Social Criticism and Dictatorial Regimes.
When I wrote Citizen Class 5, I intended, amongst other things, to create a world of warning and social criticism. Obviously I'm not the first science-fiction author to handle such themes, in fact they almost seem to belong to the genre. Perhaps raising questions over the ways, and means, of humanity is more comfortable if we're allowed an imaginary world with which to distance ourselves?
What is surprising, considering the successful history, and suitability, of dystopian fictions, is that publishers in the modern age largely ignore such works. Social criticism has become conspicuous in its absence in the modern age. We are not supposed to notice the order of things, let alone comment upon them.
In Citizen Class 5, everyone is judged by the Machine which ministers every aspect of social order and resource management. A central theme to my novel is this;
Humanity no longer wields its systems of power, instead those systems wield humanity.
I have come to believe that everybody should be fearful of complacency and casual judgements, for these are the early tools of any dictatorial regime. Martin Niemoller's famous poem reads; 'First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a communist.' For those of you who don't know how this ends, Niemoller found himself in a very lonely world by the time they came for him.
This is a poignant illustration of the dangers of judgement. Separate yourself from people with labels and you remove empathy from the world.
For the record, I'd like to say that Citizen Class 5 explores many more areas than this but the critical examination of the inherent flaws of systems is its backbone.
I should also like to take this time to express my awareness of, and appreciation for, the works of the urban poet, Linton Kwesi Johnson. I based the linguistics of the Rastafarian's in Citizen Class 5 on the sentence structure of his works and I hope I did it justice ...at least a little.
My final thought;
If you can filter the modern world, without being absorbed by it, then your judgements are your own. If you reference what is proper, or good etiquette, every time you make a decision, they probably belong to the system.
*enfeebled by a weight of revelation, your author stumbles off*
;-)
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7076475.Loron_Jon_Stokes/blog
