andy jennings

"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...

"Perilous Republic" my novel available in all ebook stores. It is set in Melbourne Australia in the late 2020s. Some time ago I was in hospital for a few days, and I had a copy of Piketty 'Capital in the 21st century'. It is comprehensive both across cultures and through time. The book has some simple but frightening conclusions. That inequality is the result of the naked exercise of power, that throughout history it has followed a pattern of increasing to the point where it is totally irrational. Then at some point it all breaks down, either through war or revolution. My protagonists are proponents of "normal capitalism" or the perhaps unlikely "capitalism with a human face". How might they fix the housing problems? How might they fix very low wages and poor working conditions? You might think of simply seizing all the property and redistributing it, or something like that. But they don't want to do that. They want to somehow get from ...

In the near future, you might face an interview with a policeman or woman wearing the google glasses. How might it go? First he/she might ask you your name. The glasses have access to images of you from various databases. If you give a false name he will know  straight away. Let's say you are on a train. He might ask where you are off to today. The ticket you carry has a unique number linked to your identity. He will know where you boarded the train.  He might ask where you work. Linked to the tax office database, he will have your complete work history.  What changes with the glasses is the immediacy. Especially in identifying you. Much of crime fiction is nostalgic. Typically (e.g. Rebus) the detective is an older male, quite uncomfortable with technology. He relies on younger people around him to make use of it. Even then, not a great deal of surveillance is employed. There might be some trawling through CCTV footage. Is the past somehow more human? O...