Reviews Todd Moore's Working On My Duende by Tim Scannell The Continuation of History: Future Societies in Fiction by Pete Dolack ~ . ~ . ~ Todd Moore's Working On My Duende (Kings Estate, 870 Kings Estate Road, St. Augustine, FL 32086; 100pp.; 1999; $10) by Tim Scannell Duende (dew-EN-day) is the power to attract through personal magnetism and charm. More importantly, dueño de casa is the owner of a house--in this poem, the master of the home we call narrative poetry. One does not experience mere, paltry charisma, the tinsel flakery of 'character' in Hollywood or mainstream media, because Moore nudges an appreciative reader into the mind of a 'searcher' for creation and meaning, and the reader comes to relish, among many things, the artisanship of a storyteller, who, in this one long poem, pens the finest crescendo since the closing sonnet of the sequence called "Sunday Morning" [Wallace Stevens]. Todd Moore is not 'working on' his duende,[*Ed.] approaching it or trying to achieve it: He is atop it--entirely figured out, fully fueled, and revved up. With this very successful poem, Moore shakes the bejabers out of Death and out of the fear and anxiety which block life and the resolve to create. His 3500-line poem is seamless in many ways. Wholly unpunctuated, its exquisitely attentive persona (3rd person limited) evaluates a panoply of other poets' duendes, and rejects them all; they are neither why he creates nor how he tells his story: i'll take it from here because it's my turn to write a take on the duende . . . (93) Like Dante...no, like Ulysses, since the earlier hero trembles only once before Death (Book XI), Moore trembles only once as well, in a very powerful nightmare sequence, which appears at the center of the poem, its nadir: & all of a sudden 3 white horses ride up . . . & one of the riders sd are you afraid of dying & i don't know why but i wasn't in fact i wasn't afraid of anything at all & then another rider sd well you ought to be & he stuck out his hand & i noticed he was holding a little round thing . . . & my whole life up to that point was going on in there . . . the marble turned into a bubble that broke & for awhile after that i avoided marbles & bubbles & archetypal horses the ghost faces of them shining & sliding . . . (54) From the outset of this narrative and throughout the reader is treated to an immense catalogue of other poets (from great to unknown) who fill the core and edges of a category we may call 'alternate' or 'outlaw' or 'underground' poetry. It is not strange that García Lorca--preoccupied with Death--weaves in and out of the poem, he who had somehow summoned up the spirit of death who was trying to disrupt lorca's train of thought keep him from writing the piece on the duende … [but] my duende is a whole lot differ ent i take magical realism & curanderas like ultima & maria sabina w/a grain of salt . . . (3) We meet Wilma McDaniel, Albert Huffstickler, Jack Kerouac, Mark Weber, Leslie Marmon Silko, Jack Micheline, etc., and a peppering of non-poets as well: painters, Navajos, Anasazi pothunters; Moore's father, and Moore's son, Jason. We even watch the duende work on a guy wearing a bandana in an alley he's spray painting day of the dead skeletons on old boards just as fast as he can . . . (24) In short, inasmuch as the word only came into English in 1964, Moore assembles and dismisses (often abruptly) the most variegated array of duende-seekers ever put to paper, their 'magnetism and charm' too often based on New Age-y fetish or loony shamanism. He is, however, no less biting toward poets. We meet, for example, Gary Snyder: & gary you sd that short haired joy & roughness & gary you sd america yr stupidity but you didn't look around the only thing you saw was the bar you didn't see the rez you didn't see the 4 corners you didn't see the clouds . . . the real work is chasing the duende the real work is wrestling the angel of death for the poem . . . (33-4) All of the above mentioned, then, have a notion as to their source, plinth, bedrock, of duende, of who is, indeed, the 'owner of the house.' But it is a triumph of self-reliance and poetic integrity, effort (70+ books), for Todd Moore to know that none - no one - can give their duende to him! He must wrestle "the angel of / death" for his own poem. In my view, Todd Moore's 'poem' is one of the most skillfully sustained narrative accomplishments in late 20th century poetry. It is, at once, a story of endurance and a beautiful lyric-song. And that, too, begins at the onset of this poem. Moore's wife, Barbara, is trimming roses and saves one perfect rose for me i can feel my pulse shoving darkly against the stem working on my duende . . . (8) He asks, is duende just a pouring out of passion during the creation of some thing or is it that plus love . . . (31) Truth is, the poem is well beyond conjecture or feeling or dream. It is sensate and animate: & i am shaking myself into my language working on my own private duende even tho i am a white man an anglo a gavacho a gringo a belangana a honky a white eyes motherfucker . . . i'll take the spit & all those words & make them into a badass poem working on my duende . . . (49-50). Jealous Death is met along the way (several times), and it is this final threat to confident creation, in Moore's view, that must be faced and conquered. suddenly all things are avail able to you & in that place you are free death can't get you it's like being at the epicenter of a poem you are writing & when you step out . . . you enter the skin of time . . . (88-9) For creation, and its 'poem,' are in no way a