Read an interview with Jase and Forrest about the book in The Dream People #29

Read an excerpt of the book, or view a selection of the art included in it here

From cold dead island with archaic fragments of a society long since passed to sprawling city of metal and bone; Chevy decides he might as well take the trip and what he loses and gains along the way sends him into existential malfunction; deprogrammed rebuilt across withered façade, a skeleton stripped hung from sky jaws of synthetic life set to swallow –

This City is Alive is a surreal novella featuring illustrations by Jason Daniels. It merges the experimental nature of beat writers like Burroughs or Ginsberg with the modern surrealist sensibility of Steve Aylett’s novels. The story follows two lines; Chevy as he leaves the bleak, empty island he was born on, and a homeless man named Simon Klepper enduring life on an eerie dystopian city in the middle of the ocean.

Chevy leaves on the Captain’s raft with Nail and his son, Mesa. Shortly after heading into sea they realize they no longer have the option to return – Nail is an addict abusing the drug ‘protoplasmic flash’ and the mayor wants him for his involvement in his son’s overdose. They travel through the ocean in search of land or food. Through ghost ships running on deep dream aesthetics, receiving letters from martyrs screaming for an escape, losing half their crew to horrors of the seas and pure, unbridled rage... while Simon Klepper lives as an outsider in a city where deviancy from the plan is unacceptable. The Emperor doesn’t seem do anything but prune the imperfections; this includes ‘deportation,’ when a prisoner of the city is packed away in a red capsule and shipped out into the ocean to die...

This story is essentially about what it means to be an outsider. Whether alienated by addiction, deformation, or failure to recognize their function in society, every character is detached.

"This City is Alive is like waking up with your veins falling to shreds due to some hideous genetic impairment for which there is no known cure. An authentic piece of 'bizarro' literature full of serious social concern and cumm-spattered with the irreal and irreverent."
- Mike Philbin, author of Jane's Game, Twilight's Last Gleaming and The Hoo-Hoo Are Coming

"The combined talents of Forrest Armstrong and Jason Daniels make for an impressive, mind-altering force. With This City is Alive Armstrong resuscitates the reader's amputated interest in contemporary literature, slapping apathy from our eyes with a tale as engrossing as it is brutal. The final outrage against complacency is the stunning visual art supplied by Daniels, evocative of worlds perhaps dreamed by tumors grown drunk on fermented carcinogens. One can only hope (fear?) that they will continue their collaborative rampage."
-John Edward Lawson, author of Discouraging at Best

"This City is Alive is essentially a psychedelic experience in print form... When it is over you'll have just as many answers as questions. Forrest Armstrong and Jase Daniels have created a unique work that will leave your brain more than a littlet tweaked."
- Jeff Burk, reviewer for The Dream People and other journals (Full review here)

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