Futureland is bestselling mystery author Walter Mosley's first science fiction book since Blue Light, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Futureland's nine linked stories will provide an accessible and intelligent introduction to written science fiction for mystery or mainstream fiction fans who do not normally read the genre.

Experienced science fiction readers, however, may be less than satisfied with Futureland. Reading it, you might decide Mr. Mosley grew up reading SF, respects the genre, and still watches SF movies, but has read little SF written during or after the New Wave of the 1960s. However, something more may be going on here than a genre newcomer making beginning-SF-writer mistakes. Mr. Mosley may be deliberately, and craftily, creating SF accessible to his large non-SF readership and to others who are strangers to this genre.

Some have labeled Futureland cyberpunk, and it does present a dark, infotech-saturated, corporation-controlled future; but it is in fact an inversion of cyberpunk. Instead of that subgenre's cliche of cool, cutting-edge, street-smart, but not very believable outlaws who out-hack and outwit powerful multinational corporations, this Dante-esque collection presents outlaws and outcasts who may be street-wise, but who have little chance of overcoming the corporations and governments that control, and sometimes take, their lives. Like shockingly few other SF works, Futureland directly examines the lives of the working and the nonworking classes, the poor and the marginalized, the criminal and the criminalized. In other words, Futureland is set in a world quite alien to many veteran SF readers, and is therefore a book they should try. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly
Although Allen brings a distinctly human touch to a cold world of computers and corporations, his relaxed style seems ill suited for these nine interconnected stories set in the near future. The frenetic material should be bristling with tension, but here it comes off as leaden. Agreeing with the sci-fi theme, the recording makes use of some effects, like giving Allen's voice a distant, tinny sound for a radio advertisement or a stentorian echoing effect for a ringside announcer. But even more would have been appropriate, such as background noise or music woven into the segues to heighten drama. While distracting in some recordings, such effects seem to be missing here amid the high-tech hullabaloo, especially given Allen's deadpan delivery. The stories themselves are intriguing and notable within science fiction for their focus on marginalized and underprivileged characters. But Allen's approach is simply too languid for the subject matter, and the dialogue in particular comes off as stilted and awkward. Simultaneous release with the Warner hardcover (Forecasts, Sept. 10, 2001). Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Mosley projects a depressing view of life around the middle of the 21st century: individual, racial, and sexual repression are the order of the day. The wealthy few have extraordinary power; computing and medicine have progressed but are harnessed to evil ends. For example, computers simulate the justice system for the poor, and there's a more potent substitute for tobacco. Richard Allen does an excellent job replicating various African American dialects and manages to inject a sense of excitement and anticipation into a work where the individual rarely triumphs over the system. For high school students and adults. James L. Dudley, Westhampton, NYCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
The creator of mean streets detective Easy Rawlins offers nine science-fiction short stories of a high order. Like many who enter this genre only occasionally, Mosley comments satirically on the present, specifically aspects of African-American life, which he treats with perception and gritty imagination. Narrator Richard Allen fully employs his skill with characterization, reserving his wonted soft tones for the narrative. He nicely serves moments of high drama and tension. Unfortunately, he also misreads many lines, obscuring or reversing their meaning. His diction could be better, particularly when he impersonates a highly volatile or strongly accented character. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Mystery star Mosley tries his hand at science fiction again, to better effect than in the novel Blue Light (1998). For these nine interconnected stories, he conjures a mid-twenty-first-century world in which one company is the most powerful force in the world and political correctness is the law. The only significant revolutionaries are black, and blacks and whites are still highly antagonistic. All Mosley's good guys are black, including the smartest man in the world, imprisoned for assisting the deaths of his ailing grandmother and uncle; the world's heavyweight boxing champ--a six-foot-nine-inch woman who goes into politics after KO'ing the male heavyweight champ in less than a minute of round one; a private dick who solves cases with the help of a greatly enhanced artificial eye; and a regular-joe worker who becomes the reader's eyewitness to the dawn of a new world when a backfiring biological weapon kills everyone who isn't at least 12.5 percent black. Lest that last bit of business seem too black-triumphalist, the worker-hero quickly discovers that intraspecies predation hasn't vanished. Ably slinging the technobabble to explain the odd wonder-gadget in his tales, and greasing them with plenty of "oh-baby" sex, Mosley creates sf in which Shaft and Superfly would feel at home. Can ya dig it? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Life in America a generation from now isn't much different from today: The drugs are better, the daily grind is worse. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened to a chasm. You can store the world's legal knowledge on a chip in your little finger, while the Supreme Court has decreed that constitutional rights don't apply to any individual who challenges the system. Justice is swiftly delivered by automated courts, so the prison industry is booming. And while the media declare racism is dead, word on the street is that even in a colorless society, it's a crime to be black.
But the world still turns and folks still have to get by with the hands they're dealt, folks such as:

