Perhaps too unbelievable to fathom at the beginning of 2020, The PornME Trinity by David Leo Rice has taken on an entirely new meaning and resonance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. An (ongoing) era, as we all know, when everyone was forced to acknowledge just how bleak and ersatz their existence really was when confined to four walls (whether at work or at home, or working from home). But after enduring that lockdown period, The Opiate Books felt the time was right for a second edition, complete with a supplemental foreword, a new afterword by Chris Kelso and addendum questions to a perspicacious interview with the author himself.

As for The PornME Trinity’s “heroic pervert” (as Rice classifies him, per the Cronenbergian model), Gribby, life in the surveillance state isn’t so bad, so long as, at the very least, it means there is the constant comfort and consolation of porn. All the many kinds of porn.

He just didn’t realize that there would be so many kinds (all ultimately escalating variations on the same “theme”) after clicking yes on the $12.99 a month plan offered by a mysterious company called PornME. This seemingly innocuous act results in some hyper-real (“deep fake,” if you prefer) images of himself engaging in all manner of sexual scenarios–violent or otherwise–with his co-workers (for most people, that’s not exactly an eroticizing thought–enticing one even less to come into the office).

At first, Gribby’s response is very positive indeed (which the folks at PornME have the dopamine levels to prove), but as the situations start to become increasingly lurid–in addition to being a Groundhog Day string of experiences that are indecipherable from the next–he wonders if this distraction is really worth the dull pain. Especially when it gets intergalactic.

Buy a copy through your preferred bookstore via bookshop.org. Come on bubba, you know you wanna!