Future X [Paperback]

Kent Smith (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Holloway House Pub Co (August 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870675494
• ISBN-13: 978-0870675492
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,162,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific sci-fi from Holloway Books, April 25, 2008

By 

Michael L. White "impossiblefunky" (Westland, MI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Future X (Paperback)

The year is 2073. The United States has been divided with parcels of land given to African Americans. These are institutionalized ghettos, surrounded by walls, guarded, and monitored heavily by police (called "Bruisers" for their love of inflicting pain). The story follows two men living in New Watts: Ashleigh and Zeke. Ashleigh is a radical actor who presents street plays based on outlawed books such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X (his great, great grandfather). Zeke works for The Man by day (for which he gets a pass outside of the city) while running a cell of Black Radicals by night.

It's only a matter of time until the two men's paths cross. As it is, the whole book becomes "a matter of time." From the opening scene which sets up a device used by law enforcement to reverse time after a crime has occurred (where the criminal would be arrested for something they intend to do), author Kent Smith introduces a science fiction element which sounds like it might rival the "pre-crime" scenario of Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report." When Ashleigh and Zeke team up, they decide to hijack the time travel device and use it for resetting history, going back to 1964 and encouraging Malcolm X to initiate a Black Revolution.

When Ashleigh finally sees his ancestor, it's the moment when Malcolm X is stabbed in an airport bathroom. Scared out of his wits, Ashleigh pulls off the greatest performance of his life, taking over the life of X. Black Power meets the Space Time Continuum in this insightful take which draws upon Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Future X also strongly recalls Michael Moorcock's sci-fi classic, Behold the Man, in which a time traveler assumes the life of Jesus of Nazareth, bowing to a fate which seems predestined.

Holloway was a notoriously cheap publisher. It's obvious that they didn't spend much (if anything) on proofreading Smith's work. It's dotted with typos, occasional homonym abuse (perfectly understandable), and an occasional misspelling ("looser" rather than "loser"). Luckily, these are easy to overlook due to the story being so compelling.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SERIOUSLY DEEEEEEP !!!!!!!, November 5, 2007

By 

Mr. Amenta (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Future X (Paperback)

As a young Blackman who has been an astute reader since I was a child, I found this book incredible. Kent has a wonderful ability of story telling unlike anything I have read in quite some time. In the book I found this extremely interesting that he fingered the RAND Corporation in experimenting with time travel, Marshall Law and "the outlaw of reading books", just like it used to be back on the PLANTATION............. HMMMM. If you like science fiction, then this is a must have, you won't be able to put it down till your finished.