Title: The Futurist: A Novel

Author: James P. Othmer

Type: Hardcover

Pages: 272

Date Reviewed: September 13, 2006

THE ULTIMATE SPIN-MEISTER

It's the kind of novel you start casting as you read: Here is Christian Slater. There goes Kathy Bates. With rare exceptions, the writer keeps it in present tense, third person, which is much the way a movie camera would read it.

The Futurist is the story of the ultimate spin-meister, a spiritually frozen motivational speaker who has a crisis of conscience at the height of his powers. It is a dizzying kind of morality play in novel's clothing. In my opinion, this morality play aspect, along with the movie thing, comprise The Futurist's greatest strengths and weaknesses. Think of a post-Millennial *Network* and you're heading in the right direction. Added to this, its lack of a bona fide sex scene (the only scene that could be argued as such really involves kink as opposed to actual sex) probably ensures its entry into the high school contemporary-lit canon, at least for the short term.

While not a great book, it is an extremely well crafted debut by an imaginative, gifted storyteller. I was never swept away by the story, yet I was entertained and it gave me much to ponder. Thus, you will probably enjoy The Futurist to the degree that you like being entertained as you ponder the ongoing dilemma of sacrificing America's founding values upon the altar of commerce.

The book contains an impressive number of great lines, a/k/a thoughts for further contemplation, some of which I bestow upon you now, just in case you want to drop them at your next party or summit conference, although, as Othmer might warn you, posing as substantial when you haven't done the work behind having actual substance is A Very Bad Idea -- or at least one with consequences you will have to work out for yourself:

"The philosophical task of our age is for each of us to decide what it means to be a successful human being." [p. 29]

"We need disaster to validate our existence." [p. 49]

"People covet the shaman, then they despise him. They hear your name. They blame you. Or see you as a tool to spread the word to blame someone else." [p. 51]

"To know what the rest of the world is about to need. To know that is to be eternally rich." [p. 59]

"The global preoccupation is, what horrible thing is going to happen next? What, not why." [p. 66]

"It's okay not to know what you want, where you want to go, who you want to become. It is okay to wonder. To ask. It is normal not to know. We all felt it before, Yates, but we felt like we were the only ones who ever felt that way. What's not okay is to stop wondering, right?" [p. 73]

"Once you get one big thing right, people tend to forget all the previous things you got so very wrong." [p. 87]

You want more, go buy the novel. Hint: the best metaphor in the book is on page 218. IMHO.

The Futurist takes place around the globe and aboard the first hotel in outer space. Greenland is a metaphor for timeless permanence, the literally glacial movement of the cosmos, yet it also situates one character's inability to create movement in his lonely, spiritually frozen life. Milan, by contrast, is a metaphor for transformation, yet it also represents the ephemeral and superficial, and thus by extension, the instability and dysfunction of contemporary life. Which is spiritually frozen. And so on.

One thing that this book purports, in the way of increasing spiritual health, is to experience the epiphanic moment and then to move on. Not to linger, not to try endlessly to recapture it, for doing so takes you out of the now and fixates you on the past and the future. This is timeless ancient wisdom. Why, with all our advanced technology and the wisdom of the ages still at our fingertips, do we have such a hard time remembering this? It seems more difficult now than ever.

The moral crux of the novel arguably occurs on page 90:

Yates: "What's the most courageous thing you think a man or woman can do?"

Boss: "Easy. He overrides his fears and his ego by acting to preserve the liberties and freedoms of his country and family. His courage is greater than his fear. His actions are not fueled by desire, they're fueled by love."

There is, of course, no "easy" answer to this question. One could just as easily argue that the most courageous thing a human can be is true to himself, before all others, and to keep that self-respect alive regardless of the cost. Perhaps it boils down to how much abuse or neglect (same difference) one suffered as a child.

Thus, not surprisingly, this "easy" answer turns out to be part of an elaborate sham, while ironically it also turns out to be Yates the Futurist's ultimate guide to action. In an era of shifting, vaporous institutions, when the very notions of "country" and "family" are in upheaval, commitment is often synonymous with entrapment, and maintaining loyalty to anything greater than oneself can be tough to justify.

Whether you believe that Yates is a hero or a coward (and Othmer presents a compelling argument for the latter as part of the novel's climax) probably says more about your own values with regard to these concerns. A novel about the moral ambiguity of contemporary life could do much worse.