Minneapolis resident Robert E. S. III is now promoting his 330+ page science fiction graphic novel Hobo Fires on Kickstarter. On this crowd funding platform Robert is now accepting pledges for the book with the goal of raising $6000 to boost publication of Hobo Fires in the fall of 2014.
The Hobo Fires Kickstarter campaign ends April 10th.
The Story:
One backpack, two boots, and the open road. In the year 2137 a young woman named Poenee travels the country by hacking rides on robotic freight trains. Poenee soon learns that getting on the train is the easy part. In the robotic railroad jungles and hyper techno city streets the difficulty is surviving encounters with robot police, feral humans, tornadoes, anti-authoritarian street riots, android agents, and having a mentally ill travel companion with a court ordered chip implanted in his head.
That’s the story in Hobo Fires but to me it’s not really fiction. People have been saying how creative the story line was, but having rode freight trains myself across the country and experienced our techno culture on the bottom end in the present day, it’s an obvious and logical progression from where we are now. In some ways these things already exist, kids are out there right now hacking freight trains, just like they’re hacking everything else, including a global capitalist culture that is seeking to control our bodies and desires. The frontier of freedom is everywhere that there’s a pair of eyes and hands doing alphabet work.
Hobo Fires is a dystopian novel at first look, but inside the matrix you find it contains dreams of possibility, a world that still exists on the fringes and is fighting to be happy a hundred years after we are gone. There are communities who gather to celebrate and support each other in the struggle for freedom, which must also be a struggle against those with power who oppress.
Hobos in the year 2137 have evolved from the destitute and haggard ramblers of the previous century. They are organized and have collective power. To survive at all in this environment they must be intelligent and skilled, able to blend in with the general population. Travel is restricted for various economic and political reasons, so the contemporary hobo of the year 2137 must move like a squirrel on a wire, transgressing into forbidden spaces to be able to explore the world: Outside. Outside of town, outside of a wage slave job, outside of cyber monitoring and state control.
That’s some of what I’ve done in my life. Building shanty boats out of scraps with friends and floating down big rivers in the Midwest. It’s a transgression, society says you’re not supposed to quit your job and spend months floating down a river with your friends, watching fish jump and birds fly, singing songs and sharing food and meeting strangers and doing whatever you want to do. All the townspeople we met on the river just smiled when we told them our story, and then they would say, “I always wanted to do that.” That’s the inspiration for Hobo Fires, to build the world we want and get on it. Yes, aware that we are surrounded by a swirling madness that we have no control over, but focused on the beauty that we hold in our hands.
Recently my work has been published by Microcosm Publishing: Unsinkable: How To Build Plywood Pontoons & Longtail Boat Motors Out Of Scrap (2012) is a combination photographic documentary and D.I.Y. boat building guide. Shut Up & Love The Rain (2010) and Awesome Future (2011) are comic books. I edited a book of real stories about health called Alive With Vigor! (2014).
Hobo Fires at Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com
Website for Robert Earl Sutter III: robertearlsutteriii.com
Robert Earl Sutter III
3332 18th Avenue South, Apt. #1, Minneapolis, MN 55407
612-558-7273 / RobertEarlSutterIII@gmail.com
www.RobertEarlSutterIII.com
www.kickstarter.com