Ptolemy "Popo" Bent: This gentle backwoods child has a genius I.Q.- and a soul so pure that officials want him locked up forever...

Folio Johnson: A hardboiled, cyber-augmented private eye who can see beneath the dark poetry of the metropolis, he will need an even greater edge than that to find out who's systematically murdering rich, young Nazis...

Fera Jones: She's the boxing Queen of the Ring who must still fight all comers to save her dad, preserve her identity, and protect the fans who believe in her...

Dr. Ivan Kismet: The world's richest man, Macrocode's CEO is a tycoon, tyrant, and messiah who is evidently more powerful than God. So it's too bad for everyone that Dr. Kismet is utterly insane...

Walter Mosley brings to life the celebs, working stiffs, leaders, victims, technocrats, crooks, oppressors, and revolutionaries who inhabit a glorious all-American nightmare that's just around the corner. Welcome to FUTURELAND.


Download Description
The place is the United States. The time, the near future, 2020-2040. Here, justice is blind and the ranks of the disenfranchised have swollen to a toxic level. High tech rules the day while human nature, for better or worse, remains constant. In nine int

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Throughout his literary career, Walter Mosley has demonstrated a breathtaking versatility, first making his name with hard-hitting mysteries exploring the modern African-American experience and then boldly delving into the world of science fiction with the dazzling Blue Light. Here he again ventures into the sci-fi arena to give us a splendid collection of nine loosely connected stories featuring a near-future America brimming with ultra-technology and insurrection. Political travails have escalated into fierce social disorder, and every institution in the nation is privatized, from prisons to schools to Eden-like retreats where hedonism and slavery go hand in hand. Mosley brings the talents he's already known for in the mystery field and sets them to work in a world where revolution is as prevalent as home computers.

The stories that make up Futureland deal with the likes of Vortex "Bits" Arnold, a convict on Angel's Island, where prisoners wear electronic snakes attached directly into their nerve centers, so that any inappropriate thought is immediately dealt with. We meet Fera Jones, the female heavyweight boxing champion who must follow either her own course or the one set for her by a feminist group bent on creating a new world order. There's also Ptolemy "Popo" Bent, a child genius trying to find God in radio waves, and his uncle, Chilly Bent, who makes the ultimate sacrifice to ensure his nephew's future.

Reminiscent of Paul Di Filippo's Ribofunk, Futureland is filled with thoughtful, edgy, and highly accessible storytelling. Mosley retains his high standards throughout, never growing lax with his plot or contrivances. Using some of the tropes of cyberpunk fiction, such as genetic engineering and high-tech psychological conditioning, the author adds to them a literate and mystical sensibility that will grab you by the throat. His characters are often less concerned with computer technology than with reaching the ear of God. They inhabit a world in which millions of famine victims are either saved or left to die, based on the results of a tennis game. Expatriates, zealots, and political prisoners abound, and it's certainly no fluke that these tales are described as "imminent." This is satire of the most biting and effective kind because it uses the social ills of today and ingeniously extrapolates them into a vision of tomorrow. (Tom Piccirilli)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Life in America a generation from now isn't much different from today: The drugs are better, the daily grind is worse. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened to a chasm. You can store the world's legal knowledge on a chip in your little finger, while the Supreme Court has decreed that constitutional rights don't apply to any individual who challenges the system. Justice is swiftly delivered by automated courts, so the prison industry is booming. And while the media declare racism is dead, word on the street is that even in a colorless society, it's a crime to be black." "But the world still turns and folks still have to get by with the hands they're dealt, folks such as:" "Ptolomy "Popo" Bent: This gentle backwoods child has a genius I.Q. - and a soul so pure that officials want him locked up forever." "Folio Johnson: A hardboiled, cyber-augmented private eye who can see beneath the dark poetry of the metropolis, he will need an even greater edge than that to find out who's systematically murdering rich, young Nazis." Fera Jones: She's the boxing Queen of the Ring who must still fight all comers to save her dad, preserve her identity, and protect the fans who believe in her.

