by Seb Doubinsky
I began the “City-States Cycle” 30 years ago, not knowing it would become a cycle. They were just three separate novellas (first published as such in… Denmark!) that later became “The Babylonian Trilogy”, and from there, I kept on writing about the same universe. As a child of Punk (I went to London in 1979 for a holiday and it changed my life), I always cherished irony, self-irony and politics, and my favorite writers at the time were William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, Michael Moorcock, and Thomas Pynchon, all for obvious reasons. I therefore wrote my novels with a subversive frame of mind, trying to peel off the glamorous fiction of our corporate democracies to show the grinning, decaying skull it was hiding. Unfortunately, dystopia became more and more real and a part of our daily life. The triumph of capitalism in 1989 led to a totalitarian-like ideology that is slowly, but surely, crushing us and the world we live in. And, to make things worse, there is absolutely no other ideology today that can save us, as they are all totalitarian by essence. In many ways, the world I had described in my fiction was becoming real, and I began to feel as horrified as Aldous Huxley was after WWII, when he saw his “Brave New World” becoming the blueprint for Western societies.
In my eyes, writers and artists bear a heavy responsibility, as they help shape the world’s invisible structures, and I felt like I had to write a book that could give my readers some hope. I had been right in painting dark things, and I thought that maybe it was time for me to try other colors. The #MeToo movement was decisive in my decision to write “Liberation Now!”, as feminist movements are the last political movements alive today, and they cover a very large ground, as they do not only focus on gender, but also on social and racial issues. That’s how I got the idea of writing a novel with only female main characters who manage to actually change the world. “Liberation Now!” is a tribute to the women’s struggle and it carries the hope that women (in all their denominations) will be better than men in changing things for the better.
“Liberation Now!” can be read as novel, and a manifesto. I defend both denominations, and I hope that it will give my readers the desire to resist the dominant structures and to help others do the same. Readers are not anonymous entities, they are the real seeds of change. And fiction is the field where they can meet and gather their strength.
~Seb Doubinsky
LIBERATION NOW! by Seb Doubinsky
GENRE: Science Fiction | Fantasy
BOOK PAGE: https://meerkatpress.com/books/liberation-now/
SUMMARY:
A radical and trippy scifi political fable about an improbable gang of women fighting for the freedom of planet Earth.
Things are looking grim for Earth as the alien force known as the Subliminal Empire seems to enjoy a complete yet unnoticed control of the planet. However, a motley crew composed of a city-state president on the run, a financial advisor who quit her job, a disgruntled academic studying the dangers of A.I. and an undercover alien agent who previously worked as a manager for a rock band might very well jeopardize the cosmic imperialists’ plan and prove once and for all that one should never underestimate the power of women when it comes to liberation.
Doubinsky masterfully crescendos his genre-defying saga in this breathless, action-packed standalone finale.
BUY LINKS: Meerkat Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual writer born in Paris in 1963. His novels, all set in a dystopian universe revolving around competing cities-states, have been published in the UK and in the USA. He currently lives with his family in Aarhus, Denmark, where he teaches at the university.
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EXCERPT from LIBERATION NOW!
VITA
Vita parked her bike next to the other machine in front of the bleached bungalow, a superb chopper with a shiny blue tank. The ocean roared some fifty feet away, gnawing helplessly at the sandy beach. Ash’s house was one of a long stretch of small houses and businesses obviously built to enjoy and exploit the seashore. On the opposite side of Ash’s abode stood a bar and a lawyer’s office specialized in real estate. Everything looked a little run-down, probably because of the highly polluted waters, which made bathing impossible. A few miles up, a concentration of chemical and oil industries had gradually destroyed the environment, with the blessing of New Petersburg’s politicians. Global warming had helped the process, by developing algae which fed on the chemicals, turning them into toxic plants. They shone under the surface at night, a beautiful and eerie yellow-green glow that could be seen for miles. Your skin would develop a myriad of itchy pustules should it come in contact with them and leave you with impressive scar tissue once the eruptions dried and finally fell off like tiny skin petals. The town was called Blue City, but Ash thought that they should change it to Poison-Green City.
Vita was getting off her bike when Ash came out of the bungalow to greet her, holding a coffee mug in each hand. She wore a simple white t-shirt that enhanced the dark ink of the tattoos covering her arms and neck, and a pair of jean shorts which had the same effect with her long legs. Her feet were bare, tip-tapping on the warm concrete. Ash put down the mugs on the parking’s concrete and they hugged for a long time, clinging on each other’s body like the proof of their own existence.
“I’ve made some coffee,” Ash said. “Let’s sit on the porch and admire the devastation.”
Vita nodded, and they sat side by side on the brittle beach chairs, the steaming mug in their hand. Even if it was a beautiful late August morning, there were only a few people on the beach, sitting in the sand or walking at a safe distance from the shore.
“Every day reminds me how stupid humans are,” Ash said, blowing on her coffee to cool it down.
Vita nodded. Ash’s words made her think of one of her favorite jokes: “As Confucius said, only human stupidity can give an idea of the infinite.”
“What brings you here? Not that it isn’t great to see you, but five years is a long time.”
“I need a place to lay low for a while. Last mission was a disaster. You might even have heard about it.”
Ash shook her beautiful head, her blonde hair rolling like a matte fire around her perfect features.
“You’re the only contact I’ve left. We’re all in hibernation right now. Total communication ice-age.”
“And you think you’re safe here?”
“The Subliminal Empire definitely doesn’t know you exist. You’re completely under their radar, and I’ve managed to escape their surveillance, I think.”
“You think?” Ash asked, half-ironic, half-worried.
“No, I know. I hid in the same motel for two weeks, my Synth tuned on the 1880s. No grays appeared during the whole time.”
Ash nodded, playing with her mug.
“OK, just to make sure: Let’s tune into the Planet X Super Blue Beach Resort and check, just to be safe. You could be a double agent now, for all I know. Five years, girl. It’s a long time. Things happen.”
“Sure. I understand.”
Synth was a drug that allowed its users to access parallel dimensions that could be shared, if you synchronized your experience. Ordinary non-users would just appear in the setting with their normal clothes on, while Synthers would be part of the setting: cowboys in a saloon, knights in armor around the Round Table, astronauts in a space station and so on. But Synth also revealed agents of the Subliminal Empire, who couldn’t manipulate space-time, and became gray shapes in the hallucination. Any weapon, police apparel or hostile aura would turn a person gray. Gray was the color of power. Gray was dangerous.
Both women let the Synth take over their neural systems, shifting the time-frame to the date and place of their choosing. Ash turned her head towards Vita, as the two suns stood high in the impeccable red sky. Their coffees had morphed into complicated cocktails, and they were both reclining in comfortable deckchairs. The beach was crowded with bathers and families, and children screamed and laughed as the purple waves hit their chests. Not a spot of gray in sight.
“Cheers,” Ash said. “Good to see you again.”