The Electric Archipelago (WIP)

Author's Thoughts on this Draft

This is a work in progress. The finished product will be longer, have much more detail. I think that my main problems are that I move too fast and that I struggle with describing what people look like, especially faces. Although a fast-moving book might be a good thing.

There are a lot of different themes at play. I wanted one theme to be that the MC's positive interactions with people built up a kind of good Karma that contrasts with the negative aspects of the corporate social credit systems. Social credit systems are a hot topic at the moment. This was the main inspiration for this story. It is already happening in China, will it spread to other entities?

In this world people are commodities/resources. They are indentured servants and debt slaves. I am not so sure about this aspect of the story. It is a standard idea in dystopian cyberpunk tales. It makes sense in this world of extreme control. But I am afraid that it will get a little too excessive.

I want to make a world that has the decadence of ancient Rome but is transitioning into the chaos of the 1960s. There should be a tension there, something bubbling just under the surface. The people have no meaningful work to do, as robots do all of the labor. They are given the pointless job of watching the drones, for no other reason than it keeps them busy. And it also gives them cash, kind of like Henry Ford paying the workers enough to buy his cars. The bread and circuses of sex bots and VR will only keep this generation tame for so long, it is bound to go south at some point.

On a similar note: if there was a big war in the near past, then there should be veterans of that war. We know that it was a guerrilla war, at least from the appendix, so they should be at least a little bit like the veterans of Vam and GWOT. I myself am a GWOT vet, I often feel that frustration, that sense of pointlessness, that we wasted so many young lives.

I also wanted to play around with the idea of the perception of reality and living in bubbles. This topic is very much related to the work of Scott Adams, I would highly recommend looking into his thoughts on the subject. The senator's speech when he is being told about the blackmail is one example of this concept. Each side believes what they want, the truth has little to do with it. Reality itself is being manipulated thanks to augmented reality. It is unclear how much or how little people truly believe, because they may very well be lying to appease their company.

I think that the next draft needs more dystopian elements. The company propaganda needs to be more invasive, more vicious. The book needs more augmented reality, more glimpses inside of the different realities that each corporation forces on people. It also needs a scene where a person that is brainwashed tries to defend their beliefs using sophistry.

But it can't get too overwhelming. I have been playing The Outer Worlds and as much as I enjoy that game's dark humor, the anti-corporate themes can get a bit old; because everything about that universe is built on that idea, on taking the dehumanization and disposable nature of the worker to the greatest possible extreme.

It is also easy to forget that this story isn't so much anti-corporate or anti-capitalist; it is a protest against the infiltration of ideologies into corporations and organizations in general. We have seen leftists do it with the news and entertainment industries. This tactic is known as The Long March Through the Institutions and is called Critical or Conflict Theory. Conservatives refer to it as Cultural Marxism, and will insist that it be called this, even when you point out the fact that you can prove its existence by calling it by the name that its creators gave it.

As I said before, this world needs to be fleshed out. We need a few more subcultures and a bit more tech. We need more leering descriptions of the city, its people, and their culture. It needs an extra dose of Noir.

The book needs a layer of slang. But again, not too much of it. Many readers cite excess slang as being a problem with A Clockwork Orange. It is also one of, one of many, reasons why many people find Naked Lunch to be unreadable. Each company needs a nickname, which is not necessarily even hateful, to be used as a synonym.

I want an MC that is a little different. He isn't just an anti-hero, he revels in the craziness of the world around him. He is a voyeur, a people watcher. He isn't just a social person, he is fascinated by people and their strange ways. I think that this is the best lens with which to view this world. He won't mope about how bad things are, he won't go into edgy soliloquies about bringing down the system. He will mostly stick to presenting the world around him in a (hopefully) interesting way.

I think that his status as a Skinwalker isn't used enough. He needs to use the ability more, otherwise there is no point to it. I also have to wonder if Skinwalker is the right name to use, as it is heavily associated with lame Creepypasta stories from Reddit and /x/.

Ashley is a whole other story. I plan on making her a bit more cutesy in the final product. This character presents a high level of risk vs reward. She has the potential to be a fun and memorable character, a unique twist on the Razorgirl trope. But she also has the potential to be annoying. Annoying characters can ruin otherwise good stories, see Temple of Doom and The Fifth Element if you don't believe me.

All in all, I think that this is a good start. I want to finish this and get it published, almost certainly through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I look forward to any feedback that you can give me. Thanks for reading.