I'm reading "The Lost Cause" by Cory Doctorow. I'm about half-way through, so I don't know what it's like in the second half, but so far it feels so apiece with the vision in my head when playing games of Fully Automated, and that's really exciting.
The book takes place in Burbank, California, in an unspecified year that sounds like slightly less than one generation removed from today. Around 2040, I'd say.
It's been a few presidential administrations from now, and the US has implemented a Green New Deal, and Climate Corps are commonplace internationally. But also, things are tense. The world is still on fire, and a lot of conservatives are not pleased to see this new world taking shape. And within this context, the story is very communal. The protagonist knows all their neighbors, and everyone is always doing things for one another and relying on each other. Mutual aid is just integrated in to everyday life.
It's a great book, with an interesting plot and good characterizations. But there's another level of enjoyment, because I feel like reading the story makes me think of all the ways its tone, locations, and conflicts could be appropriated the way you do when running RPGs. It hits especially hard, because for anyone who isn't familiar, Burbank is a suburb of Los Angeles, and the intensely local sense of cultural pride that is a theme of the book is so familiar to my attempts to present that same feature when playing Fully Automated! with friends. I think the rich culture and patchwork nature of LA inspires that in a lot of people.
And also, I'm thinking of how much more I want to see this genre of writing expand, and how sharing a game like this can do a small part to add to getting people into writing more of these stories. And also, obviously the feedback loop that happens when people make more stuff that inspires other people to make more stories themselves.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm really liking this book on three levels:
- "I'm really enjoying this good book."
- "I could steal so much stuff from this book for running games."
- "This seems like further proof that at lot of people are working in this idea sandbox, and I can't wait to see where that cycle of inspiration leads."
I finished the book.
I liked it a lot. I liked how well it pictured a word in which work pressures were lessened and people's time was more flexible. I think it had lots of exciting action. It presented a lot of crises and ideas that could be their own adventure in FA. And I really liked how everyone knew each other.
I actually grew up in that kind of environment. My hometown -- Pittsburgh -- is famously well-networked. People joke that everyone is two degrees from one another or fewer. Everyone went to school with everyone's cousin. I liked how Doctorow highlighted that dynamic in the story. I have thoughts on the ending, but don't want to spoil anything, so I'll keep them to myself.