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Under a Collapsing Sky
The altered-right government has won the 64th presidential election. Meanwhile, universities have gone on strike, vaccinations against the looming bio-plague are rolling out, and a trade embargo with the East has forced Europe and North America to unite under USENA. In an era almost schizophrenically poised between religious fanaticism and a mania for scientific hegemony, all that remains is the hideousness of a world defiantly resisting change.
Across a polyphony of five different perspectives, readers are “evented” through the biological heresy portrayed in Brandon W. Teigland’s debut novel Under a Collapsing Sky. At its centre is the mysterious drug Phoenix Tears, an unknown brain parasite which, once metabolised, could be capable of either bringing on the bliss of metamorphosis, or the ritual murder of those looking for a cure.
Across a polyphony of five different perspectives, readers are “evented” through the biological heresy portrayed in Brandon W. Teigland’s debut novel Under a Collapsing Sky. At its centre is the mysterious drug Phoenix Tears, an unknown brain parasite which, once metabolised, could be capable of either bringing on the bliss of metamorphosis, or the ritual murder of those looking for a cure.
178 pages, Paperback
Published September 29, 2021
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7 people want to read
About the author
Brandon W. Teigland
4 books15 followersBrandon W. Teigland is a Canadian speculative fiction writer and apocalyptic realist largely concerned with pioneering the posthuman as a neo-decadent literary phenomenon. He is the author of the novella Under a Collapsing Sky (2021), the novelette Metapatterning for Disconnection (2023), the novel Neuromachina (2024), and the fiction collection My Child is a Stranger (2025).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 23, 2021
Brandon Teigland’s debut novel Under a Collapsing Sky is a work of science fiction set in a future world that’s eerily similar to our current one. In this future dystopia, humanity is still grappling with the same existential issues we seem to be grappling with now in our current moment: misinformation (referred to as “facteaters” in the book), famine, trade wars, bio-weapons, mass migrations, populism, and so on.
“It wasn’t just the neo-fascist films coming out of Hollywood since the altered-right took government; these mostly just pushed the usual American exceptionalism and denied global warming through ridiculous analogies such as rightist politicians being locked in a Turkish bathhouse in Brussels by leftist radicals until they overheated.”
The main difference between our current reality and the one imagined by Teigland, is that in his version of the world, things have gotten so bad governments are seriously contemplating shipping refugees to Mars:
“Now, limited in resources, the USENA had to either reduce the population or leave Earth. It was likely that they were going to have to do both, and it was looking like the serum was going to do this for them.”
The central element of the story revolves around a bio-leak from a top government-controlled experiment. This biological entity is of great interest to both the government and regular civilians—some want to control it, others to study it, and others still, to consume it.
“The organic entity had sprung directly from a hallucinatory vision. It had oozed out of him, dragging its shapeless form along the big one-bedroom apartment.”
The novel’s strength lies in Teigland’s impeccable prose. It is an easy and enjoyable read, even for someone like me who normally never dabbles with hard sci-fi. The story hooks you in within the first few pages and manages to maintain a steady pace throughout. From the beginning to the end, Teigland’s attention to detail and world building are first class. That being said, the story can feel unsteady at times. It isn’t always clear what the science is exactly. This ambiguity imbues a kind of mystical and psychedelic element to the story. There are places where you’re not certain if you’re reading sci-fi or magic realism, while other scenes feel both fantastical and surreal:
“He was alive, but just what was alive about him was not easy to determine. Fungal forms grew out of a mossy layer that had replaced his epidermis…At the top of his head, a small sapling had sprouted.”
For me, who is not a huge reader of speculative fiction, it was these surreal and vivid moments which drew me into the story. Moreover, Teigland’s characters are all very introspective; their thoughts and musings help to give the overall story a philosophical feel—the destination is hardly as important as the journey.
“Because, in reality, simulating a bioplague was equivalent to creating one. Equivalent to creating a biological heresy.”
