This fall(ish) I have a new book coming out thanks to the good people at Red Giant Books. It is an illustrated novel(ish) and I am actually pretty proud of it. If you are interested in having me do a reading near you, know that my time and energies can be purchased for the small price of a place to expend my time and energies and a beer. And the beer is negotiable.

And so to promote the possibility of future such readings (and beer) I am posting the first of a series of samplings from aforementioned forthcoming book.

So here:

TomorrowLand

Introduction From TomorrowLand

Hello. This is the future. See our spaceships. See our moving sidewalks and silent cars. See our tallest, shiniest building and the bright blue sky that teeters upon its point. Walk in our quiet parks and observe the pretty, handsome people, the brightly colored birds living happily in cages built or evolved right into the trees.
So much seems to have changed over the years, and yet at certain angles, under certain lights, this world might look the same as it did a decade or a century ago. We seldom tear down and build up from scratch completely. There is always the refurbished, the recreated, the renewed. And away from the city, in other neighborhoods, on other planets, it will forever be the style to live in old-fashioned homes, with wrought iron fences, lampposts and all the trappings of what we imagine to be a more innocent time. Our vehicles (metal or plastic? Three wheels or four?) might give us away, but we tuck them neatly behind the antiqued wooden doors of garages made to look like carriage houses. And really, our cars and clothes are not so different as you might imagine. Styles change and change back again. Technology advances but then hides itself. People themselves do not evolve (no larger foreheads or telepathic powers, I am sorry to tell you) and if it were to all fall apart tomorrow it would not be long before witches would be burned at the stake again and some randomly selected race or class run out of town on a rail.
But it will not all fall apart tomorrow. We will go bravely forward, making new discoveries, inventing new things, then hiding them all behind the wood paneling, the fake bookcase, a plastic shrub.

Fiction, Grant Bailie

About the Author

Grant Bailie

Grant Bailie is the author of the novels Cloud 8 and Mortarville, as well as numerous stories online and in print. His latest novel, New Hope for Small Men is available in e-book form under the auspices of Necessary Fiction, where it was first serialized. His book TomorrowLand--an illustrated novel of sorts--is due out in the fall through Red Giant Books Mr. Bailie currently lives in Lakewood, Ohio, which is a stone’s throw from Cleveland. He knows this because sometimes the people in Cleveland throw stones.

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