Busted Synapses

SKU: 978-1-940372-58-7
$14.99
$14.99
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The world of tomorrow holds wonders unlike anything humanity has ever seen! But only for those lucky few. 


Alicia, a runaway New Woman, comes to small-town Wheeling, West Virginia, and gets entangled with Jess and Dale, throwing their lives of pointless work and drug-fueled virtual reality into chaos. Meanwhile, truths are uncovered of the nation’s rewritten history—truths powerful corporations would rather leave hidden.     


Rural cyberpunk of frustrated ambitions mixed with life-altering changes and cyber-mystery! 


Now Open for Pre-Orders: Pre-order now to receive your copy early. The general release date is September 15, 2020, but pre-ordered copies will start shipping in August.

REVIEWS

​“Johnny Mnemonic goes Millennial. Cyberpunk is not dead, and Erica Satifka is its queen.” (Silvia Moreno Garcia, award-winning editor of She Walks in Shadows)

“Busted Synapses is the cyberpunk cry of Generation Screwed—a shrewd look at transhumanism through the lens of insurmountable debt and a thoroughly dehumanized workforce. A stunning novella from a unique voice in the literary class war. 

“Satifka is a working-class writer for our incomprehensible times, turning out endless truths in fiction and speaking for a generation lost in debt and dead-end jobs. This novella cuts through the cyberpunk future we were promised like a high-interest credit card lining up ketamine dropped off by a drone. Do lines of this book and dream of your own electric sheep. 

“A book for the people whose lives are all online and whose friends are always on the brink of unlivable lives. Busted Synapses is the kind of painfully true that only great science fiction can be: it reads the future in video cards and credit cards and shows us fear in a fistful of medical bills. A grim and bitter triumph.” (Meg Elison, author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife)

“What constitutes a human life? Erika Satifka asks that monster of a question in Busted Synapses, and the answers offered aren’t for the faint. With poignant sensitivity and science-fictional rigor, Satifka proves herself an uncanny chronicler of the human—and inhuman—condition.” (Jason Heller, author of Strange Stars)

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FORMAT
trade paperback; 104 pages
​
AUTHOR
Erica L. Satifka 

COVER ILLUSTRATION
Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor

COVER DESIGN
Scott Gable

OTHER FORMATS
ebook [available September 15]

THEMES
Appalachia, cyberpunk
Erica L. Satifka
​Erica L. Satifka’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Interzone, and the anthology Weird World War III, among other places. Her debut novel Stay Crazy won the 2017 British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer. Originally from western Pennsylvania, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband/editor Rob and several adorable talking cats.