Dead Neon: Tales of Near-Future Las Vegas...

I pride myself in not owning a television, I have not had one in 5 years and I have never looked back. So how do I get my news you ask? KNPR and online of course. But one thing I have is a fabulous book collection and it grows everyday and soon it will grow again with Jarrett Keene's and Todd James Pierce latest creation. This came to me today so I will allow it to speak for itself...

Las Vegas has long been considered the American icon of excess. It offers every imaginable extreme of greed, pleasure, and despair, all supported by technology that enhances fantasy and allows residents and visitors alike to forget reality and their human responsibilities. The fourteen stories in Dead Neon imagine Sin City in the near future, when overindulgence has led to social, environmental, or economic collapse, and technology can no longer reverse decay or chaos. The settings range from futuristic casinos to the seared postapocalyptic desert, and the subjects vary from the struggle to survive in a repressive theocracy to the madness of living in a world where most life forms and all moral codes have vanished.

The contributors, all either Vegas-based or intimately familiar with the city, capture its unique rhythms and flavor and probe its potential for evoking the fullest expression of the human spirit in settings of magic, horror, and transcendence.

Todd James Pierce is associate professor of English and creative writing at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He has published a novel and a story collection and is the coeditor, with Jarret Keene, of another Las Vegas story collection, Las Vegas Noir.

Jarret Keene has taught creative writing and literature courses at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has authored several poetry collections and a rock-band biography, and has edited or coedited several books about Las Vegas. He also covers the city’s underground music scene for national and regional magazines.

Brian Paco Alvarez enculturating Las Vegas into the millennium...