After the Deluge

2004 Carlsson, Chris (b. 1957). After the Deluge [Cover adds A Novel of Post-Economic San Francisco]. San Francisco, CA: Full Enjoyment Books. DLC

San Francisco in 2157 has been partially submerged as a result of a major earthquake and global warming that has left only the upper floors of buildings, hills, and some islands above water, presented as an anarchist utopia where people collectively keep everything going without coercion beyond lots of posters reminding people that work needs to be done. “All work is voluntary and goods and services are distributed without any checking” (5). For young people “the whole idea of banks and money was alien” (7). But a second thread follow s a man who is an arsonist, hates the new San Francisco, and wants a society of “complete individual freedom” rather than collective anything and joins the “Reagan-Pinochet Army” that is willing to fight to achieve it (281). The novel also deals with how the new San Francisco dealt with the wave of crime they created. See also his Nowtopia: How Private Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists and Vacant Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today! Oakland, CA/Edinburgh, Scot.: AK Press, 2008 where he says “Nowtopia, like Utopia, is a ‘no place,’ but unlike Utopia, it is also ‘everywhere’.”