I Wish that I Had the Talent, and the Energy, and the Time
To write a novel about an America that is deep into the demographic collapse that the experts are predicting (I know; beware the experts!), circa 2100.
The population long ago peaked at about 340 million. It is now 28 million. Only six million are under age 25. The major cities are completely hollowed out.
The old infrastructure set aside for taking care of the elders is gone. Robots ran it for a while, but they are largely gone as well. Where there is family, family cares for the old folks, but for many reasons mean longevity has dropped to 58 for males and 64 for females.
People cluster in settlements. The largest is near Tallahassee and comprises about 340,000 inhabitants. Almost everywhere they are sustained by local agriculture. Horses and oxen accordingly have made a comeback.
Conflict occasionally breaks out among the settlements. In the main, the people are not culturally aggressive, but as in Native American times, competition for resources -- famine -- drives them to it.
In some places, certain women of strong constitution and character choose to be "breeders," each having ten children or more, often from as many fathers. Their fecundity allows them to accumulate power within the tribe. Thus, in the sociology of the time, communities sometimes are classified first and foremost as matriarchal or patriarchal.
The children are raised communally, but the circumstances are such that infant mortality is high, and those that survive to seven or eight invariably are hard at work by then.
And yet I don't want my novel to be a novel of dystopia and despair a la Cormac McCarthy. There is a spiritual resilience among the people. Further, as in our time and in times past, passion sometimes evolves into love, and familial bonds awaken that cannot be broken. Indeed, mirabile dictu, a long-dormant anthem of kitsch somehow has risen from the ashes to become our new, but informal, National Anthem, and it becomes the subtext for the novel -- "Que sera, sera."
