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a-wandering-imagination · 4 months

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Chapter 29

Anton woke to a severe pain in his neck. As he came to, he realized that he was bound to a chair and that his head had been hanging limply to one side, thus causing the pain that had forced him awake. He started to cry out but realized his mouth was sealed with duct tape. His hands were tied behind his back and then there was rope around his torso, tying him to the chair. The chair was an old wooden office style chair with a high back but no armrests. Anton’s legs were duct taped individually to the two front chair legs. He shifted his weight a bit and felt the chair start to topple and adjusted his balance to keep from going over. He squinted and looked around the room. There was nothing in the room and it was only about ten foot square with no windows and no furniture other than the chair he was sitting on. There was just one door, which he was currently facing. The room was dark except for a faint red glow coming from behind him. He craned his neck back and saw that there was a surveillance camera mounted at the top back corner of the room and a red light on the front appeared to indicate it was active. Apparently it was, because it wasn’t more than a matter of moments after he had turned to look at it that he heard footsteps outside.

The lights in the room came on, a couple of recessed fluorescent fixtures. They flickered a bit before coming to full brightness. Anton squinted at the harsh glare as he heard the deadbolt turn in the door. He looked up at the man who walked through the door and recoiled involuntarily. The man couldn’t have been more than about five feet tall, if that, and appeared to be very, VERY old. From the look of him, Anton would have guessed the man to be in his late eighties or early nineties. And from his posture and the appearance of his hands, he appeared to be suffering from several forms of arthritis. The man looked like he should be in bed rather than up walking around. Something about his demeanor, however, made Anton suspect that this man was not who he seemed, like his appearance was some sort of camouflage.

The man stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He leaned against the wall adjacent to the door jamb and fished a pack of cigarettes from his hip pocket. He shook out a cigarette, brought it to his mouth and then pulled a worn Zippo lighter from his other pocket and flicked the flame to the end of the cigarette. He took a long drag and exhaled as both hands, one holding the pack of cigarettes, the other the lighter, retreated back into his pockets. He stood this way for a several minutes, hands in his pockets, staring at Anton, while he smoked. Finally, he pulled his right hand from his pocket, took the cigarette from his mouth and tapped the ash onto the floor. He then put the cigarette back in his mouth and walked over to Anton and in one blindingly quick movement pulled the duct tape from Anton’s mouth. The motion was so quick and so unexpected that Anton screamed involuntarily and the scream seemed exceptionally loud in the small, windowless room.

“Sorry about that,” the old man said. “It’s usually best to take it off quick. Doesn’t hurt so much… or at least not for as long.” He smiled at Anton.

“Who are you?” Anton asked, recoiling away from the man as much as possible. Indeed, his estimation of the old man’s physical capabilities had just been upended by the blinding speed with which he had snapped the tape away from Anton’s face. This gnarled little man was some strange enigma indeed and Anton felt a knot of fear tightening in his stomach.

The old man, seeing the fear in the younger man’s face, smiled, stepped forward and then leaned down until he could whisper into Anton’s ear. “No. The real question is -who- -are- -you-?” The old man hissed the last three words in a distinct, drawn-out rhythm, adding further menace to the question.

“Wha-what do you mean?” Anton stammered. “I’m nobody. I’m just a guy looking for other survivors.”

“What? No other survivors up there in Juneau for you to hang out with?” the old man sneered, leaving the question hanging in the air.

“What do you mean?” Anton asked, getting more nervous by the minute.

The old man returned to his spot near the door and turned and leaned against the wall once more. He stood staring at Anton for several more minutes. Anton was about to speak when the old man cut in. “You may have noticed that I am not quite as decrepit as I appear. I am actually quite fit. Very fit, in fact. So fit, in fact, I can run faster than you can watch.” The word ‘run’ had no sooner left the old man’s mouth than the old man, whom Anton had been watching with increasing fear, disappeared. It was only the sound of the man’s voice as he finished the sentence that belied his actual presence. The old man was now standing behind Anton at the back of the room. Anton craned his neck around to see the man standing against the wall, just as he had been near the door, still smoking his cigarette. “But,” the man said, stepping away from the wall and dropping his spent cigarette to the floor where he twisted it out with the toe of his sneaker. Anton waited for the old man to finish. The old man walked slowly back around Anton’s chair until he was once again standing in front of Anton. “I think I’m not the first man you’ve seen with these abilities, am I?” The question hung in the air and Anton said nothing.

