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The Mere Future
"Clever word craft, poetic political satire and biting humor on every page."— Publishers Weekly The paperback edition of Sarah Schulman's dystopian satire about urban mores set in New York sometime in the future, when the city has morphed into an idealized version of where rent is cheap, homelessness is nonexistent, and the only job left is marketing. But all is not as it seems, culminating in a murder committed by a prominent New Yorker and a resulting trial that transfixes the city. Kessler Award-winner Sarah Schulman 's other books include Rat Bohemia , The Child , and Ties that Bind .
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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312 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Schulman
59 books795 followersSarah Schulman is a longtime AIDS and queer activist, and a cofounder of the MIX Festival and the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is a playwright and the author of seventeen books, including the novels The Mere Future, Shimmer, Rat Bohemia, After Delores, and People in Trouble, as well as nonfiction works such as The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life during the Reagan/Bush Years, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, and Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America. She is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at The City University of New York, College of Staten Island.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
August 27, 2022
Plotless, pointless. Some interesting prose but not much more. Trying to be post post post or at least seemingly so.
August 1, 2025
“We’d come to that time in our romance where we knew too much, and so the real loving could begin.”
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September 6, 2024this was fine. i liked the joke about getting gay people to buy GAP by advertising that audre lorde wore khakks
October 9, 2011
Spending money was now what we did at home. When no one was looking. This stuff on the street was fluff. A diversion.
We were marketed to at work, where we felt employed.
But once we stepped outside of the office, there was none of it. Not a trace.
Sophinisba had realized that the most traumatic and marking things in a person’s life happen in secret, in private. They often involve cruelty from someone you love or at least know. All of us are used to this. We don’t like it, but it’s now familiar to suffer indignities, to be dehumanized and lied to at home. For many of us, life has been that way since childhood. Then we grow up, love someone, trust them, and they hurt us. Again, AT HOME. We know nothing else.
Given this very common but unacknowledged truth, the violation of marketing is just another slap in a very full face. Assimilable.
But public, that’s another story. That is a place of display, and trust.
Now, we go home to cry. And to shop.
***
Sarah Schulman is one hell of an acrobat.
Over a trim 183 pages, Schulman manages to create and destroy a utopia (or the mythical image thereof) by offering society the very thing we want most of all—affordable housing. Then, without a word of warning, she slips the needle of marketing into our collective vein and whispers sweetly to us, telling us it will all be okay, all Albert Brooks-in-Drive style. All this while balancing family dysfunction, acceptance of gays and lesbians, the ramifications of eliminating the very concept of the poverty line, and the struggle for artists to define their worth in a social structure more akin to the post-modern communist Star Trek utopia, where everyone contributes to the grand schematic (or The Media Hub) in their own way.
The Mere Future is also dripping with lyricism, personality, and intricately—occasionally ridiculously—drawn individuals.
The novella begins with the introduction of a new Manhattan regime. Under newly elected Mayor Sophinisba Breckinridge, the city experiences The Big Change: the cost of living drops dramatically, homelessness is all but eliminated, and the art of marketing becomes the be all and end all profession. Personality matters, possibly more than ever, and notoriety is currency.
Schulman’s writing is sharp—intelligent without overwhelming her characters or the reader with the intellectual/sarcastic shorthand she employs progressively throughout the book. Instead of directing the characters to whatever forced endpoints her argument might have, she allows them to grow naturally and absurdly, to whatever endings suit their development under the veil of Mayor Sophinisba’s utopian dystopia.
It feels oddly coincidental that I would come to this title so soon after reading Zsuzsi Gartner’s Better Living Through Plastic Explosives. Though their narratives and structures are decidedly different, both writers are dystopian satirists, unafraid to let their subjective social criticisms rise to the forefront of their storytelling. But where Gartner’s collection of short fiction wanted to stand at the front of the class, yelling “Hey, look at me and how clever I am!” Schulman’s novella is content to let its diction and style evolve through the content and the characters—especially that of Harrison Bond, the dark, dissatisfied celebrity writer whose status, trembling as it is under the weight of past success, remains his greatest commodity.
