Floyds Gone

“When you have them pixelated, magic occurs. You become the imagination of the technology. Like you’re watching the technology dream.”

A man plans to disappear after his partner becomes pregnant. Films play on loop in a countryside home filled with waste. A violent video appears on an online server where people plot and rate hoaxes. An employee stalks his boss to protect her from a threatening man. Pictures of a burning building are nominated for a major prize. An empty boat returns to shore and the photographer on board has disappeared.

These are some of the unsettling, vivid images that accumulate throughout Floyds Gone, Jacob A. Smith’s debut story collection. Inhabiting the uncertain space between images, dreams and reality, Smith’s stories probe the strange data of our mediated lives. Built around moments of arrival, departure, and change, and a recurring name that may refer to more than one man, the stories of Floyds Gone are all powerful screenshots of life lived in a world of multiplying images and vanishing selfhood.