It’s July 2023, and I have just realised it’s over a year since I wrote my blog on “Taking stock”. At that time I had decided to take some time out from writing to pursue a research project and set up a database for the mass of information I had accumulated on various different academic areas of interest. The database is now virtually complete, or at least in a position I can move on to write again.

A year ago I published my last novel, “The Healer” and I know I need to get back to writing again. It’s not a lack of motivation, or ideas that stopping me. It just an avalanche of distractions, observations and concerns.

Since the end of the pandemic the world seems to have gone insane or at least fundamentally changed. The internet has been hijacked by trolls and fact-checking zealots, and corporations have capitulated to left-orientated philosophies, such as ESG and critical race theory. In this brave new world of ours, discourse is not tolerated and much like the French Revolution anyone who is not part of the mob is automatically cancelled. Free-speech is now labelled the province of the far-right. And yet these new ideas are quite alien to the common man/woman who just wants to earn a good living and protect their family (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness).

Science fiction is often about speculating about the future. But what will it look like if these trends continue? Will we own nothing and be happy? Will the automobile be something that are children see in a museum? Will cash disappear and be replaced by a a programmable currency and a social credit system? Will we live like drones in fifteen minute cities and feed off processed insects? And what of trans-humanism? Will we be fed state propaganda through are phones or directly into chips in our brains? All these ideas already exist today and more alarmingly are promoted by some powerful interests.

As a sci-fi writer, should I be building these future worlds in the same way Orwell did? Or should I stick to battling alien invaders, or travelling to new planets? I have never been a particular fan of dystopian sci-fi, or using fiction to pursue a political agenda. I have always felt that my writing should show the best of humanity. After all, most readers want a positive emotional experience. The hero/heroine should struggle, but should ultimately win in the end.

So you see my dilemma. I want to see good overcome evil. I want the hero to win against the odds. But how realistic is that in these possible depressing future worlds?

Let me know what you think.