Reality(TM) 2048: Watching Big Mother (Paperback or Softback)

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.

Derek Cressman has written two non-fiction books, The Recall's Broken Promise--How Big Money Still Runs California Politics (2007), and When Money Talks--The High Price of "Free" Speech and the Selling of Democracy (2016), which received an honorable mention in the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards for political science. He edits and writes for The People's Rule, an online journal that serves as a yardstick for measuring democracy in the United States.

Derek spent 25 years working for nonprofit, non-partisan organizations to protect voting rights and reduce the role of big money in politics. In 2014,he ran for California Secretary of State. 

When he's not writing or spending too much time in the Chattersphere, Derek farms olives in northern California, teaches middle school debate, and enjoys mountaineering,  woodworking, and travel. He graduated with honors from Williams College in 1990 earning a degree in political science.