Douglas Smith's Going Harvey in the Big House

"Big G looked around his cube. Dull green walls. A floor covered with a grey coarse carpet. His private in-chute and dis-chute in the opposite wall, with a hidden compartment big enough to make his few personal items seem lonely lying inside. He shook his head. All of this luxury still made him uneasy."

Big G is a "Smoother", a citizen charged with the task of maintaining peace inside "the House", a massive cube into which billions of people have retreated, seeking refuge from a polluted and poisonous Earth. Big G is aided in his task by the totalitarian structure of House society which prescribes and monitors each citizen's behaviour and movement and keeps most inhabitants docile via the daily administration of drugs in their food.

The House is Big G's world. He is well-adapted to life within its confines and has known no other. Indeed, he cannot even imagine any other life that would not be complete chaos. Then, one day, Big G is given an assignment which turns his familiar world inside-out.

Big G and his work partner Tapper are sent to deal with a "Harvey" -- a citizen who has snapped under the stresses of House life. Big G encounters an image in the Harvey's cube which both fascinates and repels him. The image -- a "pictab" of white swirls on a blue background -- is incomprehensible to Big G. Nothing within the clean lines and close spaces of the House looks like that. Big G's curiosity gets the better of him, and he sets out to learn more about the strange image on the pictab, unwittingly setting his neatly-ordered life on a collision course with the world outside.

Going Harvey in the Big House presents a frightening dystopia in the tradition of Brave New World and We in which Douglas Smith demonstrates powerfully dark world building and exemplary character creation skills.

Big G is a difficult character. His unquestioning acceptance of his world makes him inaccessible as a reader stand-in. Yet even without the empathy usually hoped for in a story's protagonist, Doug succeeds in making Big G a sympathetic character.

We feel for Big G. We experience him as "other" and yet, at the same time, as entirely and believably human. We understand why he makes the decisions he does, and this understanding makes Big G's story very, very scary. A thoughtful and disturbing read.

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