“You saw someone like me up in Juneau, didn’t you?”

Anton stared up into the sharp blue eyes of this strange little man, trying to gauge what, exactly he should say. He had no idea where he was. He didn’t know if the girl was also being held somewhere nearby. Hell, with all he’d been through, he couldn’t even say for sure if what was happening now was real. He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Is that a ‘no’?” the old man asked.

“No, I was… I mean… I’m confused. Where am I? Where are we?”

“I’m the one asking the questions, thank you, and you didn’t answer mine. Either of them.” The old man walked a slow circle around Anton’s chair staring down at him. “Who are you and what did you do to Johnny up in Juneau?”

“I don’t know who Johnny…” Anton didn’t have time to finish the sentence. In a flash, the old man struck. It was a backhanded slap, much like a father would give a disobedient child, but it had such force that it spun Anton in his chair, twice, toppling him on the floor where his head smacked concrete… hard. He saw flashes of light but didn’t lose consciousness. The pain in his mouth was incredible. He could feel his lip starting to swell and there was blood running from a gash on the inside of his lip.

“We can do this the easy way, or the other easy way. You see, they’re both easy for me. Breaking your bones doesn’t take any more effort on my part than it does to pat your cheek. You lie to me again and I’ll do more than pat your cheek.”

Anton scooted himself around on his side to where he could once again see the old man. “If you mean that guy on the dock in Juneau, I didn’t know him. He just showed up there when I was leaving. I didn’t do anything to him. It wasn’t me that killed him.”

The old man didn’t move. He stood, leaning against the wall, staring off into the distance as if he were considering his next move. He looked down at Anton once more. “You expect me to believe that old indian killed him?”

“No, I… wait… what? What indian?”

“The old fella that was sitting on the porch up at the convenience store.”

“There was no one there when I was there… except that Johnny fellow you mentioned.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed now and a look of anger flashed across his face. He walked over to Anton and squatted in front of him. With his index finger he tapped Anton, hard, in the middle of the forehead. Anton felt like he’d been hit with a ball peen hammer, and saw flashes of light again. “Who fuckin’ killed Johnny then!?!” the old man screamed.

“It was a monster!” Anton cried, both of his eyes watering from the pain in his face, as he tried to shift himself away from the old man. The old man, however, had jumped up and back, slamming into the wall. There was a look of terror on his face. Anton lay there watching the old man as he circled Anton, eyes wide with renewed interest.

“What monster?” the old man asked, but Anton could tell from the man’s expression that he had some idea what Anton was talking about.

“You’ve seen it too, haven’t you?” Anton asked. The old man’s movements were once again too fast for Anton to see, but suddenly Anton was crushed against the wall, the old man’s hand at his throat. The little man was holding Anton and the chair he was tied to some eighteen inches off the ground with one hand. The hand itself felt like iron on Anton’s neck. The strength was unbelievable. Anton choked and gasped for breath.

“What monster?” the old man whispered again, as he held Anton against the wall and his hand slowly closed around Anton’s throat. Anton’s eyes bulged and he could hear a pounding in his ears. His arms and legs began to convulse as his body fought for air. A gurgling sound bubbled from Anton’s throat and a look of terror filled his eyes. The old man released his grip enough for Anton to suck in a breath. “What monster?” the old man whispered once more and his jaw clenched as he waited for Anton to speak. It was at that moment, however, that the old man realized that Anton was no longer looking at him. His terror-filled eyes were now looking over the old man’s shoulder. And just as Anton forced out two simple words, the old man knew exactly what those two words were going to be. He knew because he felt that now increasingly familiar prickle of the skin at the back of his neck… he knew. Anton gasped and said, “That one” and motioned with his eyes to something that the old man could only assume was standing behind him.

The old man spun but was too slow… too slow by far… nothing could move that fast… and yet it had. That massive black beast moved so quickly that even the old man with all his unnatural abilities was unable to see it. He just felt the hand close around his head and the fingers, vice-like, grinding into his bones. The pain was exquisite and blinding. The old man heard a pop and the room went black. Anton had fallen to the floor when the old man spun away, and the chair toppled and Anton’s head hit the wall on the way down. He saw a flash of light that seemed to come from somewhere back behind his eyes, and then he too fell into the swimming blackness of unconsciousness.

