Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.2 AVERAGE
4.2 AVERAGE
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
As a thought exercise, awesome. As a book? Hard to get through. Interesting, but the format as imagined oral histories makes it a bit hard to trudge through.
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
This is such an important book. I’m so grateful for it and the questions it explores, which I haven’t really seen anywhere else. I really chaffed against the fake oral history structure—I just hate when authors write about these things from the outside rather than live within it. The dialogue was also super clunky at times, it’s clear the authors weren’t fiction writers. May there be more books like this to come!
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
such a great starting book for 2025. This book made me feel hope for the future in a time where things feel bleak outside. Reading this book, I felt like I was there, and I can’t wait to read it again!
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A must-read! Even though what the hell is
a must-read, this concept, darn, abolish it.
If you’re into Octavia Butler’s Parable of
the Sower or any of the Le Guin Sagas, but
can already recount their plots backwards
in your sleep because they are so much
discussed in that lil degrowth bubble of
ours: here is some fresh and deslish
tempeh-steak of speculative fiction for
you.
Eman Abdeladi and M E O’Brian stage
themselves as two academics from the
close future (in which the insitution of
academia has fallen, but anyways, thats a
sideplot) doing an oral history project
about all of our wettest dreams: the
revolution, big time. Prisons, Money,
States, Family - abolished! Palestine -
liberated! Everything - communized. Only
Australia is still an enclave of capitalism in
which oddities like private property and
profit accumulation survived. In the rest of
the world decentralized, participatory
decision-making bodies govern
communities, people live in constellations
of the wildest sorts according to their
needs and wishes, everyone who can does
3x3 hours of work in ever changing
contexts and settings as pepole wish and
2x2 hours of community work,
transformative justice circles do conflict
resolution procedures, co-parenting
between groups of varying numbers of
people, trauma therapy is daily bread and
humans steward land in harmounious
ways. Exciting is, we also get to know how
we eventually got there. Through twelve
interviews with former military operatives,
skin workers (what we now call sex
workers), rave organizers, forest
conservationists, kids who grew up in the
commune, and facilitators of assemblies,
the authors offer a prismic view of the
tumultuous times between today’s
hegemony of capitalism, white supremacy,
and patriarchy and the juicy piece of world
thereafter.
But, fair warning to all those hardcore
transformation-strategy-masturbators out
there: you won’t find your satisfying
answers about how global revolution
finally really worked. The book doesn’t
really dig into how existing institutions—
governments, corporations, militaries—
reacted to the upheaval, which weakens
its exploration of the mechanics of
revolution. There’s a lot left to the
imagination when it comes to resistance:
what obstacles were overcome, and how?
And while it touches on the challenges of
organizing the new society, it doesn’t dive
deeply into the nitty-gritty. How is power
distributed? How are decisions made?
How is conflict mediated?
There’s so much room here to explore,
and the book skips over these details,
leaving some of the world-building feeling
less credible than it could be. The
arguably most repelling feature is the
space elevator and communisation of
space to make space accessible to all.
Better than Musk’s ideas for space, ye
sure, but, why the hell do we need space
tourism at all? Imo the book here seems
to be ‘absolute decoupling is gonna
work’
-level optimistic about thängs, but
well that’s just my humble opinion
anyways.
All in all, I was fully sucked in by this book who likes that speculative fiction utopia revolution port kinda thing.
a must-read, this concept, darn, abolish it.
If you’re into Octavia Butler’s Parable of
the Sower or any of the Le Guin Sagas, but
can already recount their plots backwards
in your sleep because they are so much
discussed in that lil degrowth bubble of
ours: here is some fresh and deslish
tempeh-steak of speculative fiction for
you.
Eman Abdeladi and M E O’Brian stage
themselves as two academics from the
close future (in which the insitution of
academia has fallen, but anyways, thats a
sideplot) doing an oral history project
about all of our wettest dreams: the
revolution, big time. Prisons, Money,
States, Family - abolished! Palestine -
liberated! Everything - communized. Only
Australia is still an enclave of capitalism in
which oddities like private property and
profit accumulation survived. In the rest of
the world decentralized, participatory
decision-making bodies govern
communities, people live in constellations
of the wildest sorts according to their
needs and wishes, everyone who can does
3x3 hours of work in ever changing
contexts and settings as pepole wish and
2x2 hours of community work,
transformative justice circles do conflict
resolution procedures, co-parenting
between groups of varying numbers of
people, trauma therapy is daily bread and
humans steward land in harmounious
ways. Exciting is, we also get to know how
we eventually got there. Through twelve
interviews with former military operatives,
skin workers (what we now call sex
workers), rave organizers, forest
conservationists, kids who grew up in the
commune, and facilitators of assemblies,
the authors offer a prismic view of the
tumultuous times between today’s
hegemony of capitalism, white supremacy,
and patriarchy and the juicy piece of world
thereafter.
But, fair warning to all those hardcore
transformation-strategy-masturbators out
there: you won’t find your satisfying
answers about how global revolution
finally really worked. The book doesn’t
really dig into how existing institutions—
governments, corporations, militaries—
reacted to the upheaval, which weakens
its exploration of the mechanics of
revolution. There’s a lot left to the
imagination when it comes to resistance:
what obstacles were overcome, and how?
And while it touches on the challenges of
organizing the new society, it doesn’t dive
deeply into the nitty-gritty. How is power
distributed? How are decisions made?
How is conflict mediated?
There’s so much room here to explore,
and the book skips over these details,
leaving some of the world-building feeling
less credible than it could be. The
arguably most repelling feature is the
space elevator and communisation of
space to make space accessible to all.
Better than Musk’s ideas for space, ye
sure, but, why the hell do we need space
tourism at all? Imo the book here seems
to be ‘absolute decoupling is gonna
work’
-level optimistic about thängs, but
well that’s just my humble opinion
anyways.
All in all, I was fully sucked in by this book who likes that speculative fiction utopia revolution port kinda thing.
hopeful
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
This was a very interesting book about how things could be. It’s written as if it’s a non-fiction book of interviews with various people who survived all the uprisings and disasters and now live in what’s left of New York. The authors (who are academics) are written as themselves doing the interviews with fictional interviewees. It’s vitally important to read the introduction to this book as it explains the future setting and who the various people are. I think a lot of people are tempted to skip introductions to non-fiction books, but this one does the work of explaining what actually happened between now and the future setting.
I think there’s a lot of good world building within the book, and while there is a lot of telling instead of showing I think it makes sense given the chosen format. That said I do think there are very obvious gaps in explaining everything. We get a general sense that things are better now for everyone but only on a surface level. We don’t really know for sure how things have been resolved – is racism still a thing? Sexism? Etc.
In addition, while disabled people are mentioned don’t really get a sense of how things are for disabled people in general in this future. While many of the interviewees have mental trauma and mental health issues there wasn’t anyone with a physical or sensory or cognitive disability. I would have liked it better if at least one interviewee had been disabled themselves instead of just mention of specific individuals with disabilities.
In general though I do believe the book works as an idea of how things could be and depicts a hopeful future after a series of disasters even if I wasn’t entirely convinced that everything is for everyone in this future.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A