Songlands - (Dispatch Books) by John Feffer (Paperback)

About the Book

"2052. The world is a mess. The climate change meltdown has triggered an endless cycle of natural disasters. Nationalist paramilitaries battle against religious extremists. Multinational corporations, with their own security forces, have replaced global institutions as the only real power-brokers. Waves of pandemics have closed borders with such regularity that travel has become mostly virtual. Aurora, a middle-aged poet, tries not to think about how the world has turned so chaotic and dangerous. Then one day a strange woman walks into Aurora's life and, in an instant, the world's chaos gets personal. Suddenly the obscure professor has a target on her back and the fate of the world in her hands. Her salvation, and that of the planet as well, lies in the mysteries locked inside the head of this enigmatic woman who has appeared on her doorstep. Unlocking those mysteries will take Aurora on a virtual journey around the fragmented globe and up against the world's most powerful corporation. Songlands, the stand-alone finale to the Splinterlands trilogy, describes humanity's last shot at solving the world 's problems. Can Aurora assemble a team to reverse the splintering of the international community and avert an even more dystopian future?"--Page 4 of cover.

Book Synopsis

2052. The world is a mess. The climate change meltdown has triggered an endless cycle of natural disasters. Nationalist paramilitaries battle against religious extremists. Multinational corporations, with their own security forces, have replaced global institutions as the only real power-brokers. Waves of pandemics have closed borders with such regularity that travelhas become mostly virtual.

Aurora, a middle-aged sociologist, tries not to think about how the world has turned so chaotic and dangerous. At university, she focuses on her students. At home, it 's her children. She devotes her spare time to writing poetry. She 's relatively comfortable, but not particularly happy. And she 's angry at how small her life has become.Then one day a strange woman walks into Aurora 's life and, in an instant, the world 's chaos gets personal. Suddenly the obscure professor has a target on her back and the fate of the world in her hands. Her salvation, and that of the planet as well, lies in the mysteries locked inside the head of this enigmatic woman who has appeared on her doorstep. Unlocking those mysteries will take Aurora on a virtual journey around the fragmented globe and up against the world 's most powerful corporation.

Songlands, the stand-alone finale to the Splinterlands trilogy, describes humanity 's last shot at solving the world 's problems. Can Aurora assemble a team to reverse the splintering of the international community and avert an even more dystopian future?

Review Quotes

"An intriguing conclusion to a worthy trilogy. Feffer leaps far into the future in this book, but his view of it is enriched by a quirky, sensitive understanding of our world as it is--both its dangers and its possibilities." --Adam Hochschild

Praise for Frostlands:

"By taking us on a cautionary journey into a future planetary collapse where the term "one per cent" is redefined in a terrifying way, John Feffer forces us to look deeply at our own society 's blindness to ecological apocalypse and greed. But the novel 's enchantment goes beyond dystopia: the quest for salvation depends on a crusty female octogenarian who would make Wonder Woman salivate with envy." --Ariel Dorfman

"A worthy sequel to the thought-provoking Splinterlands, Frostlands is triumphant and absorbing science fiction, full of ecological and societal warnings. It is a unique and imaginative look at a future Earth scarred by environmental neglect.... In a short space, Frostlands touches on a variety of intriguing subjects. The killer drones and network-hacking warfare of Frostlands aren 't wild speculative fantasy of a remote future; Feffer is focused on the next fifty years or so, with an eye toward avoiding the mostly bleak landscape that Frostlands so vividly captures. Rachel and Arcadia represent the ability of humans to adapt and fight back against even self-inflicted environmental and societal wounds; their story is both edifying and entertaining." --Foreword Reviews

"Devotees of near-future science fiction adventures will root for resolute and energetic Rachel on her quest to save Earth."--Publishers Weekly

Praise for Splinterlands:

Feffer 's confident recitation of world collapse is terrifyingly plausible, a short but encompassing look at world tragedy. " --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Feffer 's book is a wild ride through a bleak future, casting a harsh, thought-provoking light on that future 's modern-day roots." --Foreword Reviews

"Just as it 's especially enjoyable to read science fiction written by real scientists, Feffer offers readers a uniquely well-researched and historically robust argument for why the world turns out the way that it does, which makes it all the more relevant--and frightening. "--Washington City Paper

"Readers who enjoy dystopian stories that hold more than a light look at political structures and their downfall will more than appreciate the in-depth approach John Feffer takes in his novel." --Midwest Book Review

"Splinterlands is a short and powerful dystopian novel, framed as an all-too-credible account of what might happen in our lifetimes." --Climate and Capitalism

"John Feffer is our 21st-century Jack London, and, like the latter's Iron Heel, Splinterlands is a vivid, suspenseful warning about the ultimate incompatibility between capitalism and human survival." --Mike Davis

"Feffer 's book, in short, is provocative in the best sense....The dystopic alternative, illustrated so powerfully in Feffer 's Splinterlands, provides us with powerful motivation to shape a better, less splintered, future." --W. J. Astore

"Splinterlands paints a startling portrait of a post-apocalyptic tomorrow that is fast becoming a reality today. Fast-paced, yet strangely haunting, Feffer's latest novel looks back from 2050 on the disintegration of world order told through the story of one broken family-- and offers a disturbing vision of what might await us all if we don't act quickly." --Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickle and Dimed and Living with a Wild God, and founder of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project

"A chilling portrayal of where the politics of division could take us. Now I only hope he writes the sequel to tell us how to avoid it!" --Naomi Oreskes, co-author of The Collapse of Western Civilization

About the Author

John Feffer is a playwright and the author of several books including Aftershock: A Journey into Eastern Europe 's Broken Dreams and the novels Splinterlands, and Frostlands. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Salon, and others. He is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.