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In writing a novel based on our current world situation, what would be your focus?
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Scout
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Apr 29, 2024 09:31PM
You might focus on personalities, conflicts, motivations, injustices, hypocrisy, protests, divisions, scientific advances, free speech, the economy, education, immigration, the arts, conspiracy theories, lawfare, mass hysteria, confusion, etc. Wish I could come up with more uplifting topics. Maybe you can. So what would be the focus (or maybe several) of your novel, based on these trying times?
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Scout, if the book is to deal with the defining issue of our age, it needs to focus on the internet, which would obviously encompass the internet of things, AI and the like too.
It is the internet, above all else, that is changing the way we live and has the most scope to damage/ destroy mankind.
A good starting point for the book would be to ask what would happen if the internet completely crashed - if it was destroyed by a mega internet virus (or whatever).
We'd be completely ...err...banjoyed because everything, whether it be utilities, banking, taxation or anything else is now administered using the internet, with no paper trail.
Ordinary folk would be propelled back into prehistoric times but without prehistoric survival skills. We'd be completely at the mercy of those people who restarted the 'civilisation'.
I addressed these issues in my 2020 novel, Thirty Years from Now.
It is the internet, above all else, that is changing the way we live and has the most scope to damage/ destroy mankind.
A good starting point for the book would be to ask what would happen if the internet completely crashed - if it was destroyed by a mega internet virus (or whatever).
We'd be completely ...err...banjoyed because everything, whether it be utilities, banking, taxation or anything else is now administered using the internet, with no paper trail.
Ordinary folk would be propelled back into prehistoric times but without prehistoric survival skills. We'd be completely at the mercy of those people who restarted the 'civilisation'.
I addressed these issues in my 2020 novel, Thirty Years from Now.
All topics that you mention and more characterize our times indeed. Hard to encompass them all in a novel, that's why I'd switched to non-fic to tackle some of them :)
As follows.[1] Corruption of ruling elites and core social institutions.
[2] Collapse of the rule of law as enforced by the state, rise of private corporate security.
[3] Mass homelessness and poverty.
[4] High tech used to advantage the rich and powerful.
My novels, bar one, could be regarded as a future history, starting off in the very near future (I dated the first one around 2030.) For what it is worth, they were based around Graeme's four points, plus (2) being in part due to excessive government debt, and some terrorism thrown in to get the stories going.
It so happens that we get an entirely distorted picture of the world 🌎, for expose and scandals are extrapolated and underscored while good things are uninteresting and therefore don’t make news 📰. In every system there would be corrupt functionaries and good ones, looking at either is not enough , it’s the complexity of the whole that would convey the reality. Not sure it’s something worth writing ✍️ about though 😎
A story of 300 pages in which various people help old ladies cross the road would not be particularly interesting.
It seems to me that great literature of every age deals with the paradox of the human soul. Why is it that an individual can rise above themselves, but groups will generally degenerate into mobs of vile creatures unworthy of the epithet "Human"?
Interesting thought, but how true is it? Think of all the charitable organizations. When I was young, what people in a suburb did was if a big job had to be done, say laying a concrete drive around a house, all the neighbours would come and shovel stuff, in return for lots of beer at the end. That doesn't happen now, and in many cases we don't even know our neighbours. We do get people together to organize charitable things that have to be done, but this doesn't get much publicity.Could it be that we hear more about the bad stuff?
Why did Oskar Schindler put himself at personal risk to save the lives of 1,200 Jews while tens of millions of his fellow Germans, at best, turned a blind eye and too often aided, even revelled, in the murder?Why does this pattern repeat throughout history?
A good question, indeed. In situations, requiring an action for the sake of others, most people would shrug and say to themselves - “not my problem”, some would join compelling force - government prescription, seeking personal favors while neglecting moral deliberations, and only relatively few - would endanger themselves to help others and go against the tide. How many would intervene helping someone in a trouble on the street?
On the other hand, internet 🛜 makes striking a chord easier with moving images that as often as not designed to promote a fake reality.
Graeme, your topics seem to center around class and economic disparity. How would you address that in a novel? Or is it too complicated to explain? And do most novels begin with a big idea and use story to address it?
Scout wrote: "Graeme, your topics seem to center around class and economic disparity. How would you address that in a novel? Or is it too complicated to explain? And do most novels begin with a big idea and use ..."Class and economic disparity were always Dickens' go-to subtexts.
My just finished novel is a satire on something that afflicts us all in these dark days but I'd rather not say what it is as (to the best of my knowledge) no-one else has done this yet.
Adrian wrote: "My just finished novel is a satire on something that afflicts us all in these dark days but I'd rather not say what it is as (to the best of my knowledge) no-one else has done this yet.Are ISPs intentionally ramping down data speeds at predetermined times in order to increase domestic violence, strokes, and heart attacks?
Interesting question. In 1973, the futuristic novel, "The Camp of the Saints," by French author Jean Raspail was published and caused something of a sensation. The plot centers around in infiltration into the West by flotillas of Third World immigrants. I have heard some contemporaries who discuss immigration issues referring to the book. While Raspail was reacting to the potential loss of French culture and the French language due to unchecked immigration, it is interesting to see how readers might view it through a broader lens today.There have been novels that anticipate the future - Brave New World hints at genetic manipulation; 1984, a slide into totalitarianism and the loss of privacy; Atlas Shrugged to an energy innovation that could be seen as "green" energy; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? suggests AI.
I think some of those concepts are reasonably obvious and many have gone down the various paths. It is what you do with them that counts.
