‘Stealing the Future’ with Max Hertzberg

Marx Hertzberg discuses his proto-utopian spy thriller, which uses fiction to look at the challenges of transforming society into a system based on mutual-aid and grassroots democracy.

With Housmans recent expansion into our Vaults, we have greatly expanded our political fiction stock, and will be adding more fiction talks to our events programme in the near future. With that in mind we are delighted to welcome Marx Hertzberg to discuss his proto-utopian spy thriller, which uses fiction to look at the challenges of transforming society into a system based on mutual-aid and grassroots democracy.

Stealing the Future is the first in the East Berlin Trilogy of crime and spy novels set in a counterfactual GDR – an East Germany that still exists, an East Germany that didn’t collapse in the revolution of 1989, but introduced radical political and economic changes to stay independent.

Stealing the Future is about a “realistic utopia” – it seeks to describe that phase of hard work, hope and (seemingly?) insurmountable challenges. It’s a thought experiment: how could the East Germany of 1989 go from Communist dictatorship to something much more equitable, much fairer and more just than we even dare dream is possible?

Gritty and realistic but hopeful, Stealing the Future gives the traditional crime and spy thriller a revolutionary twist.

Most utopian novels are set in a new environment: perhaps a new planet, an ‘uninhabited’ or isolated island, or some future or parallel place. But the East Berlin Series charts the progress of a society like ours to one with more utopian properties; it maps the changes, the successes and failures of a society navigating by the light of utopian ideals.

Max Hertzberg, onetime Stasi files researcher and more recently a social change trainer and facilitator.
Stealing the Future is his debut novel, having previously co-written and edited A Consensus Handbook and How to Set Up a Workers’ Co-operative.

Between research trips to Berlin and Eastern Europe, Max is working on the next book in the East Berlin trilogy (working title: Thoughts are Free, due out in Autumn 2016). He’s not quite managing to find enough time to scrape a living by doing translations, editing and proofreading.

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