I’ve seen the future, and I don’t like it very much – Elizabeth Kay
If you like setting fiction in the near future you try very hard to imagine what it will be like - but you have no idea how accurate your dystopia may be. No one predicts a utopia any more. I’ve recently returned from China. Don’t get me wrong – I liked the place a lot, and I have developed a considerable respect for the Chinese. There’s so much they’ve got right – and so much they’ve got wrong, too. I was surprised to learn that the population of China was already 400,000,000 in 1904. It’s nearly 1,400,000,000 today. If you’re familiar with the work of Malthus you’ll know that an unchecked population increases exponentially , whilst food production increases arithmetically . It ought to be quite clear to everyone that something has to be done before we breed our way into oblivion, but the Chinese seem to be the only people who have tried to address this issue, and they...