Tomorrow's Gone

At last, I have finished my first science fiction book. A few strange but interesting things happened after I had been writing for a couple of months.

Originally, I was writing a time travel book for young adults, something I had never done before. I found it an exciting experience as I got well into the driver's seat—much like the first time you take to the road on your own as a driver who just passed his or her road test. It was different, and it was a subject I had always been keen about—time travel, parallel worlds, aliens, etc.

My other interest has not been a lifelong subject, but one that, as I have grown older, I have developed stronger and stronger views about. Conservation did not have to be thrown or driven at me. Like many, I have watched the slow decline of the natural world as the populace has technologically advanced, using many resources as well as those already used to further our living standards. The problem is that we have never really tried to repair the damage but instead left a trail of devastation in our forests, tons of plastic in the seas, and pollution in the air that has eroded the very atmosphere that protects us in space.

Put these two interests of mine together, and it was inevitable that they would influence a book I am writing that depicts what this world will look like in two hundred years' time if we do not teach our young to look after their surroundings.

I was into the sixth or seventh chapter when I had a break for a couple of days, and on returning, I had one of those moments when realization kicks in about something the subconscious has done without thinking. I concentrated on the task at hand and had got so wrapped up in what was happening to my characters. As they discovered their surroundings and had those they met begin to explain the political and cultural situation to them, I realized it was me that was telling the reader what I thought or believed in.

Remembering that I was originally writing for young adults, I went over the work again and knew I had to edit or change the audience I was writing for. For example, a young woman explains about different rules about sex and birth control in the working and middle classes created by the Crowns, the ruling government, and how working-class kids are educated until fifteen only and then sent to government factories while middle-class kids go on to further education for managerial jobs in government.

Needless to say, I could not change the work. I love the idea of putting my thoughts 'out there' through my cast, so I carried on, and looking at the finished result, I am pleased I kept things and changed the genre to 'New Adult'.

The story, as a whole, is an adventure, but it has this very serious side to it, and in places, it deliberately goes dark, creating an almost frightening Orwellian view of life two hundred years from now, as in Orwell's 1984.

The point of the book is simple—unless we wake up and teach the young more seriously at school about what is happening to the world around them, their great-grandchildren will inherit a world as described in my book, TOMORROW'S GONE.

It is essential for a new generation to develop an environmental consciousness so that when they step into roles in universities, government, or industrial management, they can create regulations, enact laws, and address the damage before it becomes irreversible.