Stepfather Bank Book

"First-rate satire with a serious core" - Library Journal "A highly original cautionary tale . . . on more levels than the reader might first suspect." - Stan Schmidt, editor, Analog "A jaunty, corkscrew ride through a skewed future" - Alan Dean Foster "Burlew, his adventures and scams are funny, earthy, heroic, very human...you root for him all the way!" - Florida Times-Union "It stands as savvy satire. It also stands as a diverting, thinking person's thriller." - The Virginian-Pilot The year is 2110, and the Bank owns everything. It's called simply The Bank because its full name is six hundred and sixty-six words long. It began as a secret merger of Alphabet, Disney, China National Petroleum, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Colombia, Fox, Egypt, and the Mafia, among many other international corporations, cartels, and governments. Occasional mentions of the Bank's existence on the Internet were quickly deleted, or ridiculed as the ravings of conspiracy theorists. After the Last War and the intereconomicum of the Big Overheat, however, The Bank finally emerged into the open, to exercise what had long been predicted as the final stage of economic evolution: monopoly. By the year 2110 it has owned Earth (et cetera) for four generations. It's eliminated armies and armaments, governments and war, cash and crime. Over the span of a hundred years it's transformed the world genetically, scientifically, culturally, and economically. It employs, is owed by, and so rules everyone. Everyone in the world. Except Monaghan Burlew. Burlew's styled himself as a freelance poet since the day he turned fifteen, completed minimum schooling, and became of Working Age. Since that day he's never earned a currency unit. Therefore, by law -- and the Bank is rigidly legalistic -- he pays no percentages and owes no taxes. He owns nothing, and buys nothing, so the Bank can't "assist the client in question to find the most suitable employment, considering both said client's talents and the needs of the world economic community" -- i.e., tell him where and at what to work. He's the only man outside the System. The only one on the planet who's free. He also has no idea that, very shortly, he will be Earth's last hope of surviving an interplanetary catastrophe. STEPFATHER BANK was originally published by St. Martin's Press in hard and soft cover editions. This new revised edition is published by Northampton House Press.