New Planetary Blues

by Chris Parker

Introduction

New Planetary Blues is set, 300 or so years in the future, in the New Planetary Confederation, a "Star Trek"-style interplanetary society which, while it has sorted out most of the practical problems "resource shortages, inter-communal strife etc. "that resulted in the near-demise of Old Earth, has a whole set of new problems specific to the Brave New World that has been created in its stead.

Chief among these are issues of personal freedom, quality of life, "authenticity", etc., because the planets making up the Confederation are run, to all intents and purposes, not by politicians but by the corporation "HoloCorp" that owns the information and entertainment networks that keep the population placid, sated with homogenized pap, tawdry tat of all descriptions. HoloCorp runs "themed planets" for this purpose: Planets Sport, Literature, Music, Religion and History etc., taking their revenue both from residents who wish to live in re-creations of New Orleans or the Victorian England of Trollope and Dickens, and from tourists who wish to be entertained by "Blind Date" with Mr Knightley, or can-can lines of female nineteenth-century novelists.

Into this Baudrillardian world come two twenty-first-century "authenticators", revived from their cryogenically frozen state to ensure the holographic entertainment is based on genuine memories and knowledge, rather than what happens to have survived the vicissitudes of Old Earth history. The resulting culture-clash is humorous, often farcical, but with a seam of seriousness running through it; the denouement leaves a state of affairs in place that could well serve as a setting for future, more issue-specific, novels set on particular planets.

© Chris Parker 2006

Now read the first chapter.