HALVING IT ALL

In this debut novel, a group of abducted earthlings learns about economics in a satirical SF setting.

Three female earthlings—Evadne Lynn, Flora Neemer, and Millicent Tenor—have been sent to the economic reeducation camp on the tiny, remote moon of Ting. There, they receive hologram lessons from Violet Self, who uses as her textbook The Manual of Basic Economics for the Stupid and Ill-Informed to convert the young women from socialists to capitalists. These lessons take on particular resonance for the prisoners given that they spend most of their energy gathering coconuts for sustenance. They are released before too long but cannot go back to Earth, which has been quarantined due to an outbreak of coronavirus. Instead, they are sent to the larger moon of Kapathund, a socialist society caught in the midst of hyperinflation. Kapathund is the home world of Violet, who meets with the women to explain why the socialist moon isn’t anything how they imagined it to be. With Violet’s help, the group seeks to cure Kapathund of its inflation and learn something about the true nature of capitalism along the way. Petersen’s comic world, rendered in precise prose, brings to mind the work of Douglas Adams. While there is much talk of the underlying theory of economics, Petersen has quite a lot to say about human behavior as well, as here where Violet observes another group of prisoners on Ting: “There was always one person who seemed...not smarter or more industrious, not even more prone to capitalism. But there was usually one person who was unhappier than the other two. More unfulfilled, more driven…it was usually a feeling of frustration, rather than optimism, that pushed people forward.” The book’s message is decidedly pro-capitalist, though its definition of capitalism is a bit more nuanced than the term generally used in American political debates. The story does not have much of an emotional dimension—the cartoonish characters primarily exist to represent various (and often misinformed) ideological positions—but the novel is short enough to mostly satisfy as a satire.

A comic and engaging yet didactic look at the mechanisms underlying economies.