#apocalyptic fiction #creative writing #first novel #new fiction #pandemic fiction #book publishing #booklover #fiction books #harper collins #random house #simon schuster #scary stories #suspense

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bookishlyvintage · 10 months

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06/27 pub day: The Wife App, Carolyn Mackler

#the wife app #carolyn mackler #domestic fiction #second chance romance #pub day #book birthday #arc #simon schuster #romcom #currently reading #cr #fiction #books #book cover #contemporary #bookblr #booklr #bookstgram

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inkskinned · 1 month

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my father told me he read it, but he hasn't read it. that's okay. my friends keep picking the words out of my throat.

someone once told me that the more trigger warnings that go on a book, the better it is. i didn't mean to write something with so many conditional phrases - i was writing about what i felt while being a human. sometimes you are a person and sometimes you are a statistic. sometimes it is falling upwards and sometimes it's sliding back down again.

my father tells me that it will be difficult to get people to read it. i didn't like the idea of a singular genre. i'm not going to lie to you - it is actually a difficult book to get through. i change the rules in it. it's not poetry or prose explicitly. it's neither false nor reality. i give you the tools to "solve" the book, but i let you do the thinking. my father says people don't care to think. i don't know about that - i think we just, like, enjoy reading.

the thing is - i was tired of stories about survival where someone with depression goes to therapy and wakes up okay. i didn't live like that. i was tired of books about violence, where the gore of what i experience was splashed in glitter to lick off the page. like, i was a person, you know? i had a life and a job and a family. and in books, i watched my story get ripped up so people could explore the viscera of my body. so they could feel good. my brother once called it inspiration pornography. we had walked out of a suicide-prevention seminar, both of us disgusted while the increasingly-elated presenter kept listing methods-of. i remember the look on my brother's face. like i would tear that man apart given the right time and place.

my father says that kids these days. he warns me against writing about things that are too-serious. he says that they don't want it. i don't listen. he does make me take out a scene from the book where i go to church after having sex with a woman. it used to be the 7th scene in the book. i don't think he's read further than that, it rocked him too hard to continue.

it's a book about being queer. it's a book about being raised catholic. it doesn't have monsterfucking, i'm sorry. it's just about, like.

at some point you have to choose to stay here. and then you do have to stay here, which takes practice. this is about forming the habit. this is about what happens after you've already started doing the work. because, like. you keep going. you have to. and it's like. very imperfect.

i should make a post on instagram. i should make this announcement less bittersweet. but like -- i'm giving it you, specifically, because i think you know why i had to write it. you and me. this little community.

body's a bad monster. here's the link if you're interested in ordering.

#i will never shut up about this #by the way . this is the book that u are trying to get me to eat #also available on other links!! barnes and noble and s&S #also btw i drew the cover :) they asked me to lol #btw this isn't self-published. this is like. book deal thru simon and schuster

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lovebooksgroup · 1 year

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Kelly's #bookreview of Murder On The Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict @ak_benedict @simonschusterUK #booktwt #bookblogger #fivestarread

Murder On The Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict Review by Kelly Lacey I went into the book expecting a cosy crime read. Just based on the cover. Cosy crime is not what this book is at all. It is a hard-hitting topical read. It absolutely has reading triggers such as rape and abuse. I really enjoyed the main protagonist Roz Parker. She was feisty and believable. Her Scottishness…

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#Alexandra Benedict #Book Blogger #Book Review #Kelly Lacey #Murder On The Christmas Express #Simon Schuster

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genderfcker · 2 years

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reasons why it's very frustrating to be someone who wants to work in a creative industry right now:

warner brothers/hbo/discovery decided to scrap the batgirl movie in post-production before anyone outside of its test audiences could actually see the film

the same company also decided to remove 36 titles from its streaming platform hbo max, several of which were hbo max originals and can no longer be viewed outside of pirating sites, which means the creators will no longer be able to get paid for their work

simon & schuster and penguin random house are in the process of merging. if the DOJ trial doesn't stop the merger, we're going down from having a big five to a big four in the publisher world, with the two of the biggest publishing houses merging.

