I’m finishing up the final proofs for Mythmakers & Lawbreakers, my book coming out this September from AK Press. I’ll be posting a lot about it, and about other anarchist-fiction related projects I’ve got up my sleeve, a lot over the coming little bit.
To say that I’m excited about this book is to criminally understate things. I set out two years ago on a bit of a quest to discover the meaning of anarchist fiction. Like any proper quest, it involved camping illegally in the pissing rain at least once. Mostly though, it just involved endless hours of research.
This book is two parts. The first, the body of the book, is interviews with a wide variety of anarchist fiction writers–some of whom who are tangentially involved in anarchism, or fiction, or both, but all of whom have really fascinating takes on the subject.
The authors included in the final version are:
The front and back cover art is by that wonderful Colin Foran, the artist behind A SteamPunk’s Guide To The Apocalypse.
And the introduction is by one of the most talented SciFi authors in the field, Kim Stanley Robinson. Robinson doesn’t identify as an anarchist, but has portrayed them sympathetically–most famously in his Mars trilogy–and serves the vital role of an outsider looking on to what we’ve done.
The other part of the book consists of my research into the history of anarchist fiction writing. Specifically, it chronicles, briefly, each anarchist fiction author I could track down, living and dead. It also presents lists of books that represent anarchism in various ways within their pages, and touches on the thoughts about anarchism of many sympathetic authors such as George Orwell and JRR Tolkien.
And yes, the entire book is licensed Creative Commons. We will make it as available to all people of all income brackets as possible.
for pre-order as well.