SOJALS rating:

Mediocre (2/5)

I first read this on the 9th June 2003.

Futureland is America thirty or forty years into our future. The gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened further, and life at the bottom has become tougher and more hopeless. In nine short stories Mosley gives

• Popo Bent's father gets a chance to revalue himself with respect to his child prodigy son.
• Folio Johnson, the electronically augmented private investigator, finding again what he always knew, that you cannot trust anyone.
• Fera Jones becoming the worlds best boxer while her father slowly dies of his drug addition
• Neil Hawthorne, computer programmer - a job for the lowest of the low - just a step away from termination, suddenly finds himself in a new world of freedom, romance and productivity, and then finds that of course it does not last.

Now I don't read short stories so much and the Americans are obviously on to me. This book is succinctly entitled "Futureland" in the American edition, has a rather different title in the UK:

Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World

Had I known that I probably wouldn't have read it, but as it happens it turned out to be rather a good book. Mosley's writing is excellent, very clear and powerful. The short stories do, thankfully, come together somewhat at the end (which is the only reason I can justify including this review, since I only review novels).