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Mallworld, Incorporated, ebook available FREE at Bookbaby below with Coupon Code MALLWORLDINC
Mallworld: Bound Together, ebook available FREE at Bookbaby below with Coupon Code INTERCONNET
Mallworld: Bound Forward, ebook available FREE at Bookbaby below with Coupon Code COEXALT
Mallworld’s political crisis explodes as workers unite in a general strike against Executive Party subjugation. Jime Galilei’s ReBound Party wins a guarantee of elections running as champions of strong civic culture and economic justice. But when Mall CEO Ronald Ryan and the Executives crash the economy a bloody disaster ensues. The Executives suspend the vote but ReBound vows to hold elections anyway. Can they win, and will the Executives give up power?
Exploring political theory through a dystopia that becomes a utopia, Mallworld, Inc: Bound Forward asks, “How can we transform our world to honor our interconnection with each other and with nature?”
Jime, in exile Outside, organizes the workeys to free themselves from servitude and they go on strike, shutting down Mallworld’s industry. Meanwhile, the walkout Inside against the abusive Mallmart corporation swells into a general strike, and the Executives are forced to let Jime back in and allow free and fair elections.
ReBound’s philosophy of interconnection and coexaltation spreads further, even reaching Mallworld’s aristocratic circles. The Executives, however, orchestrate a great capital flight from troublesome districts, and Mallworld’s economy withers.
In a final campaign debate, Jime defends the ideals of democracy and equality and ReBound takes the lead. But only days before the election, a calamity strikes and the Executives suspend the vote. ReBound proclaims they will hold elections anyway, but can they oust the Executives? And if they succeed, what new world will they build?
In the vein of 1984, Brave New World, and Ecotopia, Mallworld, Inc: Bound Forward tells the story of a future struggle for democracy in order to explore the political ideas that can reverse our democratic and environmental crisis today. A utopia for the 21st century, it envisions a world devoted to coexaltation and dignity and charts a path for humanity to get there.
After winning Mallworld’s first democratic election, Jime, Sam, and ReBound battle Executive propaganda in the media and crackdowns in the streets. Discontent seethes in the sprawling, dystopian shopping complex, which has oppressed humanity since the eco-collapse. ReBound’s philosophy of political interconnection is spreading, but then a key leader is assassinated. Can they survive when the oligarchy threatens to burn down all they have built?
Exploring political theory through a fictional dystopia, Mallworld, Inc: Bound Together tries to answer the question, “How can people be free in a world of modern communications and information technology?”
The ReBound Party, now governing a Mallworld section, starts changing politics to liberate the people from overwork, overconsumption, and bloody spectacles. The greedy Executive oligarchs, fearing for their power, fight back with a smear campaign on holovision. But ReBound confronts issues of identity, economics, and equality, and their ideas about interconnection and coexaltation are spreading. When the Executives fail to discredit the new working people’s movement, they turn to harsher tactics.
The oligarchs assassinate a key opposition leader and ReBound supporters take to the streets, only to face a violent crackdown. When ReBound backs a labor strike against one of Mallworld’s most powerful and abusive companies, the Executives threaten to destroy everything the movement has achieved. Can ReBound survive?
A dystopia for the 21st century, Mallworld, Inc: Bound Together tells the story of a future struggle for democracy in order to contemplate the political ideas that can reverse our democratic and environmental crisis today. It follows in the tradition of 1984, Brave New World, and Ecotopia, but affirms an empowering vision of a world devoted to “coexaltation”—mutual elevation rather than exploitation—that aims to inspire progressives and others dismayed at the current direction of our society.
After the environment collapses, humanity lives in a sealed, luxury shopping mall a thousand miles across. It seems like a paradise, but Mallworld’s greedy oligarchs subjugate the people through overwork, overconsumption, and bloody spectacles. Jime Galilei is a cynical, failing everyman who discovers his empathy, rejects bread-and-circus consumerism, and ignites a political revolution to revive democracy, community, and a green earth.
A book of political theory written as fiction, Mallworld, Incorporated tries to answer the question, “How can we build a better world when society shapes our very individuality to exploit us?”
Mallworld, Incorporated advocates for an “interconnective republic” that embodies an ethical principle of “coexaltation” — mutual elevation by attending to healthy relationships. In all that we do, we should recognize and respect our interconnections to other individuals, to society, and to nature, and continually be asking how to create and maintain healthy connections. How ought I elevate myself and others through my words and deeds? How ought we all elevate each other, together? In this way we can overcome the alienation of capitalist modernity and move to a polity in which we lift each other up and create a society of human flourishing. Mallworld, Incorporated is based on a vision of a healthily interconnected world.
