PIW in Fiction

 

While researching my Apocalypse Soon talk, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/08/apocalypse-soon.html, I came across one China Miéville, an author of science fiction and fantasy novels, many with an apocalyptic theme. By apocalyptic I mean the correct sense not the popular one. An apocalypse is not necessarily a time of destruction at the end of the world, but also a moment of revelation, exposure and unveiling, after which the world will be forever transformed, possibly for the better. Miéville's apocalyptic ideas are entwined with his political opinions; he is a Marxist. As you know, I couldn't be more opposed to him politically, but I still find him a fascinating individual; I've read four of his books. In a 2016 live lecture somebody in the audience asked him: "This is a question that occurred to me. You were reflecting on the complexities and difficulties of constructing an impossible world in such a way that the reader can accept the social logic and go with the flow and enjoy it. So this has a political kicker to it; is it feasible to envision a socialist world in that kind of way? There are some classic socialist utopias and some very unconvincing ones; some very naff ones, but is it possible to do that in a way that is not just plausible, like propaganda, but complex, enjoyable and challenging in all the ways that you and we want your fiction to be. Have you ever thought of doing that; and if not, why not?" China summarizes the question for whoever didn't hear the audience member and then responds thus: "To do the depiction of socialism essentially, to do the depiction of a post-capitalist world? Okay, well my go-to answer here is no. I don't think it is. And not only is that radically different for me from saying that it's impossible that it could be created, it is constitutive of believing that it could be created. I am not a person of faith, but I don't take it as a criticism to say at all, I take it as diagnostic to say, because I am a socialist. I am someone committed to a post-capitalist social world and my relationship to socialism is, and this is by no means unique to me, is eschatological, it is part of that kind of millenarian tradition. This is a connection which has been made many many times, but I take it very seriously, very constitutively seriously. It's not just a question of saying one wants a better world, one wants the Big Rock Candy Mountain, although I do not in any sense denigrate the desire for the Big Rock Candy Mountain. (Audience laughs.) I'm quite serious. I think those kinds of dream utopias are quite important, in many cases because of their absurdity; but in this particular question, and this goes back to totality for me, and this is where there is an absolutely rational kernel to the connection between the sort of chiliastic (Christian end times) tradition and the Marxist tradition. It is that if you take seriously social totality, one of those components, along with Mickey Mouse and the exchange rates, is the human mind. That doesn't mean that we are robots programmed by an oppressive totality; but it does mean we are absolutely conditioned by that totality and that we can't think outside it, which for me is one of the reasons that politics often, and I don't mean this in a sectarian fashion, a certain type of anarchist politics, a certain type of ultra-left politics, a certain type of hippie politics, which is predicated on prefiguration is a category era for me. And it is both to honour the totality of capitalism and to take seriously the radicalism of the potential of an alternative, to say that we can't think beyond it. It is in the process of changing it that one might change oneself and start to become someone capable of thinking beyond this shit; and so for that reason no. I think any depiction of a post-capitalist totality will always banalize, domesticate, fail, be unrealistic, be trite or be dull, because it can only ever be a pre-emptively hobbled dream predicated on the now, on what Trotsky calls the social lie; and in a 'post-lie' world we won't be these people so we will be dreaming different dreams and dreaming them in a different way. So it is precisely about the importance of getting there that is why, and people often refer to Marx' reference about not writing the recipe books for the cooks of the future, which this is why he (Karl Marx) refused to describe socialism. It's a little bagatelle, it's a little bon mot, but I think there's a very important truth to it. And that is why, and I won't go into the specifics because it would comprise spoilers, but you have basically just got at the key point, the nexus, of Iron Council (one of China's novels); so no, I think this is undepictable and unthinkable." (The "Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a reference to George Orwell's Animal Farm. It is the name of the animal afterlife preached by Moses the raven and it summarizes Orwell's very MBA-ish attitude to the church.) Source: https://youtu.be/HBf28LBGsso?si=0IyNnMNukwkq7IkA&t=2775.
 
