An Unintended Prophecy

[ecosophia]

I finished doing the page proofs for the last four of my soon-to-be-reprinted novels today, with Retrotopia the final manuscript of the set. It had been quite a while since I last read it. I've had readers comment already that some of my fiction reads like prophecy, but there was a passage in Retrotopia that I don't think has been mentioned yet. The main character, Peter Carr, is listening to another character talk about the downsides of technology.

* * * * *

"Then you have the technologies that have other costs—do you happen to know the real story about the 2020 US election, by any chance?”

That was another hard one to argue. “Yeah,” I said again. “That’s the one where hackers got into the electronic voting machines?”

“And made them report a landslide presidential victory for Bozo the Clown. Yes, that was the one."

* * * * *

This was written and published in early 2016, before anybody was talking about hacked voting machines. I really, truly don't intend my novels as predictions, or for that matter instructional manuals!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

As early as 2004 I heard people saying that electronic voting machines could be hacked or at least used dishonestly, which is why I became a poll worker for a number of years-- to keep an eye on things. As it turns out, the machines to watch are the central tabulators downtown. Even paper ballots are read electronically and that code can be messed with.

But in early 2016, Trump hadn't even been elected yet, and you were one of the few souls predicting he would win that one. The idea of the 2020 election being massively hacked wasn't on anybody's radar. In fact you were predicting a win for Trump that year too.

But there isn't a lot of daylight between Bozo the Clown and a rutabaga, so, you made an eerily accurate prediction there.

- Cicada Grove

[ecosophia]

I thought a Trump victory in 2020 was likely, but I was careful not to offer a firm prediction either way, since it was clear to me that it would be a very hotly contested election. That it was so hotly contested that quite a number of counties had more votes than there were people on the voting rolls -- well, that was a bit more than I expected!