Earlier in the month, Hateball hit ya’ll with some historical fiction with his review of The Terror. Last night I finished a fresh future history: Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America. Author Brian Francis Slattery is a writer, folk musician, and freelance editor for publications concerning “economics, public policy, and international affairs.” In Liberation, a fucked economy is the catalyst Slattery uses for the absolute relapse of the U.S., causing a revival of our shittiest institution: slavery. In the book, the U.S. dollar becomes nothing more than an heirloom. Banks disappear, foreign investors pull out wiping their semen across the flag before they bounce.

Most future histories are filled with uber-advanced technology or omniscient governments, but Slattery envisions our time to come as a regression to the lawless wild west of the 19th century. Roaming communities, buckshot, and a revived Sioux tribe grateful for the fall of society make up the landscape of Slattery’s future U.S. Against this backdrop is the resurgence of slavery. This time around, however, people volunteer themselves into slavery so they’re guaranteed at least a place to sleep. The slave trade is run by Aardvark, the book’s wealthy antagonist fat cat. Aardvark’s enterprise is challenged by the Slick Six, a group of international criminal anti-heroes.

Slattery is like the bastard love-child of Jack Kerouac and Harlan Ellison, with Bob Dylan marinate. This is probably my second favorite future history behind Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog. Slattery’s prose is musical, punchy, and fucking fun to read. I found myself rereading paragraphs aloud to myself (in private, of course) and halfway through I hit up Amazon and ordered Slattery’s previous novel Spaceman Blues: A Love Story.

It’s a sprawling odyssey featuring assassins, Indian warfare, mutinies, and even a seven day rave in the Nevada desert. In conclusion, read Liberation or I will fight you.

- Oh Mars