This got me thinking, because I have the same fascination with comparative eschatology as China Miéville does. How would we writers of fiction, who are also conspiracy theorists, depict the post-Illuminati world? Or can we? Readers of my Roswell trilogy will know that I end Roswell Redeemed, the concluding book, with a final chapter that is a bit of a postscript, set two years after the previous one. Following the death of one of the main characters, the others travel to Roswell to explore some of their family's history. It is a short, relaxed and atmospheric passage which provides a summary of the story's themes, but also a hint that the future might not be a utopia; although I maintain a tone of optimism and hope. The final line of dialogue is: "So that's it. One story ends and another begins." I was breaking the fourth wall there a bit and addressing the reader directly, something I only ever did at that point. Also I was implying the same thing China was saying, although I had not seen his video when I wrote the end of Redeemed. Excuse the spoilers, but by the end of the story the real UFO Disclosure has finally happened and the influence of the Illuminati has been permanently eradicated from the earth. That is when this "new story" begins, the one after the Roswell trilogy which I have never written and probably never will. Rising, Revealed and Redeemed are all about "getting there"; they describe three imaginary yet feasible and predictable stages in that long process, but what is there? Will it simply descend into another New World Order because of the inevitable problems of "just human nature, mate!" Will we suffer from the "boredom of paradise", the theory that in a perfect world there would be no problems at all and therefore no challenges, no stimulus, nothing to strive for and no adversity to overcome? For most people, especially men, those things are essential no matter how negative they are as a current experience. They give our life texture and colour. However, do we know for sure that those things would be absent in a post-Illuminati world? The PIW will probably have many surprises for us. Even now I can predict humans will still get into conflict; it is not just in our biological nature, it is one of the fundamental dialectics of the universe. We will still have love-rivalries and family feuds, for examples. There will still be natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. We may face the threat of hostile extraterrestrial civilizations... real ones this time! Despite this, I predict that we may end up fighting manufactured miniature wars. These would be completely limited to the participants and would essentially be nothing more than very violent sports, but they would happen and there would be real death and injury involved; gladiatorial combat on a much larger scale. And that connection reminds us, many historical cultures have done just this. I address this set of concepts in a scene earlier in the novel when the Quilleys travel to a party to celebrate the 1970 New Year. Clane gets into an argument with his daughter Siobhan on this issue:
"Aren't great days great?" said Clane cheerily as he tucked into his Irish stew.
    "Are they that great?" Gina responded with semi-mock-dubiousness.
    "Yes!" he answered playfully and gave a litany of all the reasons to be optimistic. "The economy is booming! We haven't had a stock market crash for four years. The wars around the world are calming down; even England is stabilizing."
    "What about those outside Disclosure nations?" asked Siobhan.
    Clane waved his hands dismissively. "Oh, they'll see the light eventually. They'll probably reform into social democracies in a few years. They'll know it makes sense. I really think the decade to come will be far better than the decade we're leaving."
    "I hope so." said another passenger, a man they had been talking to during the journey from New York.
    "I know so! This could even be the start of the post-Disclosure equilibrium."
    "What's that?" asked Brendan.
    "Something I read yesterday in The Washington Post by John Fields; you know, the guy who presents History Today. He put out this dynamite piece called '23 Years' because it's the twenty-third year since Disclosure. He said that basically all the problems caused by the Disclosure revolution have now been addressed and fixed, and as a result we can now reap the benefits of Disclosure itself without having the burden of its drawbacks... He quotes me five times in it." Clane winked arrogantly. "We have the new tech well on the way to full development and integration. We're delving further and further down into the Illuminati files every day and we'll probably be at the bottom within twelve years or so. There are already development proposals for this 'post-new tech' you might have heard about."
    "I've heard the phrase." said Siobhan.
    He lowered his voice. "Well I can't say too much now, but this promises to be incredible even by the standards of what we've seen so far. It's largely to do with the medical field."
    "I'll pass judgement when I've seen it, dad." said Siobhan with a half-smile.
    "The point of all this is that we might be emerging out of the transitional period between the pre and post-Disclosure worlds. Fields quotes Winston Churchill's phrase 'the end of the beginning'; the beginning being that of the pre-post-Disclosure equilibrium."
    "Pre-post-Disclosure equilibrium." Brendan repeated to feel what the words were like on his tongue.
    "Brendan, you know about the three forms of equilibrium, don't you?"
    "Of course, dad. It's basic stuff, Newton's second law. I am going for my high school diploma in physics and chemistry remember?"
    "I know, son." He bowed his head apologetically. "Perhaps you could explain."
