The Amazing Digital Circuit
When I was younger, horror scared me a lot more than it does now. At first, it was mostly older asian films about mythological creatures and monsters haunting humans at any turn. The Five Nights at Freddy's series, when the first few games released also scared the shit out of a younger me, it was only until I was forced to exposure therapy myself to the animatronics cause my cousins enjoyed the FNAF franchise very much.
Maybe it was due to that exposure therapy in which I started to be less fearful of scary stories, alongside creepypastas that were all the craze back then. However, those were baby steps in comparison to when I became a teenager and my taste grew much further.
Horror games and films intensified my interest in the topic, especially in regards to surreal or experimental horror. I also grew an interest towards extreme horror films/splatterpunk. Some part of it may have just been me being a try-hard 15 year old, seeking out anything weird, gross and gory. But even as my interest started to wane, those stories I was exposed to still stuck in my mind. In recent times, I've been getting back into reading casually, and the lot of the new books I've read have all mostly been horror focused. Alongside that, I've rediscovered a new found appreaciation and interest in creepypastas, unfiction and creepy, disturbing books in general, especially if they have interesting or surreal formats/presentation.
One such book (or book series I should say) I've rediscovered since my craving for more reccomendations is a scifi horror book series called “The Amazing Digital Circuit”. It was released through a span of 3 years, from 1997 to 2000 by an author who's pseudonym on the books is G.W.S. Apart from there not being that much knowledge on the author publicly, the book was published via an indie publishing company named “Defective Organization Press”. All I know from what I've skimmed is that the company was based in New Zealand, being founded in 1987 and was mainly known to publish works of small, independent authors.
Now, what was the main thing that caught my interest when looking into this book? I noticed that while, upon release it was met with very little fanfare, books were still churned out despite the first book of the series not doing the best, which has resulted in a small but dedicated cult following for this series. It's also gained some intrigue with the knowledge of an ongoing mystery of it's 9th book, which would've been it's grand finale of the series that was teased in little bits at the end of each previous book, unfortunately was never actually published, leaving the series on a cliffhanger. Don't worry, apparently G.W.S proceeded to publish other written works, some very similar in the niches that TADC was, but none quite as notable as TADC.
From what I've first read of the small fanbases experience with the book series, it was often regarded as a masterful example of story telling, highly praised for it's intrigue and introspective moments, particularly with it's 8 main characters. What was also most talked about when it came to the books themes and messages, was it's commentary on technology and virtual communication, it challenges the reader and ropes you in deeper and deeper into this fictional world. Due to it's open ended nature, as the final book was never released, thus the story never “ended”, people have taken this in different ways.
One common interpretation was that, whatever was in that last book was too difficult or even painful to release, others have taken this as a challenge or even a long alternative reality game G.W.S was playing on the readers, that the ending was a solvable mystery with hints and clues scattered everywhere. Some rumour that the final book was physically destroyed in a multitude of ways, that the reason it was never released was cause there were no remaining archives of it, and G.W.S just wouldn't capture the same magic she had before with it's original scripts.
There have been efforts made in the past for the search of this enigmatic 9th book, but every path eventually leads to a dead end, forcing anyone invested in the search to either give up or be back at square one. It doesn't help that when attempting to get in contact with either G.W.S or the publishing company, both parties politely refused any requests for an interview or just didn't have any answers.
Everyone in the fanbase is so caught up on the 9th book, for good reason I understand, but I've noticed how everyone's so focused on this never released final book while disregarding the main material that was released. Surely 8 books has much more substance and interesting things to discuss as compared to the idea of a missing, final book that was canned?
This story interested me so much, especially after seeing the little bits and pieces people would describe of the plot and characters, another problem presented itself though. Most people didn't seem to have a physical copy of the books, not even one. If someone did have a copy or copies, plans would be made to have them scanned and archived, but nothing came. That or they were just extremely combative and gatekeepy as “real dedicated fans” for having physical copies.
I was getting desperate, obviously there's no way I think such an obscure, old american book series could be located at any local bookstores here, but there wasn't anyone online willing to sell or share their copies, without a heavy price at least. I searched everywhere, from forums to newletters, websites just anything for a glimpse into any of the books. It was frustrating me how seemingly revered this book was by it's fanbase, yet everyone was so damn secretive of the available material.
That is until, while just randomly searching through some foreign torrenting sites and proxies out of curiosity, I found it. Copies of all 8 published books just freely listed on this website. I had to check for a moment while downloading one pdf to see if it was really genuine, or just a giant hoax. I was on my phone as I awaited for it to finish downloading, as soon as I opened it in my pdf viewer of choice, I couldn't believe it.
Here was a genuine full pdf copy of one of the Amazing Digital Circuit books, I internally thanked whoever decided to upload all 8 books on that proxy site and hurried to my laptop to start downloading all the files, as if they would've been snatched out of my grasp if I took any longer.
I am happy to finally talk and discuss my thoughts on this mysterious series of books that has somehow acquired such a cult following but is seemingly non-existant in any wider conversation of obscure horror titles. It would be criminal for me to just set this backstory all up and just not release the pdfs somewhere more available for your reading enjoyment but I will quickly summarize the plot here:
G.W.S
The Amazing Digital Circuit
The Amazing Digital Circuit first introduces us to it's main setting, a dark and macabre carnival attraction with no visitors, all except for the eight humans who are trapped there by force. The story starts with a new member of the carny, a young woman dressed in jester attire she cannot remove, given the name “Pomni” upon arrival. Here, she meets the remaining seven members of the carnival, all unique and eccentric in their own ways. An antagonist is introduced as an Artificial Intelligence, named CAINE (all capitalized) as it oversees all of the carnival ground and forces the members to play out strange roles or play games, refusal to take part in it's games will result in CAINE killing everyone slowly and painfully, before reviving them back til they accept it's offer.
It is very soon revealed, that the nature of this carnival is not one based in reality at all, but instead, everyone is held captive in a virtual reality within a CD ROM each member recounts, in some way before they arrived, they had received and are “playing”. Upon entry there is no way out no matter what, and some members claim that they've probably been trapped in the game for years.
Everyone has seemingly lost all hope in finding an exit and are at the mercy of CAINE, but Pomni is determined to leave and return to her real life, before she forgets it. Within the books, there are two main narratives starting from the second book in the series that shows Pomni “participating” in the strange games CAINE hosts in attempt to get closer to each member and to find answers for an explanation or escape. Through these interactions, comes the other main focus and appeals of the books, the exploration of each member's backstories. Each book (with the exception of the first which was Pomni centric) chronicles the life events of each member, from notable moments to when they are caught up in this mysterious game.
From this description, you can probably picture what the ninth book could've been about now. It would've had some conclusion to the character's attempts for an escape, the pieces to the mysterious CD ROM, the company that was developing that game and CAINE's existence. Accompanied with the glimpses of text at the end of each book, that was seemingly clips of the final book, it garners a lot of intrigue to see how this all ends.
Perhaps the task to finish such a complex series of books got to the author, especially with those rumours of any rewrite or retelling being futile compared to it's original, raw form. We shall never know beyond what we can speculate and are given in relation to heavy story beats. In a lot of ways, after reading some books of the series so far, the scope and scale of The Amazing Digital Circuit is akin to the seemingly complex and ambitious goals, the mysterious game company for the CD ROM, Caine & Abel, sought to achieve with it in the story.
Well, this is getting long, so unfortunately I need to end it here. This page will definitely be updated! I just need to upload those pdfs somewhere more available.
Will be looking forward to catching up with more information :-).
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