Barnes & Noble recently decided to stop stocking new middle school books unless they know they're going to be major bestsellers, which multiple new authors didn't find out until weeks before their debuts. B&N accounts for a large chunk of publishing sales for said authors, and limiting what books are available there means debuting authors are mostly screwed unless they put together a massive marketing campaign on their own.

#hbo max #discovery #warner brothers #barnes and noble #barnes & noble #simon & schuster #penguin random house

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thebookbin · 2 years

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The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War

Craig Whitlock

Publisher: Simon Schuster Genre: nonfiction, journalism Year: 2021

As much as I distrust the Washington Post, I do regard Craig Whitlock as an honest reporter, so I was definitely interested in this book. As a 27 year-old, the United States has been at war nearly my entire life. It was such a part of life that it never really registered to me as anything out of the ordinary. I am from the generation that has very foggy memories of 9/11 itself, and was rather traumatized by the teachers and school system that made us watch videos of people jumping to their deaths out of a burning building every year in the save of "remembrance."

When Joe Biden announced he was pulling American troops out of Afghanistan, I was sad for the Afghan women, but overall glad with the development. I am not ever in favor of imperialism, and there is no other way to describe the United States' actions in the Middle East. When this book was published, I was interested, but in the middle of trying to graduate, and I didn't get the time for it. After taking my time to really digest this book, the sins of the US are many indeed.

Whitlock details the war timeline alongside an examination of a few key indicators of the war: corruption, irresponsible spending, the opium trade, ect. As he takes us through all the documents he's recovered through his legal battle with the Pentagon and FOIA request crusade, and the details are astonishing. I think in this era of "respect the flag" discourse this should be required reading for Americans who have such devout blind faith in their governments. There are chilling quotes:

“The Afghan army and police forces looked robust on paper. But a large percentage materialized as ghost billets, or no show jobs. Afghan commanders inflated the numbers so they could pocket millions of dollars in salaries — paid by US taxpayers — for imaginary personnel, according to US government audits.”

That price paid by American citizens was $8 trillion and almost three thousand US military deaths, saying nothing of the millions of civilians who perished in the never-ending conflicts. Whitlock was able to glean much of this information from the Army's Center for Lessons Learned and their reports, which are astounding to read. While three American presidents claimed we were making progress to the American people, their Generals and troops on the ground were admitting defeat.

“Of all the flaws with the Afghanistan nation-building campaign—the waste, the inefficiency, the half-baked ideas—nothing confounded U.S. officials more than the fact that they could never tell whether any of it was actually helping them win the war.”

storygraph | bookshop.org | local houston

★★★★★ we knew American Imperialism was bad but not this bad stars

#book review #nonfiction #afghanistan war #us politics #journalism #the afghanistan papers #craig whitlock #2021 #simon schuster #history #required reading #war #five stars #featured

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dduane · 1 year

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This is a big deal.

#Penguin Random House #Simon & Schuster #merger #or as it happens #not

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electronickingdomfox · 11 months

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The Kobayashi Alternative (or the 1000 deaths of James T. Kirk)

Finished this game (a text adventure) recently, and oh God, what a glorious mess it was!

The frame story (which only appears in the manual, by the way) places you as a Starfleet Academy cadet, playing a simulation of one of Kirk's famous missions, as a sort of alternative to the infamous Kobayashi Maru test (hence the title). But the actual game revolves around Kirk's mission, trying to find Sulu, who has disappeared in the Trianguli sector. And you're given complete freedom to explore the area and planets in whatever order you choose, and to mess the game in whatever way you want.

And that's my main point of interest here. I've witnessed so, SO many deaths for poor Kirk, because of my ill-advised decisions... Falling into craters, being run over by lava from a (not-so-extinct) volcano, sinking in quicksand, being eaten by a dragon, falling into a moat (and then being eaten), beaming down to a planet with a temperature of -250° in just my uniform (because why not?), or the more gruesome version of beaming down to a no-atmosphere planet without a spacesuit. It's also possible to return to Earth without finishing the mission, just like that, which gets you court-martialed. Or beam down some unsuspecting redshirt to a dangerous area, and to his unavoidable death (which here causes a Game-Over, very much unlike the series). Want to swear at someone until the crew arrests you for bad conduct? Check. *For the record, these are the swear words I found to work: bitch, bastard, suck, c*ck, f*ck, ass (use them in any combination you see fit). There's also many crazy things to do, which don't necessarily lead to a game over. Leave poor Scotty stranded on a planet and depart without him (good luck when you need something from Engineering). Or make Spock mindmeld with clay. Or tell McCoy to enter Spock's quarters, and just leave him there for the rest of the game. There's a planet with aliens that are offended by clothes and will put you in jail for wearing them (well, this is inaccurate, because James Tits-Out Kirk would definitely beam down naked, if it would help the mission... and make sure to video-call Spock right before doing so).

