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Factory 19
We’re told that the future will be brighter. But what if human happiness really lies in the past?Hobart, 2022: a city with a declining population, in the grip of a dark recession. A rusty ship sails into the harbour and begins to unload its cargo on the site of the once famous but now abandoned Gallery of Future Art, known to the world as GoFA.One day the city’s residents are awoken by a high-pitched sound no one has heard for two a factory whistle. GoFA’s owner, world-famous billionaire Dundas Faussett, is creating his most ambitious installation yet. He’s going to defeat technology’s dominance over our lives by establishing a new Year 1948. Those whose jobs have been destroyed by Amazon and Uber and Airbnb are invited to fight back in the only way that can possibly by living as if the internet had never been invented.The hold of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and their ilk starts to loosen as the revolutionary example of Factory 19 spreads. Can nostalgia really defeat the future? Can the little people win back the world? We are about to find out. ‘Like Orwell, of whom he has written so brilliantly, Dennis Glover’s work is charged with courage, intelligence and purpose. He is the complete writer, and one made for our times.’ —Don Watson‘Savagely hilarious and unlike anything else you’ll read this year. It boils with the anger of the present moment.’ —Rohan Wilson
462 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2020
16 people are currently reading
303 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Glover
17 books23 followersDennis Glover was educated at Monash and Cambridge universities and he has made a career as one of Australia's leading speechwriters and political commentators. His first novel, The Last Man in Europe, was published around the world in multiple editions and was nominated for several literary prizes, including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. His second novel, Factory 19, was published in 2020, and his newest novel, Thaw, is forthcoming.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
October 6, 2021
This is a great book. In it, the author innovatively explores whether the invention of the computer has actually made humans better off and he does this with great wit, historical understanding and economic insight. Highly recommend!
March 4, 2021
It had a great premise but I just didnt care for the characters at all and it hit a really weird point of no return about 3/4 of the way through.
January 5, 2021
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Factory19 by @dennisglover
Glover’s Australian dystopian novel, is certainly Orwellian in nature and inspiration
...
Set amongst the Tasmanian landscape, Factory 19, also looks to the past, imagining an isolated industrial colony reclaiming a time stolen from them by the digital age. It is the year 2022, monopolistic Big Tech reigns supreme, digital devices are ubiquitous, and many people are burnt out by the gig economy’s “endless, exhaustive hustle for survival”
...
In response, Paul Ritchey (also a speechwriter) contracts the world’s first allergy to technology – diagnosed as “digital proximity anxiety” – and is forced to relocate to the low-tech plains of Hobart, Tasmania. But this isn’t Hobart quite as we know it. Faussett announces the opening of a new industrial colony in Hobart titled Factory 19. This community will remain fixed in the past, Faussett claims, eschewing the “inadequacy of the present” for the “golden age” of the 1940s. (Their Year Zero is March 1948, the month before the advent of the first mainframe computer.)
...
Nostalgia and the pursuit of happiness are two of Factory 19’s most prominent themes
...
Factory 19 also draws attention to the limitations of this utopian vision of a static past. It isn’t long before Faussett’s halcyon arcadia begins to fray at the edges, and the rosy tint of nostalgia starts to fade
...
Steeped in historical detail, Factory 19 is both a social commentary on the malefic indifference of the digital age and a criticism of neoliberalism’s deleterious effect on the working class
...
Loved beginning the year with Australian novel
...
Have you #read this #book? What did you think?
Factory19 by @dennisglover
Glover’s Australian dystopian novel, is certainly Orwellian in nature and inspiration
...
Set amongst the Tasmanian landscape, Factory 19, also looks to the past, imagining an isolated industrial colony reclaiming a time stolen from them by the digital age. It is the year 2022, monopolistic Big Tech reigns supreme, digital devices are ubiquitous, and many people are burnt out by the gig economy’s “endless, exhaustive hustle for survival”
...
In response, Paul Ritchey (also a speechwriter) contracts the world’s first allergy to technology – diagnosed as “digital proximity anxiety” – and is forced to relocate to the low-tech plains of Hobart, Tasmania. But this isn’t Hobart quite as we know it. Faussett announces the opening of a new industrial colony in Hobart titled Factory 19. This community will remain fixed in the past, Faussett claims, eschewing the “inadequacy of the present” for the “golden age” of the 1940s. (Their Year Zero is March 1948, the month before the advent of the first mainframe computer.)
...
Nostalgia and the pursuit of happiness are two of Factory 19’s most prominent themes
...
Factory 19 also draws attention to the limitations of this utopian vision of a static past. It isn’t long before Faussett’s halcyon arcadia begins to fray at the edges, and the rosy tint of nostalgia starts to fade
...
Steeped in historical detail, Factory 19 is both a social commentary on the malefic indifference of the digital age and a criticism of neoliberalism’s deleterious effect on the working class
...
Loved beginning the year with Australian novel
...
