A.I. took the work. Gigs replaced jobs. Ordinary people are left to scrape together lives in a world that's no longer built for them. These are their stories.In a frighteningly near future where Basic Income is supplemented by gig work assigned by “the app”…an octogenarian punk and a lonely young worker seek escape through music. A street artist makes art by night and paints over it by day. A has-been detective chases a case into a forgotten world. A drug runner makes a long, strange delivery. A writer marks her days on a decaying space station she can’t leave. And a refugee asks for help in the last free place.With a hard-won blend of biting satire and humanistic passion, two creators from the North of England weave together six divergent chapters into an extraordinary graphic novel. Gigs is both a powerful warning about the oppressive world to come and a defiant celebration of the humanity that will sprout up in the cracks.“A sharp, funny look at where the future’s heading and what we can do about it. Emotive, thought-provoking, beautifully drawn and written with wit, this is the sort of science-fiction we need more of.”— Adrian TchaikovskyAuthor of the Hugo Award–winning Children of Time series.
Contributors: (W) Mark Mosedale
Mark Mosedale is a writer from the North of England. He has also been a pot washer; a video game journalist; a dollar-store clerk; an unpaid writer for major national newspapers (once willingly, once without being informed, which seems careless now); a customer-service advisor for a debt management charity; and a paperboy. He once ran 100 miles without puking, but he did it quite slowly. Mosedale lives in Leeds, England, with his wife, kids, and preoccupations.Si Smith is a UK-based comic artist and freelance illustrator. He has also worked: as a primary school teacher; in teams programming festival events and venues; on a zero-hours contract invigilating shows at a well-known arts institution; as an exhibition curator; in an art supplies shop; on the panel of an under-the-radar arts funding body. He loves Radiohead and The Slits, and the best gig that he ever saw was RIDE at the Manchester Albert Hall in May 2015. Smith is married with two adult sons, and he currently lives and works in Leeds in the North of England.