After the Deluge

A teenage arsonist threatens a partially submerged mid-22nd century San Francisco. As a Public Investigator "tryout" seeks evidence across the utopian city full of canals and veloways, the political and social conflicts of a society based on generalized abundance and commonly held wealth are explored. Here's a vision of post-economic life with the pleasures, pain and confusion characteristic of the human condition across historic periods set in a San Francisco strangely familiar and yet dreamily different. When there is no such thing as private property, what is crime, and how does a utopian society protect itself from bad behavior? Should scientists be as free as artists to create? What is a 'free market' for work without money and commodities? "Many tackle the apocalypse, but not since Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia has a writer envisioned its Left Coast utopian aftermath. In Carlsson's highly imaginative sci-fi thriller, an alienated teen and an arson investigator reveal the fissures in San Francisco's revolutionary new society. After The Deluge deserves a wide readershi for its vivid blueprint of a sustainable direct democracy set among the still-familiar human cultures and neighborhoods - enhanced by greenways and canals - of the City by the Bay." [Laura Lent, librarian, San Francisco Public Library]