Simon English: my big self decoy justin beiber brings together a significant new body of painted drawings by the artist that format themselves around the double page spread, with both image and text on the page to invite and resist quiet contemplation. These exquisitely delicate and brutal drawings tussle with one another for space, pulling the viewer into the energetic and colourful vortex of the artist's psyche. Diaries jostle with devotions, desires and disputes-a confabulation of friction and fiction in a place where fetish and fact collide. Simon English draws across the blank page with the instincts of one entering cyberspace. His surfing history is left only too clear on the surface of the page, or buried beneath heavy black deletions and overpainting. His are the 'old' gremlins, the monsters within that say one is too much and more is never enough. In 2004, Bill Arning wrote that "for picture addicts like myself, English is the equivalent of a crack dealer". ,br> The work within the book is brought together with written contributions from Laurence Scott, who will contribute a text emanating from English's imaginary drawing database, and Sally O'Reilly, who will construct a voice for the work somewhere between art, theory, fiction and fantasy.

Morphology will in all probability be regarded by future generations as one of the major theoretical breakthroughs in the field of folklore in the twentieth century. -- Alan Dundes Propp's work is seminal... and], now that it is available in a new edition, should be even more valuable to folklorists who are directing their attention to the form of the folktale, especially to those structural characteristics which are common to many entries coming from even different cultures. -- Choice

In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert Humbert offers a memorably brief account of his parents' death: "picnic, lightning." Picnic Comma Lightning, too, opens with death-that of Laurence Scott's mother-because, for a philosopher, death raises a profound existential question: How do we know what is real, especially when we have come to question the reality of so many of our day-to-day experiences? Writing from the intersection of philosophy, politics, and memoir, Scott transforms his personal meditation on loss into a beguiling exploration of what it means to exist in the world today. It used to be that our lives were rooted in reasonably solid things: to people, places and memories. Now, in an age of online personas, alternative truths, constant surveillance and an increasingly hysterical news cycle, our realities are becoming flimsier and more vulnerable than ever before. Scott's far-ranging examination charts the ways our traditional mental models of the world have started to fray. He ponders how ubiquitous cameras reframe our private lives (an event only exists once someone posts the video), how mysterious algorithms undermine our attempts at self-definition through their own data-driven portraits, and what happens in those moments when our illusions about reality are ruptured by incontrovertible facts (like the death of a parent or a bolt of lightning). "A report from the front line of the online generation" (Sunday Times), Picnic Comma Lightning is an essential account of how we've started to make sense of our strange new world.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2015 WINNER OF THE JERWOOD PRIZE ONE OF WIRED's NON-FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE We spend more time than ever online, and the digital revolution is rewiring our sense of what it means to be human. Smartphones let us live in one another's pockets, while websites advertise our spare rooms all across the world. Never before have we been so connected. Increasingly we are coaxed from the three-dimensional world around us and into the wonders of a fourth dimension, a world of digitised experiences in which we can project our idealised selves. But what does it feel like to live in constant connectivity? What new pleases and anxieties are emerging with our exposure to this networked world? How is the relationship to our bodies changing as we head deeper into digital life? Most importantly, how do we exist in public with these recoded inner lives, and how do we preserve our old ideas of isolation, disappearance and privacy on a Google-mapped planet?

'Clever, funny and deeply moving... an engaging and thought-provoking journey through the fakery of modern life.' Mail on Sunday

'A stylish, playful exploration of what digital life is doing to the way we find meaning in the world.' Guardian, 'Book of the Week'

In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the narrator offers a memorably brief account of his mother’s death: 'picnic, lightning'. Picnic Comma Lightning similarly opens with the death of Laurence Scott's parents, and the definitive ending of their deaths raises for him one fundamental question: how much of what we live through is truly real?

With humour and insight, Scott transforms this personal meditation on loss into an exploration of what it means to exist in the world now. It used to be that our vision of the world was rooted to reasonably solid things: to people, places and memories. But today, in an age of constant internet debates, online personas and alternative truths, reality feels more vulnerable than ever before.

Picnic Comma Lightning looks at how digital life is distorting, echoing and magnifying our age-old preoccupation with what is real and what isn't. Where do we draw the line? How is technology shifting these boundaries? And how do we maintain a sense of reality in an increasingly unreal world?

'A report from the front line of the digital generation by someone superbly well-equipped to read and decode the signals.' Sunday Times