John Neufeld -Sleep, Two, Three, Four. (1971, 191pp, Avon Books, USA)
With Nixon's dirty tricks campaign in full swing, paramilitary SWAT teams being
set up across the country and the FBI murdering and framing militants it was
all too easy during the early 1970s for American troublemakers to see the creeping
hand of Fascism at work. This novel, obstensibly aimed at the teen market, projects
what were seen as the seeds of such an authoritarian takeover into the 1980s.
Very much a product of its time Sleep, Two, Three, Four is set in a society
in which a paranoid, unscrupulous Administration has guaranteed itself a lifetime
rule by suspending the constitution and declaring permanent martial law. Thanks
to the use of "black bag" operations in which government double agents
randomly attack and rape citizens this turn of events has been embraced by a
white middle class frightened for both it's life and property. Blacks, Native
Americans and other so called "minorities" are contained and dying
out within festering slums whilst anyone challenging the system is locked up.
Adolescents are sent to "Maturity Centers" in preparation for adult
life and any children deemed as "sub-normal" or posessing "pre-criminal
personalities" are shipped off to labour camps.
The novel's teenage protagonists are forced to try to escape this stifling reality
after they join a nascent, but growing underground resistance which is involved
in killing off members of the government terror squads. Following a bungled
attempt to capture the sadistic leader of one of these squads the teenage team
is forced to flee across country with a disabled brother and unwilling sister
in tow.
Whilst the writing is often painfully and self conciously hip the novel nevertheless
works well both as a cautionary tale and a dystopian thriller. Even its inevitable
awkward teenage romance avoids becoming too cheesy. Neufeld and his seemingly
paranoid contemporaries were not so far off the mark either as Watergate and
the actions of the Italian P2 lodge were soon to illustrate how far some in
high places were willing to go in order to maintain power.
-IBM.
"Wow! Over and over again, Never Ready Newman breathed
the word. He breathed it listening to a serene and strangely beautiful person
named Baez; it slipped out hearing Country Joe and the Fish- 'really weird looking'
Never Ready thought, watching the set. He pulled Wagenson's 'degenerate' label
from his memory and tried it on what he saw.
He gasped again as on his tiny screen three hundred thjousand people began clapping
their hands and singing against the War!
Never Ready felt elated in an odd way. he hadn't been prepared for any of this.
Not the color or the people or the music- strange sounding chrods and rhythms
that, although he couldn't remember hearing them before, seemed somehow mysteriously
familiar, as though when he was a child he might have danced and whirled to
it in a circle as his parents laughed and clapped their hands for him."
For more details check out the author's website at
http://www.johnneufeld.com