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Bat Hardin #3
Rolltown
In Rolltown…, Reynolds has turned his productive imagination towards the growing phenomenon of mobile living in America.
Taking us decades into the future, he tells the story of a world where people have taken to the road en masse, in huge mobile "towns" composed of hundreds or even thousands of inhabitants, attempting to deal with a hostile and over-organized
- GenresScience FictionFiction
165 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1976
3 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Mack Reynolds
509 books43 followersDallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Clark Collins, Mark Mallory, Guy McCord, Dallas Ross and Maxine Reynolds. Many of his stories were published in "Galaxy Magazine" and "Worlds of If Magazine". He was quite popular in the 1960s, but most of his work subsequently went out of print.
He was an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party; his father, Verne Reynolds, was twice the SLP's Presidential candidate, in 1928 and 1932. Many of MR's stories use SLP jargon such as 'Industrial Feudalism' and most deal with economic issues in some way
Many of Reynolds' stories took place in Utopian societies, and many of which fulfilled L. L. Zamenhof's dream of Esperanto used worldwide as a universal second language. His novels predicted much that has come to pass, including pocket computers and a world-wide computer network with information available at one's fingertips.
Many of his novels were written within the context of a highly mobile society in which few people maintained a fixed residence, leading to "mobile voting" laws which allowed someone living out of the equivalent of a motor home to vote when and where they chose.
He was an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party; his father, Verne Reynolds, was twice the SLP's Presidential candidate, in 1928 and 1932. Many of MR's stories use SLP jargon such as 'Industrial Feudalism' and most deal with economic issues in some way
Many of Reynolds' stories took place in Utopian societies, and many of which fulfilled L. L. Zamenhof's dream of Esperanto used worldwide as a universal second language. His novels predicted much that has come to pass, including pocket computers and a world-wide computer network with information available at one's fingertips.
Many of his novels were written within the context of a highly mobile society in which few people maintained a fixed residence, leading to "mobile voting" laws which allowed someone living out of the equivalent of a motor home to vote when and where they chose.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 20, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"Mack Reynolds’ Rolltown (1976) takes place a few decades in the future where democracy has devolved into a meritocracy. The United States has a huge database for every individual and jobs are given based on IQ scores, etc. The most intelligent people get to vote. However, because of the meritocracy all racial tension has virtually disappeared since everyone is judged on their own merits. Those that are not intelligent [...]"
"Mack Reynolds’ Rolltown (1976) takes place a few decades in the future where democracy has devolved into a meritocracy. The United States has a huge database for every individual and jobs are given based on IQ scores, etc. The most intelligent people get to vote. However, because of the meritocracy all racial tension has virtually disappeared since everyone is judged on their own merits. Those that are not intelligent [...]"
February 15, 2025
Mack Reynolds' 1976 Rolltown, whose shorter version appeared earlier in Galaxy as "The Towns Must Roll" in a playful reference to Robert A. Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" of 1940, is an entertaining, not-too-terribly deep and yet still pleasantly provocative novel of a near-ish future United States with communities of ultra-modern mobile homes traveling restlessly across the U.S., Mexico, and now South America.
The community of New Woodstock--a "mobile art colon[y]" (1976 Ace paperback, page 17), actually--is "some fiive [sic] hundred homes strong," plus "auxiliary vehicles spaced periodically between them" (page 10). "[O]n an automated underground ultra-highway in the States" the protagonist's ex-police "electro-steamer could easily maintain a steady five hundred kilometers an hour"--a nice 300 mph, that is--and "[e]ven under manual control..., three hundred kilometers an hour," but "the average home...seldom got much above a hundred kilometers an hour, especially when traveling in a group" (page 12).
Some homes are "what [is] usually called a camper, a very compact bus-like vehicle that combine[s] the electro-steamer and living quarters very neatly" (page 14), while "[m]ost of the homes [are] drawn by fairly modern electro-steamers" (page 10) and thus must be "set up" at the common campsite at the end of each day's travel (page 14). Some are "larger and consequently more awkward" (page 14), but "by far the most luxurious mobile home in Woodstock" is a unit of three "fold[ing] quite compactly underway" when pulled by their "three heavy electro-steamers," with one for "the only two servants" in the town and the other two "joined" at night for the owners (page 47) and boasting "a second floor which telescope[s] down" or up (page 48).
Standard technology includes "Tri-Di screen[s]" (page 48) of various sizes, "automatic bar" (pages 31, 49), "electronic heater" for cooking frozen meals whose very containers and eating utensils also are edible (pages 35-36), and "library TV screen" for "dail[ing] practically any book ever published," as "[l]ong since, the National Data Banks had recorded every volume in the Library of Congress, the British Museum Library[,] and the libraries of every university in the West" (page 36). All cars have video phones, of course, and in another spot-on prediction of our own twenty-first-century world, a person also will carry a "pocket phone" that has "not only a portable TV phone, but your identity number which embraced your credit card, your voter's registration, your military number, what amounted to your post office box, your income tax registration, and everything else in the way of identity, including passport" (page 69).
Using this "pocket phone cum credit card" at one of the ubiquitous "ultra-market[s]" shows, "seemingly, [that] the Australians ate the same food, wore the same clothes, lived in the same type of house[,] and enjoyed the same entertainment as did a South African, an Argentine, or an Alaskan Eskimo" (pages 15-16). Protagonist Bat Hardin, police chief of New Woodstock--"a fairly tall man with a military carriage and a perpetually worried expression" (page 11), who also "had spent...long years in the Asian War" (page 6), including being "battle-commissioned in the Delta debacle" (page 138)--"[i]sn't, he realize[s], particularly happy about the fact" of this worldwide homogenization. "It must have been interesting, in the old days, to be able to witness different cultures, eat exotic foods, sample different drinks, ogle girls attired in saris or sarongs, rather than the now practically universal Western world fashions" (page 16). Indeed, but...well, whatta ya gonna do about it?
Yet what has enabled this American consumer's paradise, in which the "current Per Capita Income" is "[s]omething like $20,000" (page 64), or, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator, more like $108,000 in 2024 dollars? As Bat explains to the stagily helpful question of a non-American resident of New Woodstock, "the full impact of automation hit us," including in the "sales and services" sectors, and "then, of a sudden, the majority of the population became occupationally displaced" (page 23). The little work that remains "requires both I.Q. and education. You need both. I.Q. without education is, of course, worthless, but you need the I.Q. to get the education, in the schools that count, at least" (pages 24-25). "[Y]our dossier in the National Data Banks" (page 25) shows your IQ, of course, and because "[t]here's not enough work to go around," the government, self-congratulatorily termed the "Meritocracy," provides the non-workers with "Guaranteed Annual Income, the Negative Income Tax" (page 24).
Although the shorthand is that the current American democracy is "One dollar, one vote," Bat reminds us that in actuality it is "One earned dollar, one vote" (page 31). That is, "Dividends, rents, pension income, income from a trust; none of them count. The slogan is pragmatism. The theory is, the most useful members have the most voice in running it." At the obvious objection that "the majority of the citizenry is disenfranchised," Bat shrugs that "Democracy is a label. So far as I'm concerned, it's a great idea but there's been precious little of it since primitive times when government was based on the clan and there were few enough people in a society so that all course participate"; he gives another mini-lecture on democracy from "the Golden Age of Greece" through the American Revolution, nominal freeing of the slaves in 1863, and the granting of women's suffrage in 1920 (page 32).
Now, there indeed are a few noticeable lectures-to-the-reader in this book, such that, rather self-deprecatingly, Reynolds even has one of the characters object to Bat, "Goddammit to hell, stop lecturing me largely about things I already know" (page 24). I am inclined, however, to cut the poor fellow some slack in a slim, swift-moving book of only 165 pages, and which now is over 50 years old. Yes, we receive info-dumps about the current American society, the history of democracy, and even, very usefully, the fact that "Mexico's relationship with the colossus to the north has not been a happy one," all the way back to the nineteenth-century wars over the Southwest (page 63), but they indeed are helpful.
It is this latter issue, by the way--the manner in which "the fantastic Negative Income Tax" makes "millions...suddenly free to leave America's overcrowded cities with their slums and ghettos,...swarm[ing]" the U.S., Canada, and now farther south (page 62)--that drives the conflict of the plot. Bat's friend, the steady Ferd Zogbaum, "notice[d] at the border this morning a, well, kind of sullen quality about some of the authorities" (page 35), and, strangely, unlike last time Ferd came, none of "the locals" have come, whether "just to gawk" or even with "souvenirs and such to sell" (page 34). And when the Americans' "fantastic incomes...shame a Mexican, make him appear a beggar in comparison," and "run up the prices astronomically so that [they] can no longer buy even mildly luxurious items" (page 64) while "other nations to the south" begin to feel, as one man says, "Everywhere, everywhere, your damnable mobile cities destroy the countries in which they park" (page 62), trouble can boil over dangerously.
