Perilous Republic : my latest fiction
"Perilous Republic" $US2.99 : available in all ebook stores Future fiction starts with a premise. You make some guesses. In "Perilous Republic" I explore the world of Melbourne at the end of the 2020s. There are some trends, some pressures that I think will be important. Let's start with demographics. As the population ages, we will get to the point where the majority of the population are beyond working age. This is a profound change and has far reaching consequences. Political parties are in the business of winning elections. If they can do this by handing out money to the majority of old people, then I think they will. Where will they get this money? They might take it from the minority of working age people or they might borrow from the future, which is essentially the same thing. We already see the use of direct election bribes in the early 2020s. It's simple. It works. But in essence it's a violation of the social contract: it puts all of the he