Making the Most of Hell on Earth
Two Cities, Venice and Neverness: one real and one the setting of David Zindell's magnificent series, A Requiem For Homo Sapiens. What do they have in common? Both should have been hell-holes. A swamp, a frozen wasteland. But instead their inhabitants built homes that had more in common with poetry than cities.
Even in the worst conditions, even in the nastiest dystopias, somebody, somewhere will be making the most of what they've got. They'll be having parties or stealing kisses or sniggering behind the back of a supervisor. Writers who forget this, bleed their worlds of colour. They end up with Kansas when they should be aiming Over the Rainbow.
As a basically happy person with a miserable imagination, I need to be careful to heed the same lesson.
Even in the worst conditions, even in the nastiest dystopias, somebody, somewhere will be making the most of what they've got. They'll be having parties or stealing kisses or sniggering behind the back of a supervisor. Writers who forget this, bleed their worlds of colour. They end up with Kansas when they should be aiming Over the Rainbow.
As a basically happy person with a miserable imagination, I need to be careful to heed the same lesson.