Although it has some quaint old '70s notions like bare-breasted female fashion, and its info-dump lectures can start to feel a little cheesy, and the final wrap-up sure as hell is quick and unjustifiably optimistic, Mack Reynolds' Rolltown nevertheless is an enjoyable and entertaining story that also makes us think about how our society is and could be structured, a very decent 4.5-star read, which of course rounds up to 5 stars.
The community of New Woodstock--a "mobile art colon[y]" (1976 Ace paperback, page 17), actually--is "some fiive [sic] hundred homes strong," plus "auxiliary vehicles spaced periodically between them" (page 10). "[O]n an automated underground ultra-highway in the States" the protagonist's ex-police "electro-steamer could easily maintain a steady five hundred kilometers an hour"--a nice 300 mph, that is--and "[e]ven under manual control..., three hundred kilometers an hour," but "the average home...seldom got much above a hundred kilometers an hour, especially when traveling in a group" (page 12).
Some homes are "what [is] usually called a camper, a very compact bus-like vehicle that combine[s] the electro-steamer and living quarters very neatly" (page 14), while "[m]ost of the homes [are] drawn by fairly modern electro-steamers" (page 10) and thus must be "set up" at the common campsite at the end of each day's travel (page 14). Some are "larger and consequently more awkward" (page 14), but "by far the most luxurious mobile home in Woodstock" is a unit of three "fold[ing] quite compactly underway" when pulled by their "three heavy electro-steamers," with one for "the only two servants" in the town and the other two "joined" at night for the owners (page 47) and boasting "a second floor which telescope[s] down" or up (page 48).
Standard technology includes "Tri-Di screen[s]" (page 48) of various sizes, "automatic bar" (pages 31, 49), "electronic heater" for cooking frozen meals whose very containers and eating utensils also are edible (pages 35-36), and "library TV screen" for "dail[ing] practically any book ever published," as "[l]ong since, the National Data Banks had recorded every volume in the Library of Congress, the British Museum Library[,] and the libraries of every university in the West" (page 36). All cars have video phones, of course, and in another spot-on prediction of our own twenty-first-century world, a person also will carry a "pocket phone" that has "not only a portable TV phone, but your identity number which embraced your credit card, your voter's registration, your military number, what amounted to your post office box, your income tax registration, and everything else in the way of identity, including passport" (page 69).
Using this "pocket phone cum credit card" at one of the ubiquitous "ultra-market[s]" shows, "seemingly, [that] the Australians ate the same food, wore the same clothes, lived in the same type of house[,] and enjoyed the same entertainment as did a South African, an Argentine, or an Alaskan Eskimo" (pages 15-16). Protagonist Bat Hardin, police chief of New Woodstock--"a fairly tall man with a military carriage and a perpetually worried expression" (page 11), who also "had spent...long years in the Asian War" (page 6), including being "battle-commissioned in the Delta debacle" (page 138)--"[i]sn't, he realize[s], particularly happy about the fact" of this worldwide homogenization. "It must have been interesting, in the old days, to be able to witness different cultures, eat exotic foods, sample different drinks, ogle girls attired in saris or sarongs, rather than the now practically universal Western world fashions" (page 16). Indeed, but...well, whatta ya gonna do about it?
Yet what has enabled this American consumer's paradise, in which the "current Per Capita Income" is "[s]omething like $20,000" (page 64), or, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator, more like $108,000 in 2024 dollars? As Bat explains to the stagily helpful question of a non-American resident of New Woodstock, "the full impact of automation hit us," including in the "sales and services" sectors, and "then, of a sudden, the majority of the population became occupationally displaced" (page 23). The little work that remains "requires both I.Q. and education. You need both. I.Q. without education is, of course, worthless, but you need the I.Q. to get the education, in the schools that count, at least" (pages 24-25). "[Y]our dossier in the National Data Banks" (page 25) shows your IQ, of course, and because "[t]here's not enough work to go around," the government, self-congratulatorily termed the "Meritocracy," provides the non-workers with "Guaranteed Annual Income, the Negative Income Tax" (page 24).
