A few more pix from the archive this morning:
Second studio in Houston back in 2021.
Third studio in Houston circa 2024.
Writing space at 3rd Houston studio.
Early TSG script, written in Los Angeles around 2016, before I adopted more of a “Marvel Method” working from loose plots instead.
Have yet to come across pix from the fist Houston space, Denver studio, LA, or New York. It's all a jumbled mess.
One of the surest ways to infuse my life with misery is to sit me in front of a computer screen for multiple hours on end. Unfortunately for me, this past week has been mostly that, and the next week will likely entail more of the same. Some days I find myself clocking in something like 12 hours straight at the computer. Needless to say, this is not the life of the artist one aspired to as a child, but it is exactly what the job necessitates (at least for me I guess) in this evidently despicable century of human existence. Most of these hours don't actually involve doing much in the way of anything creative.
– TSG Exhibition: The ask included proposing objects that can be pulled from the world of THE SOLAR GRID; objects that could potentially be fabricated and displayed within an exhibition setting. This meant going through the entire now complete graphic novel with a particular eye for the speculative objects that could ostensibly work, making note of them, and putting them all into a presentable proposal-ready PDF.
– The Podcast Series: Going over the video recordings of the episodes (wherein I interview Egyptian artists), each one an hour long, and identifying the moments in which the guest talks about a particular project. Make a list of all mentioned projects, email it to the guest so they can send back relevant imagery of said projects. Once received, email them to the video editor along with time-stamps that indicate where the images ought to be spliced in.
-TSG Archive: Two things have necessitated going through my very unorganized history of TSG process documentation. And y'know, TSG took 10 years to complete, so that's a hell of a lot of unorganized history to go through. Which is how I stumbled upon this:
Giving a keynote presentation about THE SOLAR GRID at the Science Fiction Research Association conference held in Oslo circa 2022. Photo credit: lost (I'm so sorry!)
Of course, the above-mentioned projects haven't been the only reason behind recent computer-centric activities. There's also the usual stuff: email, accounting, flight bookings, etc.
My one piece of advice to young artists from here on out with be: Just know that it'll involve something like 70% admin, 20% actual creative work, and 10% putting out fires and/or wanting to die.
Excited to announce that my long time Emmy-award-winning friend Yasmin Elayat and I have received a generous grant from AFAC to adapt THE SOLAR GRID into a videogame:
THE SOLAR GRID: VIDEO GAME is a narrative adventure set in a post-collapse Earth powered by solar satellites. Players unearth speculative objects revealing buried histories of climate collapse. Knowledge is power. Will the players restore balance or fuel the forces of exploitation?
This is a two-year project that will see a playable demo based on THE SOLAR GRID developed, before we can tap into additional funding sources to take the project further.
Based exclusively on downloads, it looks like THE SOLAR GRID has readers in Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Finland, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, the United Kingdom, in addition of course to the United States.
The story, I think, is just asking to travel into other languages.
The latest newsletter went out a couple days ago. RESTRICTED FREQUENCY #234: Shortform.
After popular demand, the complete THE SOLAR GRID graphic novel is now available for download. For a limited time only, there are presently two ways to get it:
The book is also being serialized in print from Radix Co-op.
A pathway for a collected print edition is still being explored.
This complete e-book edition comes with a never-before-seen introduction by Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Castlevania, Normal), extensive foreword by Sim Kern (The Free People's Village, Genocide Bad), and fantastic afterword by Ho Che Anderson (King, I Want To Be Your Dog, Godhead).
Hundreds of years after a global flood, night has been consigned to legend. In its place, the Solar Grid—a vast network of artificial suns—keeps Earth bathed in relentless daylight, powering factories that never cease. But this eternal dawn comes at a cost: The Earth has become a scrapheap, a wasteland stripped of resources to fuel colonial settlements on Mars.
Amidst the ruins, two young scavengers, Mehret and Kameen, stumble upon a discovery that could shatter the Solar Grid's fragile, oppressive system. The story spans centuries—from a submerged Cairo to the corporate strongholds of New York, and into the augmented reality of a distant Mars. Environmental collapse, capitalism, imperialism, and migration collide in an epic tale that examines the hopes and consequences of unhinged techno-utopianism.
