Locklands (The Founders Trilogy, #3)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

This is the curious tension of a pandemic: nothing about your experience is unique or exceptional, for it is shared by so many; and yet, you feel utterly alone. The final installment of a series is often about stress, and closure. The characters are put through agony, and they ask themselves, “Will we make it? Are we going to get out of this? How?” And then the author, with their farsighted wisdom, carefully ties up all the loose threads, delivers everyone to the place where they are meant to be, and the great curtain gently falls. It was a strange thing to write this story while waiting for our own deliverance, our own closure. Sometimes it was very hard to make the words come. And yet, I felt compelled to finish. For if the Founders Trilogy is about anything, I suppose, it is that the innovations of our species do not yield dividends on their own. They only bring prosperity when they are paired with a society, a culture, or a people who can use them to their utmost. A road cannot bring travelers if people refuse to let it be built. A printing house cannot bring wisdom if its readers decide they mostly prefer lies. And there is no balm or medicine that can bring health and happiness if the sick refuse to take it. If we find ourselves unable to take advantage of the many gifts that our brilliance has bestowed upon us, then it is my suspicion that there is no tinkering that can make those gifts function as they ought. Rather, it is upon the people to change themselves: to r...

These are the author's reflections on writing the book during the pandemic and how the themes of the series dovetail with the way the pandemic and our reactions to it unfolded.