Nearly Roadkill
Queer Love on the Run
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
This cyber-erotic romantic thriller, written by two queer icons in the 1990s, has been "rebooted" for today's readers.
In this rowdy cyber-romance originally written in the 1990s, two people meet online and fall in love in every guise they can manage. As Scratch and Winc go from anonymous lovers to accidental heroes and gender outlaws, they expose the shadowy Web stretched between technology and capitalist greed, nearly becoming roadkill on the internet superhighway. With a little help from their friends including a brave teenager and a mysterious hacker, these darling rebels fight government intervention and find chosen family in this eerily prescient tale.
The 30th anniversary “reboot” edition includes an updated lens for today’s readers, as GenZ investigative journalist Drew uncovers what just might be the greatest queer love story of all time. Like Octavia Butler's PARABLE OF THE SOWER, Margaret Atwood's A HANDMAID'S TALE, and George Orwell's 1984, the return of NEARLY ROADKILL is right on time with urgent lessons for our contemporary landscape.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bornstein (Gender Outlaw) is better known for her pioneering work in gender studies than fiction, but in 1996 she and coauthor Sullivan published this erotic thriller that dives deep into the possibilities the then-new world of the internet opened up for trans and queer people. Updated with a new frame story set in the present, the tale feels as urgent and electric as ever. Scratch meets Winc in an online chat room. They know nothing about each other IRL, but their sexual chemistry is intense and immediate. Through anonymous interactions, including intimate cybersex and lengthy discussions of how they relate to gender, they come to new understandings about each other, themselves, and the world. But their freedom is threatened by a new law requiring that all internet users register with the government, documenting all of their personal details. When Scratch and Winc refuse, they become enemies of the state, which will use any means to identify them and force them to conform. Though the expositional gender theory occasionally interrupts the cyberpunk suspense, slowing the pace, time has not blunted Bornstein and Sullivan's insights into how gender shapes individuals. The result is both entertaining and persuasive.
