Albert knocks the socks most queer Science Fiction. It is passionately sexual, yet like D. H. Lawrence's classic novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, thoroughly political—showing that power, sex, and politics are forever entwined.
More of a commentary on its time than the future, still it predicted much of what would happen in the fifteen years since its initial publication in print form. Set in the year 2025, when the "White Christian Party" has taken over America, Albert was originally published in 1995: it completely predicted the far right, fundamentalist swing of the US under George W. Bush, as well as the advent of gay marriage as a major issue confronting America.
Who is Albert? The son of two Same-Sex fathers and an unknown mother on the tribal planet Ki, raised in the midst of deceit, war, and murder, reborn again on Earth, the son of two lesbian mothers and an unknown father, Albert is the gay Everyman at the crossroads of two worlds and two centuries. Like all of us, he is attempting to find his own story, his roots, his life, and to define himself and the tribe he comes from.
Albert is indeed the story of Man, and the last part of the chronicles of the extraodinary planet Ki, beginning with the book Mirage and going on to Circles, where power defines sex and love in its most enduring form, as the Goddess Ki Herself keeps all of life in control.
“A saga comparable to Lord of the Rings,” Men’s Style, New York.
Albert, or The Book Of Man advances a unique understanding of same-sex existence: homosexuality is part of the untamperable balance of life on Earth. Death, even in the face of AIDS, does not separate gay men but places them in a continuous chain of consciousness.
"Remember this, friends and neighbors: Hate in the name of Jesus is better than Love in the name of anybody else! That’s something I am not ashamed of, and I call that the truth!” Brother Bob Dobson, Leader of the White Christian Party.
Even for Science Fiction, Albert or the Book of Man, first published in 1995, several years after the administration of George H. W. Bush (Bush One) and the beginning of the “culture wars” in America, was years ahead of its time. It predicted the far-right swing in the U.S., and the rise of such politicians as George W. Bush, Jr. (as well as Dick Chaney, and Karl Rove) and his usurping of fundamentalist Christianity toward political aims and goals; the U.S. invasion of foreign governments to advance these goals; and the arrival of right-wing politicians of various guises using populist “market-driven” fundamentalism, such as Sarah Palin.
Albert also predicted the idea of “gay reserves,” places where gay men and lesbians might be free to marry and have more liberated lives—an idea we saw in the division of the country into “blue states” and “red states,” as well as localities that permit gay marriage and those that seek to destroy the validity of it. In his conceptualization of the White Christian Party founded on an anti-gay, anti-birth control, and antibortion platform, Perry Brass saw ahead of the period when Albert was written, in the mid-90s, to a more threatening and dangerous world, the one we presently live in.
He also predicted the advent of “cyber-warfare,” “cyber-poisoning,” and other forms of high-tech violence that we are now starting to experience with the introduction of bombs and other devices activated by cell phones.
In 1995, when Albert was first published, cell phones were still Dick Tracey ideas; Brass completely conceptualized their position in today’s world, as well as the introduction of global positioning systems tracking the movements of drivers throughout the country. Although Albert is definitely a book of queer science fiction, Brass’s ability to see into the future is uncanny. He has done this in the midst of a story that is passionate, endlessly exciting, and always on the move. It is about a divided America, but it will never divide your attention.