The Good and the Ghastly

Set in the 3340s, this broadly satirical thriller imagines that, in the aftermath of a devastating global nuclear war, humanity has managed to rebuild a world that closely resembles our own early 21st century. Boice (MVP) plays with the aphorism that those who fail to remember the past are doomed to repeat it (the 34th century has its own Hitler, Adoranso Horater, who's committed to exterminating the Jews), but otherwise offers stock characters and situations indistinguishable from those in a contemporary crime novel. The more significant changes, such as a different approach to obesity (all newborns get gastric bypasses) or an evolutionary scheme that produced a squirrel with a scaled tale and vestigial wings, are mere throwaways that define the setting as "other." Those whose idea of biting social commentary is a future in which people celebrate Christmas by human sacrifices to a huge stone statue of Garfield, the cartoon cat, will feel right at home. (June)