Authors Electric

Dystopias have become a major part of fiction over the last few decades, and with our current awareness of the state of the planet are unlikely to go out of fashion. It is, of course, much easier to write a dystopia than it is to write a utopia, because we all have such different ideas about what, exactly, constitutes a perfect world. Imperfect worlds are all around us, and scientific predictions about what the next century will bring are terrifying. An abbreviated definition from Wikipedia reads: A  dystopia  is a community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is translated as “not-good place” and is an antonym of  utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, Utopia, published 1516, a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty. Dystopias are often characterised by dehumanisation, tyrannical governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associa...

     Bob Newman ( Old Possums’ Book of Practical Pigs)  wrote a  delightfully surreal novel, with nods to Garcia Marquez and Conan Doyle. The characters ranged from a glyptodon to a javelin thrower from an obscure Amazonian tribe, and the story had its denouement at the 2012 Olympics. Unfortunately, he finished it too late to have a hope of publishing it in time. There are ways round it – a solution of sorts is the tag-line “…this book tells the full story behind the javelin final at the London Olympics – not as it was, but as it should have been…” But it would have been much better to get the forward planning right!             Thinking ahead can be very important. Tying in publication to something you know is on the horizon can be a good move. Major anniversaries are excellent inspirations for non-fiction, and a quick search on the web can be very fruitful. However, it’s the monthly short st...