pretense, in no way some gauzy dream. Both, conjointly, are nurtured toward flesh and blood, are quickened and made alive! It is to take words, ostensibly inert, and to make them real, a quest that is not a travelogue to the land of enchantment but instead a journey into the ultimate mystery & that's where my duende is . . . (70) And so, Todd Moore rejects the duende of others met or read of along the way. He works the ownership of 'his' house of poetry by, "squeezing every / thing out of it / that i can . . . " (82). When asked in an interview about the improvement of the writer's craft, he said: "The first thing you have to do is learn to concentrate and focus, focus, focus. And you have to listen. And you have to nail the seat of your pants or panties to the chair." (Lummox Journal, May, 2000:13) For all of us, art is long, life short, but Moore gives his readers more than a great deal. What he gives, in fact, is mastery. It is like the crescendo of horses the poet assembles at the end of the book, four pages of them, which begins slowly, while watching a black haired woman saddling a horse . . . she talks to it [to give calm] she tells it a poem . . . but way back in side its blood is a secret duende that it will give to the woman when it heads into the wind . . . (95) Of course it will, and there is no mystery as to why: The key is reciprocity the horse is skittish but she talks to it . . . & she strokes its mane & pretty soon it calms down & begins to get used to the way that she touches it . . . (93) If you come to life inauthentically or in bad faith, it will repay you with a 'kiss of Death.' If you come to life with what it demands, then you receive creation itself and its love. There follow Reggie Barbara's grandfather, who rode his "fire red" horse across the Illinois prairie, Carol Moldaw, who tells of a "horse / struck by lightning / in her neighbor's arroyo," John Sinclair, who strokes the "head of his little dun pony," Albert Pinkham Ryder, who "is adding the last / few brush strokes to / death on a pale horse;" and a score of other references to horses in the great body of Western Literature and Art. And where is Death? Reduced to a mere guffaw as the persona talks to a friend on a street corner in Albuquerque, New Mexico: a pale faced kid behind the wheel of a black low rider . . . he smiles & gives me the finger a death's head is painted on the door A highly recommended masterpiece. Wonderfully illustrated with twelve Wayne Hogan drawings. (Tim Scannell is a prolific, independent reviewer for this and many other magazines. He lives in Washington State.) [*] Editors' note: For a review of In Search of Duende, a collection of Federico García Lorca's poetry and prose, go to http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/six/grayson6r.htm]     ~ . ~ Essay The Continuation of History: Future Societies in Fiction By Pete Dolack History has not ended. The concept should have been too laughable to even be contemplated; the very fact that ever shriller cacophonies of propaganda are hurled at us ought to prove the point, if it needed to be proved at all. No matter how many times Margaret Thatcher's "There is no alternative [to Capitalism]" is pompously declared; no matter how many times Francis Fukuyama is invoked to declare the end of history--a quote sure to be one of the 21st century's reliable laugh lines--much of the world persists in refusing its assigned role. We must pay close attention because most of this is yet under the radar, save for the occasional spectacle when the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund or a hemispheric "free trade" conference convenes, and we are shown a backdrop of protesters while a befuddled television talking head scratches his head and says, "I don't get it." If the talking head is planning on a nice career as a media personality, he'd better not 'get' it. Potential Socialisms Rarely Explored in Sci Fi The subset of the "no alternative" grouping are those who say, "Well, yes, maybe Capitalism isn't all wonderful, but look at how Socialism failed." Socialism did not fail; Stalinism did. The story of one brutal distortion, solidifying the incredible twists and turns taken by one country weighed down by the horrors of its absolutist history, and further bent beyond recognition by a single-minded dictator, is fascinating for the very patient. But however fantastic the story, there is no denying the story. By the middle stages of the Soviet era, Stalinists and Western anti-Marxists had agreed on one critical but profoundly inaccurate point: Stalinism is Socialism. Stalinists wanted to continue a monopoly on power and Western anti-Marxists wanted people to think there was no alternative to Capitalism. We've begun the 21st century, and Stalinism is dead. It will stay dead. Still, the desire for a better life remains. But what life? Most say, "We don't know." We don't, but it's too easy to say so. Clearly, whatever is next will have to be built on top of present-day society. It'll have to be built, at least in some part, on a critique of Capitalist society. We already know its faults, so it is bound to at least be a starting point. When we cross from the real world into the world of fiction, those starting points come with us. There are as many Socialisms--or 'potential future societies' if 'Socialism' is too scary a word--as our imagination will allow us, and it would be natural for those fiction writers of the future, science fiction specialists, to explore them. Oddly, despite the countless dystopian novels out there, such exploration is extremely rare. I read the genre regularly and (overall) it is parched for ideas. Much of it consists of fetishized military engagements and thinly veiled technology manuals masquerading as stories. Even the dystopias usually consist of the author taking a single idea and seeing how far she can run with it. The rare exceptions, then, tower above the field. Rarer still are those who attempt to create a truly different society based on recognizable characters. Two of these authors are Ursula LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson. LeGuin and Robinson Succeed Beyond the Genre Both winningly attempt to work out new worlds, but in very different ways. Ms. LeGuin is an anarchist who sketches out societies either in the far future or someplace far from Earth. Mr. Robinson, who writes from a Marxist perspective, sets his stories on Earth or elsewhere in the solar system and in the near future. Whether or not it is agreed that the societies sketched out are plausible, these stories are the works of authors realistically grappling with the full range of human emotion and human interaction with huge, impersonal forces, forces that nonetheless are human created. Both do this with a variety of vivid characters and subtle interplay that make much of their body of work flow well outside of the usual confines of science fiction. Contrary to Stalinist myopia that shrilly proclaimed the creation of a "workers' paradise" (that a slogan has to be ever more loudly proclaimed is all the proof needed of its falsehood), real life comes fully equipped with contradictions. If it is not a full-blown contradiction it is certainly an irony that an anarchist, Ms. LeGuin, understands this basic Marxist assumption when Stalinists are unable to. Ms. LeGuin's The Dispossessed wears this right on the cover; the novel's subtitle calls it an "ambiguous utopia." LeGuin's "Ambiguous Utopia" Believably Contradictory The ambiguous utopia is the world of Anarres, the marginally habitable moon of the Earth-like planet Urras. Although Urras is not Earth and its inhabitants are not humans (although they are very much like humans), its political, social and economic systems are very recognizable to the humans of the second half of 20th century Earth. This "coincidence," however, is quite forgivable. Urras is dominated by two nations, one an American-style Capitalist nation consumed by greed and the other a secretive Soviet Union-style nation. Urras is a world with technology and environmental awareness far beyond Earth's 20th century, political development at the level of Earth's 20th century and a social system of the 18th or early 19th century rooted in profound sexism; it is an utterly male-dominated society. Urras's hounded anarchists of the past were allowed to leave Urras and settle on the moon Anarres, used as a mining colony. Life on Anarres is life on the margins. A dry world that is desert except for small areas of moderate rainfall, the anarchists are continually on the verge of disaster. Only by being a completely collective society, by cooperating with each other, can they survive. With resources so limited, a competitive Capitalist society would fail quickly: American-style inequities would not simply create poverty, they would create mass starvation and rapidly deplete the limited natural resources. Such a place would shortly descend into hopeless chaos and implode. Anarres is far from perfect, being an "ambiguous utopia." It is an anarchist society without government, yet it must ensure resources are used where they are needed, that men and women with the right skills are sent where they are needed and that the basic necessities of life are available to everyone. With no jails or coercion, peer pressure must be sufficient to deter the potentially uncooperative. Freedom of decision and personal life choices are paramount, yet people must be sent to new locations when emergencies occur. One of the largest contradictions is in how people are to serve this society, in normal times and during crises. This problem is embodied in the main character, Shevek, a brilliant physicist. Can Shevek best serve Anarres by continuing his research, at which he is so far beyond other scientists that no one on Anarres can fully understand his work? Only a handful of physicists on Urras can, and they are interested in exploiting him for their own (national) interests. The Allegiance of Genius Although it is assumed that Shevek's esoteric work will have applications some day, it has no practical use now. Or, particularly during the crisis of a severe drought that leads to deprivation around Anarres, is it in the dry world's interest that Shevek drop his research and perform practical work that will help Anarres marshal its meager resources for survival? Can he go back and forth depending on conditions? It is the very fact that Anarres is a collective society that enables individuals to flourish in a difficult physical environment. Yet can those individuals do what they want, or must that individuality be set aside for the greater good? There is no easy answer, or even single answer, to this question. Neither Shevek nor his society can formulate a solution. Yet the struggle over this question on Anarres is vastly different than the contradictions inherent on Urras, where the two dominant nations still regularly fight proxy wars in other nations against each other and where the "free" American-style nation proves to be much less free than it appears. Anarchists in an Ordered Wilderness The tenuous relationship between Anarres and Urras has its own set of contradictions. The society of Anarres, based on cooperation without even the concept of money, is so different from the modern neo-Liberal state built on pitiless competition with power rooted in economics as to be seemingly an impossible transition. And, indeed, Anarres is not the transformation of any society, even if it was conceived on Urras. The Anarres anarchist society is constructed in a place that was empty, except for a couple of mining settlements where nobody lived permanently. It is created out of nothing, not out of a pre-existing society. On Urras, where the original Anarres settlers escaped from, the traditional nation-state forms still exist, intact, two centuries after the new Anarres settlement is closed. Can a New Society Only Be Created in Isolation? Can a radically new society, based on values far different from existing society, be created in the same nation? Are pre-existing societal pressures too powerful to be overcome? Can a radically new society only be created on a blank slate? Is a radically new society needed to be created somewhere else before it can supplant the existing order? And if so, does the lag period have to be decades, even centuries? Now we've leaped from contradictions on a personal scale to contradictions on a national or even global scale. The Dispossessed does not purport to attempt an answer to these questions and for the most part does not even ask these questions. But it does stimulate thought about these questions, and this alone elevates it into very select company. If we dig down into Anarres society, it is, theoretically, a world of "pure" anarchism, although some Marxists might argue that such a society would be the end result of Communist development. Anarres is a world of true common ownership: There is no state, not even a government, to own productive property in the name of the people. The only global organization is a bureau that links people with jobs that need to be filled. The bureau has no corrosive powers; any man or woman is free to accept or decline a posting. Basic Individual Freedoms vs. Common Survival But in times of crisis, such as the long drought Anarres goes through, peer pressure is very strong to accept a post, even if it is in a remote location and it requires the employee to be away from his/her partner for a long period of time. Housing, cafeterias and other needs are always available, wherever a posting takes a person. This also makes Anarres a mobile society, as there is no private property to be left behind, freeing men and women to move around the moon as they like. It is also a society totally without hierarchy, class distinctions or gender roles. Puritanism is also erased; a full sexual freedom exists with the elimination of sexism and gender roles. These liberating social conditions are inseparable from the economic freedom of Anarres. It is, again, a place with true common ownership, different from an anarcho-syndicalist economy, in which the members of small collectives would together own their workshop or production facility. It is also distinct from the concept of the state owning property in the name of society as sketched by Marx and Engels and later elaborated by Lenin. But even this concept is, in theory, a stage of development in which the end result is a withering away of the state which, again in theory, might result in an economic design not much different from the concepts of the anarchist society of Anarres. Isolation No Guarantee Against Contamination Anarres is able to maintain its society through isolation. There is no contact between it and Urras, except for freight ships that mostly transport minerals to Urras, but also carry other goods, even books, in both directions. Anarres is completely closed to Urras, with nobody from the freight ships allowed to leave the small port. It is unthinkable for any Anarres citizen to go to Urras. Governments on Urras ruthlessly suppress any groups that wish to implement Anarres ideas, but the nations of Urras make no attempt to interfere with Anarres itself; Anarres continues to ship minerals to Urras and, from the Urras point of view, remains a mining colony. The people of Anarres, who deeply believe in their project, are allowed to continue to develop their society with no interference, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of miles that separate it from the warring nation-states of Urras. But what if there were no such separation? What if the Capitalists of Urras saw a threat in Anarres? Would Anarres have the freedom to develop its egalitarian society? Can a radically new and different society exist beside societies that continue to use traditional, hierarchal forms? These questions do get raised in The Dispossessed, and of course asking these questions brings us back to Earth. Earth's moon is not capable of sustaining life; alternative societies will need to take root here on Earth. But is it possible for a radical society--an egalitarian society that provides an adequate standard of living, materially and in all the other ways--that, by its very existence, provides a superior alternative to Capitalist society, to have the time to create itself? Is it even possible for such a society to take root with more powerful neighbors ready to suppress it? Ursula LeGuin, the creator of an "ambiguous anarchist utopia," is not optimistic on these questions. Kim Stanley Robinson's Tri-Colored Mars No more optimistic is Kim Stanley Robinson, the creator of a Marxist-inspired revolution on Mars that succeeds against great odds. Unlike the anarchists of Anarres, who have a world essentially handed to them--because authorities on Urras apparently decided this would be a way of getting rid of their troublemakers--the Martians of Mr. Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) have to overthrow oppressive colonial rule to create their better society. But just as Anarres benefitted from its distance from Urras, Mars's distance from Earth is what gives the revolutionaries the space to create their new society. And the Martians, too, must compromise. Anarres must continue to supply Urras with minerals or face the possibility of an invasion; the revolutionary Martian government must continue to accept a continuous stream of colonists from Earth and maneuver its way around the colossal economic power of Earth's biggest corporations and the puppet political institutions the corporations control. In the years of the 21st and 22nd centuries, Capitalism continues to develop; that is, economic power is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. About twenty corporations have a stranglehold on the world's economy and dominate Earth; the economies of all nations except the 11 nations of the G-11 (expanded from the present-day G-7) are dwarfed by the top transnational corporations; indeed, most nations of the world are directly controlled by one of the top corporations. The United Nations is the gendarme of this corporate domination. The UN organizes the colonization of Mars on behalf of its corporate masters; the intention is to exploit the resources of the Red Planet and, over time, to relocate some of Earth's excess population. Red vs. Green: "Terraformation" Some colonists are willing to go along with this program; many others want to create a better world than what they left behind on Earth. This increasingly bitter divide is complicated by an environmental divide between "Reds"--those who wish to leave Mars as it is ‹ and "Greens"-those who wish to terraform Mars into an Earth-like environment. The divide between willing colonists and independent-minded social builders does not coincide with the environmental divide. Although there is wide support to break free of Earth's grip and build a better society, there are more "Greens" than "Reds" on the environmental question. During the colonial era, the decision is out of the Martians' hands as the UN and the corporations behind it seek to create an Earth-like Mars. Terraforming begins with the first colonists and there is far too much economic muscle applied from Earth for the process to be slowed, much less stopped. A further fracture in the developing Martian society, and one which ultimately adds to political tensions, is the huge social gap between the younger men and women who are born on Mars and the waves of colonists who continue to flood the planet. The intention of the independence-minded colonists is to create a better society, not only in terms of dispensing with the rapacious economic determinism of Earth, but in other realms as well. These colonists want to create a nonhierarchal society free not only of class distinctions but of ills such as sexism, racism, nationalism and cultural arrogance. To the men and women who are born on Mars, this is not only natural, but easy to express because to them the hideous stratifications and exploitation of Earth are revolting and unimaginable. Counter pressures come on economic and colonial questions from the colonists who see Mars as a natural colony of Earth and from the large number of colonists who come from more repressive cultures who seek to replicate the backwardness they left behind. Native vs. Colonist On this fictional Mars created by Mr. Robinson, we have something of a hybrid between a society trying to create itself next to existing, hostile societies and a society free to create itself out of nothing in isolation from hostile counter pressures. Mars is of course barren of life before the arrival of the first trickle of colonists--the Martian population starts in the hundreds and rises to the tens of millions--so it has the potential to create itself out of nothing. But in reality, it is a colony controlled by Earth, regularly sent new colonists who don't share the lofty ideals of the independence-minded or "native" Martians, and who act as forces to create a replication of Earth. Here we have a different contradiction, that between the huge distance between the planets that should provide the space for a new society to create itself and the very powerful forces that bind the new, and still developing, society to the old. For a long time, those powerful forces overpower the native energy that seeks to create a new Martian society; a society that would be different and more advanced than what can currently exist on Mars. The Martians don't have the option to isolate themselves--even if they could reach a consensus on that issue--because they aren't strong enough to stop the UN from following whatever policies the UN wishes to follow. Gradually, repression is strengthened until the movement for independence is forced underground. During this time, underground resistors can create small hidden pockets where new societies can be created, but they are politically impotent. Addressing Diversity Unlike the "ambiguous utopia" of Anarres, where there was freedom to create something entirely new in a political vacuum, the Mars of Mr. Robinson's Mars trilogy has real pressures acting on it, external and internal. Far from political, social or environment unity, this Mars has wide ranges of opinion on all questions, and vastly different, even irreconcilable, cultural experiences. It has to find a way to juggle and allow