While this is a dystopian novel, it is an attempt at serious political theory, albeit written as fiction. It is not genre science fiction meant only to entertain, nor is it a tale of young adults resisting the system, and I don’t want to mislead or disappoint readers expecting that. Mallworld, Incorporated contains substantive discussions of political philosophy, and hopefully will make readers think about the kind of society we have today and what we should have tomorrow.
If you believe that our democracy and environment are in crisis, however, then this is a book for you. Mallworld, Incorporated discusses political principles appropriate for an advanced democratic society, and describes how modern capitalism corrupts those principles and creates a commercial dystopia, not a healthy, democratic, civic polity. It then begins to show one way to transform that dystopia into a strong democratic society.
Mallworld, Incorporated, Sample Text:
Chapter 1: Emptiness in Fullness
Only scrubgrass and dust lay before him, and the colossal Mall loomed behind him.
Scrubgrass and dust as far as the eye could see, although even runty little tufts of grass wouldn’t grow in the lakebed. Lake Michigan had been poisoned by pollutants before drying up, he knew, and you couldn’t get anything to grow there now, not even weeds. Not that much would grow anywhere Outside anymore.
Which is why I’m stuck in this moonscape, Jime thought as he turned back toward the algae paddy that he ran. If we had real farms like the ancients maybe I wouldn’t be managing this shit-plantation.
I should’ve just bought up to my minimum Shopping Quota last year like everyone else, he thought. Still, it wasn’t fair. Mall Management shouldn’t have assigned me to months of algaecultural purgatory Outside the walls of Mallworld, with no spectas, no restaurants, no stores — nothing but algae farms and assembly plants. And scrubgrass and dust. Jime resented it. He had been such a star in business school that everyone called him “Prime Time Jime” — but look where he was now. At least his Time Out was finally nearing its end and he would be back Inside soon. He couldn’t wait to buy himself something nice.
Jime walked back to the dark red algae paddy, which lay in the shadow of the immense Mall, breathing hard at the effort it took to haul himself across the few hundred yards distance. He hadn’t lost any weight during his reassignment, despite seven months of deprivation; his brown, baggy, off-the-rack suit could only do so much to hide his girth. He shambled past the company jetcopter he was learning to fly as part of his supervisory duties. Looking towards the algae pools, he barely noticed the bent-backed workeys who were laboring to stir the blood-colored slime. Jime turned and eyed the long line of the Mallwall, really the many walls of the Mall’s millions of interconnected buildings, which stretched so far it vanished into the horizon. He spotted a mange-rat scurrying along the wall’s base, dodging in and out of various pipes and mechanisms. Manges were a kind of rodent that survived off the trash and scrub Outside, and here on the edge of civilization they were everywhere. A few weeks back the workeys had been abuzz because one of them had gotten locked out of the dorms overnight and was eaten by manges. The dumbass should’ve made it back in before they locked up for the night, Jime thought; what do you expect rats to eat anyway, since there’s practically nothing outdoors but you? He felt that workeys were dumb and filthy and smelly, and mostly just lazy. If they would only move their asses and do some real work then they could be Managers too, instead of breaking their backs stirring the red goo. The mange-rat scampered towards him along the wall.
As Jime lumbered back towards his office at the base of the Mallwall, he took in the immense enclosure looming above him and stretching as far as he could see in both directions. The ancients would be proud of the people today and the gargantuan Mall they had built. Mallworld extended from here, the Northgate section of the Milwaukee Annex, down through the Chicago-Gary Rotary where Mall Central was, and across the Ohiodomes to Penn Pastures. It thus encompassed the Southern Great Lakes Corporate Regional Zone — although with the lakes sucked dry, Jime didn’t know why it was still called that. Over seven billion shoppers lived and worked in the belly of the Mall, with its stores and kiosks and waterparks and office towers, all covered by roofs and domes of concrete or algaeplastic, all perfectly climate controlled, and filled with pleasant music, pleasant scents, and pleasant shoppers — everywhere. I should be Inside, Jime thought, not out here with the wretched workeys. He looked down and saw the mange disappear into a dark hole in the wall, presumably to fatten itself and then shelter in some dreary nest it had found Inside.
Inside: where Jime could go shopping to buy new food and clothes and plastiplants and hologames, and be part of the latest thing again. He missed strutting the mallways — the corridors and walkways of the Mall — with their colorful sim-skies and constant buzz of human commotion. He loved how different sections were set up to imitate different places: ancient streets, foreign cities, tropical islands. Shopping and entertainment had been stolen from him during his Time Out, and all he could think of right now were the fantastic pork ribs in New Tropicana. When he got back Inside in two weeks, those ribs would be one of the first things he’d buy.
He looked back towards the cracked and dusty lakebed.
You can’t make dinner out of scrubgrass and dust.
[End of sample text. To read more, please purchase Mallworld, Incorporated]