Public Access Afterworld: A Novel

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 and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

One of Publisher Weekly’s Ten Best Books of the Year

“Beautiful, funny, and scathing . . . I stayed up all night binge-reading.”—SenLinYu
“Gave me a vertiginous thrill I haven’t encountered since David Mitchell.”—Torrey Peters
“Psychedelic horror of the first order.”—Grady Hendrix
“Heart-wrenching, hilarious, visionary, and so damned smart, this novel is a major work by a major writer.”—Paul Tremblay
“Utterly hypnotic.”—Lev Grossman
“Dazzling and politically acute, Schoenbrun’s debut announces a major literary voice.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A dazzling story . . . a great American novel.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“One of the best novels of the year.”—Booklist (starred review)

One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year: The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review Podcast, The Boston Globe, Time, The Millions, Autostraddle, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Lit Hub, Vulture, AV Club, The Chicago Review of Books, The Bookseller, Reactor, Electric Lit, Book Riot, Crime Reads, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Gizmodo, Debutiful, and Write Through the Night

Find the receiver. Make it real.

At 5:35 p.m. on September 3, 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 12, 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 mash-up 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.