Hello friends,
Many of you expressed an interest in my Optimistic Future Fiction, so I wanted to share that my novel Well Housed is published today, and to offer a free download of the ebook for anyone who wants to read it. The world I have envisaged incorporates many of the ideas discussed in WEAll and these forums provided me with lots of material to draw on 
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Here’s the blurb:
It is 2050 and Johannesburg, South Africa, got it right. The city offers universal basic income, guaranteed housing, lush green spaces and excellent public facilities. Personal peons (smarter than smartphones) and AI administrators run everything.
But success has a drawback: everyone wants to live in the golden city.
Thulisile Duma and her colleagues in Housing plan to densify the last remaining pockets of entrenched privilege: twelve leafy northern suburbs. Will the residents cooperate? The peons are accused of lying. Oliver Dias, the city’s data expert, must investigate. Moral dilemmas ensue.
This thoughtful and cosy novel previsions the workings of a benevolent city administration - a collaboration of human and machine intelligence dedicated to long-term human wellbeing.
I’ve had some 5-star reviews on Goodreads (Well Housed - a 2050 novel by Judy Backhouse | Goodreads) and here are extracts from two of them:
‘It was fun to imagine living in such a place as this future Johannesburg, where peons (personal electronic assistants) tend to your every need, politics are collaborative, and everyone is housed, well-fed, and encouraged to follow both individual and common goods.’
‘The book took me from skepticism (“there’s no way this could ever happen”) to genuine curiosity (“what if something like this could work?”).’
I’m really hoping that my fiction can contribute to conversations about better futures, so I’m very curious to hear from this community whether it works in that way or not and also what themes you would like to see in future stories. So please download a copy of the ebook from Judy’s Makings (https://shop.judybackhouse.com) using the coupon WH100WEALL at checkout and let me know what you think. (Valid until the 31st December.)
Judy
PS: You can find out more about my fiction at https://judybackhouse.com/fiction and subscribe to my quarterly newsletter, Making it Up, at Subscribe for a story. My newsletter goes out in January, April, July and October each year and includes what I am working on, books I am reading, ideas I am exploring and a short story.
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