“The Serpent Underneath” by Julie A. Fragoules describes a “Near Term Dystopia”—what can happen to our society and country if, in the next twenty years or so, things go off the rails. The novel is from the ‘anti-woke’ point of view. The dystopia, the New Republic, (perhaps a wry comment of the political leanings of the magazine of the same name) is an authoritarian socialist government that promotes issues such as extreme environmentalism, ‘anti-Northern European’ political correctness, equality, fairness, wokeness and Community as the norm to aspire to – or else. As we join the story, this dystopia is in the process of pulling everyone into the newly built city and is letting the countryside go fallow. Once in control, the Community plants chips in the brain that can track you, and if you try to escape or otherwise get out of line, can be used to kill you. The New Republic or the Community, as this dystopia calls itself, came about when the world we know fell apart. The reasons for this fall are familiar.  … More “The Serpent Underneath” by Julie A. Fragoules