“Ganzeer treats The Solar Grid as a culmination of his personal, professional and political experiences over recent years.” – THE GUARDIAN
“Ganzeer’s project epitomizes his hyper-democratic ethos.” – FOREIGN POLICY
“It’s a story about the inevitable destruction of our planet by corporate greed and a couple of unassuming antiheroes who somehow bring it all down. This is a story of revolution, the powerless taking power back from the powerful.” – SLATE
Humbled to see that THE SOLAR GRID has been getting a fair degree of scholarly interest in recent years. These two popped up on my radar:
Contingent Futures and the Time of Crisis: Ganzeer's Transmedial Narrative Art — by Dominic Davies for Literary Geographies, 2022
Climate Change and the Future of the City: Arabic science fiction as climate fiction in Egypt and Iraq — by Teresa Pepe for Fragile Ecologies: Environmental Urgency in the Arts and Literatures of the Middle East, 2023
August will see six academics at the top of their game come together in Dresden for Petrocultures 2026 to discuss THE SOLAR GRID and “its many affordances for thinking through techno-optimism, energy, colonization, etc.” as associate professor Stacey Balkan recently put it in an email. The panel discussion is set to include:
I too will be in Dresden for this meeting of minds, which I am very much looking forward to and immensely humbled by.
Upon reading what I felt was an absolute throwaway book—THE COMMONSENSE OF NUDISM by George Riley Scott—an idea for a most unusual sort-of-sequel to THE SOLAR GRID made its way into my mind. Now, THE SOLAR GRID actually already ends in a way that kind of invites a sequel (though unnecessary, it's a completely self-contained graphic novel), but that sequel if pursued would be too expected, I think. This other sort-of-sequel I can't stop thinking about, wouldn't at all be expected and would likely come off as highly peculiar (I can't help myself apparently). But it would also be so perfect in a way. It wouldn't feature any of the characters from the original THE SOLAR GRID (itself surprising, given how many characters there are in the book—it'd be so easy to pluck any one of those and do something entirely focused on them), but would instead feature a new cast of characters and how they get on in the aftermath of THE SOLAR GRID's destruction. Fertile ground for social friction, and the rise of new ideas and ways of being despite most people at large holding onto the old. Even when the very conditions that created the logic and reasoning for the old has clearly disintegrated before their eyes.
To be clear, THE COMMONSENSE OF NUDISM is a shit book. Published in 1934, it's filled with much quackery, false arguments, and casual racism, but it's sprinkled with a kernel of interesting enough reason throughout, and a handful of passages that are kind-of historically overlooked—like how Hitler cracked down on the rising nudist movement in early 1930s Germany.
Obviously, I will refrain from engaging with this sequel idea or any other ideas concerned with graphic-noveling unless I'm able to land a good enough publishing deal for THE SOLAR GRID. Can't be placing the cart in front of the horse, which is something I have a history of doing but have finally managed to overcome, I think.
“This book (The Solar Grid) is a singular voice, unique in its eclectic mix of intelligent science fiction, world politics, innovative design, and hardcore punk aesthetic. THE SOLAR GRID is fantastic art and you will be changed after reading it.”
—Farel Dalrymple, author of THE WRENCHIES
Within a day of receiving a most enviable introduction for THE SOLAR GRID, a potential agent—who's had the manuscript sitting on her desktop for several months now—finally wrote back to tell me she wasn't sure she could agent it because the book isn't mainstream enough. She is of course absolutely right, and I as a matter of fact take her assessment as a compliment. My “idols” have, after all, never been mainstream. Although many have managed to become largely mainstream despite their material being anything but. There's Crumb, Alan Moore, Philip K. Dick, Hunter S. Thompson, and Burroughs to name but a few. Even Vonnegut started out as a fringe writer.
This puts me in the less-than-ideal position of having to agent the work myself, as I'd like the book to exist out in the wild for readers to discover beyond my limited reach.
I was chatting with members of a grant-giving body a few days ago about another potential book project. One of them said, “So you're writing, drawing, and designing it?” To which I nodded. “Wow, one-man show,” she said.
Not gonna lie, I'm a little tired of this whole one-man show business. The thought of working on the material while other better-positioned folks take care of getting it out there strikes me as very appealing, but it does seem to be insistently elusive for one reason or another.
Today I order chicken and make some soup in an attempt to rid my body of whatever new plague has infected me.
Today's soundtrack is a combination of cafe chatter (played via my phone) and Persian jazz (played via my laptop).