Equimedian
Jason Velez lives a mundane existence installing EmuX virtual reality machines—scraping together just enough money to pay for his increasingly unsustainable science fiction collection—when he begins having strange dreams. He knows he has to make some personal changes if he hopes to get his life in order.
Except change is exactly what’s happening to those around him. His roommate’s personality suddenly shifts. Jill, his closest single friend, retroactively has a long-term partner. And why doesn’t anyone remember what a wristplex is?
Disoriented by these alterations, and suffering from panic attacks and lapses in memory, Jason tries to convince his friends that something is off, and it might have to do with the enigmatic Progress Pilgrims—a mysterious order who can travel microseconds into the future. But if that wasn’t enough, a flyer labeled only EQUIMEDIAN leads Jason to a meditative self-improvement service that seems to know a little too much about Jason for comfort.
With his walls closing in and nowhere else to turn, Jason must decide where and how to finally make a stand. If he does, he might just change the world—if the world doesn’t change him first.
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“One of the most promising of today's newer science-fiction writers." —Robert Silverberg
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“A cleverly Borgesian, reality-distorting premise enlivens this tribute to Silver Age SF." —Kirkus Reviews
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“Wow. So... Equimedian. Alvaro Zinos-Amaro isn’t fucking around. Working-class, righteously subversive post-cyberpunk that patches MIRL through MIDI and drags memory into malware. With wit, grit, heat, and bite, Zinos-Amaro hunts the most dangerous VR game of all: the human brain. Philip K. Dick is turning [these pages proudly] in his grave." —Jason Heller, Hugo Award-winning author of Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded
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“Equimedian is a valentine to science fiction, a story of maturation, and a complex view of our complex reality. You will root for Jason as he struggles, as we all must, to grow up in a bewildering world." —Nancy Kress
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“Not only does Equimedian appeal to the reader in me, but the writer–stories here are not only real, but the keys to the Kingdom. Equimedian is weird, intellectual, warm, warped, freaky and fannish. I loved it." —Thoraiya Dyer
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“Plenty of science fiction books get the science right, but this might be the first one that gets the science fiction right. It’s Don Quixote in a Möbius comic strip drawn by Philip K. Dick—for Kilgore Trout." —Stephen Graham Jones
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“Zinos-Amaro's absorbing debut is–fittingly–at least three things at once: a poignant slice of life, a surreal, slow-burn conspiracy thriller, and a love-and-loss letter to the science fiction genre. I emerged from it as one does from the very best dreams." —Rich Larson, author of Ymir and Tomorrow Factory
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“This novel instantly propels Alvaro Zinos-Amaro into being one of the most exciting new voices in SF. Read it now, before everybody starts asking you if you’ve read Equimedian yet." —Michael Marshall Smith, New York Times and internationally-bestselling novelist
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“Wondrous, creepy, vertiginous. PK Dick meets Hermann Hesse meets Black Mirror, with knowing nods to Russ, Heinlein, Galouye and countless others, on a ride through fandom, obsession and loss. Equimedian is as mind-bending as it is urgent in what it has to say about the combinatory power of words to change the world." —J.S. Breukelaar, author of The Bridge
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“Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, one of the field's sharpest minds, has written a Phildickian delight. Jason, a science fiction obsessive, finds himself inside the kind of stories he's spent his life reading. As reality keeps shifting under Jason's feet, and conspiracies unfurl, we never stop rooting for him. Fans of New Wave SF are especially going to dig this." —Daryl Gregory, author of Spoonbenders
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“[Equimedian] promises to reach many different types of reader with its invitation to traverse high tech, how reality is defined and represented, and the forces that would compromise, alter, or control it." —Midwest Book Review
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Written by Hugo Award Finalist Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9862194-8-6