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves good literary writing, as well as anyone who’s a fan of solid science fiction.
“It wasn’t just the neo-fascist films coming out of Hollywood since the altered-right took government; these mostly just pushed the usual American exceptionalism and denied global warming through ridiculous analogies such as rightist politicians being locked in a Turkish bathhouse in Brussels by leftist radicals until they overheated.”
The main difference between our current reality and the one imagined by Teigland, is that in his version of the world, things have gotten so bad governments are seriously contemplating shipping refugees to Mars:
“Now, limited in resources, the USENA had to either reduce the population or leave Earth. It was likely that they were going to have to do both, and it was looking like the serum was going to do this for them.”
The central element of the story revolves around a bio-leak from a top government-controlled experiment. This biological entity is of great interest to both the government and regular civilians—some want to control it, others to study it, and others still, to consume it.
“The organic entity had sprung directly from a hallucinatory vision. It had oozed out of him, dragging its shapeless form along the big one-bedroom apartment.”
The novel’s strength lies in Teigland’s impeccable prose. It is an easy and enjoyable read, even for someone like me who normally never dabbles with hard sci-fi. The story hooks you in within the first few pages and manages to maintain a steady pace throughout. From the beginning to the end, Teigland’s attention to detail and world building are first class. That being said, the story can feel unsteady at times. It isn’t always clear what the science is exactly. This ambiguity imbues a kind of mystical and psychedelic element to the story. There are places where you’re not certain if you’re reading sci-fi or magic realism, while other scenes feel both fantastical and surreal:
“He was alive, but just what was alive about him was not easy to determine. Fungal forms grew out of a mossy layer that had replaced his epidermis…At the top of his head, a small sapling had sprouted.”
For me, who is not a huge reader of speculative fiction, it was these surreal and vivid moments which drew me into the story. Moreover, Teigland’s characters are all very introspective; their thoughts and musings help to give the overall story a philosophical feel—the destination is hardly as important as the journey.
“Because, in reality, simulating a bioplague was equivalent to creating one. Equivalent to creating a biological heresy.”
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves good literary writing, as well as anyone who’s a fan of solid science fiction.
October 7, 2021
Dystopic science fiction clearly grounded in contemporary life. Multiple viewpoints include a scientist unraveling the mysterious origin of a dangerous drug/fungus/brain parasite. An old man encountering an alien intelligence in his lonely apartment. A political hustler trying to manipulate the media and cover up all manner of shenanigans. A philosopher (of esoteric ideas) struggling to comprehend existence in a rapidly changing world. An ex-biospherian founds a cult and unleashes a psychotropic apocalypse. Reminded me most of Ballard, Burroughs, some Philip K. Dick, and like much of their work this book is not for every everyone. It is complex and disturbing but it pays off the reader's investment.
My favorite theme is that the apocalypse in this book (like global warming) has already happened and the main characters are at the stage not of being able to stop it but at best mitigate it or use it for their own ends. Like us they are grappling with circumstances that are changing whether they (or we) want them to or not. For me what this book is about is how how what we once called the world has already moved beyond the human. The old binaries are decoupled. Old boundaries dissolved. Destructured. The characters try to catch up to a reality that exceeds their grasps. The old mental tools and philosophical concepts with which they use to apprehend reality are failing. This is a good book for thinking about the apocalyptic as revelation, rather than as mere catastrophe.
Bleak, unrelenting, disturbing not least because of its ideological slipperiness and the pervading sense of a text compiled in a site of epistemic overlap, there are some genuinely fantastic moments of hallucinatory beauty in which Teigland’s ideas find their voice. A unique vision.
My favorite theme is that the apocalypse in this book (like global warming) has already happened and the main characters are at the stage not of being able to stop it but at best mitigate it or use it for their own ends. Like us they are grappling with circumstances that are changing whether they (or we) want them to or not. For me what this book is about is how how what we once called the world has already moved beyond the human. The old binaries are decoupled. Old boundaries dissolved. Destructured. The characters try to catch up to a reality that exceeds their grasps. The old mental tools and philosophical concepts with which they use to apprehend reality are failing. This is a good book for thinking about the apocalyptic as revelation, rather than as mere catastrophe.