Although the shorthand is that the current American democracy is "One dollar, one vote," Bat reminds us that in actuality it is "One earned dollar, one vote" (page 31). That is, "Dividends, rents, pension income, income from a trust; none of them count. The slogan is pragmatism. The theory is, the most useful members have the most voice in running it." At the obvious objection that "the majority of the citizenry is disenfranchised," Bat shrugs that "Democracy is a label. So far as I'm concerned, it's a great idea but there's been precious little of it since primitive times when government was based on the clan and there were few enough people in a society so that all course participate"; he gives another mini-lecture on democracy from "the Golden Age of Greece" through the American Revolution, nominal freeing of the slaves in 1863, and the granting of women's suffrage in 1920 (page 32).
Now, there indeed are a few noticeable lectures-to-the-reader in this book, such that, rather self-deprecatingly, Reynolds even has one of the characters object to Bat, "Goddammit to hell, stop lecturing me largely about things I already know" (page 24). I am inclined, however, to cut the poor fellow some slack in a slim, swift-moving book of only 165 pages, and which now is over 50 years old. Yes, we receive info-dumps about the current American society, the history of democracy, and even, very usefully, the fact that "Mexico's relationship with the colossus to the north has not been a happy one," all the way back to the nineteenth-century wars over the Southwest (page 63), but they indeed are helpful.
It is this latter issue, by the way--the manner in which "the fantastic Negative Income Tax" makes "millions...suddenly free to leave America's overcrowded cities with their slums and ghettos,...swarm[ing]" the U.S., Canada, and now farther south (page 62)--that drives the conflict of the plot. Bat's friend, the steady Ferd Zogbaum, "notice[d] at the border this morning a, well, kind of sullen quality about some of the authorities" (page 35), and, strangely, unlike last time Ferd came, none of "the locals" have come, whether "just to gawk" or even with "souvenirs and such to sell" (page 34). And when the Americans' "fantastic incomes...shame a Mexican, make him appear a beggar in comparison," and "run up the prices astronomically so that [they] can no longer buy even mildly luxurious items" (page 64) while "other nations to the south" begin to feel, as one man says, "Everywhere, everywhere, your damnable mobile cities destroy the countries in which they park" (page 62), trouble can boil over dangerously.
Although it has some quaint old '70s notions like bare-breasted female fashion, and its info-dump lectures can start to feel a little cheesy, and the final wrap-up sure as hell is quick and unjustifiably optimistic, Mack Reynolds' Rolltown nevertheless is an enjoyable and entertaining story that also makes us think about how our society is and could be structured, a very decent 4.5-star read, which of course rounds up to 5 stars.
August 21, 2024
In a future of Guaranteed Basic Income and Negative Income Tax, Bat Hardin and partner Ferd Zogbaum are volunteer peace officers for a thousand-strong rolling arts community called New Woodstock. Created from mobile homes, they are on their way to South America and passing through the small Mexican town of Linares when they are involved in an altercation with locals. This leads to Bat being kidnapped by a local vigilante group of Mexicans, offended by the damage the norte-americanos are doing to their country. With a dash of economic theory and an exposition on the merits (or otherwise) of a Meritocracy, Mack Reynolds tries to convince us that one dollar-one vote is not a sensible way to run a country. (Could be a warning to the world of 2024.) While sneaking out of Linares early one morning they feel they have avoided the revolutionaries, but they are not done with them yet. Segueing into a combat book, Bat and his team must try to fight off the enemy in an ambush. Fairly lightweight stuff from the reliable Reynolds. This is an expansion of The Towns Must Roll, serialized in IF in1969.
September 19, 2019
Reynolds' ability to forecast trends is undercut here by overlong stretches of philosophical discussion often ending with one character saying, "I already know all that".
August 15, 2015
Mack Reynolds is one of those authors I can read over and over again. He has a dystopian view of our future, where more and more folks end up on welfare (here, called "the negative income tax") and how they take to it, banding together in towns made up of motorhomes. (Cue the song by The Who: "Going Mobile") I can't wait to get my books out of storage and read it again.
May 13, 2025
Objectively not very good but I liked the premise very much as an urbanist.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews