Sherwood Nation - Softcover

Parzybok, Benjamin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 161873086X ISBN 13: 9781618730862

Publisher: Big Mouth House, 2014

Synopsis

Chosen for the 2016 Silicon Valley Reads program. It was morning and the power was not yet on. Zach and Renee lay in the heat of the bed listening to the city wake outside the building's windows. "Parzybok does this thing where you think, 'this is fun!' and then you are charmed, saddened, and finally changed by what you have read. It's like jujitsu storytelling."--Maureen F. McHugh, author of After the Apocalypse In drought-stricken Portland, Oregon, a Robin Hood-esque water thief is caught on camera redistributing an illegal truckload of water to those in need. Nicknamed Maid Marian--real name: Renee, a twenty-something barista and eternal part-time college student--she is an instant folk hero. Renee rides her swelling popularity and the public's disgust at how the city has abandoned its people, raises an army . . . and secedes a quarter of the city. Even as Maid Marian and her compatriots build their community one neighbor at a time, they are making powerful enemies amongst the city government and the National Guard. Sherwood is an idealistic dream too soon caught in a brutal fight for survival. Sherwood Nation is the story of the rise and fall of a micronation within a city. It is a love story, a war story, a grand social experiment, a treatise on hacking and remaking government, on freedom and necessity, on individualism and community. "Benjamin Parzybok has reached into the post-collapse era for a story vital to our here and now. Sherwood Nation is part political thriller, part social fable, and part manifesto, its every page brimming with gonzo exuberance."--Jedediah Berry (The Manual of Detection) Benjamin Parzybok is the author of the novel Couch and has been the creator/co-creator of many other projects, including Gumball Poetry, The Black Magic Insurance Agency (city-wide, one night alternate reality game), and Project Hamad. He lives in Portland with the artist Laura Moulton and their two kids. He blogs at secret.ideacog.net.

About this title

Review:

"Set in Portland Oregon after a massive drought has crippled American society west of the Mississippi, Sherwood Nation is a different kind of dystopian novel. No magic. No zombies. No tyrannical overlords ruling with iron fists and tournaments. It brings a fascinating realism to the genre, creating a uniquely human and tangible version of the apocalypse story. Sherwood Nation is about real people grappling with an all too real catastrophe in ways that reveal aspects of our culture today, while exploring the best, worst, and, most importantly, the vague middle between the two ideals, of what we could be."-- Josh Cook, Porter Square Books

"Parzybok's achievements are manifold here. First, he tells a gripping story whose lineaments are never predictable. There are great suspenseful set pieces, like the theft of a water truck and a shootout in Sherwood. The entire action is compressed into about two weeks or so, but feels like a whole saga: birth, maturity, and death of a kingdom."
-- Locus

"A group of idealists, led by a charismatic young woman, struggle to remake society in postapocalyptic Portland, Ore."
-- Shelf Awareness

"Sherwood Nation has left me with memorable images that will, no doubt, be triggered over time. There's something heavy real in its imaginings--something that almost compels me to pray for rain."
-- NW Book Lovers

"With climate change and ever-increasing consumption, running out of water is a danger we don't readily acknowledge, yet Benjamin Parzybok's Sherwood Nation makes that danger vividly real. . . . Here we see how people behave in crisis--some better and some worse--and how idealism, self-concerned realism, and the personal hang in a balance; friends, alliances, and enemies are made, and, most effectively, Renee's boyfriend, Zach, and Renee herself grow (and glow) as things get tough. Ben, who's Portland-based, is the creator or co-creator of numerous projects, including Gumball Poetry and the Black Magic Insurance Agency, a city-wide, one night alternate reality game, so he knows about building community. He's done a great job here, but let's hope the richly detailed "Sherwood Nation" never really has to come to be."
-- Library Journal

"Parzybok is riffing on the Robin Hood story, to be sure, but he also layers on some astute social and political commentary, and he's built a fully functioning and believable future world. Give this one to fans of Adam Sternbergh's Shovel Ready (2014)."
--Booklist

"Benjamin Parzybok is one of our most imaginative literary inventors. In Sherwood Nation he gives us a vision of Portland's rebellious indie spirit that goes deeper than the usual caricatures, revealing a city alive with conflict and possibility. This is playful, serious, and profoundly humanizing art." -- Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife)

"Portland is a rare outpost, with a semi-functional municipality, but the burdens of relentless rationing and an increasingly apparent division between those who go thirsty and those who do not, make for prime tinder. It takes just one minor act of symbolic monkey wrenching to set this tale ablaze.
"Couch has remained in my consciousness because it goes "out there" to find its core (think Douglas Adams, Tom Robbins, Gabriel Garcia Marquez). What makes Sherwood so compelling and, frankly, often terrifying, is how close to home it lives.
"This Portland is totally familiar, invoking the attitudes and spirit of today's residents and details from the recent political landscape. It feels like the place we know -- until a nightly power blackout or parade of National Guard water distribution tankers jars us with a reminder that this is, thankfully, a work of very good fiction."
-- Register Guard

"Benjamin Parzybok has reached into the post-collapse era for a story vital to our here and now. Sherwood Nation is part political thriller, part social fable, and part manifesto, its every page brimming with gonzo exuberance."--Jedediah Berry (The Manual of Detection)

About the Author:

Benjamin Parzybok is the author of the novel Couch, and has been the creator/co-creator of many other projects, including Gumball Poetry (literary journal published in capsule machines), The Black Magic Insurance Agency (city-wide, one night alternate reality game), and Project Hamad (an effort to free a Guantanamo inmate and shed light on Habeas Corpus). He lives in Portland with the artist Laura Moulton and their two kids. He can be found online at levinofearth.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Big Mouth House
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 161873086X
• ISBN 13: 9781618730862
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400