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Dystopia Revisited 2045: A Story of Our Future, Peter Siedel, New York: Prometheus Books, 2009, 338 pages.
Reviewed by Clive Doucet
I'll state my bias now: I'm not normally a science-fiction reader and the first few chapters of Peter Siedel's 2045 irritated me. But the book's main character eventually captured me, in spite (or perhaps because) of the simple way the author presented his protagonist.
Whatever your aesthetic, you should read 2045 because it paints a vivid picture of the consequences of allowing governments to continue with public policies that profit a few immense corporations. More importantly, 2045 makes it clear that now is the time to put an end to this practice.
Siedel's world in 2045 is a corporate state in which the bulk of the population has become 21st century serfs. With a focus on one man and his family, the author shows how and why people in the future could lose control of their economic lives, and have little hope of affecting the destiny of their nation.
The book's main character, a perky Republican named Carl Lauer, contracted a virus in 2010 that sent him into...