Bleak, unrelenting, disturbing not least because of its ideological slipperiness and the pervading sense of a text compiled in a site of epistemic overlap, there are some genuinely fantastic moments of hallucinatory beauty in which Teigland’s ideas find their voice. A unique vision.
March 20, 2022
"Under a Collapsing Sky" is like no other book I’ve read. It re-imagines the genre of speculative fiction to interrogate not just what the world will look like in the future, but what the nature of reality and consciousness might look like. Teigland’s fiction is driven by rich philosophical ideas without compromising character or story. "Under a Collapsing Sky" will shake the reader’s foundations. It calls into question what, if anything, it means to be human. Teigland’s exploration of our complex relationship with material culture and technology will deepen the reader’s understanding of the strange dystopian moment in which we currently find ourselves. If you are on board for a re-evaluation of all values, you will love this book.
September 20, 2021
This story will stick with me for a long time. I couldn't put it down. Hauntingly beautiful and downright chilling in equal measure. Teigland's style is unique and his insights into human nature thought-provoking. Looking forward to reading more from this author.
January 12, 2025
"Under a Collapsing Sky" is my favourite type of novel; it is very complex, set in an unsettlingly familiar and terrifying dystopian reality, and focused on hallucination-adjacent descriptions of strange evolving biology. I just completed my second reading of it, and while finding much that I missed in my previous forray, I still find my self curious, confounded, and wanting to dive back in again.
This is a brilliant book, and the amount of personality, life, and detail Brandon is able to cram into its concise 171 pages is nothing short of impressive.
This is a brilliant book, and the amount of personality, life, and detail Brandon is able to cram into its concise 171 pages is nothing short of impressive.
January 25, 2022
Grotesquely beautiful! Explores the volatility of evolution, life, death and the relationships between human and non-human entities. An omnipresent visceral lens into the consciousness of 4 characters experiencing a parallel post-pandemic dystopian reality. Allows space to observe, reflect and process current events. Teigland’s speculative fiction feels real - like you’ve lived it yourself; mythos of the present bio-plague and climate crisis becoming past… “because thought is not human.”
February 8, 2024
Through Brandon Teigland’s debut novel, "Under a Collapsing Sky," we enter a speculative fiction world not unlike that of Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece "Valis," in the sense that everything is “totally fucked.” "Valis" takes place during the paranoid drug culture of the 1960s Bay Area, and that provides a measure of safe removal for the contemporary reader. But Teigland’s work, set some twenty years from now, feels so inevitable it’s terrifying. Our failure to address ecological and social justice crises have resulted in alt-right government rule, looming bio-plague, academic censorship, the promotion of pseudoscience, synthetic food, even migrant labour camps on Mars. And a botched government experiment has unleashed a bio-hazard nightmare rivaling the best X-Files episodes. The future is, just like the ironic pin donned by one of the book’s anti-heroes, Céline, “NO FUN.” And Teigland’s dark and funny yarn shows us that there is no use in pretending, like the witch who gives Céline a Tarot reading and pulls the most terrifying cards of the deck--Death and the Tower--that everything is somehow just going to be okay.
