Paradise Gardens

Susan I. Weinstein is a writer, playwright, and painter. "Paradise Gardens," an Orwellian speculative fiction, was written in the 1980s. It was read in-progress, at the original Dixon Place and at Darinka, whose archive is now part of NYU's Fales Library and Special Collections. Pelekinesis published the new definitive editions of "The Anarchist's Girlfriend" (2016) and "Paradise Gardens" (2017), previously serialized by maglomaniac.com. "Tales of the Mer Family Onyx: Mermaid stories on land and under the Sea" will also appear in a new edition by Pelekinesis. Susan's short fiction and poetry have appeared in literary magazines, such as "The Metric" and "The Portable Lower East Side." Currently, she is at work on a WWII novel based on blacked out V-mail.

The definitive new edition of Weinstein's PARADISE GARDENS is an Orwellian speculative fiction set in a near future world where the Federal government has dissolved amid ecological breakdown. In the 2250s, Nate Greenfield, real estate visionary, with the help of P.R. maven Madge Chilton, sells corporate business on his "eden underground." PARADISE GARDENS becomes the home of the United Business Estates (U.B.E). Left behind are the Unconnected, people outside corporate protection. Capitalism has devolved into the corporate feudalism of the U.B.E., where employees are conceived as Superior or Average to fit the needs of business.Suspended between the settings of 2250s on the Earth's surface in NYC and 3011s underground, chapters alternate with a revolving cast of characters. Fates are determined by the Psychologicians, who manage the civilization's data base. Yet, when model employee Janet McCarthy finds herself caught in a web of alternate identities, only her lover Michael can attempt to cut her loose. At stake, is the reset of the planet. In this cautionary near-future, Sinclair Lewis' classic It Can't Happen Here, has already happened. It is a vision at once strange and familiar. The recognition it brings is a dark pleasure.