The Drone Future-Present

 “People’s Future of the United States,”by 25 fiction writers, 2020

Evidently we have none. 

This book's title riffs off of Howard Zinn's "People's..." series, but it falls short.  Lots of this poetic future fiction seems too precious or vague or confusing to make sense.  But there are broken outlines in these short stories.  In the future, dystopia rules.  The United States is gone by civil war, plague or environmental destruction and global warming.  The stories are centered on a diversity approach to characterization.  Class is invisible.  Production is magical and the fictional characters are indigenous, gay, lesbian, Arab, immigrant, African-American, angry women, Latinix, trans.  They make appearances outside of any notion of class or movement or politics, like some kind of fantabulist dues check-off. This is what the writing market demands at this time in liberal history evidently. 

Most of the people in these stories are hunkering in the ruins under an omnipotent and militarized surveillance state intent on getting rid of knowledge.  Not a stretch.  Yet some stories don't even attempt to be in the future.  There is an occasional high fantasy of change, or an individual rebellion, a bit of sabotage, a childish riot.  But impotence seems to be the main theme.  No future, no power, no organization, no nothing.  

The stories are full of drones, walls and detention camps, implanted chips and Dollar Stores.  Memorizing books like Bradbury’s 451.  Imaginary names for repressive forces and technological horrors.  Two undergrounds, the Matriarchs and some unknowns.  Not-so-futuristic gay conversion therapy.  Echoes of the sterility problems in Handmaid’s Tale or Children of Men.  (Why this fear of a dearth of babies?!) An MSNBC take on Russian hacking, involving Russians in the Cleveland Municipal Government!  A Universal Basic Income future that conflicts with a cranky capitalist, which is the funniest of the lot.  Hologramic faces and clothes that hide the real person.  A burning Seattle. Dragons get ridden, like Game of Thrones.  One story has nods to racist robot algorithms, Lord of the Rings sentient trees and nods to the digital world of The Matrix.  Another is a women's version of Ground-Hog Day.

Most of these bits are not so different from the present.  Omar el Akkad, who wrote the book American War, writes one of the best stories, as it tries not to be too ‘magical’ and ‘science-fiction-y.’  Attempts at poetic alchemy fail if there is no real ‘ground’ to a story, instead dwelling on a vaporous gruel.  A good number of these efforts at speculative fiction are in that style.

At any rate, if you like snapshots of speculative fiction, you might like this collection and the diversity within.  Looking into the future is valuable, but it is really a projection of present politics.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left:  “American War” (Akkad); “Hunger Games,” “The Matrix,” “Blade Runner,” “The Road” (McCarthy); “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (Dick) “Red Star” (Bogdanov);“War for the Planet of the Apes” and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” “The Heart Goes Last” and “Handmaid’s Tale,” (both by Atwood); “Good News” (Abbey); “World War Z,” “Cloud Atlas,” “The Dispossessed” (Le Guin); “Maze Runner,” “Divergent – Insurgent,” “Children of Men”(James). 

  

And I bought it at May Day Books! (Please knock if door locked due to crime.  Covid hours 1-5 PM.  Mask up!)

The Kulture Kommissar / December 19, 2020

Happy Solstice and Great Convergence on the 21st!