Jim Poyser

The Last Actor and Other Stories Jim Poyser

The year is 1994, where a global pandemic called The Cold is ravaging humanity. In this alternative reality, The Cold first manifests as a cough with a rash, before descending into a miasma of mucus-filled afflictions. Cultural forms march on, however, and the entertainment industrial complex - TV, movies, sports -replaces trained actors and athletes with the novices and incompetents. "The Last Actor" features Mark Moses, the last true actor remaining on planet Earth, as he negotiates his narcissistic path toward humility and self-enlightenment. Poyser's fantastical novella, written a quarter century ago about a global pandemic, is a prescient and poignant portrayal of a culture struggling to define itself in the face of existential dread. Other stories in The Last Actor and Other Stories include bizarre tales of human overshoot, technological obsession and insatiable consumption. While wildly divergent in content, these tales all emanate from the same brain, author Jim Poyser, who considered these stories lost and forgotten to time.