Grid City Overload - Paperback

by Steven T. Bramble (Author)

Set in the fictional hub of Grid on the verge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Grid City Overload swirls around three central characters: a budding uppers addict, an informational psychopath, and schizotypal soda factory worker who believes he's a fish.

Two interlocking conspiracies are converging on this socially and psychologically vulnerable trio in a city designed to function as a pure technocracy. Fueled by an abruptly powerful political movement, the ubiquitous software company InfoZebra begins construction on a massive new corporate headquarters at the heart of Grid. At the same time, the legal rights to a dying woman's head are called into question. Between the two is a prodigiously skilled hacker who transforms both situations into scandals, upending the city and ensnaring the people around her, both knowing and unknowing.

The result is a journey into the minds of the citizens, and objects, of Grid, including dissident cultists, highstrung partiers, anti-identity authors, a retired hitman, tech tycoons, and a sentient phone torn by love and revolution. This surrealistic and intricate novel, the second installment in a triptych about technology and madness, paints a psychological portrait of high-tech civilization struggling to keep up with its own advancements, stumbling into an era in which human beings are abstract and reality takes on a new meaning.