The World and All Its Warts from James W. Ziskin

 You’re writing a novel set in the current time. Do you include covid, politics, climate change among the background or foreground parts of the environment? If so, why? If not, why?

Yes, I would include Covid, politics, and all the rest in any book set in current times. If I were writing about the early 1940s, would I not feel obligated to mention the little contretemps known as World War II? Did Dickens not expound on the social and labor issues of his time? Street urchins, orphans, and workhous...