It’s still less than twenty years since the clock ticked us into a new millennium but we are now in a completely different world of communication.
Back then, the worry was that the first of January 2000 might send all our computers haywire but this now seems like a fanciful panic. We have since moved on to a new way of living in which instant, absolute and global communication is accepted and required as the norm.
But all the resulting benefits have arrived at the cost of a fresh neurosis. We must now start worrying that our thoughts and predilections, our very characters and souls may be being stolen from us and used by others for nefarious if hazy purposes. So checks and confirmations are now being put in place. Pretty soon, if you feel like dropping coins in the palm of some unfortunate guy sleeping rough, you’ll have to ask him first if he’ll permit you to do so: that assumes, of course, that it is a ‘he’ and not a ‘her’ and that both of you have decided which!
All of this can make today’s fact seem a lot stranger than fiction but that makes life easier for those of us dreaming up plots for stories. Spy scandals, assassination by remote control, vote rigging by subliminal thoughts : these are new takes on old tricks made much more sophisticated by the technology of today. Even the world’s oldest profession has come up to date – now you pay not just for sex, but also for saying that you didn’t!
My new book, Millennium, tells a story of what might have been, drawing on established facts of history to provoke imagination and test the actions of the characters. Where does the fact stop and the fiction start? That’s for you to decide and I hope you enjoy the process.
