ISBN-13:
978-1-938349-50-8
eISBN:
978-1-938349-51-5
Library
of Congress Control Number: 2017931728
Cover design and illustration by Cathy Saksa-Mydlowski http://www.saatchiart.com/SaksaArt
Interior
illustrations by Susan I. Weinstein
Edited by Kelli Lapointe Copy Edited by Nick Newert
Author Photo by Diana Rivera
Copyright
© 2014, 2017 Susan I. Weinstein
All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced,
transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic,
electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews.
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the
opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the
publisher. The author represents and warrants that s/he either owns or has the
legal right to publish all material in this book.
Eat Your Serial Press Publication 2014 First Pelekinesis
Printing 2017
For
information:
Pelekinesis
Publishing Group,
112
Harvard Ave #65, Claremont, CA 91711 USA
Susan I. Weinstein is a writer, playwright, and painter. She is the author of 3 books, THE ANARCHIST'S GIRLFRIEND, PARADISE GARDENS and TALES OF THE MER FAMILY ONYX (Pelekinesis Publishing). Susan’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in literary magazines, including The Metric and The Portable Lower East Side - a literary magazine in NYU’s collection of the lower east side art and literary movement.
Her plays include the Dec 2019 performances of ETHER: The Strange Afterlife of Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at I.R.T. theater. Her play THE WAPSHOT WHATEVER: The Secret Lives of Computer Programs was at Dixon Place Mainstage in 2018. Her play Something About That Face was produced at NY’s Harold Clurman Theater. Susan lives in NYC.
About Paradise Gardens
“From
the infinitely imaginative mind of Susan Wein- stein, PARADISE GARDENS spins a
fabulous web. Clever, funny,
serious, and prescient, this novel takes us on a breathtaking journey. Lovers of Aldous Huxley’s and Margaret Atwood’s dystopias are in for a satisfying treat.”
—Sonia
Taitz, award-winning author of The
Watchmaker’s Daughter and Great With Child.
“One of the most disturbing
yet oddly funny science fiction/dystopian sagas I’ve ever read. When corporations have wrung every drop out of
nature and mankind has no
other option but to build entire communities under-
ground, how do you spin it to make it seem like a dream destination?
You call it Paradise Gardens of
course and you sell it like everything else. When we have no natural water, no natural food, and even the wind
and the sunlight has been poisoned
you will still
have hucksters selling
whatever is left for top of the line prices. A thought provoking story well conceived and brilliantly executed.”
—Patrick King, author of the Shane Cullaine detective
series
“Weinstein creates a unique future that is wildly imagina- tive with echoes of our present. Best of all, her immensely absorbing story engages the mind as well as the emotions. You will never forget Fern Johanson, Janet McCarthy, Michael Thorpe, and, the outlaw Rod Estamaya.”
—Ann
Schwartz, former Hachette Copy Chief
“I just finished reading Paradise
Gardens and it was an interesting
story. I liked the story line and
the characters are strong … There was a lot going on in this book, like the cover.
The author did a great job of creating a world to escape to.”
—Debra
Gaudette, “Deal Sharing Aunt”
“A dark and witty dystopian novel, reminiscent of Atwood’s
Oryx and Crake trilogy, where
the ultimate mani- cured gated
community (underground) controls the lives of its citizens, and wards off the
diseased and despairing hordes on the earth’s surface.”
—Susan
R. Chalfin, author of Trinity
Preface to Paradise Gardens
It was the age of Reagan, 1980's, when I began Paradise Gardens. I had just read a book on how capitalism evolved from feudalism and was living in "Morning in America." I began to imagine capitalism devolving into a modern corporatized feudalism, as a conservative ideal of America. Originally entitled Inside the U.R.S. (The United Religious System), the novel was written as a cautionary tale, since this was a time of ascendancy for far-right religious groups. Some were believers in "the rapture," the apocalypse and rise to heaven of the faithful--after the 4 horsemen did their work. It seemed they were doing all they could to accelerate the "end times."
