“This is not the bus that was foretold to us by the great prophet. This is not the bus to Chicago. This is just a temptation sent by evil doers. This is not the path to salvation. All praise Chicago!” – James R. Galpinski, ‘Edge of the Known Bus Line’
What up dudes I have got to get my calendar together. There is stuff coming up in August. I’m so hesitant to promote early because the show last month got postponed and now I’m superstitious. Well, the show got rescheduled to August 20th, so come see us then. I’m reading at Words // Friends, Sara Matson’s series, on August 26th. There is possibly another August reading in the works. I will have flyers and stuff soon. What I really want to promote right now, though, on the heels of recommending 10 or 13 anthologies for you to read, is that I am going to be in another anthology. This one is coming from Atomic Carnival Press and is entitled Eat The Rich. Are you mad at billionaires? Are you mad at millionaires? Well. Come to this anthology for some catharsis, because those jagoffs are gonna get eaten. Gotta be honest, I didn’t know if I could write a cannibal story1 until this anthology. Many thanks to Eirik Gumeny for his thoughtful and patient notes with my submission.
Speaking of Eirik Gumeny—he was an old Cracked.com comrade, a great speculative fiction writer, and good dude. Atomic Carnival Press is entirely his brainchild. He was taken from us too soon a couple of years of back, and indie lit is lesser for it. Monica Rodriguez took the mantle of this anthology up, and I’m so grateful to her for doing so. Pre-order Eat The Rich here!
Okay, let’s get to a book that’s actually out in the world.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week
A book that my friend Tommy Beanbags bought for me and shipped to my house with a handwritten note signed “- T. Beanbags,” which made me laugh a whole lot. The note now lives with the book, Beans. A book that refuses to ever explain why or how any of this is happening, and is all the scarier for it. A book that taught me that you can butcher rats and get hallucinogenic highs by eating venomous spiders (I, uh, will not be verifying or even testing this info). A book that has characters imagining the Midwest as some kind of holy place, which, well. Some parts of it, for sure. I’m talking, of course, about Edge of the Known Bus Line by James R. Galpinski.
Edge of the Known Bus Line by James R. Gapinski: so listen what’s happening is this our narrator gets on the bus for work, right? She works in a deli. The bus, however, switches to Out Of Service. Instead of letting everyone off, the bus’s destination is now Out Of Service. Passengers are forced off the bus at gunpoint and left stranded at Out Of Service, a wasteland where people eat rats, bugs, spiders, and even dead people2. No one has names: our narrator befriends a woman wearing a tarp whom she names Tarp Lady. Tarp Lady’s boyfriend is a guy with a condom wrapper eye patch that the narrator nicknames Condom Eye. A fellow passenger, a regular on the narrator’s bus route who stares at her ass all the time, becomes Ass-Starer. We learn there are a couple of cult/gangs: the Chicago Faction, who believes that one day a bus destined for Chicago/O’hare will come and take them away, the Pittsburgh Faction, who seem about as relevant as the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Cleveland Faction, who lives in the hills, eating spiders and having visions of Cleveland. Our narrator studiously tries to avoid being in any faction.
A few elements combine to make this book really great: 1) Out Of Service is a truly messed up place that is inescapable—the bus will not take you back, the mountains are unforgiving, anyone who ventures into the tunnel where the bus disappears only ever seems to come back out of the tunnel. It’s purgatorial. Some people have been there for nearly a decade. 2) our narrator, a working class woman who has survived and won’t really talk much about a troubled marriage, takes it all more or less in stride. I mean, she’s trying to escape, she’s trying to undermine the authority of the Factions, and she’s trying to stay alive. But there’s no crying, no woe-is-me. It’s almost like just a shitty day at work, except it’s upwards of a month3that she spends in Out Of Service. 3) Nothing is ever explained. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but there’s no “here’s why Out Of Service exists, here’s what it’s a metaphor for, here’s the Dark God behind it” or whatever. The novel ends, satisfactorily, but not with any new information. That might be the most unsettling aspect. You are not in control of your own life, no matter how mundane your commute. Things just happen to people. There’s not much you can do about it. Except try to stay alive. Eat rats if you must.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Hey, new DOMi & JD BECK out last week! I’ve listened through a couple times, and need to do another pass through with headphones. First impression is that I do really like it—there’s more singing and less minimalism than the previous one, but it feels like growth rather than overextension. It’s just more to wrap my head around than expected. Their first album is something I think anyone can easily get into. This one takes a few more listens. Still, I feel lucky to get to watch these two musicians grow. They’re both like 23 or something *looks it up* okay the internet is inconclusive, but they might both be younger than 23. Goddamn.
- This Week In ICE: Salvadoran Man Held At Delaney Hall Dies in ICE Custody and A Third Delaney Hall Detainee Has Died, New Jersey Congressman Says by Gwynne Hogan in The City Reporter, California’s largest ICE facility neglected detainees’ medical needs, monitor finds and The professor facing prison in ‘antifa’ case: ‘They want to scare all who oppose ICE’ by Sam Levin in The Guardian, Orbin Mauricio Henriquez Serrano survived a violent arrest in St. Paul. It still haunts him. by Madison McVan in Minnesota Reformer, Mourning and Resistance: Paul Goyette’s poignant photos capture the grief and strength present at Chicago vigils honoring those killed by ICE. by Jill Petty and Remember Their Names: A public art installation honors the lives lost to the US immigration system. by Jocelyn Martinez Rosales in South Side Weekly, Restaurant Owner Moonlights As An Advocate For Somali Asylum Seekers. He’s Never Been Busier by Ben Lauren and Chicago DJ Tunjo Was Ready To Host Karol G After-Parties. Then, ICE Arrested Him And His Husband by Francia Garcia Hernandez in Block Club, New York’s Use Of AI For Family Policing Summarizes The Last 30 Years Of City Politics by Sohini Desai in Defector (not explicitly about ICE but also definitely about ICE), The quiet infrastructure of control by Shawn Mulcahy in Chicago Reader (not explicitly about ICE but also definitely about ICE)
- Analysis Finds That Google’s AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization by Frank Landymore in Futurism
- Musk’s AI told me people were coming to kill me. I grabbed a hammer and prepared for war by Stephanie Hegarty in BBC
- Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly by Anthony Cuthbertson in The Independent
- Bosses Are Becoming Obsessed With AI, Using It to Make Every Decision, Barraging Their Employees With Nonsensical ChatGPT Directives, and Even Asking It Who to Fire by Maggie Harrison Dupré in Futurism
What’re you still doing here? Are you frightened of the unknown, whether represented by whatever’s at the end of your bus line or the future AI bros are forcing upon us? Only one of those should scare you, and it only sort of makes for good fiction. Shoutout Virtuosity (1995). Hey, Thundercat has a song about busses.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. If you’re a bus driver or train conductor or public transit employee in any capacity, I hope you have an especially great weekend. You are truly awaited in Heaven. Everyone go take a train somewhere this weekend.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- there are no depictions of dudes-gnawing-on-fresh-roasted-dudes cannibalism in my story, if that bothers you. It’s just talked about about. ↩︎
- there are no depictions of dudes-gnawing-on-fresh-roasted-dudes cannibalism in this book, if that bothers you. It’s just talked about it. ↩︎
- I think? possibly longer, but not a year ↩︎