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Schoenbrun’s new project is a thematic continuation of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and I Saw the TV Glow
In 2009, two high school outcasts meet up to watch the end of analog TV broadcasts. One of them sees a strange program on the airwaves that makes them question everything about their identity and life. The other looks on, and their relationship fractures. It’s a Jane Schoenbrun moment through and through, and a scene that could belong in their breakout film, I Saw the TV Glow.
As a follower of Schoenbrun’s work, I can’t help but know so much about them. I know that they used to work as a film critic before directing and writing movies. I know that they’re trans, and that their work is in constant conversation with that identity. It has propelled them to become one of the most notable voices in indie cinema.
Public Access Afterworld, their first novel, is out this week. It takes away the camera but gives Schoenbrun unlimited scale. The result is stubborn and unwieldy, for better or worse, and a great example of why Schoenbrun’s fans keep returning to their work. While their stories are a mishmash of tropes and references, Schoenbrun arranges the pieces in a way that’s uniquely their own.
Analog TV signs off
The story begins with David Sawyer, a high school boy in love with his best friend, Erin Morrison. When they’re not in school, they’re watching TV in her basement. On the last day of the analog TV broadcast, Erin notices a surreal program called Public Access Afterworld. She records it on tape and becomes obsessed, believing it to be a portal to somewhere else. When David watches the recording, he doesn’t understand it, but he doesn’t want to disappoint her, so he pretends to be just as entranced by it.
He takes the tape online and finds a community of people with similar stories and inexplicable connections to TV, all hoping to learn where these transmissions come from and what they mean.
In 2026, we meet Bethany Peters, a trans woman living in a rapidly changing Austin, overrun by tech companies and tech bros. She lives with her perfectly adequate boyfriend and is stuck in a rut. She thinks her life might change when she lands a job at GlobalVill, a YouTube-adjacent mega-company where people post and share videos. The catch is that she’s a content moderator, spending her days watching videos that swing between boring, mindless content and some of the most disturbing stuff she’s ever seen. It’s her entry to Public Access Afterworld.
Bethany spends the rest of the novel unraveling the conspiracy at the core of the story, meeting characters who’ve been changed irrevocably by Public Access Afterworld. When she develops a screen sickness that puts her on the clock, she has no choice but to accept that she’s the chosen one in a struggle she never asked to be part of.
An observer of your own life
The great thing about books is that it’s all up to the writer and the reader’s imagination, with no concern for budget or studio executives. Schoenbrun goes long on topics they’ve already made movies about: isolation and connection in the digital world (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair), television as the embodiment of somewhere you want to escape to (I Saw the TV Glow), and our impulse to deconstruct art instead of feeling it (Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma). It’s so vast in scope that it feels like one of those unadaptable Stephen King tomes, traveling backwards and forwards in time, through alternate dimensions, with an ensemble cast that brings a filmic perspective to every chapter.
Schoenbrun’s characters tend to be so ruled by their obsessions that they stop living their lives. Public Access Afterworld, while goofy at times, sends them chasing the next thing — a new job, a new connection, a signal from somewhere else. The novel argues that fantasy can be just as bad as reality, and that no single escape will make you happy.
The novel is filled with strange comedic beats that undercut its self-seriousness, like the evil corporate guy interrupting the climax by taking over the internet connection to call via Microsoft Teams. A member of the Public Access Afterworld forums inexplicably knows the inner details of every Gossip Girl episode without ever seeing the series. When a character alludes to sexual trauma, Bethany cuts them off: “I don’t want to hear about that. Too dark.”
As the novel progresses, more and more characters pop up, and the sprawl of its 600 pages begins to take a toll. Schoenbrun uses economical and filmic language to move the plot along, but I found myself wishing for more texture in the prose and a narrower focus. Maybe it’s the former critic in Schoenbrun, but some compelling ideas are over-explained, giving the novel the feeling of a thought exercise. With film, you watch an image that’s been carefully imbued with meaning, allowing you to make a connection to a larger idea on your own. In writing, Schoenbrun can hammer the details home too hard, spelling things out.
Public Access Afterworld is a must-read for anyone interested in the Schoenbrun project. The novel, outlined as a trilogy, was almost an HBO series. While I would’ve loved to see Schoenbrun film some of their grandest set pieces to date, I’m happy to sit, read, and imagine them instead.