Whether their ideals were messianic or fiscal, they manifested in actions, such as closing mental hospitals and having patients on the streets with no treatment. A vague plan for patients being integrated into "the community" never occurred. Benefiting corporations, stockholders and generally wealthy individuals was the higher objective. They had risen, because they were Superior beings. It was a point of government to serve the elite doing the deity's work. Ayn Rand was again in vogue, along with a messianic Darwinism.
This attitude trickled down, not any benefit to average people from the huge tax breaks and unfettered business. I remember a casual conversation at a bar with a Wall Street investment banker. He told me, quite earnestly, that I should leave my rent-controlled apartment. I was preventing the real estate from achieving its market destiny. I was impeding the greater good of business. So before 1984, this reality, culminating in 1987's "Greed is Good" in Wall Street, I began to dream Paradise Gardens.
It began with an image of a young woman in a corporate office, who loved her job, and was a model employee. I worked temp jobs in corporations and had a publishing job in the 666 Fifth Ave, building, which had a devilishly bright red carpet. I also was a publicist for Bluejay Books, which focused on Science Fiction classics in beautiful hard covers. I was a literary person, who had an interest in utopias, from Thomas More's to America's Utopian experiments, from the Shakers to communes in the 1960s. Writing press kits and talking to people like Harlan Ellison, Vernor Vinge (whose True Names anticipated the Internet), most of all Theodore Sturgeon, widened my idea of classics.
Sturgeon, who started out wanting to be a fiction writer for The New Yorker, fairly invented in the '50's the genre of something weird in the suburbs. Spielberg once acknowledged, if he hadn't read Sturgeon in his youth, he would not have made his suburban movies (his ET is a direct cousin of Sturgeon's IT story.) Sturgeon also was the model for janitor Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's homage. Science fiction could be literary and down to earth. I read Philip K. Dick and remember how Time Out of Joint blasted the complacency of average life. I could see the direct line from Kafka's Penal Colony to Dick's Man in the High Castle.
But my roots are in social realists, Zola and the Americans, Dreiser, Dos Passos, and Sinclair Lewis. His "It Can't Happen Here" is a cautionary tale about fascism, through America's Jaycees and Lion's Clubs. Patriotism is flacked by a president, an Ad Man, selling America a bill of goods. It was written in the 30's and I thought it a period piece, though a very plausible one. Paradise Gardens has an edge of satire and Dick's wide ranging freedom of invention. This story grew, was improvised, cut back and redrafted for about ten years.
Paradise Gardens is a dark book. The Earth's surface is too polluted to support human life. In the wake of the dissolution of the Old Fed govt, corporations flee underground to the ultimate real estate project, Paradise Gardens. I have been haunted by what occurs, because it is lived by characters who became real to me. And as the story was always present, in the back of my mind, I dreamed segments, as well as imagined them awake. The characters evolved their world in my consciousness. Before it was serialized, I found I had to update things that had already occurred in my book, before reality. The World Trade Center is partially destroyed, the Information Pirates, their billboards, and missions to preserve facts, among others. Some things Ii had to update for our time.
Now we find ourselves at what to the apocalyptic seems the beginning of the end of our democracy with a president-elect who has sold angry voters what appears another bill of dubious goods. To the more pragmatic, it's just another four years of a regressive agenda--yet it's crucial for the international climate crisis, which can't be undone. I hope like all dystopians, that reality does not continue to merge with my fiction.
If a cautionary tale has a function, it raises consciousness of what can happen--to ward it off. This novel may be the equivalent of shamanic practices, where a tribe wards off a disaster by transferring negative energy to an object. Some use earth to cleanse it, water or fire to change its nature. Knowledge for any society is the best protection. And in our time, perhaps negative visualization has a function. This novel can purge our fear, allow a passage for changing dark "unthinkable" visualization to a positive future. Paradise Gardens is a passage and at the end, there is unity--of people, place, and nature.
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