The Arbiter Book

Description

(2021)

The Arbiter
a serialized ethno-cyberpunk novel

by Artrit Bytyçi

In a dystopian near future, free speech is a distant memory and all news is censored. Journalists live in exile in last remaining safe havens like Prishtinopolis from where they organize info-revolutions. They are hunted and eliminated by cybernetically enhanced agents called arbiters.

Follow one of these arbiters as he crosses the border as part of a covert mission. He must work blind, with his cybernetic implants turned off to avoid detection. But more importantly, he must not cause a diplomatic incident. The two neighboring countries are in a state of cold war caused by their opposing ideologies: techno-dictatorship and cyber-libertarianism.
This first episode of this serialized cyberpunk novel comes as a bilingual publication in both Albanian and English. But also, it is so much more — it is a hybrid between an artist’s book, a zine, a work of science fiction, a collection of essays, and a multimedia experiment.

As you read “The Arbiter,” you can enjoy the soundtrack that follows the literary text, especially composed by Liburn Jupolli. He describes his creative process in the featured essay “Composing for EthnoCyberPunk.” Other nonfiction by Artrit Bytyçi includes texts such as “Sci-Fi in Kosovo: Dystopias as a Utopian Project” and “A Printed Book in the Time of Cybernetic Reproduction.” The publication also features a Voice of America interview between Ilir Ikonomi and Flutura Kusari, which served as an initial inspiration for the story.

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