2084
Author: R.M. Harrison
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN-10: 0595294510
ISBN-13: 978-0595294510
Rating: 4/10
No one questions that family is important. Whether our relatives are biological or not, we all have mothers, brothers, fathers and daughters. Even the concept of a family unit largely goes unchallenged, despite attempts by those in the ivory towers to say nothing of the Second World to do away with it-damn the consequences. But what if the family unit, for all intensive purposes didn’t exist? That is the premise of R.M. Harrison’s “2084″, a promising dystopian epic that promises big ideas, but ultimately doesn’t deliver.
Fast forward 75 years. The United States has done what many commentators once thought impossible-it has managed to reinvent itself and stay relevant for another century. Public transportation is more popular than cars (Thanks to some fancy technology worthy of an Asimov novel), and the dysfunctional coal-fired electrical grid has been replaced by a system fueled almost entirely by solar power. For Jonn and Tina Langin, it’s the closest thing to utopia. But behind the rosy picture lies an ugly reality-that of the F.O.C.S., a not-for-profit corporation that ostensibly exists to educate children about self-reliance and independence, but in reality tears children apart from their parents under the belief that ‘adults are evil’.
Yet Jonn and Tina have no hard feelings for F.O.C.S. It is because of F.O.C.S. that the college educated-Jonn and Tina have jobs within the government-supporting F.O.C.S. is second nature to them. But when Tina visits Jonn’s grandmother’s house, she stumbles upon a treasure trove of information that implicates F.O.C.S. in some pretty shady deals-brain-washing, assassinations and the like. As three year-old son Timmy prepares to be inducted into F.O.C.S., Jonn and Tina face a Hobson’s choice: do they go along with the status quo, or do they take the kid and run, quite literally, as far away from the country as they could?
(All that takes place in the first 30 pages-this is a whale of a book, folks).
So far so good, right? Yet in the process of telling the story of Jonn, Tina, and Timmy, Mr. Harrison labors under the belief that what an already promising story needs is some back story–ladles full of it. In a space of a few hundred pages, he attempts to do the equivalent of future history, chronicling Doris Kearns Goodwin-style the entire history of the F.O.C.S., from its not-so-humble beginnings during the second decade of the 21st Century to the novel’s present. Back story in itself isn’t bad. Even Kim Stanley Robinson-no stranger to future history-spoon feeds it from time to time. But there is a difference between spooning it and forcing it down reader’s throats.
With such an ambitious book, it’s not surprising that it would have a large cast of characters, both present and future. From Presidents, to congressmen, to fanatical social workers, it’s all here. But as soon as we get comfortable with the intrigue and scandal surrounding the F.O.C.S’s birth, Harrison yanks us back to 2084, then back to the 2000s, then back to 2084 again. 
Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s like a Lost episode, minus Matthew Fox.
With its intimations of Orwell, 2084 aims high. But so did Icarus, and we know how that worked out.
John Winn – Staff Writer
Buzzy Multimedia – Sci-Fi & Fantasy Audio Books & Funny T-Shirts
Makes me wonder what message if any that the author was trying to convey. Was the F.O.C.S being run by children or sentient programs? If it was run by adults and they were teaching children that adults are evil then weren’t they saying that they themselves were evil and that when the children grew up they would be evil? That sounds pretty muddled to me.
Ethan,
It is pretty muddled, and it’s hard to say why. The back of the jacket describes him as being kind of a singer-songwriter in California, and this is his first book, AFAIK (checked again: yep, it’s his first). My guess is he’s never written anything long hand before except maybe poetry. One of the first things they taught me/us in Creative Writing 101 is K.I.S.S.–Keep It Simple Stupid. I can give you a laundry list of stories that have been rejected by editors, stories I wrote, because there were too many characters or too many plots, etc.
There is a reason writers revise, revise, revise. What looks like Shakespeare at 12:00 AM can be revealed to be crap in the light of day. That’s why it’s important to read your own stuff as much as let others read it themselves.
Jack
This sounds like one of the worst books ever. How is it that someone wrote such an awful book chock full of holes and confusing as all get out with the flash backs and forwards and sideways, with a cast of thousands still managed to get published? Is it self published? Hard to believe that a big company would let this get out there. If it Baen Books? they have some real stinkers.
iUniverse is self published
Juliet,
You’re right. iUniverse is self-published. I just saw it on the book jacket and listed them as publisher. I should have made it clear in the review.
Lomax,
I went to a con about a year ago and went to a panel featuring one of the Baen guys. I doubt that they would allow anything like this through. If they are, then I really pity them. But they run a tight shop, so I doubt it.
I have nothing against iUniverse and it’s like. It’s a good resource for academics and PhD candidates to get their dissertations published without having to worry about finding a ‘publisher’, and of course the generic family genealogy stuff. But since the ‘self-publishing’ fad hit, so many wannabe writers and authors have published material not unlike 2084. And I think a lot of it has to do with this myth that exists that almost anyone can be a writer. But the truth is, to write something even halfway decent takes months or even years.
Whenever Stephanie Meyer or J.K. Rowling do interviews, they always make it look easy. In Rowling’s case, it took ten years to get Harry Potter to press, and it’s probably not her first stab at writing. And I can guarantee you beer money that Meyer has a drawer full of rejected stories or at least had attended an institute before she supposedly ‘sat down’ for four months to write Twilight, but you wouldn’t hear it from her.
Sometimes, I think the cruelest thing that’s happened in the publishing industry is this expectation of an egalitarian meritocracy, and it is a meritocracy in some ways, but even the most hardworking writer in the world isn’t going to be the next Updike or Hemingway or even Dave Eggers or Chuck Palahniuk. I hate to say, but, people have to lower their expectations.
And that’s coming from someone who’s had some stories published. Well, one anyway.