From Thaddeus Rutkowski's five page introduction to 2040: "According to one defination, a fable is a story that conveys a moral.
In this book, there are numerous lessons about what is valuable (friends, family, and the freedom to work as one wishes). This ability to work as one dreams is well dramatized in the final parts of this book. There are also warnings about what can devalue our lives (a reliance on exclusive technological communications, a bowing to the ever-watchful State). As with all good fables, these lessons apply to all of us."
"As with most speculative fiction, Piasecki is not writing about some strange future worlds; he is offering ideas, through metaphor and storylines, taht apply directly to our present world. This remarkable projection to 2040 is absolutely a stunningly sustained technique to help us see through today." The book entertains you in 10 chapters, totally 224 pages, with 22 woodcut illustrations of the characters as rendered by a world famous artists of the recent past.