Eternity

Title: Eternity: The Long and Short of It

Author: William M. Brandon III

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Eternity is not concerned with why we are here; the eternal question remains, what are we doing with our brief existence?

Moving between the mean streets of Los Angeles and the lazy green byways of rural Georgia… between madness and epiphany… between reality and something, not quite real… between ancient cosmic terror and the mundane horrors of the American experience… Eternity: The Long and Short of It is a collection of (mostly) short warnings. Warnings of things to come, and warnings of things that we can no longer escape.

ISBN: 978-1-951393-27-4
Price: $11.95 (paperback) $3.99 (Kindle ebook)
Release date: 12/25/23

Kind words about ETERNITY: The Long and Short of It

“William Brandon’s Eternity: The Long and Short of It is a wonderfully smart and merciless dystopian collection about the evils of our times. With Ballardian scalpel-precision in dialogues and situations, William Brandon dissects the rotten limbs of neoliberalism, bigotry and technology in order to present us with the monster we have created ourselves. Terrifically well written and constructed, Eternity is a must-read for all those who seek a rewarding challenge in a book. Totally recommended.”
— Seb Doubinsky, author of Missing Signal, The Invisible and Paperclip

“An intriguing blend of sci-fi and horror, these stories smash together the future we were promised and the very different future we live with now. The world of Eternity is dystopian and paranoid, but not without a thread of soul that pulls you through.”
— Scott Gilbertson, luxagraf.net

“Brandon’s ability to merge a great story with near-future SF and technology is impressive enough, but when combined with real-world-politicking Eternity becomes far more than just a collection of great, interconnected stories; it’s a clear warning about the endless ways corporations seek to own us, and the ways in which a daily grind can make us numb to the bigger picture. Fans of Black Mirror should run—not walk—to buy this book.”
— Lindz McLeod, author of Turducken and Beast

“William M. Brandon III’s Eternity deftly depicts a world gone whorled, where isolatos and desperados, worker bees and wannabes career through odd careers like post-Rapture-messaging-service server farmer, call-center-for-monetized-conversations operator, desire-for-new-products test driver, etc., each wildly imaginative story both mirror to our terrible present and medium to terrifying futures—from here to eternity, in other words. Keenly attacking disaster capitalism, total-spectrum surveillance, apocalyptic cults, religious fundamentalism, and more, Eternity foregrounds the following ironies: the more connection, the less intimacy; the more light, the less illumination; the more information, the less understanding.”
— John Madera, author of Nervosities and Among the Dynamos

“A young atheist navigating the rise of American Christofascism and a secret police of Christian hardliners. A refugee adrift in a cyberpunk landscape looking for salvation. An apocalypse cult underpinning the American political-industrial complex, awaiting its Lovecraftian god. Poverty, avarice, desperation. Brandon’s interconnected tales—character-driven but dripping with commentary—are missives from post-Trump America, a bullhorn raised at our nihilism and apathy, warning that decline isn’t coming: ‘It’s been here for a long time.’”
— Brandon Getz, author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

“Eternity is a collection of warnings from William M. Brandon III. This punk philosopher has been transmitting warnings through his novels for the better part of the last decade, and those who have heard have heeded. With this collection of stories (or are they essays, or does it matter? Why do you even ask? Are you a cop?), he breaks his vision down even further with easier chunks for chewing, while still dense in righteous nutrition. Genre is just another authority for Brandon to defy with relish, and that deliciousness is shared with the reader. In Eternity, William Brandon cuts through the corruption and hypocrisy inherent in the American Experience with a skeptic’s scalpel. This is not a reading experience; this is a rallying cry!”
— Jordan A. Rothacker, author of The Pit, and No Other Stories, and the forthcoming novel, The Shrieking of Nothing

“William Brandon shapes Athens, Georgia as Kafka shaped Prague. The fabric of reality is, indeed, thin and the ever-present threat of detection by an underground THEM is as close to the characters of these stories as though THEY were standing just behind them, breathing thinly and waiting for the right moment to strike. Eternity features hellish call centers and data uploading facilities, the individuals who pick up jobs at these places to avoid a hideous fate, and the toxic blend of faith and misinformation. In William Brandon’s Georgia, beware. You are being watched.”
— Pam Jones, author of A Carnival of Birds, The Arizona Room, and Andermatt County: Two Parables

“William Brandon’s newest collection Eternity: The Long and Short of It, is written with a blistering, brilliant urgency, whose primary function, outlined as a compelling series of “warnings,” offers readers a remarkably thoughtful insight into class disparity, privatization, the colossal totality of civilization as information control, land ownership, disaster capitalism, history, the absurd reflective technological investigations of a rapturous theology of the doomed, marginalization, as well as the monopolization/control/management of the earth, including the reality in which it orbits, where we are all condemned as consumable objects, measured simply as an enterprise of assets to be managed by the elite.

“Brandon’s fiction dares to help readers, grappling with the existential perils associated with navigating the contemporary tribulations perpetually imbedded within “capital R, Reality,” to not only help us understand the places that we have been, but more importantly, examine the possible positions of the paths that our civilization may take us, if we fail to collectively course correct, as we strive to more positively model the sharper coming curves of our ongoing evolution.

“It is rare that a work of fiction can not only serve as deeply insightful, compassionate, caring, and forward thinking, but it also serves as a clarion call of solidarity that invites readers to unify around the idea that we use our arts as a means to create real measurable paradigmatic social change, it is for this reason that Brandon is not just an author, but also a creative pioneer, working for the themes of resistance and revolution, for as the book comes to a close we quickly realize that it is everything that we love that is on the line that we must collectively, not only fight for, but live to forever protect and preserve.”
— Phillip Freedenberg, author of America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic

“What Brandon has done here, in such Brandon fashion, is weave together the daily terror of American Existence into an oppressive, but elevated tapestry. We have the terror of work, and the way offices are torture chambers-slash-competitive leagues-slash-eugenics laboratories. We have the combined legacy of old culture and banality of individual tragedy. We have religion and its confidence games blending with technology and its own confidence games. The warnings are haunting and the way Brandon blends sci-fi, horror, technophilia/phobia and dystopian cyberpunk themes creates something beautiful.” 
— Nate Ragolia, author of One Person Can’t Make a Difference and There You Feel Free