Commune 2000 AD

Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Commune A. Bat Hardin 1 by Mack Reynolds. It was the future perfect, the greatest society in human history, with peace and plenty, and total sexual freedom. Utopia paid you the Universal Guaranteed Income, whether you worked or not.

Yet something was wrong - it was a It was called The Commune Phen It was the future perfect, the greatest society in human history, with peace and plenty, and total sexual freedom. It was called The Commune Phenomenon. Super leaders of the super future challenged Swain to locate the worm of discontent. Strange, because Swain himself felt gnawed by corruption, distracted by lust, troubled by danger. Mass Market Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

To ask other readers questions about Commune A. Lists with This Book. Feb 13, Mark rated it really liked it. Mack Reynolds was a stand-by from the 50s and 60s. Occasionally, he was close to brilliant, but most of the time he wrote solid, dependable, idea-driven science fiction that was suitable for most age groups, enjoyable for a quick read, and forgettable.

Commune AD is almost but not quite embarrassingly quaint in its presumed revolutionary ideas. Published in , it embraced the notions of continual social progress ala the Sixties to depict a country in which all the Progressive ideas had co Mack Reynolds was a stand-by from the 50s and 60s. Published in , it embraced the notions of continual social progress ala the Sixties to depict a country in which all the Progressive ideas had come to fruition with the Guaranteed National Income, total sexual liberation, and a presumptive rationality to governance that can only exist in certain utopian fictions.

It tells of an academic trying to get his final degree who is given the assignment, ostensibly for his dissertation, of investigating the new and growing commune movement sweeping the country. The real purpose, however, is to gather evidence of a growing subversive threat to the status quo. It is fascinating to reread this now in light of present day politics, because Reynolds talks about the disparities in productive capacity and population, economic elites, and the groundswell Libertarian movement.

The elements of so much we bandy about today are in this book, but in such naive form as to make it quaint. A word about the sex, though. The Sixties changed everything, but not in the ways or to the degree that Reynolds thought would ultimately unfold. And he was not of the Sixties generation. He didn't seem to know how to not write condescendingly about women, particularly in sexual terms, and the laissez-faire attitude expressed in this novel, while it exists perhaps here and there, from time to time, was never and is unlikely ever to be so innocent as he wished.

I've already written extensively about Mack Reynolds.

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It's hard for me to believe that I've been reading his work for 2. So far I've read: The Rival Rigelians https: Trample An Empire Down https: Planetary Agent X https: Mercenary from Tomorrow https: The Space Barbarians https: In my review of the latter I wrote: I wasn't sure when I read them whether he'd had any personal experience in Africa that they were based upon. But in the "About the Author" section in Commune A. As the back cover blurb expresses it: Yet something was wrong". Knowing myself, despite how glorious this projected society seems, I'd probably be among the dissastified.

This bk is "A Frederik Pohl Selection", as the front cover proclaims. The 1st page provides more details: This was published in , perhaps such circumspectness wasn't so cautiously 'necessary' as it had been in the s — but, still, they probably didn't want to alienate a prospective readership who might shy away from what wd've been 'radical' in its day. Reynolds's vision of what was as of the time of writing 26 yrs in the future is pretty much on the mark in some respects: The furniture consisted solely of one bookshelf, and one chair behind a desk, the top of which was an autoteacher; its screen connected with the National Data Banks.

There was an additional library-booster screen to one side, so that he could consult more than one source at a time, a TV phone, and a voco-typer. The reason he had any reference books at all was that he found it quicker, sometimes, to manually look up, say, a word in a dictionary, rather than dialing a book from the data banks. The two screens enabled him to display one activity, such as video-editing, in a large space without having tools blocking the view. The smart phone was also handy. The reason he had any reference books at all was because every rare once-in-a-while his internet service would fail or become painfully slow and he then resorted to looking up a reference in a print book.

Finally, he seems to get a break: I haven't had the opportunity to see or investigate the phenomenon. Your theme will be a comparison of the present-day communes with the primitive communes of ancient society. How can we serve these people if they don't keep us informed? An increasing number of the communards don't participate in the guild elections. Most aren't eligible to participate in the guild elections, because they hold no jobs, but they don't bother to vote in the civil elections, either. To put it bluntly, they're anarchists. I'd realized that I was an anarchist for about 4 yrs by then.

