According to the New Yorker, Nader includes several real people in the novel, including Warren Buffett, Barry Diller, and Ted Turner, and he telephoned them up to let them know that they were in the book. Nader felt sensitized to this issue, because he's been featured as a character in other people's novels, including Greg Bear's Eon, which the New Yorker says

portrays Nader as "a saintly figure, a hero in a wasteland," whose followers win landslide elections in North America and Western Europe (in 2011) and bring down the Soviet Union (in 2012). "You see, that's science-fiction utopia," Nader said. "Nobody can give that any credibility."

Some people, including one famous billionaire, were a bit "snippy" about being included in Nader's book. But Yoko Ono and Warren Beatty were thrilled:

Yoko Ono, who in the book invents a logo called Seventh-Generation Eye that causes millions of people suddenly to shed their political apathy, sent Nader a brief reply. ("I think it is so sweet of you to write a book about somebody who resembles me. I don't mind at all, of course. Does she look like a tiny dragon?") Warren Beatty, whom Nader envisions running for governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger, and winning, with sixty-three per cent of the vote, blurbed the book. Nader, he wrote, was showing the world "how good he thinks things could be."

So just how weird is this novel? Here's how the San Francisco Chronicle describes the plot:

The story begins in 2005, not long after Hurricane Katrina. A secret gathering is convened by Buffett at a Maui mountain retreat, where 17 very wealthy people agree to take back the country they think has been betrayed.

They give speeches, write books, organize community action groups. They infiltrate corporate boards of directors, stage demonstrations for the environment and better wages. They start a People's Chamber of Commerce, advocate changing the national anthem to "America the Beautiful" and dream up a politicized parrot, "Patriotic Polly," that becomes a media folk hero.

"Fiction is a way to liberate the imagination," Nader says, "to see what could happen if 17 billionaires and super-rich people really put their minds to it, along with a parrot, and took on the existing business power bloc and the politicians in Washington who serve (it)."

The super-rich name themselves "Meliorists," believers that people can make the world better. They persuade the elusive Warren Beatty to run against Arnold Schwarzenegger for California governor. They conspire to force Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to allow its workers to unionize. They push for universal health care. They start a new political party, dedicated to publicly financed elections. They are so quick, and clever, their foes can't catch up.

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Famous names: George O'Hanlon, Penny Singleton, Janet Waldo, Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, Don Messick

Crunchy goodness: 2

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: The show's first season aired in 1962-1963, and its second and third seasons were made in 1985-1987. There were also three animated TV shows, including The Jetsons Meet The Flintstones and Jetsons: The Movie. Robert "Spy Kids" Rodriguez is reportedly in talks to direct a live-action Jetsons.

Stunt casting: Don Messick, who played Astro the dog, also played Scooby Doo and Muttley with a similar "ruh-roh" vocalization.

Design breakthrough: The Jetsons' future city has come to exemplify a kind of retro-futurist architecture, with pin-cushion shaped houses high up on stilts and space-needle-esque buildings. When design critics want to refer in passing to a super-stylized flying-car vision of future urban life, they use The Jetsons as shorthand for a whole style.

The Jetsons Unofficial Home