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
"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
Arcadia's defense corps is mobilized to defend against what first appears to be a routine assault, one of the many that the community must repulse from para- military forces every year. But as sensors report a breach in the perimeter wall, even 80-year-old Rachel Leopold shoulders a weapon and reports for duty. The at- tack, it turns out, has been orchestrated by one of the world's largest corporations, CR ISPR International, and it is interested primarily in stopping Rachel's re- search into stopping global warming. As Arcadia prepares to defend itself against the next CR ISPR attack, Rachel contacts Emmanuel Puig, the foremost scholar of her ex-husband's work, to get information that she can use to stop CR ISPR . Arcadia intersperses the action with short reports from Emmanuel Puig on his interactions with Rachel as they meet, via V R, in different parts of the world--Brussels, Ningxia, and finally Darwin. The novel concludes with an explosive, unexpected twist that forces a reevaluation of all that has come before.
John Feffer is a playwright and the author of several books including Aftershock: A Journey into Eastern Europe's Broken Dreams and the novel Splinterlands.