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The Corroboree
SayN

Read any good (or bad) books lately? (fiction)

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Margaret Atwood's newest (I think it's still her newest) The Heart Goes Last is a goodie for you collapse-fiction addicts. *minor spoilers* In the near future North America has suffered a financial meltdown and all the societal disintegration, marauding, violence, and opportunism that goes with that. There are gated communities which are safe, have food, water, jobs, etc. that take in people with useful skills, and the main characters decide to ditch their itinerant life in a car to sign the contracts and commit to entering one of the gated communities. The way the place runs is that you're on/off in prison. You spend one month living in a house and working your normal job as a mechanic, farmer, whatever, then your other month as a prisoner doing gaol-labour. The prison generates jobs (security etc.) while producing capital (from stuff the prisoners make and the management exports) and the outside community runs the day-to-day, so it becomes a sort of self-sustaining economy based on part time voluntary incarceration. The slogan is something like "do time now, buy time later." If that's not dystopian enough for ya, don't worry, it gets worse.

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