Deathwish World, by Mack Reynolds and Dean Ing, available for review

[Jem]

Deathwish World is a near-future science fiction story written in the 1980s by two prolific speculative fiction authors. It centers around four characters whose paths unexpectedly converge in their quest for personal and social justice: Horace Hampton, a 30ish black American man who volunteers as an agent of the Anti-Racist League; Roy Cos, a political activist who tries to recruit the few privileged workers in America to join together in an all-encompassing labor union; Lee Garrett, a stunningly attractive and independently wealthy American woman who endures a lengthy application process in order to join the ranks of the futuristic Illuminati-like group known as The World Club; and Franklin Pinell, a 20ish American man who is deported upon being convicted of his third felony, and seeks to join the ranks of an international megacorporation that provides murder-for-hire services to the rich and powerful.

The main character, if there can be said to be one, is Horace Hampton. Without revealing too much of the plot, I'll say that he has an alter ego named Jeremiah Auburn. While Hampton is a black proletariat on welfare, Auburn is white, exceptionally rich, and holds a position of power in The World Club. In order to switch from one persona to the other, Hampton wears colored contact lenses, takes an injection which alters his skin color, wears temporary hair dye, and inserts a prosthesis that makes his nose appear wider. It's like a more realistic version of Bruce Wayne and Batman, except without the revenge fantasy and superhero gadgets.

The racial dichotomy of the mixed-race Horace Hampton / Jerry Auburn character is the book's most interesting social commentary narrative (among several). Hampton is repeatedly accosted by various forms of racism, while his "white" alter ego lives a charmed upper-class life. He's almost constantly drinking alcohol; when other characters see Hamp drinking, they express fear that he will become violent, whereas the characters who see Auburn drinking think nothing of it. Lee Garrett fears that she'll be raped by Hamp due to the combination of alcohol and race, yet she's swept off her feet by Jerry Auburn. Frank Pinell sees Hamp inject his skin tone treatment and assumes that it's heroin. Even Auburn's own employees, who don't know about his double life, treat Hamp as some sort of dirty sub-human while fawning over Jerry Auburn. Though the extended statement on racism is obvious, you can also see Hampton / Auburn as a metaphor for the intense code-switching that black men have to do in order to be socially accepted.

The other main socio-political narrative in Deathwish World is the "trouble in utopia" of a government that puts everyone on a form of welfare that covers all of the expenses of an ordinary middle-class life, and specially selects a few elites who are allowed to have real jobs and make a lot of money. Various political activists and terrorist groups in the book seek to change this system to enable more people to lead meaningful lives. Roy Cos represents one of them, The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as "Wobblies"). After one of his futile speeches before a sparse crowd, he meets Forry Brown, a chain-smoking former journalist who has just lost his job to a younger and more qualified replacement. Together they plot to take out a "deathwish policy" on Roy and cheat the system to collect money to fund Roy's political cause. Here's a high-quality 5-minute sample from the audiobook where Roy and Forry discuss how that might work:

https://soundcloud.com/jem-matzan/dea...

If this sounds like something you're interested in listening to and reviewing, let me know, and for as long as I have a supply of promo copies, I'll send one out.

[Susan]

I grew up reading my dad's SF Book Club collection and this book looks like it's definitely my thing.

This is my book blog: http://dabofdarkness.com/

I've been arguing with pneumonia, so you'll notice that the past few weeks, it's just read alongs and a scheduled book blog tour post. But I am getting back into my life and reviews are a weekly occurrence (as you can tell if you skim back a few weeks).

Thanks for considering me,

Susan
nrlymrtl at gmail dot com

[Jim]

Looks interesting. I'll PM you.

[Jem]

Susan wrote: "I grew up reading my dad's SF Book Club collection and this book looks like it's definitely my thing."

I agree. I'm sure there's at least one Mack Reynolds book in that collection, though maybe under one of his other pseudonyms.

I'll email you a review copy.