by Caroline Hagood
Doubinsky pens a host of colorful characters—including outlaws, finance vampires, computer-savvy strippers, ex-scholars, drug-dealing underground operatives, rockstars, and disappeared presidents—who inhabit equally vibrant locales, such as the memorably titled store, Poisoned Sea Bikinis, built on a noxious seashore, run by an ex-stripper turned bikini designer. But these set pieces aren’t merely superficial; on the contrary, one character’s description of a space in the book could describe the space of this book: “A place where various figures of the counterculture meet, and discuss, and convince . . . a dynamic center, a vortex, that both concentrates ideas and spreads them out.”
And who wouldn’t love a book that boasts a free college where you can get drugs, with courses like Poetry Versus A.I. 101 (that 125 students attend!), professors like “Mary, the Anti-Constitutional Law professor,” founded by, among others, “The Doctor Doom of the anti A.I. movement?” Sign me up!
Collaged into this inventive novel, as in our modern, chaotic lives, are conspiracy theories, excerpts from best-selling books, vignettes, warnings, and operatically hilarious spam emails. In the world of Liberation Now!, just as in ours, people wait to be replaced by A.I. bots or to be reborn as algorithms while dodging, “Wars, rumors of wars, climate trouble and growing economic inequalities.” The characters long, as we do, for “A real revolution that would permanently destroy the pyramid of power that was crushing all hopes and most possibilities,” but the difference is that they get it. But maybe Seb Doubinsky can show us the way.
—Caroline Hagood, author of “Goblin Mode: A Speculative Memoir”
LIBERATION NOW! by Seb Doubinsky
GENRE: Science Fiction | Fantasy
BOOK PAGE: https://meerkatpress.com/books/liberation-now/
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.
GIVEAWAY: $25 Meerkat Press Giftcard
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