This -futuristic- and highly satiric novel is actually set, just like George Orwell's -1984,- not in the future at all but in the present itself, a present that the author (again like Orwell) sets out to portray as it actually is rather than as people have grown accustomed to it in an unthinking acceptance. In -Topiary,- the central character goes by the name of -Plantman.- He earlier worked as writer for an enormous ad agency, but now, having switched careers from -death- to -life- and from -falsehood- to -growth,- he is hired by a company called -Topiary Techniques- to water and otherwise...