Have you #read this #book? What did you think?
November 3, 2020
Factory 19 is an audacious novel: Dennis Glover is channelling George Orwell!
Written in the same style of unadorned prose (but not quite with Orwell's economic word count), Glover's satire on nostalgia for the old economy might have the Occupy Movement in its sights, but it's also an unabashed critique of the way we have become trapped in the digital economy.
The story is this: in the setting of a very near future, Dundas Faussett a.k.a. D.F., a charismatic man of extreme wealth sets up Hobart as a model economy, based entirely on how things were in the pre-digital age which he has designated as 1948. (Yes, the inverse of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). His fiefdom has no laws, only his vision and his powerful will. (Which is eventually challenged by an increasingly fractious wife who is less tolerant and more wary of subversion than he is). The new society at Factory 19 operates like an idealised version of the postwar era: everyone has a job in his factories—which use materials and methods from 1948, to make products from 1948, for people who work in the old hierarchical worker-and-boss structures... with pay and conditions that can only be dreamed of in today's gig economy.
The story is narrated by Paul Richey, who was recovering on lo-tech Bruny Island after a nervous breakdown caused by working for a politician in the always-available relentlessly-digital demands of the 24/7 news cycle.
And what was GoFA? Reminiscent of Hobart's MoNA and the dependence of Tassie's tourism industry on it, GoFA is D.F.'s Gallery of Future Art, the plaything of this whimsical uber-wealthy man who became bored with making money which is obviously how a lot of billionaires problems begin.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/11/03/f...
Written in the same style of unadorned prose (but not quite with Orwell's economic word count), Glover's satire on nostalgia for the old economy might have the Occupy Movement in its sights, but it's also an unabashed critique of the way we have become trapped in the digital economy.
The story is this: in the setting of a very near future, Dundas Faussett a.k.a. D.F., a charismatic man of extreme wealth sets up Hobart as a model economy, based entirely on how things were in the pre-digital age which he has designated as 1948. (Yes, the inverse of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). His fiefdom has no laws, only his vision and his powerful will. (Which is eventually challenged by an increasingly fractious wife who is less tolerant and more wary of subversion than he is). The new society at Factory 19 operates like an idealised version of the postwar era: everyone has a job in his factories—which use materials and methods from 1948, to make products from 1948, for people who work in the old hierarchical worker-and-boss structures... with pay and conditions that can only be dreamed of in today's gig economy.
The story is narrated by Paul Richey, who was recovering on lo-tech Bruny Island after a nervous breakdown caused by working for a politician in the always-available relentlessly-digital demands of the 24/7 news cycle.
Surrounded by my wind-up mechanical clock, AM-FM radio, vinyl long-playing records, cassette player, books and the weekly printed broadsheet they flew in for me from overseas, my mind slowly recovered. Like a soldier back from war, I still had the occasional nightmare. For example, I would sometimes kick out in my sleep against imaginary robotic vacuums that were cornering me. But the simple therapy of living as my grandparents once had worked wonders. And after three years of such safety — I'll skip over that almost entirely uneventful period to save the reader — I found myself ready to return, tentatively, to civilisation. I couldn't yet live surrounded by the digital economy, so rather than send me to a modern city, they sent me to Hobart.
Before I offend any residents of that fine city, now recovering from all the trouble that followed, I'd better explain what I mean.
After Dundas Faussett closed GoFA, it caused the city's economy to fall like a Concorde with empty fuel tanks. The sort of decline that had taken a couple of decades to ruin the world's once-great industrial cities wrecked Hobart in a matter of months. (p.28)
And what was GoFA? Reminiscent of Hobart's MoNA and the dependence of Tassie's tourism industry on it, GoFA is D.F.'s Gallery of Future Art, the plaything of this whimsical uber-wealthy man who became bored with making money which is obviously how a lot of billionaires problems begin.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/11/03/f...
April 9, 2021
It's always refreshing to read a dystopian novel that isn't set in America! This is set in Australia, written by an Australian author and was a lot of fun to read! It's a clever satire about the problems of the digital economy and nostalgia for the way things used to be. It is 2024 and an Elon Musk type character called Dundas Fausset creates a community in Hobart, Tasmania - March 1948 (before the first mainframe computer was invented). Its a kind of utopia where everyone has a job in a factory and make tangible products with unions and pay and employment conditions which is in stark contrast to today's gig economy. However, as time progresses is 1948 the "perfect time" or is it the 1960's of social progression or the 1970's??? I enjoyed this book and thought the author did a clever job of covering serious issues in a satirical way. Because as we know no matter what era there are those that benefit and those that don't.........
December 21, 2020
Interesting premise, lots of good ideas and amusing moments, but I was never fully engaged. Which is more a reflection on me than the author.
