I just had a great idea for a novel based on the current American political situation. It’s set in the not-so-distant future when the division between the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ sections of the country has grown even more extreme, and rancor has grown on both sides. So in the ‘blue’ region the only legal foods are sushi and latte, and in the ‘red’ region everyone is required to own three SUVs and every day is a National Day of Prayer.
So what do you think? Is there enough material for a book here? And if so, what other steroetypes would also need to be included?
The SUVS in the red zone all have lift-kits and monster wheels, because every time someone tries to repair a road, sponsored militias level the DoT with a truck bomb for increasing their tax burden.
In the blue zone, not content with banning war toys, lobby groups have successfully outlawed all team sports as dangerously combative. Long since having abandoned firearms, the periodic incursions from the red zone are routinely repelled simply by the sight of men breastfeeding.
And, of course, in the red zone the name of any food item now begins with “freedom”.
I think there’s a built-in audience of political junkies who are all familiar (some might say too familiar) with the personalities, conflicts, and events that get top attention on political sites and blogs. The book could be packed with references. For instance, it could include the scene where Al Franken gets a knock on his door and his life changes forever, but it would have to be done in some particularly ironic way.
And I think it should be revealed that Ann Coulter is actually a Manhattan-dwelling, NY Times-reading feminist, and that her evil robotic duplicate is the one who’s been writing all her columns and giving all her speeches for the past ten years or so.
Lastly, deep in the heart of the red zone a secret plan is being devised and experiments are being performed inside a building called “The Institution of Marriage”. Needless to say, the blue region will send a team of gay commandos to destroy this building.
The blue states tend to hug the East and West coasts, while the red states are in the Heartland and South. So all the Blues have to do is stop imports and exports to the Red and blockade the valuable ports of Mobile, Savannah and Charleston. Then it’s a divide and conquer strategy, as one Blue army heads straight down the Mississippi River and another adopts a scorched-earth strategy. . .
The coloring of the states is an artificial and arbitrary convention for fancy graphic work. The red/Republican blue/Democratic pattern happened to be the one chosen last election by the networks and it’s stuck like glue. If blue ever mean incumbent, and I don’t think it ever consistently did, then it don’t no more.
The red/blue coloring has flip-flopped a few times over the years, but since at least the last election, Blue = Dem and Red = Rep. It’s become pretty uniform, but in the past not every media outlet has used the same scheme.
The capital of the Blue land could be called Liberalopolis, and maybe the Red capital could be Reagantown, the Shining City on a Hill.
In the blue zone, people are secretly terrified of dangerous criminals that run free through the streets. The court systems find hardly anyone guilty for any crime. Instead they choose to identify and address the societal issues that led someone to act in a “temporary socially deviant manner”.
In the red zone, no one has found a way around the due process clauses of the constitution and the judicial system has been nearly bankrupted by the appeals of ten of thousands of people awaiting execution.
Here’s my idea: the protagonist of the story is Ann Coulter’s twin, who is an innocent, super-sweet naive liberal. She is from an alternate dimension, and is informed that she must find her Conservative counterpart. If they come into contact, they will annihilate each other, but she must do it or all the universes will be destroyed. So the story details her quest into the strange Red land, with help from the Blue forces, to find Ann Coulter (who gets wind of the plan and goes into hiding to avoid it).
Well you know it’s ironic that the Cincinatti Reds, who once changed their name for two years to avoid being associated with the Soviet Union, are in the red zone. Though maybe not for long.
Another idea I’ve had is to write a sequence where some computer genius has to hack into the blogosphere to get some key information, written as a parody of the computer sequences in Neuromancer and Hyperion. I think I’m just going to start writing the thing tomorrow and see where my brain takes me.
I’m going to take advantage of the new CS rules and bump this up, because a few days ago I decided to try my hand at a story based on what I wrote in my two posts to this thread. Did you ever do anything with this, ITR champion?
Heh, I can probably pull some of my friends together and make a short little movie about this… it’d be pretty gangwar-esque. I can see one of the Reddies bragging about how he loaded his truck up with a half-ton of scrap metal to get his gas mileage below 5 mpg, then brags about how he’s accidentally shot seven people.
I wrote four chapters before real life started sucking away all my time and mental energy. Once I reached winter break alive, other writing projects seized my attention since I wasn’t very satisfied with the quality of what I had written. But it’s still on the shelf, possibly waiting to be dusted off and continued at some point in the future. I could post it if people would like to read it.
Did you ever do anything with this, ITR champion?