Paradise Gardens

Weinstein’s PARADISE GARDENS is an Orwellian dystopia, set in a near future world where the Federal government has dissolved amid ecological breakdown. Corporate business flees to an underground colony, PARADISE GARDENS, the home of the United Business Estates (U.B.E). Left behind are the Unconnected, people outside corporate protection. In the U.B.E. employees are conceived as Superior or Average. Capitalism has devolved into feudalism. The novel is suspended between the settings of 2250 in New York City and 3011 in the Underground U.B.E. Chapters alternate with a revolving cast of characters determined by the Psychologicians, the priestly class that manages the civilization’s data base. In this cautionary near-future, Upton Sinclair’s classic It Can’t Happen Here, has happened here. It is a vision at once strange and familiar. The recognition it brings is a dark pleasure.