I had a great conversation with Bram E. Gieben (
) about his new book of essays on our collective techno-dystopian demise, The Darkest Timeline. I highly recommend it and you can buy The Darkest Timeline directly from Revol Press and at Amazon. Be cool and support indie authors, presses, non-corporate-funded ideas, etc.
Do check out the interview. We delve into Bram’s book, but also get into a whole lot of other things. Here are just a few things we touch on that you can read about later:
Mark Fisher: One of Bram’s influences in writing The Darkest Timeline was Mark Fisher, one of the early writers philosophizing about internet culture, maybe best-known for his K-Punk blog.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mark-fishers-k-punk-and-the-futures-that-have-never-arrived
Sleep Dealer: 2008 Mexican sci-fi film directed by Alex Rivera
Simulation Theory: Bram writes a lot about this in his book, and this 2003 essay by Nick Bostrom is one of the first fully laid out arguments for the theory.
https://simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf
Quan Millz: (I forget his name in the podcast), an indie author of hilarious “street lit” who has built a large following on Instagram and TikTok.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/12/1204833258/quan-millz-is-out-to-make-a-buck-one-street-lit-book-at-a-time
Zombie sites: Another nail in the death of journalism coffin. These are former local news sites that used to have real news, but now just have AI-generated slop.
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/2023/11/zombie-news-the-strange-resurrection-of-the-local-paper
And more but, unlike Bram, I’m too lazy to reference everything. So just listen!
Toxic Lit Podcast: Interview with Bram E. Gieben