the experiment
The UnsafeCompany/UnsafeWords has agreed to participate in an experiment proposed by a few of our authors.
For the next few weeks, the following books are being made available in PDF format, free of charge, to those who respond to the “Official Invitation.” As the invitation in your possession states, you are welcome to download any of the titles on this page. If a work speaks to you, you are welcome to provide the author whatever gift you deem reasonable. If you prefer print reading over screen reading, you are always welcome to buy a physical copy online. If you are not in the position to do either (or if the work is not your cup of tea), kindly consider passing the invitation onto someone else and continue the experiment.
No obligations. No catch. We will not use or sell your data. We will not solicit you in the future. Just an experiment.
Tough Guys, Bad Dudes,
and Other Men My Father Knew
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
Don’t Think Of A Republican
by H.F. Valentine
A Good Kid and His Ghosts
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
Revival
by Rev. J. Frank Layman
The Arborists
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
The Last Days of Nonviolence
by Priča – Documentary Collective of Slovenia
Do We Have Your Attention
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
For the duration of the experiment, all voluntary gifts will go directly to the author.
the work
Tough Guys, Bad Dudes, and Other Men My Father Knew
A Farewell to My Old Man and to Old School Masculinity
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
How does one break with generational misconceptions of what it means to be a man without losing all that was worth being learned? How do you come to terms with the severity of the damage while still holding onto the memory of the loved one who passed it to you?
Tough Guys, Bad Dudes, and Other Men My Father Knew juxtaposes old school stories of bar brawlers, shit talkers, and all manner of Southern macho motherfucker alongside intimate reflections on authority, alcoholism, and abuse.
For readers who recognize a piece of their own father/father figure in these stories and know firsthand the struggle of trying to be better than just “a little better,” consider these pages a testimony to the permission we rarely grant ourselves when attempting to say a proper goodbye.
Don’t Think Of A Republican
How I Won A Republican Primary As A Lefty Progressive And You Can Too
by H.F. Valentine
A curation of the scandalous rhetoric and the unprecedented electoral truth-telling employed throughout H.F. Valentine’s groundbreaking campaign, Don’t Think of a Republican proves, as badass as his candidacy may have been, the idea of running a lefty progressive in a Republican primary was not really all that bonkers.
A Good Kid and His Ghosts
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
The author of A Good Kid and His Ghosts went from confessing past wrongs in a confidential mental health support group to pioneering the grotesque spectacle that would come to be known as the Confession Industry.
An absurdist nightmare of celebrity, media sensationalism, online cannibal culture, and the commodification of anything, this was a story that could only be resolved after it had inevitably fallen apart – and only the confessions were left. A memoir dragged to life by endless nostalgia, unfailing guilt, and the ghosts of “a good kid.”
Revival
A new kind of Good News and a radically different Promised Land
by Reverend J. Frank Layman
So many of our futurists have become mere economists of prophecy. While they can describe a world ahead that is almost unrecognizable to what we knew 2 decades ago, they will make sure to insist it will be under the same economic model we had 2 centuries ago.
Depending upon how we combine and harness the potential of a handful of infant technologies, we have a shot at a real alternative. Something far beyond the Cold War debates over markets and central planning.
Offered as satirical performance pieces, garnished in the affectations of a country preacher, this revival-style series of fiery anti-sermons serves as an unorthodox yet necessary form of evangelism for this moment/movement.
The Arborists
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
In a bleak future, decades from now, Richard answers his opportunity queue and finds himself interviewing for a job with an undisclosed unit in the government’s geo-engineering program.
Learning the unit has uncovered the physics for inter-dimensional travel, Richard is offered the opportunity to be part of a team tasked with creating alternative branches of reality and hunting for the technology that could save his world from looming climate collapse.
It is only when he is successful in finding this technology that Richard’s limited understanding of the program and the consequences of his “heroism” become glaring.
More than just an inter-dimensional travel adventure with a climate change backdrop, The Arborists is about what a hierarchical society does to individuals in power, the disconnect between the intentions and consequences of those who see themselves as saviors, and the type of imagination necessary for a better world to be realized.
The Last Days of Nonviolence
A Portrait of the American Reckoning Movement
by Priča
In March of 2014, amidst unending governmental gridlock and unprecedented corruption, the American Reckoning Movement put forth one simple and reasonable demand of the United States Congress.
Anticipating the drama that would unfold, crew members from the documentary collective Priča flew from Slovenia to the U.S. to capture the spirit and experience of this movement, only to have their footage seized by officials with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in the airport prior to returning home. After a decade of petitions and court hearings, the most Priča has been able to retain are transcripts of the audio.
With no legal resolution in sight, the collective has decided to release the film in words, using those transcripts, along with crew notes, to construct for readers an experience not unsimilar to that of reading the subtitles to a foreign language film/series.
In concert with the filmmakers, and in gratitude to all those who took part in this definitive work, UnsafeCinema is honored to finally present to the world The Last Days of Nonviolence, a film that both exists and doesn’t.
Do We Have Your Attention
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
“There are books you want to write and books you need to write. This is one I felt obliged to write.”
During the so-called “War on Terror,” the infamous Ticking Time Bomb Thought Experiment was not only heralded by Islamaphobes and later elevated by the hit television show 24, but kidnapping and “enhanced interrogation techniques” were brazenly employed as an element of United States foreign policy and Dick Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine.
Do We Have Your Attention opens by satirically asking, “Knowing the danger posed by rising, human-induced greenhouse gas emissions is exponentially greater, in no way hypothetical, and 100 percent imminent, wouldn’t it be far more appropriate for activists in the War on Climate Change to engage with such a “Thought Experiment”?
What follows is an exploration into our relationship with the concept of violence as it relates to Climate Change. How we imagine violence. Our attitudes toward violence. Our fear of violence. Our proximity to violence. And, most importantly, the discussions concerning Climate violence, self-defense, and survival we allow (and don’t allow) ourselves to have.