The Mere Future carves a Spirograph design from the husk of a falsely placated Manhattan, winding through the cult of personality, all-purpose media marketing, and the impact sweeping change to an established social structure would have on a city’s inhabitants. Through the character of Harrison Bond, Schulman wraps the tightest coil of commentary around a figure so grossly representative of one of the major problems of the old world—celebrity status and its inherent power—that, in the shadow of the new, his extremes are amplified to take advantage of the full-time media circus that envelops and employs all. The greater the pariah, the greater the dividends.
The Mere Future is a wonderful companion piece to the pantheon of sort-of-but-not-quite-sci-fi dystopian literature. Schulman finds a near-perfect balance of commentary, sincerity, and wit with which to fashion her argument, without forcing resolution from content alone.
We were marketed to at work, where we felt employed.
But once we stepped outside of the office, there was none of it. Not a trace.
Sophinisba had realized that the most traumatic and marking things in a person’s life happen in secret, in private. They often involve cruelty from someone you love or at least know. All of us are used to this. We don’t like it, but it’s now familiar to suffer indignities, to be dehumanized and lied to at home. For many of us, life has been that way since childhood. Then we grow up, love someone, trust them, and they hurt us. Again, AT HOME. We know nothing else.
Given this very common but unacknowledged truth, the violation of marketing is just another slap in a very full face. Assimilable.
But public, that’s another story. That is a place of display, and trust.
Now, we go home to cry. And to shop.
***
Sarah Schulman is one hell of an acrobat.
Over a trim 183 pages, Schulman manages to create and destroy a utopia (or the mythical image thereof) by offering society the very thing we want most of all—affordable housing. Then, without a word of warning, she slips the needle of marketing into our collective vein and whispers sweetly to us, telling us it will all be okay, all Albert Brooks-in-Drive style. All this while balancing family dysfunction, acceptance of gays and lesbians, the ramifications of eliminating the very concept of the poverty line, and the struggle for artists to define their worth in a social structure more akin to the post-modern communist Star Trek utopia, where everyone contributes to the grand schematic (or The Media Hub) in their own way.
The Mere Future is also dripping with lyricism, personality, and intricately—occasionally ridiculously—drawn individuals.
The novella begins with the introduction of a new Manhattan regime. Under newly elected Mayor Sophinisba Breckinridge, the city experiences The Big Change: the cost of living drops dramatically, homelessness is all but eliminated, and the art of marketing becomes the be all and end all profession. Personality matters, possibly more than ever, and notoriety is currency.
Schulman’s writing is sharp—intelligent without overwhelming her characters or the reader with the intellectual/sarcastic shorthand she employs progressively throughout the book. Instead of directing the characters to whatever forced endpoints her argument might have, she allows them to grow naturally and absurdly, to whatever endings suit their development under the veil of Mayor Sophinisba’s utopian dystopia.
It feels oddly coincidental that I would come to this title so soon after reading Zsuzsi Gartner’s Better Living Through Plastic Explosives. Though their narratives and structures are decidedly different, both writers are dystopian satirists, unafraid to let their subjective social criticisms rise to the forefront of their storytelling. But where Gartner’s collection of short fiction wanted to stand at the front of the class, yelling “Hey, look at me and how clever I am!” Schulman’s novella is content to let its diction and style evolve through the content and the characters—especially that of Harrison Bond, the dark, dissatisfied celebrity writer whose status, trembling as it is under the weight of past success, remains his greatest commodity.
The Mere Future carves a Spirograph design from the husk of a falsely placated Manhattan, winding through the cult of personality, all-purpose media marketing, and the impact sweeping change to an established social structure would have on a city’s inhabitants. Through the character of Harrison Bond, Schulman wraps the tightest coil of commentary around a figure so grossly representative of one of the major problems of the old world—celebrity status and its inherent power—that, in the shadow of the new, his extremes are amplified to take advantage of the full-time media circus that envelops and employs all. The greater the pariah, the greater the dividends.
The Mere Future is a wonderful companion piece to the pantheon of sort-of-but-not-quite-sci-fi dystopian literature. Schulman finds a near-perfect balance of commentary, sincerity, and wit with which to fashion her argument, without forcing resolution from content alone.
January 5, 2011
On the one hand, this is a thoughtful essay about modern culture, the effects of the internet, and the tension between the values we think we hold versus the ones we'll actually defend. On the other, it's a set of rambling character sketches of mostly unlikeable people and an eyeroll-worthy manufactured denouement. On the gripping hand, it's a well-crafted prose poem that goes on a bit too long to be entirely readable.
So did I like it? In order: yes, no, and eh.
So did I like it? In order: yes, no, and eh.
August 30, 2021
Ugh. Pretentious. Try-hard. Not as funny as it thinks it is. A poor attempt at mocking post-modern bro writers like David Foster Wallace but ends up becoming what it attempts to mock. Glad it’s over.
March 5, 2011
I think Sarah Schulman is hands-down one of the best writers alive today. So I feel like I only have myself to blame for not really getting this book. I got it I guess in pieces: capitalism is an insidious cancer; heterosexism is forever; and connecting to other people is hard. Beyond that though, there was a lot that went over my head. That said, every author is entitled to write something a little inscrutable and since Schulman is normally pretty direct there was something interesting about the puzzle this short novel introduced.
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July 6, 2009Sarah Schulman lures us in with a tale of dramatic changes after a new mayor is elected in New York City -- the mayor builds so much low-income housing that even the cost of rent goes down to somewhere around $65 for a conveniently-located one bedroom; chain stores are outlawed; homelessness comes to an end, but what are the costs? Oh, no -- the costs! That’s where The Mere Future rips us to shreds.
July 9, 2010
A sort of future-history piece about…well…I don’t know. It took place in a city with a charismatic mayor who tried to do stuff but wasn’t very good at it and really just hid problems, and…yeah. I don’t know. This book was not great. Or even good. I feel like I missed something early, but I can’t say the story made me care enough to double check. Pass.
February 11, 2014
I quite enjoyed the concept for the novel. The utopian dystopia scene Schulman created, although once the economic secrets are revealed it's quite horrifying! But the characters were not as compelling as in her earlier novels. Regardless it's well worth the read.
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November 24, 2025Not an author to write futures, much better at pasts.
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January 20, 2025there were a lot of fun conceits here (i always especially love a first person narrator who is also omniscient) and silliness and the chapter titles were awesome. but this book did feel a little empty/lacking, especially in its analysis of the perversion of capitalism....it was just SO focused on advertisements and kept hitting us over the head with the fact that capitalism had moved "out of the streets" and "into the home" thru tv and mail advertisements. i mean i totally think it's admirable & interesting to be playing around with the idea of ambiguous utopia but the analysis felt very shallow and overstated, which was surprising to me for a sarah schulman book. but yeah the formal stuff happening here was cool and the meta ness so it was still a fun read
September 17, 2020
Part-fiction, part autobiography, part critical theory think piece, part stand-up-comedy act, part battle-cry-of-the-resistance, part therapy for the traumatised: to evaluate this book as being only one of those things is to find it coming up short; take it as all of them, and it becomes a fun experience and a gateway. Light, cheeky, sincere, cynical and thought-provoking, I enjoyed this book without expectations although, as with some movies, I can see how others with expectations might have found themselves disappointed. I found it a fun, provocative, and insightful commentary on interpersonal relations as much as societal trends in technology and capitalism.
March 9, 2023
Fascinating take on a kind of future for New York, starts out like a Utopia and ends like hyperreal social caste system. And slips into each easily. Characters are mostly unlikeable, and the ones that do have redeeming factors are not featured prominently in their own stories, but as side characters to the main. A weird story, but not too crazy that it couldn't happen.
July 12, 2022
This must be satire of postmodern fiction, but I thought satire would be entertaining or have something clear(ish) to say. This, instead, is a book of barebones utopia shrugged off at story's end, one-dimensional characters, and a coldness all around.
December 7, 2017
Not my favorite Schulman so far, but it's always a pleasure to read her work. This is a very strange book, and I like that, but it didn't hit me like her others have.
July 15, 2021
This book was funny, clever, and fairly easy to read although I can't claim to have understood it much.
October 17, 2021
it’s for real happening
September 13, 2022
If this had not been a chosen book club book, I never would have finished it. Pretentious dystopian. I just did not get the point.
July 19, 2014
Sarah Schulman’s writing could be the mirror image of Jeanette Winterson’s. Winterson’s books tend to start with an intriguing premise and fascinating first half, but end a little disappointingly. Schulman’s books tend to start off slow, but they eventually get in your head and leave you changed.
The first half of The Mere Future is slow moving and meandering - but in the second half plotlines come together, themes coalesce and the story gets under your skin.
This is a book for our liberal age. As Western citizens we’re supposed to love the system while believing that we’re so above it all. We buy cheap crap that was made in sweatshops while at the same time making jokes about our hypocrisy while at the same time seriously believing that this is the best of all possible worlds. We’re aware of class division while at the same time not really caring while at the same time justifying, justifying, always justifying. We care about single yes-no/liberal-conservative issues like abortion and gay marriage and pat ourselves on the back for being enlightened but stay away from ugly, messy, complex controversies where we might actually have to compromise ourselves or take an unpopular stand. It’s easy to feel politically superior when we’re told that the alternative is to be Bill O’Reilly.
The citizens of the Independent Federation of New York have an even better and more liberal society. They live in a world with homes for all, brand-less streets, and a robust welfare system, while still being able to enjoy the comforts and joys of capitalism. Schulman does an excellent job of building up the beautiful and promising shell of this future before peeling it away to reveal a dark core.
Schulman is a master at mocking literary writers. Harrison Bond was a joy to read, rarely sympathetic but utterly understandable and believable. His characterization as a pompous, self-absorbed and unoriginal writer was an awesome parody of so many adulated male writers whose trashy books incomprehensibly get taken seriously, seemingly because critics decide they’re “literary.” I won’t name any names, but you might be able to guess the specific writers I have in mind.
This books ended up being strangely heartbreaking, like losing your vision for the world or losing someone who can never come back again. If you can’t see beyond yourself, then you can never experience loss because you can never be attached to anything external. It’s people who believe in things who have the power to feel loss and pain and to come out on the other side stronger. Or be destroyed. This story explores the ways that people get trapped in their own ideas of themselves, and the various strategies they use to extinguish flickering moments of self-awareness, compassion and righteous indignation.
The first half of The Mere Future is slow moving and meandering - but in the second half plotlines come together, themes coalesce and the story gets under your skin.
This is a book for our liberal age. As Western citizens we’re supposed to love the system while believing that we’re so above it all. We buy cheap crap that was made in sweatshops while at the same time making jokes about our hypocrisy while at the same time seriously believing that this is the best of all possible worlds. We’re aware of class division while at the same time not really caring while at the same time justifying, justifying, always justifying. We care about single yes-no/liberal-conservative issues like abortion and gay marriage and pat ourselves on the back for being enlightened but stay away from ugly, messy, complex controversies where we might actually have to compromise ourselves or take an unpopular stand. It’s easy to feel politically superior when we’re told that the alternative is to be Bill O’Reilly.
The citizens of the Independent Federation of New York have an even better and more liberal society. They live in a world with homes for all, brand-less streets, and a robust welfare system, while still being able to enjoy the comforts and joys of capitalism. Schulman does an excellent job of building up the beautiful and promising shell of this future before peeling it away to reveal a dark core.
Schulman is a master at mocking literary writers. Harrison Bond was a joy to read, rarely sympathetic but utterly understandable and believable. His characterization as a pompous, self-absorbed and unoriginal writer was an awesome parody of so many adulated male writers whose trashy books incomprehensibly get taken seriously, seemingly because critics decide they’re “literary.” I won’t name any names, but you might be able to guess the specific writers I have in mind.
This books ended up being strangely heartbreaking, like losing your vision for the world or losing someone who can never come back again. If you can’t see beyond yourself, then you can never experience loss because you can never be attached to anything external. It’s people who believe in things who have the power to feel loss and pain and to come out on the other side stronger. Or be destroyed. This story explores the ways that people get trapped in their own ideas of themselves, and the various strategies they use to extinguish flickering moments of self-awareness, compassion and righteous indignation.
February 10, 2012
My first time reading anything by Sarah Schulman. I think upon reading this, I like her a lot more than I like this book. As a satirical not-really-dystopian (but maybe dystopian! maybe!) future story, it did for me what I enjoy from Vonnegut or Burroughs - Schulman serves up Big Ideas, most of them for the sake of a laugh, some of them worth a laugh and a fleeting "hmm, that could actually happen...or how nice if it did..." moment. As an architect of futures that could be, I had a great time with this book and wanted her to keep on serving up details of her brazen new world.
Where I had difficulty was with the characters and their relationships, which were peppered with more than a small amount of wit and insight, but for the most part, I had a hard time navigating these people or really feeling much of an investment.
Fortunately, the book is short and what I liked worked as a salve for what I felt was weighing me down as I turned the pages. I look forward to reading more of Sarah Schulman's work, though next time I might be diving into her essays instead.
Where I had difficulty was with the characters and their relationships, which were peppered with more than a small amount of wit and insight, but for the most part, I had a hard time navigating these people or really feeling much of an investment.
Fortunately, the book is short and what I liked worked as a salve for what I felt was weighing me down as I turned the pages. I look forward to reading more of Sarah Schulman's work, though next time I might be diving into her essays instead.
January 22, 2016
It's weird reading a lot of Sarah Schulman all at once. It's weird reading a lot of anybody all at once, although that is my current tendency. Probably college's fault. I read something by someone and I like it, I read more by them and I like it, and at a point around book #3 if I am lucky the tone and matters of each book coalesce into a screen or watery layer and some preoccupations begin to emerge. Here we see gentrification, AIDS, parents in New York and outside of New York, families. What is a family? Who takes care of you? Who is taken care of by the state? What does "having enough" do to us? What happens when we inevitably fuck up at taking care of one another?
Who gets paid attention to?
Schulman's writing as writing is great. Her craft is great. Her preoccupations are great. I keep reading her trying to uncover my own history as a queer person and we can only get so far because she's in New York and older and I'm of the PNW and younger but I'll take what I can get.
Who gets paid attention to?
Schulman's writing as writing is great. Her craft is great. Her preoccupations are great. I keep reading her trying to uncover my own history as a queer person and we can only get so far because she's in New York and older and I'm of the PNW and younger but I'll take what I can get.
August 10, 2012
This was a puzzling book to me. The Mere Future takes place “In the future, when things are slightly better because there has been a big change.” I was expecting a dystopia, but I finished the book still not certain whether things were, in fact, slightly better. “The big change” is a political one, involving housing costs plummeting (eliminating homelessness) and a ban of chain stores and public advertising in New York. Also, the “Media Hub” provides almost all employment.
The characters, however, seem to be sacrificed to the satire. The main characters are unlikeable and self-obsessed. Their relationship is dysfunctional to say the least. This isn’t inherently bad, but I didn’t feel any personal investment in them or their relationship. They seemed to just be vehicles for information about the reality of the “big change”...
Read the rest of my review here: http://lesbrary.com/2012/06/23/danika...
The characters, however, seem to be sacrificed to the satire. The main characters are unlikeable and self-obsessed. Their relationship is dysfunctional to say the least. This isn’t inherently bad, but I didn’t feel any personal investment in them or their relationship. They seemed to just be vehicles for information about the reality of the “big change”...
Read the rest of my review here: http://lesbrary.com/2012/06/23/danika...
August 6, 2012
Brilliant, witty satire of New York (and thus world) gentrification -- the culture, the desires, the imperatives. Takes place in a not too distant future in which basically everything white people in the east village and park slope want comes to pass: no more corporate branding, everything's a cute little boutique, there's a black lesbian mayor, affordable housing for all, etc. etc. And yet everyone keeps their marketing jobs. Too good to be true? No, but too good not to exist within the same (albeit more aesthetically pleasing) class hierarchies and systems of exploitation as today. Reveals the liberal humanities major's dream of progressive urban bohemia to be ridden with the same (manufactured) desire for autonomous Homes as suburbia and the frontier before them. As usual with Schulman, really smart and really funny, and even though it's satire, rarely obvious.
September 14, 2013
Although billed as a utopian novel, my favorite part of the story lies with our first person-narrator and her beloved Nadine. They live in NYC, under a new mayor named Sophinisba, who moves all advertisements and branding and all major chain stores off the streets and into, exclusively, the homes. She also lowers rent so that people want to stay at home, clicking through ads, and making purchases. The conceit is visionary, vast and somewhat messy. I like the book for its tender evocation of a long-term relationship. One woman works for THE MEDIA HUB. (Most characters in the book work for THE MEDIA HUB). The other woman wants to be an artist. I also like the superlative commentary, which enters the narrative in surprising ways, such as this: “When Emerson went to visit Dickinson’s brother next door, she stayed home. Why? My guess? She knew he would humiliate her.”
will-i-ever-finish-these-books
April 28, 2010I accidentally returned this to NYPL before I finished it. I'll have to hang out at the Muhlenberg branch one day and read the last few pages. I will say that I felt as though Schulman and I are kindred spirits due to all her hilariously brilliant--to me--word-play and absurdist criticism of modern society, especially my old NYC home. (The thoughts that float about in my mind-brain that I lack the eloquence--or courage?--to communicate. Actually, I'm just lazy.) The first part of the book was extremely unstructured plot-wise, but it managed to work. I began to lose interest as the plot developed, because I was really just enjoying the prose. Perhaps I should pick up some of Schulman's poetry, because I have a feeling I'd enjoy it.
P.S. CSI represent, yo!
P.S. CSI represent, yo!
February 26, 2010
This is probably Schulman's most unconventional novel; even more so than Empathy. It's set in a future New York where there has recently been a political Change. A new woman is mayor who has removed all advertising removed. And there are various other equitable changes put in place. But there is something disquieting about this utopia.
Many of Schulman's recurrent themes are here; withholding of affection, communication breakdown, familial cruelty, institutionalized heterosexism.
Many of Schulman's recurrent themes are here; withholding of affection, communication breakdown, familial cruelty, institutionalized heterosexism.
October 24, 2015
The summary of the book is kind of misleading... The murder, trial, and aftermath happen toward the very end of the book during the last (pretty short) 10 chapters. And it wasn't really such a big mystery how the city's Change is funded as Nadine realizes about halfway through and it's nothing too surprising. I really enjoyed the voice of the narrator/writing style and the idea that even if things seem perfect they're the same if not worse. I loved how much the narrator loves Nadine, and how Schulman created a society without public advertising. It was a really interesting and quick read (barring leaving it on a plane and waiting a week for a new copy).
February 23, 2023
Creo que no ha sido mi favorito de Schulman, pero tuvo momentos interesantes, y el New York extrañamente capitalista que construye resulta sumamente memorable. Me parece bastante ambiciosa la idea de una distopía y utopía en simultaneidad, y los detalles relacionados con eso hacen que valga la pena la novela. Por más "errores" que pueda cometer Schulman con personajes poco convincentes o tramas débiles, a mí me sigue cayendo bien, porque en todo momento, ya sea mediante una sola palabrita o una situación pequeña, destaca lo fiel que es a sí misma, a sus valores y convicciones, y que cada párrafo que escribe es fruto de una búsqueda relacionada con querer mejorar el mundo.
March 21, 2012
Honestly? I was disappointed. This was my first Sarah Schulman fiction novel. It was a series of interesting meanderings and philosophy with fictional character guides. There was little in the way of plot or character development. There really weren't any elements of "story" present at all. The jacket promised that incorporated elements from "every literary genre." Or, more accurately, none. I'm not sure what her point even is other than "beware the pervasive nature of social marketing or soon every communication will be marketing." But that's been done before, and more adeptly.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews