The Future Is Now

Once upon a time, I spent many long years working on a now-abandoned multigenerational family novel with storylines set in three time periods. I knew the date of every scene, and those dates were all locked together by the timeline of both the fictional family and real world events. One setting was pure history as far as I was concerned, one was a recent past that I'd lived through, and one was the near future. When I wrote the first draft in 2007, the familiar past era was closer than the imagined future. As I embarked on repeated revisions, on and off for more than a decade, the near future setting grew nearer and nearer. The year it took place (you can guess where this is going) was 2026.

It's a little strange to be in 2026 for real now, after spending so much time in my fictional version. (Of course, existing in 2026 is strange enough on its own.) But the strangeness is mainly numerical, and not from writing any vividly bold predictions about what life might be like now. In early drafts, most of my worldbuilding extrapolated from technologies I thought were cutting-edge. That tended to mean I accurately predicted how those technologies would be used about 18 months out, often before I finished a given draft. As my actual timeline barreled toward my near future, I gave up on any science fictional inclinations.

The major worldbuilding in my 2026 storyline was about a significant earthquake striking the Bay Area, something I never wanted to be predictive about. (But to make sure I'm not psychic, for the record: November 4, 7.5 on the Hayward Fault.) I also wrote the almost-throwaway but important-to-me line "The president was on her way to Oakland" way back before there was any particular woman (from Oakland, no less) who I hoped would be in the White House now. Sorry this game isn't more fun!

Anyway, that novel hasn't been in play for a long while, for many reasons, and that is even less likely to change in a future that's become its past. I only bring it up again to commemorate the weird space 2026 occupies in my writerly mind. And as a cautionary tale for other slow writers planning stories set at a particular point in the near future.

At present, I'm applying my slow writing to a different project. It's the novel my recent blog posts refer to, for some value of "recent" and "refer". I know I haven't said anything about it for months, and I've never shared many details. (Another thing that's strange is having a decade of blog posts about a novel that never went anywhere.) But I've been working steadily away, writing sentences and scenes that may eventually cohere into a finished novel.

This one is set entirely in the future. I've repeated the possible mistake of specifying a year, but I think I'm safe for not catching up this time, since the year is 2132. Spending imaginary time in that farther-out future is fun, and challenging, and definitely requires more meticulous extrapolations than I've ever made before. Not that I'm honestly trying to predict what I think the world of 2132 will be like. As Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in an often-echoed sentiment, "Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive." She wrote more about the idea than just the pithy sentiment, and I recommend the rest of her 1976 Author's Note to THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS.

I reread Le Guin's classic novel this month, and my book club had a wonderful conversation about it. Also in April, I turned 51 and had some delicious birthday celebrations, including a cake that I enjoyed baking. I got to show the world the sweater I've been knitting since last summer. And early in the month, early in the morning, I was woken up by a nearby earthquake that didn't result in anything besides the rude awakening. That can be my quake for 2026, thanks.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Literary Hub, Miranda Shulman describes What Knitting Has Taught Me About Writing: "When I say that every stitch, every word, is progress, I mean that every stitch, every word, is a valuable learning experience, not that they are permanent. When I'm knitting, I'm often following a complicated pattern translated from Dutch to English. It usually takes a few tries to understand what's being asked of me, and if I'm knitting in a dark room (like a movie theater or a dimly lit restaurant) I'll probably make a mistake. Then again, when I'm knitting on my couch at home, I'll also probably make a mistake. There's no way to knit a sweater faster than the time it takes to create the right stitches and understand the pattern. You have to make all the mistakes and be okay with re-doing it until it’s right. That's the process of making. That's dedication to craft. That's discovery."

March Reading Recap

I've still been reading away, enjoying an excellent selection of books:

→ THE SHAMSHINE BLIND by Paz Pardo: Agent Kay Curtida of the Psychopigment Enforcement Agency is investigating a strain of counterfeit Sunshine Yellow pills. This "Shamshine" has infiltrated the local market, causing harm to Depressives who need the real medication. Curtida is glad to have a case with potential for once, because the criminal underworld operating in Daly City and the ruins of San Francisco is small-time compared to the big cities of Boise or Iowa City. (The US's previous big cities were destroyed almost 30 years earlier, when the Falklands Conflict escalated to a world war and Argentina became the dominant superpower through the use of weaponized psychopigments.) But Curtida is out of leads to follow, so she has to turn her attention to a minor case of suicide at a psychopigment pharmaceutical company. As the new investigation continues, she discovers the death involves an unusual pigment she's never seen before, and that this case is more complicated, and more sinister, than it initially seemed.

