Public Access Afterworld

A Novel

By: Jane Schoenbrun

A mysterious realm on the other side of our screens. A dark force that draws victims into its static. The unlikely hero called to save them and herself from this electric hell. Public Access Afterworld is the profound, binge-all-night, headrush of a novel by the celebrated filmmaker of I Saw the TV Glow

"Jane Schoenbrun has the literary voice I’ve been famished for. Public Access Afterworld gave me a vertiginous thrill I haven’t encountered since David Mitchell."—Torrey Peters
"Thrilling, heart-wrenching, hilarious, visionary, and so damned smart, this novel is a major work by a major writer."—Paul Tremblay

Find the receiver. Make it real.

At 5:35pm on September 3rd, 1988, Dallas weatherman Ray "Can You Say Sunshine" Davino makes passing reference to Public Access Afterworld during a rambling monologue, right before he puts a gun to his head on live television and pulls the trigger.

On June 12th, 2009, David Sawyer and Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teens who might be falling in love, gather in Erin's basement to watch TV's analog-to-digital transition. But in the static that follows, Erin witnesses surreal broadcasts from a pirate TV network called Public Access Afterworld and their lives are changed forever.

Seventeen years later, Bethany Peters toils through the night shift at megacorp GlobalVill's bleak Austin campus. A trans content moderator, she spends her evenings reviewing an endless stream of horrific videos. But then a young streamer begins to crop up in her feed calling out to Public Access Afterworld.

But what is Public Access Afterworld?

Spanning decades and realities, with an unforgettable ensemble of outcasts and nerds, especially the messy but wholly relatable Bethany who must overcome paranoia and self-doubt to transform into a hero of our times, Public Access Afterworld will have you reading through the night and rooting for its characters to survive. A mesmerizing mashup of speculative fiction, horror, and conspiracy, it marks the arrival of a major new force in contemporary fiction by a groundbreaking filmmaker who's been compared to David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Critic reviews

“Jane Schoenbrun has the literary voice I’ve been famished for. Public Access Afterworld gave me a vertiginous thrill I haven’t encountered since David Mitchell; the kind of epic book that doesn’t just warp reality on the page but goes on warping when you look up—you read it and the world glints with secrets anew.”—Torrey Peters, author of Stag Dance and Detransition, Baby

“In Jane Schoenbrun's electric Public Access Afterworld the American dream is refracted through the lens of the history of television to show its true nightmare self. Thrilling, heart-wrenching, hilarious, visionary, and so damned smart, this novel is a major work from a major talent.”—Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep