The Guardener's Tale

by Bruce Boston

Richard Thorne is the Citizen of a highly technological future City State. Sol Thatcher is a Guardener, a seasoned member of the psych police, trained to track down aberrants who present a danger to the State and recondition them as stable productive citizens. When Richard Thorne becomes involved with not one, but two slum dwellers, a compulsive gambler and an uncommon prostitute, his descent into aberrance begins, leading to the ultimate crime, the murder of a high government official.
Sol Thatcher will know it all. He will examine the case of Richard Thorne backward and forward, but it will make no sense to him. Even his most sophisticated tools, including the mind probe of the cyberscan, will leave him baffled. Richard Thorene is that rarest of occurences, the incuarble abberant, and Sol Thatcher must be deal with him accordingly.

Genres: Dystopia, Science Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Speculative Fiction

273 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

About the author

I've published more than sixty books and chapbooks, including the novels Stained Glass Rain and the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams. My work ranges from broad humor to literary surrealism, with many stops along the way for science fiction, fantasy, and horror. My novel The Guardener's Tale (Sam's Dot, 2007) was a Bram Stoker Award Finailist and a Prometheus Award Nominee. My stories and poems have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase, and received a number of awards, most notably, a Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov's Readers' Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. For more information, please visit my website at http://www.bruceboston.com/

Reviews

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

An original creative dystopian tale reminiscent of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Finally available as ebook a Bram Stoker Award Nominee that used to be hard for me to find in paper-form. I am overjoyed at the entertainment it has provided. A thought provoking almost philosophical story from an underrated writer.

"They'll empty out your mind. Wash it clean. Every thought. Every action. Every stitch of it! And then they'll put it back together the way they think it should be!"

In a time where Whiskey is seen as an ancient potent alcoholic beverage illegal and drugs illegal and a crime whoever so consumes or possess. Novels were declared a negative freedom banned by The City State more than fifty years ago. A time where romantic love is extinct. Possession of personal computer terminals banned by the city state since it's inception.

There are a people classed as incurables, they are people who cannot be cured of their aberrance and who the city state see as a threat, non-citizens.

Tuesday's the day the citizens "Guardeners" are allowed an evening of person freedom and expression, music and perverse activities. One Tuesday sets a man on course on a path of freeing himself from the brainwashing and discovers from this a need of love, to be loved, a need for unrestricted freedom. This is a day that will change his future forever! He will meet new people and enjoy that which is classed as a crime. Is this the key to his freedom and salvation? Is he prepared for this overload of self realisation?
Review on webpage here also.

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 4 out of 5]

First I can't say this is an "enjoyable" book. Nor is it a "pleasant" book. Is it a "good" book.

Maybe.

As I read it my opinion of how I would rate it changed, it went up and down. This book is intended to be in the same vein as 1984, or A Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 even The Minority Report. At times it put me in mind of theatrical attempts (including the film The Minority Report). Was this book as "good" as the books mentioned above? In some ways yes in some ways no.

The book follows the personal lives of Richard (Ricky) Thorne, Diana his "chosen mate", Josie (the "illegal courtesan" who introduces "Ricky", Richard's new name for himself, to illegal books and radical ideas) and others as they and their lives collide with the controlling dystopian government they live under. It's also the story of Thatcher a "Guardener".

Guardeners are those "entrusted" with keeping society working. This world depends on conformity and conditioning. The world depends on and uses brain scans, recordings, radical indoctrination...and secret executions. The "Guardeners" are called that because the city state is regarded as a sort of garden. The "Guarderers" tend it. You'll see the applications and implications of the word should you choose to read this book. I didn't think (for a while) I could get involved with this world. It was a slow process. Maybe halfway through I was still ambivalent. The world and many of it's Inhabitants are thoroughly unpleasant. It's a world that I think would have a difficult time coming about...but then I'm sure the people of Nazi Germany, Russia that became the Soviet Union, Pol Pot's Cambodia and many other people who found themselves living under despotic governments never saw that coming either. As I read it came to me that there are parts of this "created reality" that would draw many of us right in. In reality most people are happy to live under totalitarian rule if they can do it, comfortably.

I found this a disturbing read and once into it, thought provoking.

In the end I decided to go four stars on this book. It will never be one of my favorites and I suppose I've seen the ideas here done as well, sometimes even better elsewhere. But here they are done very well and very thoughtfully. I can and do recommend this book.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

As many have already said this is a thought provoking and moving dystopoian tale that brings to mind many of the great classics.

This novel really worked for me by the way Boston told this one to us. It's structure in a way masked it's tale itself. Told as a novel being recounted by the Guardner Thatcher that in the end is the man responsible for the incarceration and life altering of our protagonists.

We have a protagonist in Richard/Rick that is easy to identify and empathize with. Josie also is a woman that I am sure that we all know. Danny is the quiet genius friend that is always off in his own world and thoughts. 

The themes that repeat themselves through out this story add many layers to the depth of the plot. Obsessions,  self indulgence, and conformity all play key roles. The scans and their subsequent results being referred to as flowers in bloom, touched me and made me really feel and see the garden that the  City was trying to grow. All this in attempt to bring on the Future Perfect.  They attempted to cultivate people and reduce their personalities to a conformed growth pattern, snipping and pruning their thoughts and dreams, in the same way that the gadner prunes his roses. Couple this with the way that every individual aberration seemed to act as a seed that spread out from all that came in contact with it, is truly powerful stuff.

Thatcher says: "Much to my chagrin and confusion, I saw them as human beings as well as abberant types."

The book really came together for me whenThatcher, talking about the results of Thorne's scan, did not find the flower that he was hoping to see...
"There was no visible stalk, no flower, only a chaotic explosion of colored lines and dots."

The quiet way that this story is told and the way that the ending unfolds is a great payoff for us the reader. This is not an easy read and if not for some light humor it would probably be too heavy to really appreciate.  This one will leave you thinking about it long after you finish it....Great Read!!!! 

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for this excellent tale. A dystopian novel that fits in well among such works as 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. The City State is all powerful, or so they'd like you to believe. Throughout this story of a man named Richard Thorne, who gradually becomes disaffected, we see the facade of control slowly break down. We see how the threads of human nature can be twisted but still assert themselves, no matter the methods by which control is maintained. Love and hate cannot be totally contained and must break free.

A focus of the tale, or so it seemed to me, was the reflection of our own society in the City State. For the most part in our society, control is not maintained through fear (although fear has its place), but through access to desired but limited resources, and through feeding the desire for greater access. This is at the heart of a consumer society.

While there is certainly a message in The Guardener's Tale, the work is ultimately an intensely human story that engages the reader whether you care about the message or not. I loved the writing style and found the characters and their actions to be very realistic. And the ending.... I won't reveal it but it's one that will stay with me a long time.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast easy read with characters you care about. Pretty scary future with humans as programmed/brainwashed beings. You definitely root for those that buck the system.

[Anthony Bernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bruce Boston’s The Guardeners Tale is a darkly psychological work of speculative fiction that generally reflects classic stories such as Brave New World and 1984 with the dystopian society it depicts. There the reflection ceases at once. The tale is set in some unspecified future century, long after a disastrous war that seems to have rendered vast swaths of territory uninhabitable and the backs of powerful nations broken around the globe. Since that time, however, mankind has recovered, restructuring its many splintered governments to one ruling state bent on corralling the masses, with a firm hand when needed, to what they envision as the ideal society, designated “Future Perfect.”
The population now resides in efficient mega-metropolis environments where the countless trees that line their endless avenues are plastic imitations. Conditioned from birth, they all exist as citizens of a mechanized society, save for a poverty-stricken underclass that is so disdained that citizenship is denied them; these people are relegated to slums that could be demolished any day.

It is the Guardeners’ charge to maintain order and help drive the macrocosm to the ultimate goal of a “Future Perfect” by policing the microcosm in the roll of officers and psychiatrists combined. For this duty they are armed with the latest technology of the day: Cybernetic Behavioral Analysis. Known as “the cyberscan”, it allows the user to create a holographic map of the subject’s mind in a malleable format that can be read, then manipulated for the purpose of reprogramming the mind of the subject -– it is a tool of medicine, it is a tool of justice.

The story is told through its protagonist, a high-profile Guardener who has since retired named Sol Thatcher. The man gives his testament, ironically enough, in the form of the very novel The Guardener’s Tale. In it Thatcher describes the astounding story of aberrant Richard Thorne with the talented hand of a seasoned author. It explores the thread of events that bring about Thorne’s transformation from productive, if inconsequential, member of society to dangerous criminal and enemy of the state. But Thatcher is a Guardener who is losing his certainty with a system that he has staunchly upheld and believed in for well over two decades. Thorne has become like the unsolvable value of pi to him -- the incurable aberrant. Even Thatcher’s machinery starts to turn on him as he scans deeper and deeper into Thorne’s mind in search for clues.

The Guardener’s Tale is as much a love story as a sci-fi novel, and this reviewer usually cringes at love stories. Yet I enjoyed this one because it was also so much more. It is a book of transformations: We learn how Thorne shatters his chosenmate Diana’s dreams for power and domestic bliss through his actions, while she holds fast to her illusions. Thorne is already somewhat discontented when his affair with Josie, sister of his new friend from the office, Danny DeLyon, begins. DeLyon introduces Thorn to Josie, a prostitute who lives in a nearby slum, in the guise of a favor, but DeLyon is a master of games with a secret agenda who gives nothing away free.
Josie exposes Thorne to dangerous ways of thinking, as well as a vast array of forbidden literature. He becomes enamored, and through his experiences with her Thorne’s conditioning begins to falter. Ultimately, it’s Thorne himself who becomes the hub of a wheel of changing personalities as he transforms from Citizen Richard Thorne to an aberrant capable of committing the ultimate crime.

Boston writes with a concise style here, making for easy reading and vivid clarity. He mixes in only enough lavishness to bring shape and color to his vision. The Guardener’s Tale is a smartly crafted, thought-provoking yarn, laced with wry humor and rife with sinister mind-control tech.

[Lisa Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This masterful dystopian book by award-winning fantasy poet Bruce Boston is a more terrifying story than teenagers improbably forced into a killing arena (The Hunger Games) or teenagers forced into matched matings (Matched) because these are adults created into “stable Citizens, individuals capable of expressing their individuality in a socially acceptable fashion.”

Got that? Read Boston’s statement again.

The dark delight of the title hints at the twists and turns within: a “guard” cordons off and constricts; a “gardener” grows and nurtures. How can those two coexist?

Leave it to Boston to create an intriguing neologism. Ironic telling details, at once contemporary and futuristic, make the story come alive. Richard, hungry, goes to the microkitchen for something to eat, but the cupboard is bare except for Diana’s powdered diet drink, SlimStim (a wry reference to William Gibson’s virtual reality?). The powder needs milk to make it palatable, but he’s only got water. We’re starving and there’s only diet powder in the cupboard.

With the enigmatic cover (co-designed by Boston) this is an excellent read for anyone pondering the fate of our society.

[Patrick St-Amand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick's words

Certainly pulls inspiration from Brave New World but manages to put it's own spin on things. Even though the classic "fighting against Utopian standards" is played out, the characters are strong enough to rise above what might have been just another dystopian story. Very much enjoyed.

[Bruce]

Spanish language translation of The Guardener's Tale, Bram Stoker Award Finalist, Prometheus Award Nominee.

[Arthur O'Keefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a canny blend of the Orwellian and Huxleyan, Bruce Boston presents a compelling dystopian tale with finely-executed scene descriptions and dialogue. The state imposes a conformity of drab, grey despair relieved by hedonistic distractions on “personal freedom days,” which keep citizens contented and thus unresisting. Protagonist Richard Thorne is a man whose dissident behavior is unpredicted even by the meticulous Cybernetic Behavioral Analysis used to detect any hint of possible resistance to the state. Thorne’s thoughts progress from a vague dissatisfaction and Walter Mitty-like fantasies to finally contemplating an unthinkable act against those in power. It’s not hard to see why this novel was a 2007 Bram Stoker Award nominee.

[Debby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn't want this book to end! A suspenseful and thought-provoking view of the possible future, with fascinating characters.

[GUD Magazine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Guardener's Tale comes from the personal files of Sol Thatcher, Guardener, G-21, retired. It is written semi-informally as a scholarly investigation of and reconstruction of the aberration of Richard Thorne. We're somewhere between Brave New World and the role-playing system Paranoia--no specific date is given, but tech has moved a bit beyond ours, and the society is recognizable. Wars have made large swaths of the Earth largely uninhabitable, and society has "learned from its past mistakes", has rebuilt itself, and is expanding outwards ever so slowly, with no enemy but the past--the structured and cultivated city reforming the slums. Advancement is possible from any rank, though a well-formed "flower" of a mind is required for citizenship. This flower can either be natural or conditioned in; and tending and pruning the flowers is the bailiwick of the Guardeners.

Bruce Boston has a light touch, and while neither the world nor the story are light-hearted, it is, on the surface, a simple tale and a swift read, with just enough humor to ease you through. The story follows several primary players--Richard Thorne, his chosenmate Diana Logan, Daniel DeLyon, and DeLyon's half-sister Josie. Richard is the aberrant that the story revolves around--it is his choices and actions that our narrator seeks to understand. All of the other characters are stripped down to their causes and intents, but Sol is at a loss to explain the eventuality of Richard Thorne.

As a scholar coming to the story after the fact, the narrator has full foreknowledge of events--he is seeking, through the recreation of Richard's story and all the details therein, to understand Richard's fall; and through that, how to keep others from such pained ends. We are constantly having events foretold, but where this would usually offput me no end, in this tale I find it fun, and even tantalizing.

We learn how Richard meets Daniel, and through him, Josie; see a few chance encounters grow naturally to greater things; we learn of Diana's hopes and fears, and through them learn about the society; see Richard and Diana struggle with their relationship; and Richard and Josie struggle with theirs; and eventually have to accept the consequences, and at least consider the premise that there is no perfection while free will exists.

"The Guardener's Tale" is told plainly, with simple characters that let the society shine through them. As with any dystopian story, it's a "cautionary" tale of modern society, a story about the society envisioned by the author as much as about any of the individual characters. It's a fun romp for those who love dystopias, as I do, and filled with interesting technologies and things to contemplate--bacchanalian "personal freedom nights" hearken to Brave New World, and "Halls of Expression" Star Trek's holodeck, while "virtual vacations" have more the taste of Total Recall; and glideways bring a smile to my face with memories of "The Roads Must Roll". And amidst it all is just the tale of humans struggling to exist and co-exist.

[E. Sabin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dystopian tale is very cleverly crafted. We get involved with Richard (or Rick) Thorne and caught up in the events that are changing his view of his society and his values, only to be brought abruptly out of Thorne's story by the "guardener," who is the narrator of the tale and whose identity is not known to us until the latter part of the book. Being reminded that we are witnessing the events through the Guardener's eyes causes us to question the veracity of the characters' perceptions and, of course, the Guardener's interpretation of those events. Each character has his or her own distinct perception of the turns his or her life is taking. Are any of those perceptions correct? A careful reading cannot help but make us question the reality of our own perceptions. This is a novel that the thoughtful reader will long ponder over. It ranks favorably with the greatest of dystopian fictions.

[Steven jb · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story takes place in a future state that tries to achieve order by programming its citizens. Richard Thorne meets the bohemian, Josie, who shows him life beyond the strictures of the state. As Richard discovers himself and falls in love, he becomes an outlaw of society. In the end, the author, Bruce Boston, reveals the ultimate truth in this astonishing foray into the human psyche. This was a page-turner, and it will simmer in my thoughts for quite some time. I highly recommend it.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Guardener’s Tale is not an easy read, but it is powerful, and at a time when many SF novels are becoming increasingly similar in setting and style, it's worth persevering with, and despite -- or perhaps because of -- the fact that it is such a challenge, it's one of the most memorable books of the year.

Taken from my review at Suite101.com.

[Byron 'Giggsy' Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce Boston creates a great dystopian future that is recognizable in our current present. What I liked best about the novel, is that it calmly displays the effect of the totalitarian system on the individual its meant to protect, without scaring the reader with absurd ideologies or shoving fascist antagonists down our throats.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The “The Guardener's Tale” by Bruce Boston is set in a future where any deviation from what is considered the norm for a citizen, is punishable by ‘reprogramming’ or even death! Well written and with some very memorable characters. I enjoyed this book.

[CJ Flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

his book was great I don't read fiction much but this was very well writen and Bruce Boston did a great job I could see why its award winning. Once I started reading it I didn't want to put it down! I bought it at ICON Iowa in 2011 I believe!

[Todd Hanks · Rating 5 out of 5]

anorher stunning read by bruce boston

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a classic dystopian tale of a city very advanced but suppressing the less desirable human traits. People are ultimately under the control of the Government in the quest for their "future perfect". It was a good story but unfortunately I was underwhelmed. Not because of the book itself but because I have read so many dystopian stories I didn't feel like I was reading anything new here. I still gave it a four star rating because I had to be fair - if I hadn't already read the greats, I would have loved this.

The story is narrated by a Guardener - kind of like a detective but with more power and technology at hand. Their job is to find anyone who shows any deviation to the rules and recondition them if possible. Three quarters of the book is him telling you about Richard Thorne. Richard was an average citizen who seemed a little bored with life. He started hanging around the slums, drinking, doing drugs and he fell in love with a hooker. There were others involved in this story as well, and it was a lot more complex a situation than what I just mentioned but ultimately the Guardener is explaining how things devolved in Richard's life, how they came to meet and how this affected him.

If you like dystopian stories, I would recommend this. However if you have read a lot of the classic dystopian novels such as 1984, We, This Perfect Day, etc, you may not find anything new here either.

[Maryann · Rating 2 out of 5]

As the guardener himself said I felt that this story really rambled on a lot. Maybe would have been more enjoyable with a hundred or so less pages because there was a lot of repetition.
Also, I am a great fan of dystopias and my favorite part is the rebellion and victory.
Much of the writing was very nice to read, but to be honest I can't say I liked the book.

[Welzen · Rating 5 out of 5]

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