In a foreign land, the Traveler awakes from dreadful injury and embarks on a quest he doesn't understand. Magical guides instruct and deceive him as he seeks to answer the greatest question: "Who am I?" His journey to Mountain City enthralls the natives. Can he possibly be what they believe he is?

Based in current-day Pittsburgh, Phil Grimm is a spy, an energy consortium's secret weapon to crack environmental activist networks. As the nation polarizes and extremism festers, he works undercover, but an older secret defines and divides him.

Lila could be the genuine article, or she could be just another protester Phil uses to help his clients stay a step ahead. She creates alternate realities for a living and wants to invite humanity to play, but her impish nature conceals rare wisdom. Can she look beyond Phil's deceit? What can her game teach us?

We peer into alternative worlds, inspired by great sages - ancient and modern, scientific and spiritual, from Lao Tzu to Einstein. How do these realms relate to Phil's life, to the Traveler's, to the dystopian future we glimpse?

The bottom falls from Phil's world. When he loses himself, is there any way back - for him or for them? The Traveler and Lila may hold the keys.

As corporations wage biological warfare, civilization teeters. New leaders step forward to learn, but how do these pioneers serve a crumbling society? When cataclysm rocks the Earth, fragile islands of sanity form. Can anyone arrest the fall or prepare for what follows it?

In a story about stories, Phil Grimm's Progress shows us how to see the plots we inhabit and to explore others. Ultimately, it invites and inspires us to create our own.

Autorentext

Doug Fraley is the author of Phil Grimm's Progress, a modern myth for anxious times.

Doug's writing explores the space where story meets science, philosophy, and consciousness. You can find him poking beneath and behind the obvious, squinting at possible distortions between him and the apparent.

Favorite authors include Haruki Murakami, Ursula Le Guin, Eric Newby, Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Alan Watts, and Iain Banks (with or without the M.).

Outside reading and writing, Doug's curiosity involves a lot of play - singing, meditating, cycling and kayaking.

Doug grew up near the Ohio River, forty-five miles downstream from Pittsburgh, and now lives in London, England, sharing life with a lovely girlfriend and three teenage sons.