2028

2028

A novel by D.H. Robbins

It is January 2028. By now, Demagogue-turned-Autocrat Alexander Kenton had forced his win of the 2020 American election through millions of planned, random "voting errors." He soon abolished free elections, along with the bi-partisan Congress and Senate. The Judicial branch was now weighted in his favor, granting the now-Premier Kenton enormous executive powers over the nation he has re-named "Real-America." Most of the journalists and "Intellectual Seditionists" have been put in work camps, or even executed. There is now only one TV news/entertainment network-his own. A para-militia of "BlueShirts" and PRICE (Public Reform and Immigration Control) agents were fully in place to maintain Law and Order, as Kenton had promised upon his forced 2020 victory. Now his endgame to fuse Real-America with Russia to form a new Soviet Union is within reach.

There had been opposition fronts, but their leaders and lieutenants have been either executed or put in one of the many gulag-style work camps around the country. One movement that has prevailed is the Neo-Publica, under the leadership of Sylvia Morales, formerly a philosophy professor at Yale. Having been sprung from an Alaskan work camp by a few of her former followers, she has gone underground to regroup her coalition. Will she and the Neo-Publicas succeed in taking down the Kenton regime? Will they succeed in re-forming what had once made America a fair and just democracy before the Soviet-American alliance is established?

"2028" is relevant because it is a story of what could happen when an attempted coup succeeds. Never had we come so close to this as the January 6th, 2021 insurrection, which could be argued was sedition by a sitting president. It could happen yet.

David (D.H.) Robbins has been actively writing fiction for nearly 30 years. His first novel is a family saga centered around the 1960s, "The Tu-tone DeSoto" (2014), introduces eight teenagers growing up in Iowa during the veiled turbulence underlying The Kennedy Years (1960-63). His second novel, "The Reverend" (2019) is set in New York City in 1963-64. His third, "The Weight of Indifference," takes place in San Francisco and Vietnam during the counterculture years (1965-68). His fourth Novel, "Boxing with Hemingway" (2022), is set in Paris, Hollywood, and Vienna during the mid-1920s.He has also created and produces a five-part lecture series, "The 1960's-Revisiting a Crucial Decade." Robbins has taught learning module design and has recently taught a fiction-writing course/workshop. He now facilitates a casual monthly online writers' group. Robbins was born in Darien, Connecticut, and currently lives in Simsbury, Connecticut where he lives with his wife, Kate, and Gypsy, his Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.