Smith, a happy native of this paradise, wanders off the grid and discovers sex®, the knowledge of good and evil, and the pursuit of Happiness. Can he save the human race from the Next Big Thing?
Published: November 10th, 2015
It’s way past 1984. Your toothbrush, your coffee maker and your Rice Krispies are running your life. But don’t worry... BIG DATA IS WATCHING YOU!
Welcome to Goozle Earth®, a dystopia where the all-knowing and all-powerful force of Big Data rules humanity through the Internet of Things and the corporate power of Goozle Inc. Where English® and every possible combination of words has been copyrighted and the only law is the Terms of Service, which has been replaced by the Terms of Servitude. Where the proudly psychopathic Higgs, Caesar and Emperor Omnipotent (CEO) of Goozle Inc., is determined to launch the Next Big Thing.
Smith, a happy native of this paradise, wanders off the grid and discovers sex®, the knowledge of good and evil, and the pursuit of Happiness. Can he save the human race from the Next Big Thing?
EXCERPT
Smith stared back in confusion when Julia said he was living in a dystopia.
“A dystopia?” he repeated. The word was new to him. “What do you mean?”
They were somewhere in the Green Mountains, walking on a dirt road through a strangely silent woods. That was all Smith knew. He’d lost his way in the hills, his car stopping short where a huge fallen tree blocked the road. The woman who introduced herself as Julia climbed over the fallen tree before he could tell his car to turn around. Surprisingly, she offered to walk him into the nearby village to find something to eat. The eerie silence followed them into the village, swallowing his thoughts. Julia looked different from anyone he’d ever seen, though she had (he soon realized) the same blond hair and blue eyes and the same awkward gait as everyone else in the village. The others—he noticed half a dozen villagers cutting weeds or stacking firewood around a row of decaying frame houses—weren’t nearly so friendly as she was. Most of them turned away or receded into the shadows rather than to look at him. Some of them, he realized with a start, had beards.
“It’s a society where, basically, life sucks,” she explained. “You have no freedom or privacy. You can’t do anything, you can’t say anything, you can’t even think without somebody spying on you or listening in.”
“My life doesn’t suck,” he said, smiling as always. “In fact, I can’t imagine being happier than I am. I have a good job at Celebrity Solutions, a nice condo, hundreds of friends, and two wonderful pets. Everything I want is delivered to my door within thirty minutes by an Amazzond drone.”
Julia laughed. “Guess who drank the Kool Aid!”
“Kool Aid?” Kool Aid® was Smith’s favorite beverage.
“Try thinking an original thought and see what happens.”
He stared back uncomprehendingly.
“You know,” she teased. “Say something more than 140 characters long.”
What was she talking about? Did she seriously expect him to violate the Terms of Service? She spoke fluent English® but used words he’d never heard before, like “freedom” and “privacy.” He’d heard that connectivity could be poor in rural areas, where the inhabitants—known as “Yahoos”—often expressed eccentric, paranoid ideas. Obviously, for whatever reason, he and Julia weren’t connecting. Still, there was something about her that affected him in a surprising, unfamiliar way. He later learned that it was called “sex®.”
About the author:
Bruce Hartman lives in Philadelphia. He has worked as a pianist, music teacher, bookseller and attorney and has been writing fiction for many years. His novel, The Rules of Dreaming, was published by Swallow Tail Press in May 2013 and was awarded the Kirkus Star for Books of Exceptional Merit. At the end of the year, Kirkus Reviewsselected it as one of the “Top 100” Indie Books of 2013. Another new mystery, The Muse of Violence, inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (also known as Ten Little Indians) was published by Swallow Tail Press in October 2013.
The Philosophical Detective, was published in June 2014, along with a free preview volume entitled Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts, which is Part One ofThe Philosophical Detective.
A new novel, A Butterfly in Philadelphia, was published in paperback in April 2015. It was described by Jack Magnus of Readers Favorite Book Reviews as “one of those strange comic masterpieces that you’re quite lucky to run across once in a very great while.”
Yet another new book will be coming out soon: A comic dystopia on internet privacy and freedom entitled, Big Data Is Watching You! Watch for it in November 2015.
Bruce Hartman’s first novel, Perfectly Healthy Man Drops Dead, won the Salvo Press Mystery Novel Award and was published in 2008. If all goes well, a steady stream of new books will be coming out over the next few years.
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