2030: The Real Story Of What Happens To America

Is this what’s in store?

June 12, 2030 started out like any other day in memory—and by then, memories were long. Since cancer had been cured fifteen years before, America’s population was aging rapidly. That sounds like good news, but consider this: millions of baby boomers, with a big natural predator picked off, were sucking dry benefits and resources that were never meant to hold them into their eighties and beyond. Young people around the country simmered with resentment toward “the olds” and anger at the treadmill they could never get off of just to maintain their parents’ entitlement programs.

But on that June 12th, everything changed: a massive earthquake devastated Los Angeles, and the government, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, was unable to respond.

I’ve always enjoyed stories that take place in the future but my one disappointment was that the future books described never came. We’re not on other planets, there are no flying cars, and the only robots we have in our homes just sweep the floor. So I wanted to write about a future that I thought could really happen. People ask me when I tell them the title of the book, ‘Are we all dead?’ The good news is, no. We’re still here. And I even think the future in my book is strangely hopeful, although I’m sure there will be people who strongly disagree.

– Albert Brooks, on what inspired him to write 2030

Quotes and Reviews

“As a comedian and filmmaker, the very gifted Albert Brooks has specialized for more than 30 years in cooking up quandaries with no ready solution except humiliation. His often ingenious first novel is no exception to that rule.”
– New York Times Book Review

“Comedian and filmmaker Brooks welcomes the reader to the year 2030 in his smart and surprisingly serious debut….Brooks’s mordant vision encompasses the future of politics, medicine, entertainment, and daily living, resulting in a novel as entertaining as it is thought provoking, like something from the imagination of a borscht belt H.G. Wells.”
– Publishers Weekly

“With “2030” Mr. Brooks has made the nervy move of transposing his worrywart sensibility from film to book. Two things are immediately apparent about his debut novel: that it’s as purposeful as it is funny, and that Mr. Brooks has immersed himself deeply in its creation.”
– New York Times

“The novel is a revelation, painting a caustic, unsettling and only occasionally comic portrait of a country plumb down on its luck.”
– Los Angeles Times

“Albert Brooks is a keen and critical social observer, attested by his work as screenwriter, director, actor, and comedian. His first novel, “Twenty Thirty: The Real Story of What Happens to America’’ is an inspired work of social science fiction, thoughtful and ambitiously conceived, both serious and seriously funny.”
– Boston Globe

“Required Reading!”
– N. Y. Post

“An intriguing vision of America’s future.”
– Library Journal

“Brooks’s vision of the future is credible and compelling.”
– Booklist

Editor’s Choice.
– New York Times Book Review

Albert Brooks Interviews

The Films of Albert Brooks