How would it be to live in a city where one could not dream or imagine freely? – Laplatia – Or, The City That Could Not Dream

[Alexandre]

My second fiction is called Laplatia – Or, The City That Could Not Dream.

Laplatia is a city in the near future where natural resources for the generation of electricity have exhausted. In this society mankind invented machines to capture electricity from dreams and imagination’s brain waves to turn it into society’s electrical power. So, no one can freely imagine or dream anymore. How would it be to live in a world like that? Laplatia resembles our society, where our thoughts are shaped by the mass media culture. We are all sort of Laplatians in some way. And so I reproduce common current existential anguishes people show in our society in the book. It has something of darkness, of desperation, and of self-questioning.

There are several critiques on the homogenization of our culture. We know how films end, there are sort of “recipes” for writing books and making movies and TV shows. The new is rare. Though much has been debated about canned culture and its consequences, like dehumanization and the distant and impersonal character of human relationships in general, we keep doing things the same. Laplatia aims to provoke those questions in the reader’s mind.

What are your thoughts on these arguments?