Critical Mass: Table of Contents

Cover art by Remy Francis www.rembrandz.com

A Realistic Look Into an Unavoidable Future, or An Epic Romp Through a Decaying World....

Every once in a great while comes a novel so powerful, it captivates the imagination of an entire generation. It changes the way we think, the way we speak, and even the way we live. It brings joy to our hearts, tears to our eyes, and fills our lives with warmth and vitality in such a way that we will want to share it with our grandchildren's children years from now....

This is NOT that book.

This gritty look at our future destination as a society preoccupied with wealth, convenience, and rampant consumerism is not being told by the professors of sociology in the metropolitan universities, or the religious leaders charged with guiding the desensitized hoards toward some semblance of a moral life, but rather, through the eyes of one, who by society's standards, doesn't even exist... one who lives completely off the grid, in the underground... An outcast left behind by society to live by whatever means he could scrape together; by the only law that exists when the rest of the world has moved on... The only law that has truly governed mankind since the dawn of civilization... Survival of the fittest.

There has been much speculation and controversy as to what point it is that it will become irreversible, but the hard fact is that humans will overpopulate the planet to the point of sociological and economic critical mass. Somewhere around 2048, less than 40 years from now, mankind will reach a global population of nearly 11.5 billion people before things get so bad that the growth is predicted by sociologists to actually flat-line; the mortality rate finally equaling the birth rate. As it stands right now, the growth rate is nearly 1.15%, meaning, even if everyone limited themselves to one child apiece, (sort of a "replacement" for just themselves) the population would still continue to increase exponentially toward this point, regardless, due to the fact that there are more young people than old. This "demographic momentum" can be proven with a spreadsheet.

Despite all the warning signs and attempts to educate the masses by the conveniently ignored minority of people interested in sustainability, mankind continues to march merrily into the future, interested only in economic growth, while defeating even that possibility by throwing billions of dollars a year into programs designed to kill the weed by hacking off it's branches while the root continues to grow deeper and deeper.

The impending depression, also both economic and psychological, will give birth to the rampant practice of every desperate act man is capable of. While some innovative solutions had been found to address the environmental holocaust that is staring us in the face, the sociological condition is already nearly irreparable. With the middle class nearing extinction, the rich will need to find new ways to protect themselves from the poor, and a new kind of segregation will take place in most of the major cities of the world.

Out of the ashes of the war torn inner-city jungles, cities are already being constructed right over the top of themselves. Access to large buildings is being sealed from below, and a matrix of new freeways and viaducts are connecting them together at higher and higher levels. Soon, a person will actually be able to live, work, shop, and drive to and from, without ever coming down to ground level. What started as an attempt to ease unbearable levels of traffic congestion will evolve without resistance into a convenient way to leave the unfortunate ones behind. Denial in every form will push the poor further and further out of society. What started as being barred from employment at anything that paid livable wages, and being unable to open a bank account will quickly turn into class-based discrimination toward patrons upon entering a store to spend what little money they do have, and eventually, logistical denial of access to their world at all. The poor will be reduced to a barter system and a state of economic collapse, where the strong survive, and the weak get trampled.

The story follows a small, tightly knit clan of friends in the vast, almost anarchic underground of a metropolis that evolved right over what used to be Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland. This highly descriptive, character driven epic begins in the year 2057 and spans over 92 light years and 5 centuries, involving the near genocide of an entire alien race by the remnants of a nomadic, desperate human race on the edge of extinction, and the fulfillment of a 2000 year old Viking prophecy, foreseeing the destruction of an entire solar system and the long exodus, full circle, back to a now primitive Earth.

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