Revolution/Evolution

So the other day I was thinking about my novel, RoboNomics. Sheesh, what else do I think about these days?

But for the longest time I've been constructing this novel with the idea that I want people who read it to be scared. I want them to think about the trials of my main character, Andrea Anderson, and the fact that her intellectual industry job (schoolteacher) has become obsolete because of a robot with advanced artificial intelligence and think, "Geez, that could be me."

I wanted it to be a novel about how dystopias happen. There are no many science fiction narratives out there in the world that are about dystopias after the bad shit has gone down. And a lot of robot and artificial intelligence take overs follow this format. So on top of RoboNomics being a metaphor for the 2008 global economic crisis (something no one could have imagined back in 2006 or so), I wanted it to go from a normal world, familiar to a reader in say, modern Toronto, to a dystopia.

So far, some the comments I've had on the story have been more along the lines of "That would never happen here," than of "oh my god that could so easily happen to me," which is interesting and not all that surprising. But then I think of the thousands of times this sort of thing has happened before: the total breakdown of a political system, a social contract. I think of the 1990s, when Yugoslavia went from having the world's highest rated quality of life to being a war zone. My point is, stranger things happened in reality than could ever occur in my fiction...

But there's a word for that, isn't there? Whenever a social or political system changes, wherever it slides from comfortable apathy to dystopia: Revolution. Upheaval that lasts only a little while or a long while, until a new political agreement is reached (or imposed) and a new normal is established.

And so, here's my playlist for today -- songs for a robotic revolution of a different kind:



And don't mind the bit of music geekery book ending the playlist. I just had to include a song performed what? 50 years apart. Perfect.