    Brendan smiled at him warmly. "There are three states of equilibrium best illustrated by imagining a ball rolling along a surface. Unstable equilibrium is a state in which the ball is perched on the point of a cone or dome, or a similar structure. It is only in equilibrium because it is perfectly balanced; the forces are equal on both halves and it is touching the surface on its exact centre of gravity; but the tiniest nudge either way and the equilibrium is destroyed and the ball falls off. Neutral equilibrium is a ball lying on a flat surface. It stays still until it is pushed and when it is pushed it moves, but then it simply slows down and stops due to the resistance of friction. It then returns to equilibrium in a different part of the surface. Stable equilibrium is a state like a ball lying at the bottom of a bowl with steep sides. You can push it and it moves, but then it returns to its original point of equilibrium."
    Clane took over. "And John Fields has turned this into a metaphor for politics. He claims we are now in a stable equilibrium. Every force that pushes us out of it does nothing to change the long-term state; we just return to equilibrium like the ball in the bowl. Up till now society has been a combination of neutral and unstable equilibriums, but now, for the first time ever we have stable equilibrium. Instability is the cause of all civilization's problems, with the exception of natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. Instability is generated by scarcity, therefore in a world of universal abundance there can be no scarcity, and therefore no instability; equilibrium! This can only spread over the entire world and once it's done, it will last forever."
    Siobhan frowned. "Wait a minute, dad. Are you talking about... utopia?" Her mouth twisted.
    Clane blushed and hesitated. "Is it such a dirty word?"
    "It's a word that has spawned quests that ended in extraordinary evils. There have been people through all of history who have believed that they have the key to create heaven on earth because of some religious belief or some revelatory political philosophy. What has always resulted is more like hell. What makes you any different?"
    "Because this time what we're doing is based on science, not politics."
    "Does that make you somehow immune?"
    Clane paused. He looked uncomfortable. "Siobhan... I would never be part of anything that would result in hell on earth. I just want to see a better world than the one we've had all our life and I'm happy that we seem to be heading towards one which is better. Is that so bad? Are you saying I should try to resist that?"
    Siobhan didn't answer. She looked awkward now, as if she regretted what she'd just said. Everybody else around the table was subdued by the tension between father and daughter. "No, dad... It's just that it may turn out not to be as simple as you think. You haven't mentioned one fundamental difference between the world before and after Disclosure."
    "What's that?"
    "It's not just us now. Up till now we've only ever seen the world as a planet with humans on it, an oasis of life in an infinite cosmic desert. Now we know we are just one little unit of a universe teaming with life. We can't make assumptions about the future of human civilization without taking into consideration that reality. That's what mainstream politics is still failing to get to grips with."
    "That's because the aliens generally ignore us. They fly down here now and again, occasionally they crash their craft, but really they act like we're not here. Why shouldn't we return the favour?"
    "They do not though, dad."
    He chuckled. "Oh, you mean the abductions."
    "Yes. Why, do you think they're funny?"
    "No, it's just..."
    "Do you believe they're real?"
    "Of course. We have lots of DOD formerly classified documentation about it."
    "And you'll be hearing a lot more about it very soon." Siobhan's book was due to be launched the following month. A number of governments around the world had published several reports and set up official inquiries into the abduction phenomenon. "You can't call this ignoring, dad... You used to be the kind of person who would understand that. I think maybe you've been working in Washington for too long."
Source: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2018/12/roswell-redeemed-is-here.html.
I wonder if it's worth having these discussions at this juncture in history. Some authors have attempted it, like William Morris; see the background links below. He combats the critics of his vision through the structure of the story; but how much of a futile exercise would that be for us? The PIW for us may be as difficult to comprehend as flight is to a battery hen or running through a field under a blue sky is to a man chained to the bottom of a muddy pond. China Miéville may well be right, even though I don't share his own vision for the world's destiny. We cannot truly comprehend the PIW because we live under the jackboot of the Loomies who have so warped and shackled our minds and cultures that they have forced any alternative into the realms beyond our comprehension. Those of us who think we have seen though their machinations have not shaken off their blinkers, we are merely aware that we are wearing their blinkers. We really are venturing into new territory in a way no other people have for millennia. What has happened in the last decade alone has been so unpredictable, and I certainly failed to predict it; therefore maybe we should face the 2020's and beyond with totally open minds and humility, expecting the unexpected. We should just follow the path and do our best to do what is right at each stage on the journey. Leave the journey's end where it is for now.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/09/j-posadas-at-ccs.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2017/03/news-from-nowhere-by-william-morris.html.

Fake Britain High-Res

 

See here for essential background: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2023/11/map-of-fictional-place-names.html.
The article by The Londonist has been edited to allow a detailed close-up of the map. I have therefore produced a more detailed addition of my own fictional place names to it, see above.