December 16, 2020
Absolutely brilliant book. Wonderfully written; gripping story; great themes; well drawn characters. Reminded me of earlier Max Barry - somewhat left leaning satire on nostalgia, capitalism & big business, but also willing to have a poke at environmentalism as well. And a real page turner. Definitely one of the best books I've read in 2020.
March 21, 2021
An interesting premise which initially amuses but fails to deliver especially after the first two thirds. The characters are not very convincing and whether as satire or social commentary it is too didactic.
October 24, 2020
3 1/2 stars rounded up.
December 8, 2020
Incredibly imaginative and innovative story telling. Very readable.
February 2, 2024
The internet’s ubiquity has changed the world, permanently so. Only fiction can pretend it doesn’t exist. So where are the Luddites for the 21st century?
During the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the Luddites were oath-sworn, machine-destroying technophobes afraid that machines would take their job. In today’s world, often compared unfavourably to Orwell’s Ingsoc, has the Luddite opposition to technological progress stuck around? Or, as Thomas Pynchon predicted in his 1984 essay Is it OK to be a Luddite?, have computers become so ‘‘user-friendly that even the most unreconstructed of Luddites can be charmed into laying down the sledgehammer and stroking a few keys instead?’’
In his second novel, Factory 19, Dennis Glover imagines a Luddite sanctuary built in Tasmania, away from the digital world. Like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Glover’s Factory 19 speculates a future very similar to our own, but with minor adjustments. Today, the moustachioed dictator has been superseded by a disembodied Big Brother: algorithms, thinking machines, big data. Orwell’s slogan "Big Brother Is Watching You" appears truer than ever before. Satellites track us, the internet blueprints our identity, conversations are monitored, and smartphones eavesdrop.
Dennis Glover – son of factory workers, and speechwriter and policy advisor for the likes of Julia Gillard, Kim Beazley, and Mark Latham – moonlights as an Orwellian aficionado. His previous novel, The Last Man in Europe, dramatised the last days of Eric Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, during which, dying of tuberculosis, he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Far from being a mere panegyric on Orwell’s work, The Last Man in Europe was an excellent novel that read like the autobiography Blair never wrote. Glover also wrote in 2003 a political appraisal of Orwell’s ongoing influence on Australian politics, Orwell’s Australia.
Factory 19 tells the story of an insurgency against the digital revolution. It’s 2022, Tasmania, and the island has become a ghost town after the closure of an avant-garde art gallery, the Gallery of Future Art, set up by noveau riche Dundas Faussett. The gallery’s mantra was the ‘‘inadequacy of the present’’ and included installations such as the ‘‘Big Fella’’, a six-foot penis that ejaculated visitor-donated semen every hour, on the hour.
After two years of silence, Faussett begins his most daring project: he opens a fully operational factory in Tasmania that simulates life during March 1948, a month before the first commercial mainframe computer was released. The factory advocates the ‘‘theory and practice of non-digital living’’ and shuns all technology post-1948.
Digital refugees begin to populate the island and embrace anachronistic life. But is Faussett’s factory, which retro-engineers Remington typewriters and Spitfire planes, another postmodern artwork? Or does he sincerely mean to break away from the digital world and create a prelapsarian time portal?
Continue reading: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
During the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the Luddites were oath-sworn, machine-destroying technophobes afraid that machines would take their job. In today’s world, often compared unfavourably to Orwell’s Ingsoc, has the Luddite opposition to technological progress stuck around? Or, as Thomas Pynchon predicted in his 1984 essay Is it OK to be a Luddite?, have computers become so ‘‘user-friendly that even the most unreconstructed of Luddites can be charmed into laying down the sledgehammer and stroking a few keys instead?’’
In his second novel, Factory 19, Dennis Glover imagines a Luddite sanctuary built in Tasmania, away from the digital world. Like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Glover’s Factory 19 speculates a future very similar to our own, but with minor adjustments. Today, the moustachioed dictator has been superseded by a disembodied Big Brother: algorithms, thinking machines, big data. Orwell’s slogan "Big Brother Is Watching You" appears truer than ever before. Satellites track us, the internet blueprints our identity, conversations are monitored, and smartphones eavesdrop.
Dennis Glover – son of factory workers, and speechwriter and policy advisor for the likes of Julia Gillard, Kim Beazley, and Mark Latham – moonlights as an Orwellian aficionado. His previous novel, The Last Man in Europe, dramatised the last days of Eric Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, during which, dying of tuberculosis, he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Far from being a mere panegyric on Orwell’s work, The Last Man in Europe was an excellent novel that read like the autobiography Blair never wrote. Glover also wrote in 2003 a political appraisal of Orwell’s ongoing influence on Australian politics, Orwell’s Australia.
Factory 19 tells the story of an insurgency against the digital revolution. It’s 2022, Tasmania, and the island has become a ghost town after the closure of an avant-garde art gallery, the Gallery of Future Art, set up by noveau riche Dundas Faussett. The gallery’s mantra was the ‘‘inadequacy of the present’’ and included installations such as the ‘‘Big Fella’’, a six-foot penis that ejaculated visitor-donated semen every hour, on the hour.
