The Node - Tito Perdue

First published in 2011, Tito Perdue’s The Node returns from Standard American Publishing.

Welcome to the future. The 21st century has come of age, and it seems that everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. Propelled beyond the brink by environmental catastrophe, social degeneration, and the foretold collapse of the monetary system, the American landscape has given way to a postmodern picaresque.

In such a world, where crime has been normalized, sex has been mechanized, and ethnic enclaves-equipped with inscrutable bioengineered surveillance gadgetry-vie for the last remnants of power, one hapless pilgrim stands athwart the apocalyptic tide.

Emboldened by dim nostalgia and quixotic resolve, this man-our hero, as we may insist-is entrusted to mobilize a fractious retinue of co-ethnic subversives (the maligned "Cauks") to establish a stronghold, a redoubt, a community, a last ditch . . . a Node. It remains only to be seen whether the seeds of renewal may yet find purchase, or be left to ash.