review of
Mack Reynolds's Day After Tomorrow
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 12, 2019

This was different from any other Mack Reynolds novel I've read. For one thing, it was close to a conventional spy novel; for another, it had an _____ ending. Let's start off w/ termination w/ extreme prejudice of the beginnings of an independent miners union in the USSR:

""The men in the mines there were trying to start a union."

"The minister knocked back his vodka with a practiced stiff-writes toss. "Union?" he said in surprise. "Surely they already have a union. Miners? Of course they have a union."

""I do not mean the State union," Simonov said, crossing his legs. "They were trying to establish a union independent of control by the State. They had various greivances, including a desire for better housing and medical care.. They even had plans for a strike."

"His superior poured himself another drink. "What's it coming to?" he growled. "You'd think we were in the West. What did you do?"

"Ilya Simonov grunted his version of humor. "Well, I could hardly send the ringleaders to Siberia, in view of the fact that they were already there. So I arranged for a bit of an accident."" - p 16

Larry Woolford is a subversive-suppressor in the US secret police. He's also a conformist.

"Steve Hackett himself was a fairly accurate carbon copy of Woolford, barring facial resemblance alone. He wore Harris tweed, instead of Donegal. Larry Woolford made a note of that. Possibly herringbone was coming back in. He winced at the thought of a major change in his wardrobe; it'd cost a fortune. However, you couldn't get the reputation for being out of style." - p 24

Yes, there are people like this. Yes, they are idiots.

Woolford & Hackett are assigned to a counterfeting case.

""What makes you think your pushers are amateurs?"

""Amateur," Hackett corrected. "Ideally, a pusher is an inconspicuous type, the kind of person whose face you never remember. It's never a teenage girl who's blowing money at fifty dollars a crack."

"It was time to stare now, and Larry Woolford obliged. "A teenager!"" - p 27

I'm originally from Baltimore. B/c of this, any mention of Baltimore attracts my attn & then I tend to associate the written version w/ my own experience.

""Susan Self, 418 Elwood Avenue." He looked up and said to Larry, "That's right off Eastern, near Paterson Park in the Baltimore section of town, isn't it?"" - p 35

This bk was published in 1976. In 1976 I lived in Fells Point, the neghborhood west of Paterson Park. Eastern Ave was a main drag running thru both neighborhoods. At that time the American Nazi Party bookstore was on or near Eastern Ave. Whenever I think of 'working class barracks' I think of Paterson Park & the next eastward neighborhood, Highlandtown. All rowhomes, formstone fronts, painted door screens, very few trees. The neighborhood was one of the nazi hold-outs. This was an example of the neighborhoods in Baltimore where some of the residents were notorious for never leaving more than a 3 or 4 block radius from their home. All they needed was the liquor store & whatever passed for a food store. Such neighborhoods were insanely fearful of 'outsiders'. The nazi bookstore was shut down in the late '70s for non-payment of taxes. Reynolds's choice of this area as the HQ for his resistance organization is quite strange since they're very much the opposite of nazis. I wonder how deliberate that was.

I'm an autodidact so my interest always gets strong when Reynolds promotes similar people.

""Well—briefly does it. It got out a couple of years back that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel fromula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle's change for it. So Ernest Self sued."

"Larry said, "You're being too brief. What do you mean he sued. Why?"

""Because he claimed he'd submitted the same formula to the same agency a full eighteen months earlier and they'd turned him down."" - p 64

"["]He doesn't have any degree. He said he learned to read by the time he reached high school and since then he figured spending time in classrooms was a matter of interfering with his education."" - p 65

"["]Our culture is such that the genius is smothered. The great contributors to our society are ignored, or worse."" - p 97

But what about in the "Soviet Complex"?

"He was, Ilya Simonov had found out, Leonid Mikoyan, son of one of the few Old Bolsheviks who hadn't been purged by Stalin. Leonid Mikoyan owed his position, which he was reputedly incompetent to hold down, to the fact that being the son of an Old Bolshevik in the Soviet Complex was a status symbol unrivaled. At the age of nine he had become a Young Pioneer, another status symbol in Russia; you were a nobody if, as a child, you had not been a Young Pioneer. At the age of fourteen he became a member of the Young Communist League, attaining more merit in the eyes of the elite. And at the age of twenty-six he was made a full-fledged party member. One attains little in the way of position in the Soviet Complex, no matter how competent, unless he is a member of the Party." - p 70

But it wasn't really until he put on the Harris Tweeds that his position skyrocketed.

Is Reynolds referencing an actual person? Perhaps he's meant to be the son of

"Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan" [..] "(25 November 1895 – 21 October 1978) was a Soviet revolutionary, Old Bolshevik and statesman during the mandates of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. He was the only Soviet politician who managed to remain at the highest levels of power within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as that power oscillated between the Central Committee and the Politburo, from the latter days of Lenin's rule, throughout the eras of Stalin and Khrushchev, until his peaceful retirement after the first months of Brezhnev's rule." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastas_Mikoyan

Steve Hackett's wife is a social climbing conformist too & given, once again, the Baltimore connection I found the next section interesting:

"She said, "They've recently moved into a new apartment in the Druid Hill section of Baltimore. It's the name area now. Just everybody is moving there. You're simply not with it, these days, unless you live near Druif Hill Park."

""I don't like Baltimore," he muttered.

""What's that got to do with it? Steve, we've simply got to take an apartment there. Houses have become old hat. We'll be nobodies unless we move to a Baltimore apartment."" - p 85

Well, HEY!, that must be true. I mean Gertrude Stein had a huge house there back in the day. John Waters lived in an apartment building. The proto-Vermin Supreme lived in some sort of building (a 'Jockey Club'). Neil Feather lived in a house. Just as I have to wonder about Reynolds using Patterson Park, an area associated w/ white supremacism at the time, I have to wonder about his using Druid Hill as a status neighborhood.

"Census tracts that have been in persistent poverty for up to five decades are shown in Map 8. Here, too, previously redlined tracts tend to have experienced persistent poverty, with the exception of Inner Harbor. Between 1970 and 2009 in Baltimore, the entire neighborhoods of Penn North/Reservoir Hill, Perkins/Middle East, Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park, and Upton/Druid Hill meet the definition for persistent poverty.

"Persistent segregation is displayed in Map 9. The current racial/ethnic population is also shown as a dot density overlay in order to highlight which census tracts are currently majority White and which are majority Black. All of the census tracts that comprise South Baltimore have been at least 90% White since 1970; all of the tracts in Cherry Hill, Clifton-Berea, Dorchester/Ashburton, Forest Park/Walbrook, Greater Mondawmin, Greater Rosemont, Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park, and Upton/Druid Hill have been at least 90% Black for the past five census periods." - https://societyhealth.vcu.edu/media/society-health/pdf/PMReport_Baltimore.pdf

In other words, as of when this bk was published, it's highly unlikely that white conformist professionals wd be looking to Druid Hill as a choice destination.

The Movement Professor tries to school the conformist cop Woolford on things relevant to class.

"["]Then you have lower-upper, middle-upper, and finally we achieve to upper-upper class. Now tell me, when we get to that rarified category, who do we find? Do we find an Einstein, a Schweitzer, a Picasso; outstanding scientists, humanitarians, the great writers, artists and musicians of our day? Certainly not. We find ultra-wealthy playboys and girls, a former king and his duchess who eke out their income by accepting fees to attend parties. We find the international bum set, bearers of meaningless feudalistic titles, or we find millionaires and billionaires, who achieved their wealth by inheriting it. These are your upper-upper class!"" - pp 100-101

The Movement is behind massive counterfeiting. The police state finds it impossible to understand.

"["]Remember Stalin as a young man? He used to be in charge of the Bolshevik gang which robbed banks to raise funds for their underground newspapers and other activities. But a billion dollars? What in the world can they expect to need that amount for?"" - p 112

"He was astonished that an organization such as the Movement would have spread to the extent it evidently had through the country's intellectual circles, through the scientifically and technically trained, without his department being keenly aware of it.

"One result, he decided glumly, of labeling everything contrary to the status quo as weird and dismissing it with contempt." - p 122

Indeed. It's nice to imagine that the underestimation of the opposition can result in the success of such things as sneak attacks thru hacked data base bios.

"He got the hundred odd word brief and stared at it as it filled the screen. The only items really correct were his name and present occupation. Otherwise, his education was listed as grammar school only, an initial cruel cut. His military career had him ending the Asian War as a General of the Armies and his criminal career record included four years on Alcatraz for molesting small children. Alcatraz! Hadn't it been closed down for years?" - p 127

The Movement is wonderfully clever & intelligent but Woolford, as a social-climbing conformist, is almost entirely w/o scruples. Alas, unlike in every other Reynolds novel I've read, that's presented as the more successfully powerful force. ( )

Looking at the cover and reading the summary on the back cover could lead one to believe they will be reading a good dystopian novel. Wrong!
There is almost no science in this ';science fiction' novel outside of the word rocket and a couple of gadgets that seemed far fetched in the mid-seventies.
It is basically a cheap detective story. ( )