8/17/26
Lovely weekend in Annapolis for Cat and Tony’s wedding. I wrote about it in yesterday’s newsletter. But now we’re back home and about to enter Hell Fall, which is what I’ve decided to call the next three months. This weekend, I take my youngest son to college. The week after that, Mary and I begin moving from PA to WV — a process we’d like to have fully completed by early November. In between all that, I’ve got KingCon and KillerCon, an as-yet-unannounced signing in York, PA, another wedding, and another trip up to the kiddo’s college for Parent’s Weekend (during which we might get to see former President Obama). And also finish me and Laurel Hightower’s collaborative novel and get started on THE END: THE LABYRINTH Book 5 and GENERATION HEX (which,as my Patreon subscribers know started life as a sequel to END OF THE ROAD but has since morphed into a history of horror fiction from 1999 to 2015).
It’s a lot. Thus… Hell Fall.
~
Women In Horror Year: Day 104
The Genesis Code by Lisa Von Biela
Obedience and submission...uploaded directly to the brain....
When Mark Weston is hired by OneMarket, the prestigious and premier supplier of global equity trading systems, owned by international business tycoon Simon Harris, he thinks he's found his dream job. Great pay, amazing benefits - and sure, the hours are long and the demands on his time are often extreme - but it means financial security for him and his wife Sheila, a new life and a new beginning, a fast track to success with a great company.
But deep within the walls of the enigmatic OneMarket, there is something unthinkable happening that only a select few are aware of, the development of a new kind of invasive technology dubbed the genesis code, that could not only expand Simon Harris' empire, but create a new, more efficient and obedient workforce. Mark and his coworkers have unknowingly become part of a horrifying experiment they may never be able to escape, and time is running out.
A new kind of worker...a new kind of hybrid...a new kind of corporate slave....
The Genesis Code...upload complete.
Lisa Von Biela is not a name you hear mentioned often in relation to Generation Hex (the authors who kept horror fiction alive from roughly 1999 to 2012), but she was absolutely a part of it, with stories appearing in such well-remembered venues as The Edge, Horrorfind, and Bailey Hunter’s Dark Recesses in the early 2000s. I suspect that’s because Lisa stopped writing for a while so that she could attend law school, graduating magna cum laude in 2009, and becoming a legal aid attorney helping homeowners during the Great Recession, which is when horror underwent another implosion (with Leisure Books and the small press). Another reason might be because her novels tend to do what Michael Crichton did so well — focus on the horrific aspects of possible and theoretical science and technology; as much thrillers as they are horror. But she does it as well as Crichton, and it’s mind-boggling to me that her stuff isn’t more well known.
The Genesis Code, her first full-length novel, will appeal to fans of Bentley Little, the television show Severance, J.F. Gonzalez’s The Corporation, or Jeff Strand’s Work/Life Balance. Given Elon Musk’s latest forays into brain chip implants, a reader could be forgiven for assuming she based this on that, but this novel was written years ago, way back when most people hadn’t even heard of Elon Musk, or of they had, still bought into his PT Barnum bullshit. It’s marketed as a techno-thriller, but there are moments of full-fledged horror, making it a fantastic hybrid novel. Originally published as a signed limited edition hardcover by Delirium Books imprint DarkFuse (just before the small press crash that wiped out Delirium and others), the out of print paperback and hardcovers bring hefty prices on the secondary market. Luckily, it’s now available again in eBook and audiobook from Crossroad Press.
