Drones, Detectives & Disasters: Futuristic Fiction Authors Collide
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Event Details
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Mind-blowing alternative futures and speculative disasters abound in Absence by Andrew Dana Hudson and The Wildcraft Drones by TK Rex
Once Upon a Catastophe…..
Two phenomenal speculative fiction authors tackle wildly different ideas of furture disasters befalling society and question how we might respond. Is it the end of times or a new beginning?
Meet Andrew Dana Hudson, author of Absence, and TK Rex, author of The Wildcraft Drones. This is speculative fiction like you’ve never seen it. Get ready to blur genres and bend reality.
The event is free to attend, but RSVPs are encouraged so we can accomodate everyone.
Books will be available for purchase at the event. Click here to reserve yours today.
About Absence by Andrew Dana Hudson
In this gripping, moving, and genre-blending speculative debut, the world is unraveling from an epidemic of human vanishing. Two rookie agents from the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs are dispatched to small-town Kansas to investigate a woman who claims to have returned from Spontaneous Human Absence, offering answers that could change everything.
People are “popping.” Disappearing, one by one, into thin air. A global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish.
Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. Harvey’s job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine—until his life is shaken by an unexpected assignment from the central office.
A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she’s been to the other side and back. But is her wild and irresistible account true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for it? Together with his no-BS partner, Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out.
A resonant portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut is a vividly imagined novel of cosmic proportions, examining life in a time of exception and the stories we tell to get by.
About The Wildcraft Drones by TK Rex
Can machines rewild us?
An AI breakthrough connects a team of scientists with a wild dolphin, but progress is neck-and-neck with climate breakdown. Class differences are only the first challenge when romance blooms between college girls at a soil remediation site. A forlorn drone seeks reassignment after his human companion dies—but a reckless band of rebels has other plans.
Meet a future where dolphins talk, drones grieve, and rewilding reshapes what’s possible. The Wildcraft Drones explores a turbulent timeline where the role of intelligent machines changes alongside nature and humanity, in fourteen tales from the climate crisis and beyond.
Welcome to the Grungle.
“Gorgeous, hopeful, and strange, The Wildcraft Drones is a history of the next four millennia that will make you cry — in mourning, and for joy. This is the future that cyborg oak trees and pirate drones want. I do too.” — Annalee Newitz, bestselling author of Automatic Noodle and The Terraformers
“T. K. Rex’s tales of climate refugees, sentient drones, and multispecies networks pull no punches about the hardships to come, yet leave me feeling hopeful and inspired all the same. Essential reading for the Anthropocene.” — Sarena Ulibarri, author of Another Life
“T.K. Rex’s gentle prose is dense with sly humor, sharp metaphor, and an abiding love for the natural world. These stories challenge us by showing us the logical conclusion of late-stage capitalism – spiraling natural disasters, a mushrooming police state – but they also show the endless promise of resistance and hope, of love and lust, of rewilding and regrowth. These characters – both human and adorable drone – will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading (and re-reading) this visionary book.” — Cynthia Gómez, author of The Nightmare Box and Other Stories
About the Authors
Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, teacher, and critical futurist. He is the author of Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures and dozens of short stories and essays appearing in venues like Slate, Lightspeed Magazine, Long Now Ideas, and Jacobin—as well as his newsletter, www.solarshades.club. He lives in Arizona, where he teaches writing, futures thinking, and yoga.
TK Rex is a science fiction and fantasy author from the western states, whose stories can be read in numerous publications, including their debut collection, The Wildcraft Drones. They’re an alumni of the Clarion, Taos Toolbox and Futurescapes workshops, a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, the Authors Guild, and the Writers Grotto, and is the co-host of Stir, a seasonal reading series in San Francisco. The Wildcraft Drones has been described as “climate fiction with heart” by Publishers Weekly and “a much-needed vision” by Kim Stanley Robinson. Their story “Haunting Beauty” has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, and their second book, soon to be announced, is slated for 2027. Keep an eye on this rising talent via their newsletter, press, and book tour dates, here at https://tkrex.wtf/
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Cost: FREE*