I was so impressed by the imaginative worldbuilding and well-paced plotting of this speculative detective story. Pardo has constructed such a fascinating world, between the color-based drugs that control emotions and the alternate history that reshapes politics and culture. Details of this world are dispensed gradually, at points that work naturally in the story, as when Curtida listens to the radio while driving around following leads. Curtida is an excellent character who narrates with a distinctive spin on the hardboiled detective style. Her fellow agents and the other characters are great as well, and there's plenty of real emotion in this story where feelings are sometimes manufactured by psychopigments. If you're at all curious about this literally colorful noir novel, I hope you'll check it out.

→ GOOD PEOPLE by Patmeena Sabit is presented as excerpts from a series of interviews conducted with friends and acquaintances of the Sharaf family, or witnesses who encountered them during a significant weekend. The family and the events of that weekend are under investigation by law enforcement, but the reason is kept as a mystery from the reader at first. Before understanding what's happened, we learn about the lives of the Sharafs in the years before. As a young family, they arrived in Virgina as refugees from Afghanistan. The local Afghani community helped them out through hard times, and eventually they thrived, earning a level of wealth that brought envy and scrutiny. The family is close-knit, but there's been trouble with the teenage daughter, who chafes against the strictures of her parents' traditional Muslim expectations. All this background comes into play in understanding the tragic events that are eventually revealed, explained, and then reinterpreted.

This engrossing, carefully constructed novel kept me guessing and pondering. Every time I planned to read just a few of the short chapters, I found it hard to stop. Sabit brings the voices of the interviewees to life, giving the characters distinctive speech patterns and concerns. The scenario is full of ambiguity, and each new perspective nudges the reader's understanding one way, then another, to great effect. There are no clear answers here, but much to think about, and this would be a great book to discuss with a group.

→ ALL THE WORLD CAN HOLD by Jung Yun: September 16, 2001, is a strange time to board a cruise ship, but with travel plans made long in advance, the passengers in this novel embark on a trip to Bermuda. The story follows three characters who all start out feeling conflicted about trying to enjoy themselves during such a terrible time, and who all have personal dramas that keep them from enjoying themselves anyway. Franny is determined to follow through on celebrating her mother's seventieth birthday, with all the traditional trappings of a Korean chilsun, whether or not the rest of the family agrees. Doug, once an actor in a show filmed on this very ship, is appearing as a celebrity because he needs the money, but he has no desire to be back at the site of his drunken past. Lucy was invited on the cruise as a last-minute replacement, but she's afraid she made a mistake in accepting for so many reasons, including that she's supposed to be interviewing for jobs this week. As the cruise's regular schedule of festivities proceeds, the characters grapple with their own concerns, aware of how cut off they are from news of much larger misfortunes.

I was intrigued by the setup of this novel (inspired by the author's real experience) though unsure what to expect. But it didn't take me long to get invested in all three characters and their problems. There's complexity and surprise to how the storylines develop. At times, the story could have been about any cruise, but that felt realistic to the circumstances. Whenever the context of 9/11 returned to the forefront, I found it thoughtfully handled. I liked the writing and the character portrayals, and I may check out Yun's previous novels.

→ LAKE EFFECT by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney opens in 1977 in a well-to-do neighborhood in Rochester, New York. The Larkins and the Finnegans live across the street from each other, and the families are close, each with two teenage children who grew up as friends. Also, Nina Larkin and Finn Finnegan are having an affair. When Nina and Finn decide to take steps to bring their relationship out into the open, they know it will shake up the lives of their families. But they aren't prepared for just how many relationships will be torn apart. Two decades later, there are still more consequences to reckon with.

Sweeney is always skilled at writing about family relationships, and this novel is another strong exploration of characters with complicated and shifting dynamics. Every Larkin and Finnegan family member spends some chapters as a viewpoint character, revealing secrets and grudges that the others don't know about. Not everyone gets the same amount of page time, and I was sorry not to follow some characters in more depth, especially after the time jump. So I would have been happy for a longer version of this novel, but I enjoyed all the story threads and scenes that appear in this one.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Lois Lowry is publishing a new dystopian YA novel this fall, as reported in an interview with People: "For Lowry, this book felt necessary to write for the same reason The Giver's themes — and the themes in Building 903 — resonate so strongly with readers today. 'These are tough times that we live in, with lots of questions about the future,' she tells PEOPLE. 'I'm extremely old, so I lament the fact that I'm not gonna be around to see how this turns out. However, my imagination does that for me.'" (Thanks, Book Riot!)