Even with their new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma arriving soon, filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun isn’t slowing down — in fact, they’re trying out something entirely new. Hogarth Books has announced that they’re publishing the director’s debut horror novel, Public Access Afterworld, this fall, just two months after Camp Miasma hits theaters.
With blurbs by authors like Torrey Peters and Paul Tremblay, Public Access Afterworld sounds similar to the stories Schoenbrun’s told so far on film, specifically I Saw the TV Glow. The book’s synopsis is as follows:
At 5:35pm on September 3rd, 1988, Dallas weatherman Ray ‘Can You Say Sunshine’ Davino makes passing reference to Public Access Afterworld during a rambling monologue, right before he puts a gun to his head on live television and pulls the trigger.
On June 12th, 2009, David Sawyer and Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teens who might be falling in love, gather in Erin’s basement to watch TV’s analog-to-digital transition. But in the static that follows, Erin witnesses surreal broadcasts from a pirate TV network called Public Access Afterworld and their lives are changed forever.
17 years later, Bethany Peters toils through the night shift at megacorp GlobalVill’s bleak Austin campus. A trans content moderator, she spends her evenings reviewing an endless stream of horrific videos. But then a young streamer begins to crop up in her feed calling out to Public Access Afterworld. But what is Public Access Afterworld?
While no other details about the novel exist — other than its October release date — fans will be able to entertain themselves plenty with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which hits theaters on August 7. Described as “Portrait of a Lady on Fire set in a Friday the 13th sequel,” the film stars Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder, Jane Schoenbrun’s first since the runaway success of I Saw the TV Glow in 2024.
Public Access Afterworld hits shelves on October 27, and is available for preorder now.