Anyway, despite being a primitive game from 1985, I'm impressed by the sheer amount of possibilities and open-ended options in this game. The graphic adventures from the 90's (25th Anniversary, and specially Judgement Rites) are much, much better games overall. But I wanted to talk a bit about these, more obscure text adventures.

If anyone's interested in playing them, I've found the best way is through this custom installer here, which includes all three adventures: https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/p/star-trek-first-contact.html It automatically runs the games through an emulator for modern systems, and has the last version of Kobayashi Alternative (which is very important, since previous versions were buggy as hell). First Contact uses the same engine of Kobayashi, but since it's a much linear and smaller game, it's obvious a lot of options go un-used. The Promethean Prophecy is a more traditional text adventure. It has some ingenious puzzles, but I found its typical plot of "go there and collect gems" less Trek-like.

#star trek tos #star trek videogames #text adventures #the kobayashi alternative #james t kirk #simon & schuster #abandonware #diane duane

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vintagewildlife · 1 year

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Moonrat By: S. C. Bisserot From: Simon & Schuster's Guide to Mammals 1982

#captivity #moonrat #eulipotyphlan #mammal #S. C. Bisserot #1982 #1980s #Simon & Schuster's Guide to Mammals

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quirkycatsfatstacks · 1 year

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Review: Keya Da's Second Act by Sopan Deb

Author: Sopan DebPublisher: Simon SchusterReleased: July 5, 2022Received: NetGalleyWarnings: Loss of a child, grief, homophobia If you’re looking for a novel that will stand out in your memory, may I suggest Keya Da’s Second Act, written by Sopan Deb. This novel is every bit as heartwarming as it promised to be, if not more so. Shantanu Das has been living with ghosts for years now. One could…

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#Book #Book Review #Books #Fiction #Fiction Review #Keya Da&039;s Second Act #Keya Da&039;s Second Act by Sopan Deb #Literary #Literature #Net Galley #NetGalley #Review #Simon Schuster #Sopan Deb

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brokehorrorfan · 6 months

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I Was a Teenage Slasher by New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones (My Heart Is a Chainsaw, The Only Good Indians) will be published on July 16, 2024 via Simon & Schuster.

A slasher story told from the killer's perspective, the 384-page horror novel will be available in hardcover, e-book, and audio book. Jon Bush designed the jacket cover. Read on for the synopsis.

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.

Pre-order I Was a Teenage by Stephen Graham Jones.

#stephen graham jones #i was a teenage slasher #slasher #horror #horror novel #horror books #simon and schuster #book #gift #80s horror #1980s horror #80s slashers #my heart is a chainsaw #the only good indians #jon bush

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a-wandering-imagination · 4 months

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Chapter 28

Muskie stood staring down at the man he had followed, still surprised at how easily he had bested him. After the experience in the woods, he had convinced himself that the man was some sort of superhuman like himself and had carefully ambushed him, attacking from nearly twenty yards away in the blink of an eye. But now, standing here looking at the unconscious man, Muskie was no longer convinced. He’d gone down easy. Really easy.

At first Muskie had thought there was someone else in the house because he could have sworn he heard the man talking to someone, but after he had knocked him out, he had searched the place top to bottom and found no one. Perhaps the fellow had just wigged out a little and started talking to himself. That tended to happen when a person was isolated for too long. They would create imaginary people with whom to converse out of pure desperation for companionship. Muskie had been briefed on all manner of human weakness during his tenure as an interrogator for the CIA. He’d always scoffed at those who lost their shit when they were stuck in isolation, though. Muskie liked his own company and found most other people annoying. That was the primary reason he was so effective as a covert operative. He had no ties. No relationships. He was alone. And he liked it that way--flying solo. Connections, or relationships, were (to put it simply) no more than points of weakness.

