The 88.3 Series by Giles X. Becker
Praise for The Weaponsmaker, Book 1 in the 88.3 series;
“Amazing book! Full of excitement and energy!”
“I could not put it down…the characters are memorable.”
Three novels in the 88.3 series — three different main characters make their way through a collapsing dystopia to either find a remote safe place on the western ocean or fight. Each book covers the same time period, each protagonist faces danger in a different way.
Book 1;
So you live in this dystopia. Actually it’s not all that bad since you were born into the elite class but it is still pretty tedious. You know you’re being spied on and watched and observed but if you keep your head down and don’t screw up you get fifty gallons of water a day and two hours of air conditioning and you live in one of the high exclusive gated places where there is a wind that carves its way over the drought-stricken overheated planet. Down below are the slums. They seem to cover the entire continent. You don’t want to live down there.
You’ve settled down. You used to be fairly wild but you managed to avoid arrest and stay out of the labor camps. Your father is an important man. He had to bribe a lot of police officials to keep your ass out of the penal colonies. You learned your lesson. You have a girl. She’s goodlooking. You’re going to get married and stay settled down the rest of your dreary uninteresting upper-class life. In order to make everything really really boring the Authorities long ago decreed there would be no more numbered years. History is no longer taught. Geography is also on the shit list. It hasn’t rained in like forever. You’re not sure where North is but who cares. You navigate through a world that is living on the technological remains of Old America, which existed somewhere back there in the mists of time when there was rain and open country and green rivers with men fishing from the shores in sloppy hats, free as birds, careless of spying devices, eating egg sandwiches. You’ve seen it in old movies.
Then the incredible happens and there you are — thrown out into the slum-world with nothing but what you have on your back and in your pockets. It’s called ‘a ban order’. They hope you die. You are determined not to. You will find allies and enemies and men who listen to you. It’s okay. If you are not killed first you will get everyone of the men who tore your family apart.
Our hero learns the price of becoming a hero, an insurgent, a killer, a savior — and so do his enemies.
Book 2; Nadia Stepan trundles a supply cart through the big Communications and Entertainment studios in a dead-end job. But she has decided to flee, escape and head for a marvelous island she has seen in a TV advertisement. She may be crazy but she is furtive and determined. Nadia meets the man who will help her; she learns the joy of her tiny bit of wilderness and then of becoming a radio voice, broadcasting messages to the Insurgency at 88.3 FM.
Book 3; Bude Rundel was Alan Reavis’ fight trainer and Nadia’s nemesis. He is as old as war itself, a man of the underground. He sends out the message to his men to rise up and begin the war when the time is right. He learns the terrible demands of war and leadership — encouraged by the voice of a girl in the heavens.