After two years of silence, Faussett begins his most daring project: he opens a fully operational factory in Tasmania that simulates life during March 1948, a month before the first commercial mainframe computer was released. The factory advocates the ‘‘theory and practice of non-digital living’’ and shuns all technology post-1948.
Digital refugees begin to populate the island and embrace anachronistic life. But is Faussett’s factory, which retro-engineers Remington typewriters and Spitfire planes, another postmodern artwork? Or does he sincerely mean to break away from the digital world and create a prelapsarian time portal?
Continue reading: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
September 27, 2021
An amusing take on the perils of the digital economy, the ubiquitousness of antisocial media & yearnings for nostalgia. I loved that it was set in Hobart - I'm listening to Gould's Book of Fish as well, so I'm spending a lot of time in Tassie.
To escape the modern world of disconnectedness & futility, an eccentric billionaire has set up a utopian settlement based on the time he thinks was most beneficial to humanity, March 1948. It has it's wonderful high points but the cracks begin to appear and the disadvantages of the past also become apparent.
An interesting satire, easy-reading & entertaining. I did like his point about becoming "friends" with complete strangers, to the detriment of relationships with actual people & the positive benefits to the human psyche.
3.5 stars
To escape the modern world of disconnectedness & futility, an eccentric billionaire has set up a utopian settlement based on the time he thinks was most beneficial to humanity, March 1948. It has it's wonderful high points but the cracks begin to appear and the disadvantages of the past also become apparent.
An interesting satire, easy-reading & entertaining. I did like his point about becoming "friends" with complete strangers, to the detriment of relationships with actual people & the positive benefits to the human psyche.
3.5 stars
January 15, 2021
When political speechwriter Dr Paul Richey suffers a very public nervous breakdown and develops an "allergy" to the modern world he thinks his life is over. He moves to Hobart, which since the closure of the only economically viable business, the "Gallery of the Future/GOFA" has become a technological dead zone. But then out of the blue, eccentric billionaire and former GOFA owner Dundas Faussett returns to town to set up a new project.
Welcome Factory 19, where every day is 1948. Dundas establishes an old-fashioned post-war factory, replete with typing pools, tea ladies, mechanical workshops, and traditional shipping. There's a job for everybody and a purpose-built 1948 style town. Dundas creates what he considers to be the ideal society, with 1940s everything, but with some elements of modern thinking (gender equality for example). What could go wrong?
Readers familiar with recent Australian politics and social history will recognise some of the characters in this very entertaining and highly amusing satire.
The story is set in the near future and is narrated by Paul, who describes the development of Factory 19, and the lives of all within. The book is easy to read, entertaining, and often funny. There are many moments where you almost wish that you were living with them back in 1948...but then again...
Welcome Factory 19, where every day is 1948. Dundas establishes an old-fashioned post-war factory, replete with typing pools, tea ladies, mechanical workshops, and traditional shipping. There's a job for everybody and a purpose-built 1948 style town. Dundas creates what he considers to be the ideal society, with 1940s everything, but with some elements of modern thinking (gender equality for example). What could go wrong?
Readers familiar with recent Australian politics and social history will recognise some of the characters in this very entertaining and highly amusing satire.
The story is set in the near future and is narrated by Paul, who describes the development of Factory 19, and the lives of all within. The book is easy to read, entertaining, and often funny. There are many moments where you almost wish that you were living with them back in 1948...but then again...
April 20, 2021
Hilarious, clever, interesting, very well written. I read it over a weekend. I just couldn't stop.
March 18, 2021
Unsurprisingly seriously Orwellian 😆 I thought it was pretty good nonetheless
April 30, 2023
God and Man invent paradise, ruined by women and weak men, yadda yadda themes the bible you get it. Honestly a pretty good read. Seemed a little rushed at the end but still enjoyable
January 16, 2021
A twist on the Orwell novel 1984, Glover’s book is set in 2022 and instead explores the possibility that things were better in the past - 1948 in fact. A ship sails up the Derwent to Gofa (the gallery of future art) and a whole lot of secretive building goes on. Shortly thereafter, all those left adrift by the recession are offered full employment and a new chance of a productive and happy life at Factory 19 - all they have to do is live exactly as people lived in 1948 - sans mobile phones, tablets, computers etc. At first this seems like a veritable utopia - what could possibly go wrong? - but inevitably the wheels start to fall off. A lot less economic with words than Orwell’s offering this is a clever and audacious book. Recommended.
January 14, 2021
This was a good story and week written.
May 3, 2021
I really liked the premise of this book, I really thought it had great potential. And when I sat down to write this review I was thinking 3 stars, but when I came to it, I just couldn't do it.