Muskie shouldered the unconscious man easily and headed for the landing strip. Having seen no one else in town other than the man on his shoulder and the strange creature in the woods, he was in no mood to dawdle and made good time. It wasn’t more than about fifteen minutes before he was back at the jet and had loaded the man, now bound hand and foot and ‘anesthetized’ for the trip, into the passenger section. He secured the door, swung the plane around and was about to take off when the low fuel alarm went off. Muskie swore under his breath as he shut the plane down once more and scanned the airfield. Off to his left he saw a hanger with the door open and a fuel truck parked inside. Could he really be that lucky? A half hour later the small plane was climbing to 25,000 feet. Muskie leveled the plane off and pointed the nose south, back towards Seattle and the secured communications room in the old court building. Muskie was going to find out who his prisoner was and what to do with him.

#apocalyptic fiction #creative writing #first novel #new fiction #pandemic fiction #book publishing #booklover #fiction books #harper collins #random house #simon schuster #scary stories #suspense #science fiction

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster

Going to Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

Last November, publishing got some excellent news: the planned merger of Penguin Random House (the largest publisher in the history of human civilization) with its immediate competitor Simon & Schuster would not be permitted, thanks to the DOJ's deftly argued case against the deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

When I was a baby writer, there were dozens of large NY publishers. Today, there are five - and it was almost four. A publishing sector with five giant companies is bad news for writers (as Stephen King said at the trial, the idea that PRH and S&S would bid against each other for books was as absurd as the idea that he and his wife would bid against each other for their next family home).

But it's also bad news for publishing workers, a historically exploited and undervalued workforce whose labor conditions have only declined as the number of employers in the sector dwindled, leading to mass resignations:

https://lithub.com/unlivable-and-untenable-molly-mcghee-on-the-punishing-life-of-junior-publishing-employees/

It should go without saying that workers in sectors with few employers get worse deals from their bosses (see, e.g., the writers' strike and actors' strike). And yup, right on time, PRH, a wildly profitable publisher, fired a bunch of its most senior (and therefore hardest to push around) workers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/books/penguin-random-house-layoffs-buyouts.html

But publishing's contraction into a five-company cartel didn't occur in a vacuum. It was a normal response to monopolization elsewhere in its supply chain. First it was bookselling collapsing into two major chains. Then it was distribution going from 300 companies to three. Today, it's Amazon, a monopolist with unlimited access to the capital markets and a track record of treating publishers "the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

Monopolies are like Pringles (owned by the consumer packaged goods monopolist Procter & Gamble): you can't have just one. As soon as you get a monopoly in one part of the supply chain, every other part of that chain has to monopolize in self-defense.

Think of healthcare. Consolidation in pharma lead to price-gouging, where hospitals were suddenly paying 1,000% more for routine drugs. Hospitals formed regional monopolies and boycotted pharma companies unless they lowered their prices - and then turned around and screwed insurers, jacking up the price of care. Health insurers gobbled each other up in an orgy of mergers and fought the hospitals.

Now the health care system is composed of a series of gigantic, abusive monopolists - pharma, hospitals, medical equipment, pharmacy benefit managers, insurers - and they all conspire to wreck the lives of only two parts of the system who can't fight back: patients and health care workers. Patients pay more for worse care, and medical workers get paid less for worse working conditions.

So while there was no question that a PRH takeover of Simon & Schuster would be bad for writers and readers, it was also clear that S&S - and indeed, all of the Big Five publishers - would be under pressure from the monopolies in their own supply chain. What's more, it was clear that S&S couldn't remain tethered to Paramount, its current owner.

Last week, Paramount announced that it was going to flip S&S to KKR, one of the world's most notorious private equity companies. KKR has a long, long track record of ghastly behavior, and its portfolio currently includes other publishing industry firms, including one rotten monopolist, raising similar concerns to the ones that scuttled the PRH takeover last year:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/books/booksupdate/paramount-simon-and-schuster-kkr-sale.html

Let's review a little of KKR's track record, shall we? Most spectacularly, they are known for buying and destroying Toys R Us in a deal that saw them extract $200m from the company, leaving it bankrupt, with lifetime employees getting $0 in severance even as its executives paid themselves tens of millions in "performance bonuses":

