Reality(TM) 2048, by Derek Cressman, is a finalist in the Foreword Indies Book of the Year awards for science fiction, a First Horizon finalist for new novelists from the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and an award finalist in both the science fiction and visionary categories in the 2019 American Fiction Awards. An inquisitive woman goes through the dreary motions of life in a not too distant Los Angeles that has lost its vivacity. Vera escapes her hollow world through a deep search within herself to avoid a deluge of commercial information. She gradually develops the capacity for independent thought, falls in love, and must then avoid a seductive technology that could render her catatonic.This post-Orwellian dystopia explores how the truth drowns in a sea of alternative facts, verified information, and sensationalized politics. Instead of deprivation, censorship and doublespeak, we see a future where corporations and political elites fuel vapid consumerism and control individual thought through a barrage of advertising, trademarked language, and addictive entertainment streamed directly into the brain.Reality™ 2048 challenges the tenants of Ayn Rand, globalism, and judicial activism with characters who confront the murky boundaries between rationality and emotion, objective truth and lived experience. Vera's journey explores how socially manufactured identity filters what each of us can hear and comprehend and asks whether democratic society can exist when we no longer believe that anything is true. It's where reality TV could take us if we cannot find ways to reconnect with the real world and with one another.
