Quarter 2 Reviews - 13/13

015 Speculative Fiction – Old 

In a matter of months I’ve developed a great delight in the works of Wally K Daly, including his thrilling and dark dystopian story 2004.  Although it’s dated slightly (it’s originally from 1995), it’s still also shockingly current.  At only an hour in length, I felt it could have easily been a series. Crime in London (presumably in the UK?) has reached Frank Miller-Gotham-like levels, and the hysterical Peace Party (which consists of two brothers who are in electronics) is sweeping the nation (with a hint of V for Vendetta).  Quinby, a journalist (the ever-present-in-the-‘90s Bill Nighy), and his colleagues are sniffing the trail of the Peace Party and their sinister machinations when his 16-year-old son, who’s just a little bit of a rebel, gets embroiled in crime.  The British people legitimately put the Peace Party into power, and they began a radical approach to removing those convicted by crime.  It’s frighteningly ingenious—they send everyone from the overflowing prisons “up north” to the exclusion zone where all criminals are stuck within a 50-mile radius to fend for themselves.  A purging of cities’ red light districts bring in the petty offenders into the next zone which is a concentric circle around the first one.  The third zone is reserved for the criminals’ families and conscientious objectors who refused to be bartagged.  As the system is about to be put into place, the play ends ominously.