The exhilarating and riotously entertaining science fiction romance blending queer counterculture, joy as resistance, and banging disco hits, perfect for readers of Kaliane Bradley, Vajra Chandraseker and Victor Manibo.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Disco at the End of the World by Nathan Tavares, which releases on June 16th 2026.
In 1977 – a world in which America launched its space program shortly after WWII – Mitch Ward followed Flynn, the lost love of his youth, into the US Spaceguard. Now, he’s stuck on a backwater moon base with his only friend, Gloria, watching every shuttle in the hope Flynn will be on it.
After an inexplicable encounter with a strange, euphoric being, Mitch and Gloria find themselves dishonourably discharged, and stuck with no plans and no future in a USA rapidly sliding into fascism. There’s nothing for it but to move to Los Angeles to chase their dreams, and find their people in the discos of the city.
But when Flynn crashes back into their lives, claiming to be the host for an emissary of a utopian civilization approaching Earth, he offers Mitch the power to protect himself and friends across the queer community, so they never have to live in the shadows or face oppression again.
With the world on the brink of cataclysm, and Mitch and his friends being squeezed out of every space, it’s down to this community of disco-loving outcasts to stand up for what is beautiful and right.
EXCERPT
There’s no music in Kern’s speech. He rambles about how Watkins forgot we are at war with the Reds, same as if there are boots on the ground. How he treated us like friends and not soldiers in his care. And there are wars at home, too. President Reagan issued declarations, and emergency actions, and Presidential Orders for our great Country to win the war against immorality, and anti-Americanism, and depravity. I get that Reagan’s antsy. Presidents have got the shelf life of a gallon of milk, lately. Three of them got sworn in since I’ve been in the Guard. Ford got a bullet to the head in San Francisco in ’75, then his vice president warmed the seat until Reagan won in ’76. Men need a war to make them strong, I remember Reagan saying in some address, reminding the country how he served in World War II. He talked about his war service and not so much the shitty movies he starred in when I was a kid. Kern yaps about how all of us here can be strong, moral men if we win the war in our hearts between self and service.
I don’t hear much after that with how all the air seems to leak out of the room. Starmen around me sit up straighter and flash each other wide eyes. At my side, Powell drags in a wet, jagged breath.
Kern waves his hand and Bomer wheels the projector we use for movie night on over to the front of the mess hall. We swapped the old film projector out with a new one that Mayflower Studios made with tech from the space program. The thing looks like a curved white desk lamp attached to a vacuum cleaner. Six months back, Watkins first wheeled it in here, loaded up a big sequin-looking thing called an Opti-Disc in the back, and fiddled with some dials before Casablanca burst on the projector screen. So clear, so bright that I swear Humphrey Bogart’s cigarettes stank up the room. The remote-controlled surveyor rovers that the research unit rolls around outside to map the moon already had cameras stuck to the front. Kern said that all the other rovers and the big lunar schooners were getting Opti-Disc cameras to record everything. The hallways, too.
Bomer lowers the projection screen by the Miss Moonie mural. The Opti-Disc glints blue in his white-gloved hand when he loads the thing into side of the projector. Someone cuts the overhead lights and the big eye of the projector lamp blinks on, blasting red, white, and blue stars onto the screen as trumpets blaze the Guard Hymn. When the stars clear, Starman North in a red jumpsuit faces the camera with glinting eyes the color of service-dress blues. His hair is a pomaded blond side-part, his jaw square like old film cameras.
Behind him, buttons at grey control panels blink like stars, with lunar maps glowing on the computer screens.
I know the movie set—the Founding Fathers control room—from the last God’s Guardsmen flick. Whoever painted Starman North’s lips didn’t nail the color. His lips are too red, like he’s been sucking cherries. Still, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.
“Hwhy, hello there, fellow starmen.”
Fellow starmen, my ass. He’s an actor named Kit Caber— the third Starman North Mayflower Studios has cast in their God’s Guardsmen series. I’ve seen all twelve flicks. Everybody has. They brought in Caber two flicks back when the other guy got too long in the tooth. His voice stinks of that fake Old Hollywood accent that Ma and the Uncles would whip out when they were wasted, with Casablanca in the background, stretching out their ahs, adding in Hs where they don’t belong. Hwhy, get me a glaahss of hwine, daaaling. Always old movies on TV at home. Never the news, when all the anchors had to talk about was redrawn congressional district lines, new Supreme Court seats, and other crap we didn’t understand.