What’s so compelling about Teigland’s trippy narrative is that, like the best psychedelic experiences, it throws us a lifeline of unexpected possibilities, of ways to cope with the dangerous ego trip the narrative suggests we are collectively on. It does this through the magic of prose so skillful the beautiful transcends the dystopic. Dosed with the curious drug Phoenix Tears, characters transform into stunning birds of prey and tigers, morph into mycelium and trees. Even the banal totalitarian architecture is stunning; it is described as a dead world and “[t]hat dead world was a world of doorknobs” with “buildings that seemed to be breathing through a multitude of tracheas.” Everything is surreal, alive, and connected in Teigland’s book—human merges with steel merges with mushroom merges with tiger—undermining the materialistic notion of individuality and separateness. The book is also very, very funny. The brilliant idealist-turned-sellout Professor Choy cultivates bananas in the university greenhouse because he is “driven to despair by the embargo’s banana shortage.” He gorges on everything banana; banana omelettes, banana casseroles, banana jam, banana sandwiches, ad nauseam. The student greenhouse volunteers mock him by holding the biggest bananas to their groins, stroking the makeshift phalluses. Choy eventually realizes that everyone “was either not an idiot or was an idiot. There was no third option.” Teigland’s book is resplendent with such dark humour.
Teigland’s perspective is original, sparkly, and not for the faint of heart. Reading it is akin to taking acid and looking at yourself in the mirror; the notion of the individual self evaporates, and everything gets kind of scary and darkly hilarious, but also poignantly beautiful. Under a Collapsing Sky is a book that should not only be read; it should be consumed.
What’s so compelling about Teigland’s trippy narrative is that, like the best psychedelic experiences, it throws us a lifeline of unexpected possibilities, of ways to cope with the dangerous ego trip the narrative suggests we are collectively on. It does this through the magic of prose so skillful the beautiful transcends the dystopic. Dosed with the curious drug Phoenix Tears, characters transform into stunning birds of prey and tigers, morph into mycelium and trees. Even the banal totalitarian architecture is stunning; it is described as a dead world and “[t]hat dead world was a world of doorknobs” with “buildings that seemed to be breathing through a multitude of tracheas.” Everything is surreal, alive, and connected in Teigland’s book—human merges with steel merges with mushroom merges with tiger—undermining the materialistic notion of individuality and separateness. The book is also very, very funny. The brilliant idealist-turned-sellout Professor Choy cultivates bananas in the university greenhouse because he is “driven to despair by the embargo’s banana shortage.” He gorges on everything banana; banana omelettes, banana casseroles, banana jam, banana sandwiches, ad nauseam. The student greenhouse volunteers mock him by holding the biggest bananas to their groins, stroking the makeshift phalluses. Choy eventually realizes that everyone “was either not an idiot or was an idiot. There was no third option.” Teigland’s book is resplendent with such dark humour.
Teigland’s perspective is original, sparkly, and not for the faint of heart. Reading it is akin to taking acid and looking at yourself in the mirror; the notion of the individual self evaporates, and everything gets kind of scary and darkly hilarious, but also poignantly beautiful. Under a Collapsing Sky is a book that should not only be read; it should be consumed.
May 11, 2024
Reading "Under A Collapsing Sky" is very much like experiencing a lucid nightmare from various viewpoints, which is as fascinating as it is disturbing. Events lived from disparate human perspectives weave a tableau composed of surreal politics, philosophical concerns, devious machinations, and research that is paradoxically life-changing as it is supremely deadly. The leanness of the descriptions lend themselves well to a world that is on the precipice of annihilation, or on the threshold of a quasi-supernatural transformation. Teigland's speculative fiction is chilling because it hits too near to the mark: skewed demographics, famine, surveillance, controlled narratives, rampant ideologies, and a keening for the spiritual that was lost. There are also fantastical sentient mutations described in tender detail. Here the human world easily transitions to the realms of flora and fauna and vice versa. All is connected and all is undone and remade at once. The text strikes at pressure points during a contemporary reality where the very sky may collapse sooner than was thought.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2023
Impressive debut novel by Teigland. A genre of it's own. Deeply thoughtful & chilling. Teigland molds themes with contradictory brilliance. Scientific & spiritual. Absorbing you into dystopia we can collectively relate to. The exploration of this complex world will feel at times like a psychedelic trip, intensely surreal & mystical. Intertwining with the structurally dark atmosphere of the story. With everything remaining interconnected. The vivid imagery produced by Teigland created an immersive experience, both beautiful & frightening.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews