Synopsis

Carla and Will are social climbers in New York City. After getting drunk at a party, they wake to find themselves in the middle of nowhere. They have nothing in a place where all the rules had changed. They needed to change with it.

History

First publication: Amazon, July 10, 2023

An experiment released apparently to find an editor to help finish the book.

Review

I was intrigued by this. I still am not sure how this needs to work for Mr. Spinrad. I bought the ebook and read it, mainly because Spinrad is one of the famous SF authors still around. But I knew that didn't mean this would be great. So I'm glad I can say I loved it. This first draft is rough, lot's of typos, but it's a first draft. Those sorts of things get cleaned up before the book is released. So judging the story: thought provoking in the overall situation, thought-provoking in the way it reflects our current society. Do you ever get tired of the endless Marvel Multiverse movies? I did. I loved them at first and watched a lot of them, especially Spiderman, but then they started becoming too much the same sort of thing and I just got bored by it all. Now I roll my eyes every time another one comes out. It can't be denied that those big franchises rule the entertainment industry. Those of us who don't care for it are starved for just a literate, stand-alone movie. Or book. That's a lot of what made this exciting to me. Spinrad doesn't do endless multiverse series. He just writes good solid books. And this one has characters that at first were despicable, but grew on me as they grew and changed. The future imagined here is all too scary for being close to our world. Can this possibly happen? Do you ever think to yourself, how did we get along without the internet? We did you know. There was a time when we got our news from the local paper and the 6 p.m. television broadcast, or even the radio. We watched television and read books. If we needed information we went to the library. Nothing could be "googled". Britannicad? Was that ever a word? But we got along just fine. Now we can't even imagine that. Funny in a scary way. Anyway, this story is told with great characters and plenty of humor. We watch the characters solve their problems and become better people for their experiences. I think we also get a warning about the finite reality of our world, or is there a single reality? We have a limited time to get this first draft and then it goes away. Hopefully somebody out there will step up and get this to a finished book. I loved this rough version, I'm sure the final would be great. Even in this version though it is interesting to see a book at this stage. All of us who are not published authors never get to see this. It's like seeing Picasso’s studies for Les Demoiselles D’Avignon. Get it before it disappears!