Starman North snaps out a perfect salute
“I’m here to share hwith you an important update to Guard protocol.” The camera follows him as he strides past other central-casting starmen at control panels. “And introduce you to the STAR System, hwhere you’ll find new opportunities for self-betterment as you serve your Country.”
“There’s sssomethin’ Kern’s not tellin’ us,” Powell slurs at me with his pie-crust-flecked mouth. Red creeps up his neck. “And somethin’ I t-tried to tell you all about. ’Cept you think all of us are off our rockers.”
“Powell.” I squirm. “Can it, will ya?”
Of course there’s somet hing Kern ain’t gabbing about. Everyone from here to Earth is a Washington mouthpiece. I look up and Kern glares our way, while Starman North swaggers to a chalk board with STAR System written across the top, over a bullet-point list of words.
“—hwould think. Yes, the STAR System. Now, hwe guardsmen aren’t spreading American might off in distant star systems quite yet. Though, soon enough!” He gives his best pomade ad smile. “Raaahther, STAR stands for Service.” He taps his pointer at the first block-lettered word in the list. “Trust.” Tap. “Allegiance.” Tap. “And Respect. Following the grand success of the STAR Citizen System in the Studio Zones of Los Angeles, it’s only right that we bring the STAR Soldier System here to our bravest. Thus, hwhen our citizens gaze to the heavens, hwhy, they’ll see us as shining stars!”
I need Gloria here to make me feel better with a can you believe this shit look.
“Do you Serve your Nation, and your fellow soldiers?” Starman North jabs his finger towards the camera, his eyes crinkling in concern for us, after all our time in the trenches together, decking Communists. “Trust it? Show Allegiance and Respect? The STAR System empowers you all to keep each other on the unhwavering path of American Righteousness, and—”
Powell slams me in the shin with one of his magboots when he wriggles off the bench. Starmen whisper and shuffle. Behind me, mag boots clomp, but my eyes jerk back up to the horror movie on the projection screen.
“—to increase recreational time, commissary privileges, and even pecuniary bonuses.” Starman North fans his hands at the three starmen bit players in the fake control room. “You might even get a personalized filmed ‘thank you’ message from one of Mayflower Studios’ biggest stars.”
“Hwhy!” one of the others burbles. “That sounds ahhwful swell!”
“All for doing our duty, anyhow?” another adds.
I don’t know that I got enough bourbon stashed here to convince Kern to keep me out of what ever the hell this is. I follow Kern’s eyes away from the screen and into the runway between the columns of mess tables.
“Take a seat, starman,” Kern says over the big trumpet fanfare. On the screen, Starman North and a whole squad of red jumpsuits line up in perfect rows.
“Tell them,” Powell yells.
Kern flicks his hand to Bomer, who nods and starts in for Powell.
The red jumpsuits sing the Guard Hymn as an announcer’s voice tells us, “To the STARs, Guardsmen!”
Jesus Christ. You can’t really run with mag boots on. Powell tries, anyhow, and I sink watching him lurching against the low gravity—spitting and jerking his half-dead legs—and fighting against the force that keeps his feet to the floor.
“You tell ’em what really happen’d at Puller,” Powell snarls. He launches his pie plate at Kern—unfazed, smiling, almost—and misses by ten feet. “You tell ’em, you goddam’d sonuvabitch.”
Maybe Gloria’s right and I should’ve kept a better eye on the goodies I gave him and the other Pulled starmen. I should watch. Like I owe it to him to see the mess I helped make. But my eyes blast on over to the screen where actors march in formation, as real starmen around me snicker. Pull him on outta here, someone yells. Maybe he’ll finally shut his yap.
Trumpets blast over red, white, and blue swirling stars as Bomer and two others drag Powell towards the blue hallways, his mag boot scrapes mashing up with his screams on the way out.
