Tropic of Kansas: A Novel

Description

"Timely, dark, and ultimately hopeful: it might not 'make America great again,' but then again, it just might."-Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling and award winning author of Homeland Acclaimed short story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award-nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off-from the other side-in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry's Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick's classic Man in the High Castle, and China Mieville's The City & the City The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as "the Tropic of Kansas." Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it's out there-that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past-and towards an unexpected future. Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture . . . or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change-if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect. As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light. "Futurist as provocateur! The world is sheer batshit genius . . . a truly hallucinatorily envisioned environment."-William Gibson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author

Christopher Brown is the author of Tropic of Kansas. He was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for the anthology Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including MIT Technology Review's "Twelve Tomorrows," The Baffler, and Stories for Chip. He lives in Austin, Texas.

"Futurist as provocateur! The world is sheer bat-shit genius...a truly hallucinatorily envisioned environment." -- William Gibson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author "Tropic of Kansas is the tale of a politically desperate USA haunted by a sullen, feral teen who is Huck Finn, Conan and Tarzan. Because it's Chris Brown's own imaginary America, this extraordinary novel is probably more American than America itself will ever get." -- Bruce Sterling, award winning author of Islands in the Net and Pirate Utopia "This stunning novel of a time all too easily imaginable as our own highlights a few of the keen-voiced, brave-souled women and men who balance like subversive acrobats on society's whirling edges...Read it to burn with the joy of realistic hope." -- Nisi Shawl, Tiptree-award winning author of EVERFAIR and WRITING THE OTHER "A unique blend of Philip K. Dick, Kafka (just a smidgen), and a whole lot of Christopher Brown. Adventure novel meets political satire and the finest elements of realistic sci-fi, and it's so well written it goes down like a greased eel. It's hopeful dystopia. What a book." -- Joe R. Lansdale, author of the Hap and Leonard series "Tropic of Kansas is savvy political thriller meets ripping pulp adventure-a marriage made in page-turning, thought-provoking heaven. It's a vision both frighteningly prescient and already too real, and a story of valiant heart and brain up against the worst architectures of greed and power." -- Jessica Reisman, SESFA award-winning author of SUBSTRATE PHANTOMS "[A] real page turner." -- Gavin J. Grant, Bram Stoker Award-winning editor and author