Jack of Harts

One of the things that amazes me about writing is just how crazy things can get. Or rather, how what you think is crazy when you write it can turn normal real soon. When I started writing Jack of Harts a decade ago, I had this thing in the not-too-distance future that helped build the universe as I wrote it. I called it the Second Great Depression, and though I have never noted the exact time in stories, it has always been placed right around 2050 in my timeline. And yes, my background notes get more specific than that round number.

The idea was that the Second Great Depression was this thing that happened nearly half a century from the time I first wrote about it. Part economic crisis. Hence the overall name, but it was never meant as a single event. It was an umbrella name for a massive number of global events that changed the world we know now and paved the way for the world I write in Jack of Harts. Part cultural crisis, especially in America, with a truly “us versus them” mentality taking over and turning violent. The Second Civil War. Part religious crisis that included entire cities and some nations taken over by religious extremists. The Islamic Jihad. Part technologic crisis amidst awakening AIs. The Cybernetic Wars. Part drug crisis amidst the total collapse of the Mexican government. The Drug Wars. Add in a dash of Russian reconquests and Chinese expansion, and you get the building blocks for the world of Jack. Basically, my version of The Crazy Years that Heinlein speculated on in his writings.

A decade ago, when I came up with this vision of the future, I thought this was a really dark near-future version of our history that I really hoped did not come to pass. I did not want to live through a Second Civil War, a Drug War, a Second Great Depression, and an Islamic Jihad all rolled up into a short little decade or two. I did not want to see Russia reconquer Eastern Europe (like Ukraine) or the ex-Soviet Republics (like Georgia). I did not want to see China at war with… India… or conquering the South China Sea and all the islands and nations surrounding it. Seriously. I was looking at trends from a decade ago, and thinking it would really suck if all this went really bad and it all culminated in some nasty conflict a few decades in the future.

Crazy. Right? No one would believe it could go that bad in such a short time.

But I figured it’s far enough out that I can fudge it, and say it just helped build the world that built places like the Republic of Texas into an interstellar power. Along with the Confederation of Dixie, the Republic of California, and the New England Federation. A world that is a bit cockeyed, but still close enough to our own that readers can relate to it.

A decade later, it feels like current events. Crazy Times indeed.