And One Day We Will Die by Patrick Barb - Books

And One Day We Will Die

By Patrick Barb Fiction & Literature 14/01/2025

Celebrate the Strangeness of Being Anything at All

Spotlighting the bizarrely beautiful and beautifully bizarre music and lyrics of indie folk rock band Neutral Milk Hotel, And One Day We Will Die features 22 short stories from the realms of weird, phantasmagoric, and speculative fiction, all inspired by the cult classic songs written and performed by Jeff Mangum and company. From alternate histories where happy endings are allowed and mythological re-imaginings that center love over destruction to awe-inspiring contemplations of the potential in the present and dark and unfathomable future visions, all featured authors selected one song from the beloved Neutral Milk Hotel songbook to use as a springboard for their tales.

Editor and publisher Patrick Barb has assembled a diverse array of authors and tales, with the love of Neutral Milk Hotel acting as connective tissue, solidifying into an all-star album's worth of writing talent. Drawing from On Avery Island, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Ferris Wheel on Fire, and even some of the band's bootleg recordings, these stories speak to the spark struck by Mangum's haunting, inspiring, and perplexing creative output that burns with a passionate intensity through the prose offerings within.

Featuring fiction by:

Lillah Lawson

Helen Victoria Murray

M. Lopes da Silva

Camila Hamel

Briar Ripley Page

Joe Koch

Tiffany Morris

D. Matthew Urban

Christi Nogle

Tim Major

Dan Coxon

Matthew Kressel

Lindz McLeod

Erin Brown

Brian Evenson

Edward Barnfield

Dale Light

Corey Farrenkopf

Ai Jiang

Michael Horita

Richard Thomas

John Langan

And a Foreword by

Adam Clair (author of Endless Endless: A Lo-Fi History of the Elephant 6 Mystery)