Factory 19 never really took off for me. There were too many inconsistencies and issues that were simply ignored. I struggled to get past the fact that they made their version of 1948 one in which women had equal rights and standing, but they encouraged smoking. No thought was given to the pollution and damage caused by restarting factories with 1948 technology.
What did ring true was the lack of cultural diversity (Factory 19 was very white) and gender diversity - although maybe those who didn't fit cisigender norms would simply not be attracted to Factory 19 and it's promise of a simpler time.
The ending too was very abrupt.
I wanted this to be engrossing and thought provoking. Instead I found it unbelievable and inconsistent.
Factory 19 never really took off for me. There were too many inconsistencies and issues that were simply ignored. I struggled to get past the fact that they made their version of 1948 one in which women had equal rights and standing, but they encouraged smoking. No thought was given to the pollution and damage caused by restarting factories with 1948 technology.
What did ring true was the lack of cultural diversity (Factory 19 was very white) and gender diversity - although maybe those who didn't fit cisigender norms would simply not be attracted to Factory 19 and it's promise of a simpler time.
The ending too was very abrupt.
I wanted this to be engrossing and thought provoking. Instead I found it unbelievable and inconsistent.
April 14, 2021
Interesting premise to escape the digital age with a return to 1948 and the inability of people remain consistent to that era. The ending with the Hempies, drones etc was all a bit odd and disappointing.
November 30, 2020
3.5 stars
May 5, 2021
In a rapidly deteriorating and vaguely dystopian Hobart of 2022, Paul Richey, a man whose breakdown during parliamentary question time resulted in him throwing a laptop at the Prime Minister and developing something that could only be described as an allergy to the modern world; observes as a rusty ship sails into the desolate harbour and pulls up to unload it's cargo at the former site of the famous Galley of Future Art, once owned and ran by long since elusive billionaire Dundas Faussett.
Speculation grows among the dwindling population, that DF, as he was known, had returned to ~save~ them. And, in his own way, he has. DF has had the idea to return the world, or at least his small part of it, back to the best of times. March 1948. And thus, we enter Factory 19. A utopia from the digital age, from the gig economy, from alienation and debt. The inventions of the twenty first done away with and a return of old fashioned family time, food and some values... but not all. And to this burgeoning society, Paul Richey has a front seat.
There's something compelling about this story, even though most of our characters aren't entirely likeable, they are deeply fascinating. Written as a satire, I feel like this book is trying to say a lot... a critic of the rose tinted nostalgia glasses we wear when remembering the "simpler times" of the past, especially the formative years of our lives, while stuck in the prison of the digital age and how for all of us, those simpler and better times vary for everyone. As well as an acknowledgement that humans are intrinsically, at this point, unable to work together for the common good of society because of some selfish individuals convincing others that their version is a better one. And a theme that increases its presence throughout your read is that those in power will not give it up easily.
Negatively, this book is very white, male and straight. Two of the most interesting characters are the two dominate woman within the narrative and while they are well characterised and do have their own journeys they still feel very secondary to the men of this story, even though, Paul and DF are very passive in their own ways. It's possible with a tiny bit more attention paid to their development, they may have been more well rendered characters especially how much Bobbie had to do with the initial conception of Factory 19.
However I did find it a very interesting read and something I might be thinking of for quite some time.
Speculation grows among the dwindling population, that DF, as he was known, had returned to ~save~ them. And, in his own way, he has. DF has had the idea to return the world, or at least his small part of it, back to the best of times. March 1948. And thus, we enter Factory 19. A utopia from the digital age, from the gig economy, from alienation and debt. The inventions of the twenty first done away with and a return of old fashioned family time, food and some values... but not all. And to this burgeoning society, Paul Richey has a front seat.
There's something compelling about this story, even though most of our characters aren't entirely likeable, they are deeply fascinating. Written as a satire, I feel like this book is trying to say a lot... a critic of the rose tinted nostalgia glasses we wear when remembering the "simpler times" of the past, especially the formative years of our lives, while stuck in the prison of the digital age and how for all of us, those simpler and better times vary for everyone. As well as an acknowledgement that humans are intrinsically, at this point, unable to work together for the common good of society because of some selfish individuals convincing others that their version is a better one. And a theme that increases its presence throughout your read is that those in power will not give it up easily.
Negatively, this book is very white, male and straight. Two of the most interesting characters are the two dominate woman within the narrative and while they are well characterised and do have their own journeys they still feel very secondary to the men of this story, even though, Paul and DF are very passive in their own ways. It's possible with a tiny bit more attention paid to their development, they may have been more well rendered characters especially how much Bobbie had to do with the initial conception of Factory 19.
However I did find it a very interesting read and something I might be thinking of for quite some time.
February 12, 2021
‘Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your smartphones.’
Hobart, 2022. A city in recession, the future looks grim. And then, one day, a rusty ship sails down the Derwent River to the site of the once famous, but now abandoned Gallery of Future Art, known as GoFA.
What on earth is going on?
Our narrator is Paul Richey:
‘I was the first confirmed case of something called ‘digital proximity anxiety’ – DPA – which the media inevitably dubbed ‘smartphone shock’.
Paul lived on Bruny Island in a low technology environment, to recover from a breakdown brought on by the relentless pressure of the 24/7 media cycle working for the unreasonable and demanding Prime Minister X. Eventually, he recovers well enough to move to Hobart. Paul tells us about the brave new world established by Dundas Faussett (D.F. as he is known), a world in which the future holds the past. D.F. founded the now abandoned GoFA and returns to Hobart to transform the site into a 1948 factory.
‘I contemplated my situation. I’d woken up in 2024 and was now about to go to bed in 1948.’
Yes, 1948. Specifically, March 1948, before the first commercial mainframe computer and the establishment of the RAND Corporation. Before the internet, before smartphones, before Amazon. A world in which factories had production lines with people making things. Everyone has a job: making goods from 1948, using the materials available at the time. Measurements are imperial (again) and the men use Brylcreem. My parents and grandparents would have been right at home.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Factory 19. The sort of world you used to live in.’
But the transition back to the past might not be as easy as D.F. envisages. Not everyone wants to give up 21st century technology, and the success of the factory, with its growing export markets, brings a different set of problems.
‘It was one thing to re-create the past, but another altogether to get it to work efficiently.’
This is a brilliant novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed the way in which Mr Glover recreates the past, makes us nostalgic for what seem to be happier days (even those of us who were not born until after 1948). He reminds us that while the present is not always superior to the past, some aspects are not so easily jettisoned.
How does it end? You will need to read it to find out.
‘Remembering is the most powerful political act of all.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Hobart, 2022. A city in recession, the future looks grim. And then, one day, a rusty ship sails down the Derwent River to the site of the once famous, but now abandoned Gallery of Future Art, known as GoFA.
What on earth is going on?
Our narrator is Paul Richey:
‘I was the first confirmed case of something called ‘digital proximity anxiety’ – DPA – which the media inevitably dubbed ‘smartphone shock’.
Paul lived on Bruny Island in a low technology environment, to recover from a breakdown brought on by the relentless pressure of the 24/7 media cycle working for the unreasonable and demanding Prime Minister X. Eventually, he recovers well enough to move to Hobart. Paul tells us about the brave new world established by Dundas Faussett (D.F. as he is known), a world in which the future holds the past. D.F. founded the now abandoned GoFA and returns to Hobart to transform the site into a 1948 factory.
‘I contemplated my situation. I’d woken up in 2024 and was now about to go to bed in 1948.’
Yes, 1948. Specifically, March 1948, before the first commercial mainframe computer and the establishment of the RAND Corporation. Before the internet, before smartphones, before Amazon. A world in which factories had production lines with people making things. Everyone has a job: making goods from 1948, using the materials available at the time. Measurements are imperial (again) and the men use Brylcreem. My parents and grandparents would have been right at home.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Factory 19. The sort of world you used to live in.’
But the transition back to the past might not be as easy as D.F. envisages. Not everyone wants to give up 21st century technology, and the success of the factory, with its growing export markets, brings a different set of problems.
‘It was one thing to re-create the past, but another altogether to get it to work efficiently.’
This is a brilliant novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed the way in which Mr Glover recreates the past, makes us nostalgic for what seem to be happier days (even those of us who were not born until after 1948). He reminds us that while the present is not always superior to the past, some aspects are not so easily jettisoned.
How does it end? You will need to read it to find out.
‘Remembering is the most powerful political act of all.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
January 31, 2021
A brilliant start: Speech writer to the PM, clearly a send-up of Rudd, Paul Richey, freaks out in Parliament at the huge pressure frenetic emailing from the PM puts on him: “Let me sleep, you fucker, let me sleep!” he shouts at the PM throwing his lap top at the Speaker. He is not the only one. Since analogue went digital, ordinary people have been under enormous stress: their saviour is a David Walsh clone, Dundas Fausset, who works out that 1948 is the happiest least stressful time ever – just before RAND started up. He is right, extending a little: postwar reconstruction up to the 70s, when digitalisation and neoliberalism imprisoned ordinary people, was a very successful period. Fausset planned to create a 1948 Utopia, choosing sleepy, clapped out Hobart as the ideal spot. He resurrected ships, machinery, everything from that time and built Factory 19 as the centre, first starting with constructing the Tucker 1948 Torpedo (an amazing car) and the FX Holden. His reconstruction of the 1948 when I was 13 is very nostalgic and accurate. It was a golden time:people were happier, cooperated, prosperity was spread evenly (although we didn’t think so at the time). Everything went very well at first, but baby Timmy develops TB and the only available drug – Fausset refuses later drugs, we must live in 1948 – is Streptomycin, which has dreadful side effects: Timmy dies. Dissolution begins to set in. Then Art, the archetypical shop steward, creates trouble in the workforce. The development into the 60s then the 70s evolves, like each period has the seeds of what replaces it. The plot gets out of hand after this. Very clever extrapolations, some a little obvious, others not so, environmentalism developing into a radical and violent anti-progress movement. Each era whether 1948 or 2021 has both the seeds of its successor and even its destruction. Clever, but over the top: compared with 1984 (Glover has written about Orwell), and although you agree with the overall message, you can’t take it seriously, whereas 1984 was indeed horrifying.
October 26, 2021
This book is set in the near future in a dystopian world where the state of Tasmania has become depopulated due to the the digital economy. The story revolves around Paul Richey, a refugee from this digital world. Paul was a speech writer for the Prime Minister, which meant he was on call 24/7. Paul has a mental breakdown which causes him to run amok causing a lot of destruction in the Parliament building. He is diagnosed and then sent to rehabilitate in a disused casino tower in Hobart where many other similar refugees are housed. They while away the hours reading or staring out the panoramic windows. After weeks or observing unusal activities on the former grounds of GoFA, the art gallery set up by the billionaire former gambler: Dundas Faussett, D.F. for short. And one day they hear something not heard in many a year - a factory whistle. This motley group in the tower make their way down the river to see what is going on to find a huge village and complex that turns out to be a series of factories - Factory 19, disassembled in Michigan brought back and reassembled. The vision of D.F. is to take people back to March 1948, they time he has considered everything changed - the time before there was no digital devices. Computers existed however, so expensive that they were the purview of governments and big universities. And D.F. does it. He has reinstated the currency of Sterling, set pay levels at the time, serve fresh food as it was then. Fashion was 1948, culture was 1948, and a strong union to represent the workers was established as in 1948. And the society works in harmony for a time. The rest of the world notice and want to buy the quality goods they are manufacturing. And more people came to live a 'better' life. This was a great story of how life used to be lived before social media and mobile phones became the place where people spent their time instead of at community groups and meetings face to face. And of course big tech fought back. A story of imagining a society based on nostalgia and a life well lived.
June 24, 2025
What in the 198….Animal Farm have I just read? If you’ve read any of the dystopian classics aforementioned, then the storyline to this will seem both quite old and brand new at the same time.
Hobart in the early 2020s, and things are on the downslide. Even the former bright spot of the town, the Gallery of Future Art is shuttered, and there has been no word from its enigmatic billionaire owner, Dundas Fausset. Then, into the harbour, a rusting hulk appears and unloads its cargo - to the eventual aim of Factory 19, a thought experiment writ real, in which the participants live, work, and behave as if they were in 1948 (this is selected because it’s the year of a noted book release - 1984), and initially all is jolly and good, the workers are productive, the products are well received, and the onliners like Amazon, Apple, Google and their ilk are hurting as the world realises that the past is a good place to visit. However, cracks appear, and all is not as good as it seems. Sure, life is simple, families have more family time, but there are certain benefits to the modern world. Eventually there is uprising, and full on rebellion. But you’d need to read that to find out how and why.
Superb WhatIf book, if you’ve ever hankered for a simpler,earlier time. As I did with the 80s. But: no decent hair product for us curly girls…
Hobart in the early 2020s, and things are on the downslide. Even the former bright spot of the town, the Gallery of Future Art is shuttered, and there has been no word from its enigmatic billionaire owner, Dundas Fausset. Then, into the harbour, a rusting hulk appears and unloads its cargo - to the eventual aim of Factory 19, a thought experiment writ real, in which the participants live, work, and behave as if they were in 1948 (this is selected because it’s the year of a noted book release - 1984), and initially all is jolly and good, the workers are productive, the products are well received, and the onliners like Amazon, Apple, Google and their ilk are hurting as the world realises that the past is a good place to visit. However, cracks appear, and all is not as good as it seems. Sure, life is simple, families have more family time, but there are certain benefits to the modern world. Eventually there is uprising, and full on rebellion. But you’d need to read that to find out how and why.
Superb WhatIf book, if you’ve ever hankered for a simpler,earlier time. As I did with the 80s. But: no decent hair product for us curly girls…
August 1, 2024
It's a pity that we inevitably compare 'Factory 19' with '1984'. Glover is a known fan of George Orwell. He's in good company (with me, anyway). I was born in the year Orwell wrote his masterpiece. 1948. However, 'Factory 19' has some echoes or nods to '1984', but Glover's book probably deserves to stand on its own as an attempt to envisage a different world. In this case, that period between the Second World War and the Sixties.
In Australia, this was a period in which the middle class boomed. The long reign of the Liberal Party under Menzies brought something resembling small-L values, even if the politicians of the day were only a step away from colonists. Mum and Dad could afford to buy a house and a car, even if it was only a Renault 750.
Factory 19's protagonists attempt to reinvent this period in the present. The result is a story with many twists and turns, something quite surprising. I enjoyed it.
