[Hard-hitting ensemble cast + idealistic, rousing story + great-power rivalry + social experiment of the future + reflections on human nature + alternate history + wild imagination]
“Tanks can defend territory. Ideals can win hearts.”
Faced with a rigid system, a crushing disadvantage in the Cold War, and a brain drain, the supreme leader of the Northern Frontier Alliance overruled all opposition and staked the fate of the nation on a wild, ultimate plan:
On the frozen plains of the north, the entire nation would build a city devoted solely to humanity's finest minds and highest ideals: New Dawn City, a “testing ground for communism.”
The West's most eminent scientists defect there, saying, “Only here can I reach out and touch the truth.”
The enemy nation offers astronomical sums, kidnaps people, and wages a smear campaign, but New Dawn City's radiance only shines brighter.
When the enemy nation tries to copy it, they discover... they can build neither a Sergei nor that kind of “freely given loyalty.”
(At its heart, this is a hard-hitting political science-fiction story about ideals, sacrifice, protection, and the evolution of civilization. It tells how an imperfect force in the real world can nurture and defend a perfect ideal with its own hands, and win the future through it.)
