We live in extraordinary times: on the one hand, technologies of all
sorts – biological, robotic, digital – are being invented and perfected
by the minute, and many feats that would once have been considered impossible or magical are being performed. On the other hand, we are
destroying our biological home at breathtaking speed: if we kill the sea
it’s game over for us as a species, since the sea produces 60-80% of the oxygen we breathe. On the third hand (for there’s always a hidden
hand), the democratic form of government we have extolled and promoted
in the West for centuries is being undermined from within by super-surveillance technologies and the power of corporate money. When
1% of the population controls over 80% of the wealth, you have a
top-heavy social pyramid that’s inherently unstable.
This is the
world we already live in. The MaddAddam trilogy builds it out a little
further, and then explores it.
We already have the tools to create the
MaddAddam world. But will we use them?
- Margaret Atwood
descensus Averno facilis est