Life Imitates the Art of LIBERATION
A new futuristic crime novel predicts the recent economic collapse.
The main plot of Brian Francis Slattery's latest novel Liberation essentially is that of a "pretty straightforward heist story": professional criminals assembling a team to pull off a seemingly impossible crime. But, when the characters started arguing with their author over that plot's viability, Slattery's story took on the style of a surrealistic, hippie road trip with a family drama at its center.
On the surface, this hybrid plot structure is not particularly new. Its unique interest lies in its timely setting, as evidenced by the subtitle of Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America.
Slattery told SCI FI Wire's JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS that Liberation was written before the current economic crisis, but that events have caught up with it. "At one point, I worked on what seemed like a string of publications calmly describing the many ways in which the U.S. economy could suffer a serious downturn--what could cause it, how quickly it might happen, how far it might go. From there I kind of just followed the bouncing ball."
Despite the seeming prescience of his story, Slattery actually wishes Liberation hadn't been so dead-on, especially at the time of publication. "Truth be told, I'm feeling pretty icky about the convergence of current events with the book. It was supposed to be fiction, people!"
Liberation is on sale now.