Fiction Forge Indy: This Brave New World We Have

Monday, September 14, 2020

This Brave New World We Have

I love a good discussion about genre. Romance, science fiction, fantasy, crime--these all have certain rules, and within the rules, readers have expectations. But these expectations lay a sticky boundary for readers: if the writer strays too far from the expectations, the reader is disappointed. If the writer stays too closely to the parameters of the genre, this feels like a formula.

What a fascinating discussion.

Different discussion. Different genre. The propaganda novel.

This genre goes by many other labels: the thesis novel, utopian novel, even the proletarian novel. These novels span a wide range of political and social issues, but the novel focuses on a point, and the point of the story, characters, and theme is to deliver this idea.

Think The Jungle, 1984, Animal Farm, Clockwork Orange, Atlas Shrugged, Lord of the Flies, Sister Carrie, and Brave New World.

I love this type of fiction because it tells about our world and tells truths about us. Sometimes, it is scary.

Fiction tells truths.

Four legs good. Two legs bad.

I have reread some of these books in the last few months, and I'm stunned at how relevant these are.

When we watched the destruction of historical monuments earlier this summer, I heard many people say some variation of, "If we destroy the past, then today's youth can start over."

Chills. Does this sound like 1984? Let's erase the past. Turn churches into Ministries of Love. Learn the double-speak and conformity that echoes in our world. And then, imagine the pigs smoking cigars and drinking whiskey while making plans to take over the farms. And we'll wonder why the engineers and devoted workers retire to Colorado and trade with gold. Forgive the mixed metaphors (😉).

I believe these books are more important than ever. Go read them. All of them. Right now.

What's your favorite propaganda novel?

1 comment:

AnonymousNovember 5, 2020 at 5:28 AM
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Mike

Hi. My name is Michael Moir and I'm a writer.

I don't know when I became addicted to the printed word, but over time I have found that I can't put it away from me. My therapist says it has to do with the little yellow books that were forced upon me in Kindergarten (See Spot Run...Run, Spot, Run! RUN!!!), but in the depth of my soul, I know it is deeper than that. I was born with this in my very DNA. Phrasing, grammar, and plot structure are as sure in my being as cytosine is to guanine. It is a dark and wildly fantastic creature that gires and gimbles in the shadowed places of my soul. I have been told that I must find a way to purge the wordful animal within (my therapist recommended me to a witch doctor in the Andes), but I have decided to learn to live with it. This desire, this compulsion, this demon that is writing is me and I am it.

I call him Steve.

Randy

Hi! I am Randy. I'm pretty sure that I started writing when I held my first crayola. Unfortunately, I grabbed the white one which left little proof of my brilliant earlier works! I write fiction that's often centered on gay characters - but sometimes off-centered gay characters, too -Ha! Because of the poor recording or admittance of such affairs due to prevailing political and religious views, such historical possibilities of gay relations are difficult to accept, let alone imagine. But, of course gay relations occurred, and much more often than the historical records dictate. I like to give honor to my gay brothers and sisters of our hushed past by conjuring such situation backdrops of history and breathing life into what I cannot know really occurred, but what I feel is closer to reality than it is to fiction.