Starburst Magazine

Book News: Twitter And Sci-Fi Collide In VIRULENT BLURB

Written by Martin Unsworth Tuesday, 09 October 2012

Book News

VirulentBlurb is a Twitter fiction experiment telling a story reminiscent of the likes of BLADE RUNNER and SIN CITY that soon grew to spawn its own website and then attract the attentions of several Media companies. Written by Kneel Downe and released on 1st October, VIRULENTBLURB:FRACTURES is a collection of the original tweets, along with back stories and, for the first time, the first three ‘demo’ scripts.

The book takes you into a strange and twisted world of animal spliced humans, renegade droids and a strangely poetic Universe full of wonders and fear.

“Joshua Knight is often cited as the father of the Revolution.

What is certain is that his company PolyPhazeProductions was instrumental in the birthing of a new age.

The introduction of the wonder drug ReGen tackled the ghost of falling fertility.

Immortality beckoned.

Splicing technology allowed us to wear bodies not our own: A Genetic cloak of dreams.

Furthermore, the creation of increasingly wondrous devices allowed us to go where only our shamanic ancestors had gone before.

The gateway to the stars lay not in fire belching engines but here…

Here in the wires.

Here in the VEIL.

50 years ago the world was broken.

Walls came crashing down.

All that remained of the world was this one city and a few hundred miles of wasteland.

The Sun and the Stars were gone.

Only the Moon, the endless night and the constantly falling dust remained.

WELCOME then to the world of the VirulentBlurb.

Visions and Nightmares await…”

It takes inspiration from top fantasy author Jeff Noon (VURT, AUTOMATED ALICE), who has been very supportive of the project, going as far as to Tweet “Kneel is 100 percent an individual. His work is unique, and his attitude to life moves through the sentences like a spirit, guiding and creating his vision, in both form and content.” Taken as a whole they tell the ongoing story of the Blurb-verse. Various extras have been scattered around the book.

The ongoing tale can be followed on Twitter here @VirulentBlurb or find out more at VirulentBlurb.com

You can buy the book and support independent fiction here.

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