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/03/private-equity-bosses-took-200m-out-of-toys-r-us-and-crashed-the-company-lifetime-employees-got-0-in-severance/

The pillaging of Toys R Us isn't the worst thing KKR did, but it was the most brazen. KKR lit a beloved national chain on fire and then walked away, hands in pockets, whistling. They didn't even bother to clear their former employees' sensitive personnel records out of the unlocked filing cabinets before they scarpered:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/23/exploring-the-ruins-of-a-toys-r-us-discovering-a-trove-of-sensitive-employee-data/

But as flashy as the Toys R Us caper was, it wasn't the worst. Private equity funds specialize in buying up businesses, loading them with debts, paying themselves, and then leaving them to collapse. They're sometimes called vulture capitalists, but they're really vampire capitalists:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/private-equity-buyout-kkr-houdaille/

Given a choice, PE companies don't want to prey on sick businesses - they preferentially drain off value from thriving ones, preferably ones that we must use, which is why PE - and KKR in particular - loves to buy health care companies.

Heard of the "surprise billing epidemic"? That's where you go to a hospital that's covered by your insurer, only to discover - after the fact - that the emergency room is operated by a separate, PE-backed company that charges you thousands for junk fees. KKR and Blackstone invented this scam, then funneled millions into fighting the No Surprises Act, which more-or-less killed it:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

KKR took one of the nation's largest healthcare providers, Envision, hostage to surprise billing, making it dependent on these fraudulent payments. When Congress finally acted to end this scam, KKR was able to take to the nation's editorial pages and damn Congress for recklessly endangering all the patients who relied on it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

Like any smart vampire, KKR doesn't drain its victim in one go. They find all kinds of ways to stretch out the blood supply. During the pandemic, KKR was front of the line to get massive bailouts for its health-care holdings, even as it fired health-care workers, increasing the workload and decreasing the pay of the survivors of its indiscriminate cuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#socialized-losses

It's not just emergency rooms. KKR bought and looted homes for people with disabilities, slashed wages, cut staff, and then feigned surprise at the deaths, abuse and misery that followed:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/kkr-brightspring-disability-private-equity-abuse

Workers' wages went down to $8/hour, and they were given 36 hour shifts, and then KKR threatened to have any worker who walked off the job criminally charged with patient abandonment:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

For KKR, people with disabilities and patients make great victims - disempowered and atomized, unable to fight back. No surprise, then, that so many of KKR's scams target poor people - another group that struggles to get justice when wronged. KKR took over Dollar General in 2007 and embarked on a nationwide expansion campaign, using abusive preferential distributor contracts and targeting community-owned grocers to trap poor people into buying the most heavily processed, least nutritious, most profitable food available:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

94.5% of the Paycheck Protection Program - designed to help small businesses keep their workers payrolled during lockdown - went to giant businesses, fraudulently siphoned off by companies like Longview Power, 40% owned by KKR:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/20/great-danes/#ppp

KKR also helped engineer a loophole in the Trump tax cuts, convincing Justin Muzinich to carve out taxes for C-Corporations, which let KKR save billions in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/02/broken-windows/#Justin-Muzinich

KKR sinks its fangs in every part of the economy, thanks to the vast fortunes it amassed from its investors, ripped off from its customers, and fraudulently obtained from the public purse. After the pandemic, KKR scooped up hundreds of companies at firesale prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/30/medtronic-stole-your-ventilator/#blackstone-kkr

Ironically, the investors in KKR funds are also its victims - especially giant public pension funds, whom KKR has systematically defrauded for years:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/22/stimpank/#kentucky

And now KKR has come for Simon & Schuster. The buyout was trumpeted to the press as a done deal, but it's far from a fait accompli. Before the deal can close, the FTC will have to bless it. That blessing is far from a foregone conclusion. KKR also owns Overdrive, the monopoly supplier of e-lending software to libraries.

Overdrive has a host of predatory practices, loathed by both libraries and publishers (indeed, much of the publishing sector's outrage at library e-lending is really displaced anger at Overdrive). There's a plausible case that the merger of one of the Big Five publishers with the e-lending monopoly will present competition issues every bit as deal-breaking as the PRH/S&S merger posed.

(Image: Sefa Tekin/Pexels, modified)

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/08/vampire-capitalism/#kkr

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