Lincoln Michel, Editor-in-Chief of Electric Literature and author of the magical collection Upright Beasts, recommends that “if you didn’t get enough bleak, dystopian scenarios” after binge-watching this season’s Black Mirror, you should check out “similar science fiction novels to tide you over until the next season.”
Check out “12 Books to Read after Binge-watching Black Mirror” on GQ. It’s lovely to find The Wilds on a list with some of my favorite weird books:
In the story collection The Wilds, Julia Elliott mixes science fiction visions with a Southern gothic style—think Black Mirror by way of Flannery O’Connor. Elliott enters her dark worlds from surprising angles. “LIMBs,” for example, takes place in a depressing nursing home where residents move around with Leg Intuitive Motion Bionics limbs. Other stories look attempts to make robots experience love by downloading sonnets and novels into their brains and a horrifying spa resort where the vain rich try to prevent aging through “controlled” diseases. While the premises of these stories are captivating, the real star of Elliot’s work is her lyrical and loopy Southern gothic prose.