Afterthoughts: A Farewell to Humanity

I am often worried about the future. 

Can you blame me? Everyday something is happening, something embarrassing, something shameful, something horrifying, something violent. All the time, every time. 

Be it the looming threat of climate change or the shameful embarrassment of the US government, the apathetic march towards fascism and the dissolution of democracy, the wars, the inability to tell what is real. A lot is happening nowadays. 

As I have said, I am often worried about the future of my country and the world. 

A Farewell to Humanity is that worry distilled into a horrifying piece of dystopian fiction. Those anxieties and fears that keep lingering in the back of my mind made flesh. While we are unlikely to have a homicidal AI any time soon, it doesn’t have to be Athena. 

Humans, much like the NDP, are vulnerable to panic and desperation. Tyranny comes from periods of uncertainty and fear after all. 

People have often compared Athena to Hitler, and they are right. A Farewell to Humanity was originally designed to be a WW2 allegory. I changed it in relation to feedback I have received from authors on the concept. But Hitler is just one part of Athena’s historical makeup. She is Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini and Idi Amin among many more. 

Remember, when civil debate and normalcy fail, tyranny cannot be too far behind. Which is what I wanted to show in a somewhat exaggerated (but not impossible) form with The Great Silence. 

I do hate my powers of observation sometimes, the US of A Farewell to Humanity mirrors trends I have seen in the real world to an eerie degree. I just hope they don’t mess up everything for us as much as they do in A Farewell to Humanity at least. 

This novella is bleak, but with some of the stubborn hope that I believe embodies the human spirit. We are remarkably difficult to truly kill, I love that about us and I hope that I can inspire our stubbornness in my readers. 

I know some people will be upset at how I depict the US in this story, hell the greater Age of Robotics timeline will not be kind to the US. It’s not that I hate the US, just disappointed in how it has processed. I see greatness being swallowed up by fools who are lost in their own reality. 

Some will take umbrage as well with China’s fate as well. I see it as a tragedy, technology backfiring with terrible consequences for the Chinese, Russian, and other Asian people.  They didn’t deserve it, nobody deserves the horrors of the Eastern Panic or The Great Silence. 

You could probably say that A Farewell to Humanity could be about the cruelties of the world now and in the past. The instability of the world today and technology’s role in amplifying it. 

I have studied history for too long. 

But I am glad that I didn’t make it a one to one allegory, that would have limited what the story would have been about. I suspect it would have been something akin to Deus Ex Mankind Divided’s “Mechanical Apartheid”, and probably as tone deaf as that concept was. 

Dystopian fiction is made primarily from worry, from Orwell to Huxley, from Kafka to Philip K Dick, the dystopian author tries to shine a light at the direction where we are going and try to warn us away from said path. 

I hope my voice can be enough, but if such titans as Margret Atwood are ignored and downplayed for their warnings in The Handmaid’s Tale (as an example). I do doubt it somewhat. 

I guess I can say that I at least tried, and I am not done with dystopian fiction, don’t worry about that. I just want to get Thoughtbubble done before anything happens to the US, if anything to just gloat when it does happen. 

I still hope it doesn’t though, it would be terrible for the US, her people and the world at large. 

A Farewell to Humanity is the worst case scenario. 

Well, thank you so much for reading this, I hope that you like A Farewell to Humanity despite the downer tone of this article. 

Be the positive change you want to see in the world, and we shall get out of here.