Make You Real
A Mask for the General
By Lisa Goldstein
19 May, 2022
Big Hair, Big Guns!
Lisa Goldstein’s 1987 A Mask for the General is a stand-alone near-future SF novel.
By 2012 America’s banks were computerized and networked. One ambitious thief’s malicious software could and as it happens, did, bring the United States’ entire cybernetic and financial edifice down overnight. In the days after the Collapse, General Otis Gleason had no choice but to take control, first of America’s nuclear weapons and then of the nation as a whole. Or at least that’s what he claimed.
Nine years after the Collapse, the American economy is a pale shadow of what it once was. Gleason is convinced that the problem cannot be his obsessive micromanagement; the problem must be the American people. Each day brings new regulations aimed at guiding easily misled Americans back towards wholesome conformity. Despite laws and harsh punishments, America is still plagued by non-conformists, particularly in the Bay Area town of Berkeley.
Seventeen-year-old runaway Mary is determined to be one of those non-conformists.