Nicholas Binge Talks Abyss
Nicholas Binge’s new novella Abyss opens with an idea that horror fans will recognize immediately, even if they’ve never set foot near a Lovecraftian tentacle: the soul-crushing claustrophobia of showing up to the same job, on the same loop, until the walls start to feel less like walls and more like a death sentence. In our interview, Binge breaks down how he built a cosmic horror story from something as mundane as an open-plan office (the absolute worst idea), and why he thinks late-stage capitalism is the closest thing we have to a real-world Lovecraftian entity. We also get into the book’s eerily prescient AI subplot (written years before ChatGPT was a household name), the self-directed rage that fueled its doom-scrolling horror, and that unforgettable scene from The Matrix that’s haunted Binge since he was eleven years old. Listen below!
About Abyss
Severance meets Lovecraft in this surreal tale of corporate horror and existential dread.
Joe always had potential, but he doesn’t expect much, and he hopes that his new job as an admin assistant won’t expect much of him. But when he enters the offices of Ponos—a company he’s never heard of and knows nothing about—he discovers that potential is exactly what they want from him.
A feverish dive into the inhumanity of both late-stage capitalism and the crippling anxieties of modern life, Abyss adds a new level of meaning to ‘wage slave’.
About Nicholas Binge
Nicholas Binge is a bestselling author of speculative thrillers that blend big sci-fi concepts with psychological horror. He also writes crime and thriller novels under the pseudonym Nick Brucker, with his debut White Smoke set to release in 2027.
In 2023, his breakout novel Ascension was a New York Times Editor’s Choice Pick, a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards and the Ignotus Award, and named a ‘best book of the year’ by Vulture, Goodreads, The LA Times, and The Sunday Times. His sophomore novel, Dissolution, was hailed as one of the best thrillers of 2025 by The New York Times and other leading outlets, and was followed swiftly by the critically acclaimed novellas Extremity and Abyss.
His work has been, or is being, translated into over twenty-five languages and several of his novels are in active development for either film or TV. Notably, Dissolution is being adapted into a major motion picture by Sony Pictures, with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer (Arrival, Birdbox) penning the script, and White Smoke is being adapted into a prestige TV series by A24, with Benedict Cumberbatch starring in the lead. Ascension and Extremity are also in active development for film and TV, respectively.
Binge has lived across Asia and Europe — from Singapore to Switzerland to Hong Kong —before settling in Edinburgh, where he lectures in Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University and co-hosts the Binge Reading Book Club podcast. Beyond fiction, he has written for The Guardian, Literary Hub, and other leading outlets, and is a regular speaker at book festivals across Scotland and the UK.
His next book, Exhumation, arrives in October 2026. To stay updated on new releases and appearances, sign up to his newsletter or follow him on Bluesky.
