My Child Is a Stranger

In My Child is a Stranger, a narrator first speaks directly of posthuman ecologies, then narrates a number of melancholic and intersectional stories with dystopian themes of science fiction and science reality, and then bids farewell in the high heathendom of katabasis and fervor. My Child is a Stranger shows us the voices of the alienated, strange or oblique pariahs of our community, even if we are unable to bear it. A criminal investigator's insane interpretations of an esoteric neuropath and a journalist's equally insane reasoning about the myth of reverse racism. A minor character's manic rambling about a childhood frenemy. A hermit nun imagining a Bosch-like triptych in her mind, while sitting on a chair of nails. An unwritten PHD thesis on the impossibility of language and hallucinogenic mushroom wine. The diasporic double consciousness of a poet laureate. Drunken tourists intruding into the sacred rituals of Japan. Contraband cheese smuggled from a monastery by an ex-CEO, sentenced to a future that never was. Petro-capitalism in the shadow of debased utopias. Surrealism in closed Russian cities. Guides on how to fail. Auto-crucifixion. The Methuselarity. Uppgivenhetssyndrom ... Over these scenes and more, a message spreads, a message in their story and their existence which no one will ever understand, its comprehension, not intended for human beings. Brandon W. Teigland is a Canadian speculative fiction writer and apocalyptic realist largely concerned with pioneering the posthuman as a neo-decadent literary phenomenon. He is the author of the novella Under a Collapsing Sky (2021), the novelette Metapatterning for Disconnection (2023), and the novel Neuromachina (2024).