I'd never met another anarchist at the time. It's been my impression that anarchism had been largely eradicated from the American political-scape. This bk was ahead of that time. Its character, Ted, is none-too-swift about figuring out how he's being manipulated by the status quo: What possible reason could the two have to snowball him into researching the communes? How long will that last? There's no mention of him but there are recurring references in Commune A.

And I suspect that it's going to get bigger still. In a way, you might say that Robert Owen lives. An early 19th Century British reformer. Father of the cooperative movement. Sort of a utopian socialist, I suppose you'd call him,"" - p 34 ""How are you politically? I mean, do you vote in a block? Largely we abstain from politics. I suppose you could say that so far as we of the Greek revivial are concerned, Robert Owen lives.

What has he to do with it? He scorned politics, thinking them a sham, a means of hoodwinking the people into the false belief that they were free and in control of their government. And here in Walden we find happiness in a life of toil. Here, Robert Owen lives. His New Lanark textile factory in Scotland was an influential experiment in improving the conditions of factory workers. He was also keen to improve the working conditions and life of the workers.

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At the time, factory conditions were often dire, with people working long hours for little pay. Workers received little, if any, education and had few prospects. Owen was a great believer that man was shaped by his environment and surroundings. Therefore, he felt it his duty as a manager to offer education and respectable surroundings for his extended family.

On taking over the New Lanark business, Owen ordered the building of a school. He also banned corporal punishment.

Owen also restricted the employment of children under the age of 10 children as young as 5 had been working in the factories. These young children were instead sent to school. This conflict between profit maximisation and social concerns was a continual source of tension.

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To resolve it, Owen borrowed money from a Quaker, Archibald Campbell, to buy out the other businessmen. He later sold shares to investors more sympathetic to his aims.

2000 AD 101: Judge Dredd for rookies

Owen also successfully instituted new management practices and found ways to encourage his workers to be more productive. Owen used his profit to publicise his views and opinions on education, working conditions and utopian communities.

Mack Reynolds - Wikipedia

An example of his philosophy: His factories in New Lanarkshire were visited by several European policy-makers. In the UK, Owen was invited to give testimony to a Parliament select committee on factory working conditions and the Poor Law. While Reynolds' fiction spans an array of science fiction elements including time travel, alien visitation, world computers, Amazonian cultures, and intergalactic spy adventures, his radical interrogation of socioeconomic systems sets him apart from other science fiction writers.

Reynolds sought to shake his readers' complacent acceptance of Cold War capitalism by depicting a variety of post-capitalist near futures, many of which he envisioned could occur around the year His stories, therefore, cover an assortment of social systems including anarchy, communism, technocracy, syndicalism, meritocracy, various forms of socialism, and an extrapolation of free-enterprise economics, People's Capitalism. Reynolds has been called a "cautious," [11] "critical," [15] or "ambiguous" [3] Utopian writer because his many explorations of ideal societies, such as his updates of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: Typically, Reynolds' Utopias are worlds of almost complete industrial automation so that no one needs to work, everyone lives in security thanks to a guaranteed basic income, and those who volunteer for the few jobs left are chosen via a quantitative ability test.

Reynolds' heroes usually seek to improve their societies by direct revolutionary action. Sometimes their revolution is meant to advance a people's level of civilization, as in the case of the North Africa series; sometimes it aims to upset a Utopian society where, while there is no want, inequality, or conflict, there is also no sense of purpose, as in the novel After Utopia , [15] or possibility of social mobility, as in the Joe Mauser series.

Usually, once a revolution has succeeded in subverting the status quo, another revolution follows and subverts it, as in the story " Black Sheep Astray ," giving the impression that social change is as endless as it is progressive. The short fiction section of this list includes first publications only. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For the football player, see Mack Reynolds American football. Corcoran, California , USA. Welcome to the Revolution: The Literary Legacy of Mack Reynolds. David Cowart and Thomas L. Text available at eFanzines. Reprinted in Outside the Human Aquarium: Masters of Science Fiction. State Historical Society of Wisconsin, ; quoted in Smith A Note of Caution for Would-be Utopians. Republished by The Free Library. Reprinted in Olander, Joseph D. American Government Through Science Fiction. Foreword by Frederik Pohl. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history.

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