The Last Underclass

Plot

Product Description By the 2150's, brilliant computers have automated production, middle management, and services, forcing much of the population on welfare. Genetic engineering will extend life, yet the already crowded earth can't tolerate a fall in the death rate. Society must dispose of its surplus people. A surgeon's "resource" squad tries to kidnap young "Welfie," John "QUIET" Griffin as a "body transplant" for a rich old man. While escaping, Quiet rescues LADY ANNE, whose body and identity an aged dowager seeks. Both then fight to save the "useless" poor from body snatching, scientific, experimentation, and genocide. They battle geneticists, neurologists, and politicians. Can thrusting science be regulated, be challenged? Dean Warren attended UCLA, the London School of Economics, and Harvard. He sold aircraft in Southwest Asia, served in the State Department, and capped his career as Strategic Planning Director for the Electronics and Missiles Group of Martin Marietta. Review "Dean Warren has written a fascinating science fiction story that moves through time and space at lightning speed." -- The Compulsive Reader, July 2, 2002"The Last Underclass is the kind of book that redeems the whole self-publishing print-on-demand trend. Well-written and thoughtful..." -- Curledup.com , July 18, 2002A fast action novel of intrigue, Warren is a master at expanding the results of recent neurological research. -- Linda L. Dunlap, author and nurse. July 11, 2002Read THE LAST UNDERCLASS. -- MyShelf.com, November 1, 2002Warren manages to tell a story heavy in dialogue and political manuevering without losing a sense of speed. -- RAMBLES,a cultural arts magazine, August, 2002 Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Exerpt from first chapter: Over the next one hundred fifty years the world's population doubles and stabilizes at an overcrowded twelve billion. In the meantime, automation by brilliant computers has created two distinct classes: creative "Achievers" and unemployed "Welfies." The latter barely survive in ghettos on government rations. # Slim, eighteen-year-old John "Quiet" Griffin backed toward the doorway of his ghetto cubby on that April afternoon of the year 2152. His mother sat propped up in bed, her hair streaked with a new white. He felt flushed. She stabbed at him with her blue eyes. "Damn it, Johnny," she said. "What was that about? Not like you to kiss me." Quiet knew of a mansion full of valuables, saw a chance to break in. Maybe he could pocket enough to buy his mother a newly grown pancreas. Without answering, he retraced his steps, bent his average-sized body to kiss her again, then left. # "More rations! More rations!" the mob bellowed, almost as one. Welfies milled in the square before the four-meter wall that enclosed Starman's mansion and grounds. Quiet heard verbal thunder from streets that paralleled the wall, and from other squares a kilometer or more away. He guessed that twenty thousand of the local poor surrounded the compound. San Angeles, the megacity combining old San Diego and Los Angeles, must contain ten million Welfies. Lots more where those in the square came from. He wrinkled his big nose at the stench of unwashed bodies and at oxygen-poor air exhaled through unbrushed teeth. People wore faded handouts from the back doors of the wealthy or ration-issue jump suits. The pavement underfoot was cracked. Loose pieces disrupted walking. Peeling stripes of old white wash hung from the bottom level of the eight story tenements that lined the rest of the square. Only the compound's wall seemed maintained, showing no crack or nick. It shined with gleaming, gray paint. Patches of green hedge bordered the wall, up to the armor plate of the double gate. A red puff of smoke rose from the center of the square. "We want Starman!" the crowd roared. Quiet nervously brushed-back short, sandy hair, and pulled at his bluish shirt. He felt nauseated--from the stink, heat, a