The Apoptotic Era

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In this startling literary debut, the page has turned on humanity’s utopian appetites, and a new chapter is underway—one of hunger turned inward; of collective anxiety, auto-consumption, and quantum mechanics run amok. Engineers plunge from balconies. Publishers fall in love with cultists. Severed limbs appear in parks. Language models commit libel for profit. And game shows just aren’t the same anymore. Through this complex and often hilarious history of a critically panned, seemingly unclassifiable work of art, A.G. Valentine picks at the human threads behind millenarian hysteria, mass-market publishing, emergent neuroscience, artificial intelligence, automation, and class relations under late capitalism. Epic in scope despite its page count—spanning half a century and twenty-plus diverse character arcs—The Apoptotic Era is a story of the West as it careens headlong into its own gaping maw.

“While an exact count of intact copies cannot be conducted, it is safe to assume that at least one copy of the book exists in the Northwestern United States, on a crowded bookshelf belonging to eccentric physiology scholar and Portland revolutionary Dolores L. Bright, who at age 58 cited the book as follows in the bibliography of her fourth master’s thesis: Fleischer, Johan. Autosarcophagy. Borschau Press, 1999. Hardback edition; missing dust jacket; concave lettering; creased spine; 488 intact pages, 4 pages separated from binding, free-floating or floating free, frequently fluttering out to the floor, occasionally replaced backward necessitating on-the-fly rotation; epigraph faded; dried bloodstain on the contents page.”

ISBN: 979-8-9895422-9-1

104pgs, 5.0” x 8.0”

Cover artwork and design by Jacob Tyler Henry

Released on September 26th, 2025

For international orders greater than 2 units: please email us before ordering so we can calculate shipping, thanks!

In this startling literary debut, the page has turned on humanity’s utopian appetites, and a new chapter is underway—one of hunger turned inward; of collective anxiety, auto-consumption, and quantum mechanics run amok. Engineers plunge from balconies. Publishers fall in love with cultists. Severed limbs appear in parks. Language models commit libel for profit. And game shows just aren’t the same anymore. Through this complex and often hilarious history of a critically panned, seemingly unclassifiable work of art, A.G. Valentine picks at the human threads behind millenarian hysteria, mass-market publishing, emergent neuroscience, artificial intelligence, automation, and class relations under late capitalism. Epic in scope despite its page count—spanning half a century and twenty-plus diverse character arcs—The Apoptotic Era is a story of the West as it careens headlong into its own gaping maw.

“While an exact count of intact copies cannot be conducted, it is safe to assume that at least one copy of the book exists in the Northwestern United States, on a crowded bookshelf belonging to eccentric physiology scholar and Portland revolutionary Dolores L. Bright, who at age 58 cited the book as follows in the bibliography of her fourth master’s thesis: Fleischer, Johan. Autosarcophagy. Borschau Press, 1999. Hardback edition; missing dust jacket; concave lettering; creased spine; 488 intact pages, 4 pages separated from binding, free-floating or floating free, frequently fluttering out to the floor, occasionally replaced backward necessitating on-the-fly rotation; epigraph faded; dried bloodstain on the contents page.”

ISBN: 979-8-9895422-9-1

104pgs, 5.0” x 8.0”

Cover artwork and design by Jacob Tyler Henry

Released on September 26th, 2025

For international orders greater than 2 units: please email us before ordering so we can calculate shipping, thanks!

About the Author

A.G. Valentine is a writer and multi-instrumentalist from the Pacific Northwest. Over the course of an eight-year journalism and freelance career, Valentine published hundreds of articles, mostly about music and food. His words have appeared in several short-run collaborative chapbooks, an array of print magazines and online publications, and the liner notes to one vinyl record. The Apoptotic Era is his debut novella. Visit his site at https://agvalentine.com/

Reviews

“Set in the chaotic years between Y2K and a near future of hyper-commodification, The Apoptotic Era follows dozens of characters sutured together through the messy stitches of their proximity to a mysterious book with an uncanny trail of bodies. With ankle breaking turns, Valentine whips us back and forth between white knuckle suspense, lowing disquiet, and macabre hilarity. A must read for a generation who may still not realize, all our lives, we’ve been the snake mindlessly gobbling our own tails.”

—Armin Tolentino, Clark County Poet Laureate, 2021-2023

“Enraptured by Valentine's hauntingly clinical prose, which conceals a sardonic wit under layers of viscera, I read The Apoptotic Era in one sitting while consuming two Six Shooters (a drink special comprised of domestic lager and tequila) and fourteen mentholated cigarettes. It was no small horror to realize that I’d been chewing on my cuticle for the final twenty pages.”

—Pierre Manchot, author of THE LEAST OF 99 EVILS

“The universe of The Apoptotic Era seems at first our own: Toronto, Portland, Monte Redondo, but then it’s the winter of 2039. There are unknown rules to this reality. Paranoia seems to sustain the varied protagonists. Whatever haunts them lurks just beyond comprehension, yet the mysteries here highlight the dangerous conditions of our own time, giving the narrative a brutal profundity. A.G. Valentine’s debut is full of linguistic playfulness & violence. Humor juxtaposes horror in this series of vignettes that compels rereading. The novella churns inward like an ouroboros, like a man with a hook for a hand who has gotten it caught in his own skull.”

—Benjamin McPherson Ficklin, author of The West and A Cynical View of Dystopian America

“A.G. Valentine’s ironically epic novella about the shrouded history of a spellbinding, reviled, out-of-print book (about self-cannibalism , no less) is many things—a literary punk, an evolutionary lament, an ideological forensic, a love letter to book love and also—again, ironically—an intricately extended metaphor for the post-human mess we’re now in, delivered with furious intelligence and wry humor. I’ve never read anything quite like it. Nor can I say what, precisely, it’s about, not because it’s inscrutable but because, like a prism, it shoots off interpretations in every direction, each one colorful and mesmerizing as the next. This novella’s literary forebears might be Kafka, Pynchon and Borges, yet it is completely its own beast—a bawdy, brainy artifact discovered at the algorithmic nexus of progress and collapse. I’m rather in awe of it.”

—Rick Levin, author of OFF ROUTE

“A revolving exploration of mysticism, love, curses, and class consciousness, A.G. Valentine’s The Apoptotic Era weaves together a multitude of characters and experiences to craft a unique tapestry of the strange, silent forces which underlie our lives. Maze-like and spiraling, the very structure of this novella serves to express one of its core components: the feeling of having our collective experiences dissected and separated by the oppressive, governing forces of our lives.”

—Maureen Brown, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Jelly Squid Magazine

“A.G. Valentine’s The Apoptotic Era is a taut, intelligent novella that will appeal to fans of Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Bernhard. With razor-sharp prose and immersive, meticulously crafted world-building, it offers a narrative that is both tightly focused and intellectually expansive. If you love being overstimulated by the art you consume (or consumes you), then this is for you.”

—Jordan Krall, author of FALSE MAGIC KINGDOM and YOUR CITIES, YOUR TOMBS

"An absurdist ride through satirical prose, haunting body horror, and weird meta fiction. Overall, I'm relieved I read this account instead of Autosarcophagy!"

—Stephanie Pearre, Acquiring Editor of Raw Dog Screaming Press

"A haunting meditation on loss, obscurity, and the strange afterlives of forgotten books, A.G. Valentine’s The Apoptotic Era is a dazzlingly original novella that blurs the line between literary history and fiction. Through a kaleidoscopic narrative that traces the fate of a maligned, nearly vanished novel and its mysterious author, Valentine explores the ways stories persist—through errors, accidents, and the eccentric lives of their readers. At once darkly comic and deeply poignant, this book is a love letter to literary oddities and the secret histories they leave behind."

—Summer Stewart, publisher at UNSOLICITED PRESS

Author Photo by Patrick Newson