SYNOPSIS

The place is the United States. The time, the near future, 2020-2040. Here, justice is blind and the ranks of the disenfranchised have swollen to a toxic level. High tech rules the day while human nature, for better or worse, remains constant.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine - Don McLeese

This collection of nine stories that conjure up an alternate world represents Mosley's second excursion into science fiction, following 1998's Blue Light. Science concerns Mosley less than character does (his Easy Rawlins series of detective novels is likewise richer in character than complexity of plot). This new book probes the implications of class and race, crime and punishment, freedom and technology in a country that has perfected drugs worth dying for yet can't resolve the crippling cycle of poverty. The interlocking fables include tales of a child prodigy who finds that God is transmitting messages through radio waves, prison inmates forced to wear high-tech shackles and unemployed citizens confined to octagonal sleeping tubes beneath New York City. "The weight of poverty, the failure of justice, came down on the heads of dark people around the globe," writes Mosley. "Capitalism along with technology had assured a perpetual white upper class."

Publishers Weekly

After the qualified success of his first science fiction novel, Blue Light (1998), Mosley (best known for such mystery fiction as the Easy Rawlins series) returns with nine linked short stories set in a grim, cyberpunkish near-future. Unfortunately, heavy-handed plotting and unconvincing extrapolation weaken the collection's earnest social message. "Whispers in the Dark" introduces prodigy Ptolemy Bent, who will grow to be the smartest man in the world in spite of his poverty-ridden childhood. Ptolemy reappears in "Doctor Kismet" as an adviser to assassins trying to kill the richest, most corrupt man in the world and as the brains behind a series of global plots to overthrow the status quo in "En Masse" and "The Nig in Me." Champion boxer and much-hyped female role model Fera Jones steps away from the ring to take hands-on responsibility for the influence she wields in "The Greatest." With its easily befuddled talking computer justice system, "Little Brother" is more Star Trek than high-tech cyberpunk. In more familiar territory for Mosley, PI Folio Johnson investigates a series of murders linked to Doctor Kismet in "The Electric Eye." Although packaged as SF, this book is likely to disappoint readers of that genre who've already seen Mosley's themes of racial and economic rebellion more convincingly handled by authors like Octavia Butler. Mystery fans, on the other hand, are far more likely to embrace this latest example of Mosley's SF vision, with its comfortably familiar noirish tone and characters, than they did Blue Light. (Nov. 12) Forecast: With a five-city author tour and national print advertising, both mainstream and genre, this title book should be slated for solid sales.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Although Allen brings a distinctly human touch to a cold world of computers and corporations, his relaxed style seems ill suited for these nine interconnected stories set in the near future. The frenetic material should be bristling with tension, but here it comes off as leaden. Agreeing with the sci-fi theme, the recording makes use of some effects, like giving Allen's voice a distant, tinny sound for a radio advertisement or a stentorian echoing effect for a ringside announcer. But even more would have been appropriate, such as background noise or music woven into the segues to heighten drama. While distracting in some recordings, such effects seem to be missing here amid the high-tech hullabaloo, especially given Allen's deadpan delivery. The stories themselves are intriguing and notable within science fiction for their focus on marginalized and underprivileged characters. But Allen's approach is simply too languid for the subject matter, and the dialogue in particular comes off as stilted and awkward. Simultaneous release with the Warner hardcover (Forecasts, Sept. 10, 2001). (Nov. 28, 2001) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Mosley projects a depressing view of life around the middle of the 21st century: individual, racial, and sexual repression are the order of the day. The wealthy few have extraordinary power; computing and medicine have progressed but are harnessed to evil ends. For example, computers simulate the justice system for the poor, and there's a more potent substitute for tobacco. Richard Allen does an excellent job replicating various African American dialects and manages to inject a sense of excitement and anticipation into a work where the individual rarely triumphs over the system. For high school students and adults. James L. Dudley, Westhampton, NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile