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“Paradise Gardens” Carla Sarett’s Guest Post w/Susan I. Weinstein
Thursday, March 16, 2017 8:02
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Today, we have a guest post from novelist, Susan I. Weinstein, whose dystopian novel, PARADISE GARDENS, will be published in a new edition from Pelekinesis Publishing Group. This new edition contains wonderful illustrations by the author. You can read my review of on Goodreads, here. This novel is one of several new editions of Weinstein’s work– I interviewed her about THE ANARCHIST’S GIRLFRIEND on this blog (read the interview here.)
I’ll let Susan take it from here.
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Déjà vu our strange times. In Nixon’s 1969 America, a stranger leaped out of a car, took photos of me and my high school boyfriend and sped away. Afterward, I was called into the principal’s office, and accused of being a “ringleader” of a drug ring. My choice: give names or be expelled. I gave facts. My high school was conservative, mostly working class. Beer was the drug of choice and students enlisted for Vietnam. Ten went to college. One was me. Fact: The drug ring never existed.
1969-70, I became an antiwar activist. 1980s, I began PARADISE GARDENS while working for a Wall Street publication for investors. In that time, Reagan’s religious right extolled corporate interests for the “elect.” Their destiny was to be rich. In Manhattan, where I lived, this meant sky-high rents and asking prices. Rent-controlled apartments were preventing this preordained “destiny.”
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| SHE lowered her blinds, but it was too late. He had seen her.
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2017 is again a time of deception and alarm. Paranoia is a rational response to an insane society (to paraphrase Freud). In paranoid fiction, such as Philip Dick’s 1968 “Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep,” logic is non-linear. Facades fall apart, and truth is revealed in the chaos.
PARADISE GARDENS begins in 2250, after government has dissolved amid environmental breakdown. A real estate project underground is sold to the surviving corporate elite. Rather than Big Brother, a database runs this world and controls human destiny for the benefit of corporate planning– even producing employees.
Like most paranoid fiction, there’s a kind of clairvoyance in retrospect. Some elements that I wrote about, before there was an Internet, like ”Information Pirates” have already happened. But there is light and hope in PARADISE GARDENS. I believe cautionary tales like this can bring us through our worst fears to a better place. We can sleep and imagine a more utopian future.
Like most paranoid fiction, there’s a kind of clairvoyance in retrospect. Some elements that I wrote about, before there was an Internet, like ”Information Pirates” have already happened. But there is light and hope in PARADISE GARDENS. I believe cautionary tales like this can bring us through our worst fears to a better place. We can sleep and imagine a more utopian future.
http://carlasarett.blogspot.com/2017/03/author-susan-weinstein-talks-about.html?m=1
Source: http://notanotherbookreview.blogspot.com/2017/03/paradise-gardens-carla-saretts-guest.html
