There's something about walking a thousand year-old, tree-lined street of feudal Kyoto in the afternoon, then grabbing a bullet train to end the day at 3 a.m. in the glittering neon-crusted night streets of modern Tokyo that is so mind-boggling as to drive one to madness. Which reminds me of "The Edge of Madness" book I'm working on even now as I travel throughout Japan trying to catch a whiff of its flavor, over 800 years ago around the mid-1200's BCE.

Picking up where "Total Meltdown" (Wildside/Borgo Press pending release) ends, "The Edge of Madness" is set twenty years in the future after the USA is saved from total economic meltdown by life-partner, gay political analysts Adelphous Tripler and Shawn Clarke.  In it, the New America of President "Alexander the Great" Jackson has continued developing following what everyone supposes is Jackson's keenly insightful but never actually revealed plan. To Ameria's surprise, the stimulus to jump-start smaller, leaner, more future-focused New America comes not from the brilliant people Jackson surround himself with, but from a series of serendipitous socio-technological innovations that sweep like a tsunami wave across America - a rare instance of what people begin calling an event of universal synchronicity. What results is nothing less than a Brave New World teetering on the edge of madness.

Holographic teachers, unisex bodysuits only one molecule thick, prehensile tails for fun and profit...did Jackson really foresee where New America was headed or was he just another deluded demi-god in a long succession of demi-gods like arch-nemesis, former President Brown?  Will the madness engulfing New America plunge it into a new Dark Age or somehow usher it dumbfounded the next step towards a major leap in human evolution? 

"The Edge of Madness" is a bold look into the impenetrable eyes of future humankind. So what is it the astute will see?  Ah, you'll have to read the book when it comes out, hopefully later this year!

Sincerely,
Gary Martine