- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Mysterious Press (November 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0446529540
- ISBN-13: 978-0446529549
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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
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, Inc.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
These are vignettes ...,
By
This review is from: Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World (Audio Cassette)
...not stories. They are not complete, but rather seem to have been truncated. They progress, developing an idea, then suddenly stop without closure or release. The ideas explored are quite interesting, to be sure. In fact, I'd like to see this world developed as a novel. But the rythmic problems of this writing will have to be addressed. Give me a reason to keep reading.To be fair, the ideas in the book may be given closure in the final stories. I'll never know, as I've found the experience so unpleasant that I won't finish the book.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Scary vision of what may lie ahead...,
By
This review is from: Futureland (Mass Market Paperback)
I am glad I picked this book up the other day. I thought the description on the back looked decent and I had no expectations going in, so I was very suprised when I discovered an extremely well written science fiction book about the future. This book has several main characters and they are all interesting and well written and the secondary characters are almost just as good. The possible future that Mosley has laid out is terrifying and sad at the same time. Parts of this book simply scared the #$@! out of me. My city just started putting camera's on stop lights and this book had me thinking.....The author has some very fresh takes on the future, such as at work everything is translucent so every move you make can be filmed and analyzed, camera's are in your monitor's and your bosses watch you etc. I am probably making this book sound a little 1984ish and it's not. There are some similarities but really this is a story about people and the human race and the slow but steady slide toward stagnation that we may be traveling. Also Race is a big part of this story but I did not think it overshadowed the main feel of the story. An excellent read and I recommend it.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Completely Predictable & Poorly Written,
By A Customer
This review is from: Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World (Audio Cassette)
I had the opportunity to explore this title via audiocassette on a recent weekend drive. After several hours, in spite of valiant attempts to like this work, I gave up. Driving in silence seemed a great relief. I found the stories to be highly predictable in their plot and outcome. The characters and plot lines were poorly developed and fragmentary. Adding to the agony was a narrator who's vocal talents were highly limited. Attempts to mimic accents or speech impediments resulted in nearly unintelligible results, adding "insult to injury". The juvenile nature of this work along with the poor narration results in an unacceptably poor overall experience. While the written version of this work may alleviate the limitations of the narrator, I remain highly doubtful that attempts to slog one's way through these unremittingly (and VERY predictably) dark and poorly written works would be worth the time investment.
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