In Australia, this was a period in which the middle class boomed. The long reign of the Liberal Party under Menzies brought something resembling small-L values, even if the politicians of the day were only a step away from colonists. Mum and Dad could afford to buy a house and a car, even if it was only a Renault 750.
Factory 19's protagonists attempt to reinvent this period in the present. The result is a story with many twists and turns, something quite surprising. I enjoyed it.
January 30, 2021
A man-made island becomes the first place on Earth to completely ban digital technology, ultimately establishing a new year Zero: 1948 - For anyone who has lost their jobs to Uber, Amazon, even robotic checkout assistants, they are invited to inhabit this new world that is Factory 19.
The aim of the game for Founder and Multi-Billionaire Dundas Fausett, is to completely phase out technology so that the world can experience what was once the 'Golden Age' of the world; where children can go outside and play instead of being reliant on a tablet or smart phone and where jobs are still offered to humans instead of robots.
Dundas Fausett has seen the past and "It works!"
But there are obstacles when trying to create a Utopian Society that refuses to acknowledge modern achievements, inhabited by progressives who, against the likes of their 'fearless leader' Dundas Fausett, don't ALL believe that the 40s are the best decade to base a society around.
The first 50-100 pages really set the stage for a totalitarian showdown, Orwellian style, but the execution lacks momentum and heart. from page 100-250, it feels like Groundhog Day with little to no story progression. With such a great premise it's disappointing to endure over 300 pages with no payoff.
The message is clear; with society reliant on technology and the internet to get by, reviving elements of the past is an exciting, enticing idea that [in very few aspects] could reconnect humankind... but change is inevitable, and progression has gifted us not only longer life expectancies but reduced poverty among MANY other things - basically be careful what you wish for.
'Surveillance Capitalism' or striving for a better world? You decide
The aim of the game for Founder and Multi-Billionaire Dundas Fausett, is to completely phase out technology so that the world can experience what was once the 'Golden Age' of the world; where children can go outside and play instead of being reliant on a tablet or smart phone and where jobs are still offered to humans instead of robots.
Dundas Fausett has seen the past and "It works!"
But there are obstacles when trying to create a Utopian Society that refuses to acknowledge modern achievements, inhabited by progressives who, against the likes of their 'fearless leader' Dundas Fausett, don't ALL believe that the 40s are the best decade to base a society around.
The first 50-100 pages really set the stage for a totalitarian showdown, Orwellian style, but the execution lacks momentum and heart. from page 100-250, it feels like Groundhog Day with little to no story progression. With such a great premise it's disappointing to endure over 300 pages with no payoff.
The message is clear; with society reliant on technology and the internet to get by, reviving elements of the past is an exciting, enticing idea that [in very few aspects] could reconnect humankind... but change is inevitable, and progression has gifted us not only longer life expectancies but reduced poverty among MANY other things - basically be careful what you wish for.
'Surveillance Capitalism' or striving for a better world? You decide
March 24, 2021
Factory 19 is essentially a thought-experiment in the format of a novel. I say that because it’s an intriguing idea, but I feel like the characters are forced into doing particular things so that the plot plays out in a particular way, rather than the story being led by the characters themselves. Many events are similarly-unrealistically squashed into place: a factory designed for making cars and cravats suddenly manufactures trucks and tomato soup at a week’s notice; a senior Prime Ministerial staffer only has political nous when it suits the storyline; and a Gen Y character was “raised by an iPad” even though iPads weren’t available until 2010...?!
Nonetheless, it’s an entertaining and discussion-worthy thought experiment. I’m hoping some of my friends will read this book so that we can argue about what Factory 19 really says about human nature and the inevitability of the future.
Nonetheless, it’s an entertaining and discussion-worthy thought experiment. I’m hoping some of my friends will read this book so that we can argue about what Factory 19 really says about human nature and the inevitability of the future.
January 6, 2025
Do you ever fantasise about the time before the digital world took over all aspects of your life?
I recently read a book set partly in 1993 and it felt so relaxing with characters looking things up in microfiche, making calls with landlines, talking to people etc.
This book starts with the narrator having a digital breakdown and needing to be separated from anything with a microchip.
He’s encouraged to join an experimental society based on a past era, March 1948 to be exact.
Set in Tasmania, this is a fast paced dystopian/utopian drama about the power and the challenges of humans returning to a past time (with allowances for the gender revolution).
Would make for a great bookclub discussion.
I recently read a book set partly in 1993 and it felt so relaxing with characters looking things up in microfiche, making calls with landlines, talking to people etc.
This book starts with the narrator having a digital breakdown and needing to be separated from anything with a microchip.
He’s encouraged to join an experimental society based on a past era, March 1948 to be exact.
Set in Tasmania, this is a fast paced dystopian/utopian drama about the power and the challenges of humans returning to a past time (with allowances for the gender revolution).
Would make for a great bookclub discussion.
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