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Neil Young Is Writing a Sci-Fi Novel

AUSTIN, TX - MARCH 15: Neil Young attend the "Paradox" Premiere 2018 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Paramount Theatre on March 15, 2018 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for SXSW)

Neil Young is at SXSW right now promoting his new film, the Daryl-Hannah-directed Paradox, which screens today at the festival. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he mostly discussed the fun and haphazard nature of the filmmaking for Paradox, which was shot in roughly three days. He detailed the hard work he had done assembling his recent online archival project, including developing high-quality streaming with “15,000 [different] levels” of adaptability for the service. He also revealed that he was taking a break from high-intensity touring this year in part to focus on finishing a novel he says he’s working on. The title? Canary.

He rattled off a detailed description of the book, which is apparently a madcap sci-fi yarn about an average worker who discovers corruption in the energy industry and then is forced to become a spy. In a turn out of the movie Okja, the man figures out that a fradulent solar company have genetically created a new species of animals whose “shit gives the energy to make the [fuel].” Here’s his full statement about Canary to Rolling Stone’s Patrick Doyle:

It’s kind of a sci-fi thing about a guy who gets busted for a crime. He works for a power company and there’s corruption in the power company and he wants to expose it, so he figures out a way to expose it and shuts down the grid a couple of times. He gets busted for doing that, and the cops come and take him out of his office, put him in a van, drug him, and he goes to a hospital somewhere. Then he wakes up and he’s on a mission to pay his debt to society. That’s all he cares about. Then he puts on these glasses, and they broadcast everything that he sees and he goes into different places and interacts with the people there and he’s just a regular guy, but these people in this room downtown are watching everything he’s doing and listening to everything. He discovers the solar company he works for is a hoax. And they’re not really using solar. They’re using this shit – the guy who’s doing this has come up with a way to make bad fuel, the bad energy, this really ugly terrible stuff, and he’s figured out a way to genetically create these animals that shit that gives the energy to make the [fuel]. So he’s created this new species. But the species escapes. So it’s a fuckin’ mess. It’s a long story. So it’s a novel.

Young says he’s currently working with an agent on the book. In other Neil Young news, he recently responded to the complaints of one of his more vocal haters, the NRA’s Dana Loesch, in spectacular fashion. Paradox comes to Netflix on March 23.