Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Emergency, Flu, Government, NPR, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: America, Covid 19, distancing effect, dystopia, fire-flu, government, Josh Malerman, NPR, pandemic, racism, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, theocracy, Verfremdungseffekt, writing
Why on Earth would you want to read a novel about a pandemic during a pandemic? Or why would you want to dive into a world where America is a dystopia of racial hatred and theocratic overreach when America is, well, trying to sort out racial hatred and theocratic overreach? There’d have to be something wrong with you to join in such a dance, wouldn’t there?
This was touched on in an interview on NPR I listened to this morning on my daily walk. In it, author Josh Malerman said that reading about a pandemic during a pandemic was somehow comforting; it was a way of saying “we know how to deal with this”.
In writing St Cybi’s Well I used an old literary technique to create some psychic space between the reader and my criticism of our American society, by not placing the story in America, but by having characters in the story reflect on and discuss what a dystopia American had become. This way the reader joins me in a dance, following my lead, but themselves moving through the story I’ve set out. The dystopia is there, but together we have defined it, perhaps tamed it enough that we can see it for what it is.
Of course, our reality is not the reality of St Cybi’s Well. Though it is still very early in the Covid-19 pandemic, I don’t think that it will be quite as devastating as the Fire-flu is in my book. And though we are perhaps at a turning point in the political history of our country, we’re not yet in a constitutional theocracy.
Take the lesson — or the warning — for what it is. That’s why you join the dance.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 