Writing is a way of making sense of the world

I go a bit weird if I don't write

It occurred to me recently that all of my novels are about Brexit.

That wasn’t on purpose.

Most of the time it isn’t obvious or distracting - these are all fantasy and science fiction stories, after all, often set in entirely fictional worlds. But it’s there, in the themes and the characters.

It’s there in Kay’s desire for truth and unity over propaganda and division in A Day of Faces. It’s there in the self-destructive political scheming of The Mechanical Crown. It’s definitely there in No Adults Allowed’s teardown of the idea that grown-ups know what they’re doing. It’s present in Tales from the Triverse’s current plotline, with Britain holding a referendum on whether to ban all portal travel. OK, that last one might not be me at my most subtle.

Thing is, all speculative fiction is inherently political, whether the author intends it to be or not. If you write about the future, you’re immediately making massive decisions about human development. Showing the Earth 300 years from now requires projecting what will happen economically, socially, environmentally, even if none of those things are integral to the story. The fluffiest sci-fi story that has no overt political content is still making a statement of sorts simply by showing that there is a future.¹

I’m quite happy to more directly embrace this kind of thing in my work. I don’t want it to ever be preachy, and it has to ring true for the characters, but relating the themes of my stories to real world events and concepts I believe strengthens the overall narrative. It makes them about something.

When I was writing The Mechanical Crown, a big part of that was showing the inexorable and often unintentional slide into fascism. That required researching how that sort of thing happens in real countries, and identifying the key signifiers of a fascist regime. It made for good injection of drama into the otherwise escapist adventure, but it was also me grappling with my own observations and fears about the world around me. This was in 2016.