expression to all these forces, assuming it can even find a way out of its colonial status. None of the other issues can be tackled until the first issue of independence can be solved. Even then, Mars will not have full freedom of action. A well-timed revolution, launched just as Earth enters into a sudden global environmental crisis, enables the Martians to overthrow the direct rule of the UN and Earth's corporations, but does not remove the power that still exists on Earth. There are those on Mars opposed to the revolution; they are politically neutered now but won't necessarily remain so. There are socially backward elements who can only cling to what they left behind on Earth. Among the majority pro-revolution opinion, there are a variety of conflicting interests and differing political ideas. The environmental split between "Reds" and "Greens" still exists; the Greens are losing that battle and know it, but still seek to at least slow down or somehow halt progress on terraforming. At the start of a revolutionary period, all things are possible. How will the possibilities be sorted? How can all reasonable opinions be represented? Breaking With Mother Earth How and who can decide what a reasonable opinion is? During this period of tremendous change, which will eventually come to a close, how radical a break from the old society can there be? How fast and how far can the revolution go in building a new society? Can an accommodation be made with many conflicting areas of opinion while retaining the revolutionary impulse to create a new society? Can competing interests co-exist long enough to build lasting institutions, or must one group begin to dominate other groups? Can the unique circumstance of tens of millions of miles of space between the planets allow a radical break from the past that would not be possible on Earth? Other than the last question, these questions apply to all revolutionary situations. The uniqueness of revolting on a separate planet does give the Martian revolutionaries the space to create lasting institutions to lock in a radically new society; but even here, Earth's need to deal with its environmental catastrophe keeps it occupied. Otherwise, any attempt at revolution likely would have been doomed. Indeed, a first attempt was mercilessly crushed by the UN. Old Institutions Die Hard The political institutions the new Martian government creates are not necessarily an abrupt departure from previous government styles; but there are different enough to allow radical changes in other spheres of life, especially social and economic. The government is nominally a multi-party parliamentary system on a global scale; but government exists only at the city and global levels. There are no nations or subdivisions. Economic freedom and equality are enshrined in the new Martian constitution; all workplaces are collectively owned by the people who work there. The new society is stripped of inequality and all hierarchy; with full equality among all citizens, a full and exuberant sexual freedom for all genders blossoms with the elimination of sexism; anything less is incomprehensible to those born on Mars free of the horrors of Earth. Perhaps all this happens rather too easily, but the buildup to the revolution and the pre-revolutionary work of creating a new world lasts several decades and involves three generations, so it by no means is a sudden change. Unlike the "ambiguous utopia" of Anarres ‹ rather conveniently allowed to happen on an empty moon ‹ Mr. Robinson's Mars trilogy takes the realistic approach that old hierarchies can only be removed with considerable effort. Along the way, the characters struggle with the weight of history, and argue history's lessons. Applying the Lessons of History--with Imagination There is no doubt that further lessons need to be learned from history, and it is clear that both Ms. LeGuin and Mr. Robinson have not only studied, but learned, history. Their fictional worlds, and the very real and interesting characters who inhabit them, are all the richer for this. But can these worlds--the stateless anarchism of Anarres and the Marxist egalitarianism governed through parliamentary consensus of Mars--be brought into existence on Earth? Would we want to, or would a better world be different from these ideals? Can a truly egalitarian society, allowing a full scope of economic as well as other freedoms, come into being, or would hostile Capital-dominated nations inevitably overwhelm it, as the 20th century's Socialist experiments were overwhelmed? What the planets created in these fictions have in common is that the inhabitants have full freedom--starting with economic freedom, without which most other freedoms are illusions. (Unless one's idea of democracy is choosing which cola to drink.) Whatever the future has in store for humanity, it will certainly be different from the future societies sketched in this review. But the future will have to include a full range of freedoms similar to that enjoyed by the books' characters. That won't happen under Capitalism--by definition, it can't--and it won't happen under a monolithic party that doesn't understand its own doctrine. It won't come under an ephemeral "third way" that is just Capitalism with a thin veneer of sweetener. Humanity will have to find a way forward, somehow, or face catastrophe. I won't pretend to have the answer. But it is nice to have stimulating fiction that works not only as a fine read, but allows us to think about the possibilities along the way. (Pete Dolack is a journalist and poet well-known on the NYC circuit.) ~ . ~ . ~