FUTURELAND: Dystopian Science Fiction and Filmakers Dream

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Jeffrey Newman

Futureland is a series of nine connected stories of science fiction writer Walter Mosley in a society overseen by rich technocrats. 100 years from now, thngs have become more of what they are now: more drugs, daily grind and the world’s knowledge exists on a computer chip. Then, it is a crime to be poor. Here are the summaries:

Whispers in the Dark – Details the early life of one Ptolemy Bent, a young black child who has the greatest IQ the world has ever known, and the purest heart possible in the world he is born into.
The Greatest – The rise of Fera Jones, the first female heavyweight Universal Boxing Authority world champion.
Doctor Kismet – An interview between the CEO of MacroCode International, the world’s most powerful corporation, and one of the leader’s of the Sixth Radical Congress, a movement to strengthen the positions of African-Americans in world society.
Angel’s Island – The tale of a prisoner on the world’s largest privately owned prison and how he came to expose its dark secrets.
The Electric Eye – A detective story focusing on one Folio Johnson, the “last private detective in New York”. Folio is hired to investigate the mysterious deaths of members of an elite Neo-Fascists think tank group known as the International Socialists, “The Itsies”.
Voices – Professor Jones (Fera Jones’, from ‘The Greatest’, father) hears voices in his head after undergoing a brain tissue transplant. His doctor reassures him that it is simply the foreign tissue becoming part of him. Jones meets a little girl in a park who he shows a fatherly affection for, however her existence is eerie. Similar scenes play out throughout the story, making him question what is real and what are dreams, maybe even echoes of his past drug addiction.
Little Brother – A courtroom trial for the death of a policeman in Common Ground, where the defendant can afford neither an attorney nor a judge. He is thus tried and matches wits with a judicial automaton programed with the minds of 10,000 legal experts.
En Masse
The Nig in Me- An international plague ravages the world and the only ones who are spared are those with African genes