A novel

I know authors are supposed to work in quiet (or not so quite seclusion) and not breathe a word about their novels until they’ve been published but I am to break that rule. Frankly I have some ideas in my head about a book (or books possibly) that ought to be written but I rather doubt if I will ever get round to it so I thought I’d just a push a few ideas out into the ether in the hope that someone, somewhere might take up the ideas and fly with them.

My ideas (such as they are) come in all shapes and sizes (lines to scenarios). What I am thinking of doing is to publish them all and see what happens – after all you never know. Anyway, to start off with here is the outline of a novel I would like to write in a parallel life.

It’s going to be a sort of 1984 in reverse. It is going to be set in a libertarian world. London, right now with no different technology than we have right now just with liberty. The premise will be that somehow the UK managed to miss out on the horrors of socialism and actually proceeded in a more-or-less straight line from 1900. Whether 1914 never happened or whether it was the 1945 Labour landslide that we missed out on I am not sure but I am sure we can work that one out.

The point is that the world is a whole load better. Crime is lower, healthcare is better, people are better dressed, nicer to one another, transport works and any normal person can buy a house. Oh, and drugs are legal and taxes much lower.

The main character is going to be a socialist. Yes, I like that. I like the idea of a socialist railing against the injustices he sees around him in a world that is plainly better than the one in which we currently live.

I imagine him railing against the inequality and the injustice of the average worker having to put up with a mere 4-bedroom house, an extremely high standard of education and more mod cons than you could shake a stick at.

I would like this to be a tour of the libertarian world – perhaps to take place in the course of one day. In that time I would like him to get badly injured and yet receive excellent treatment and yet for him to still find reasons to complain.

And I would also like him to make a really storming speech. Not quite sure why. Perhaps to make the point that although socialists have a lot of good lines they’re still wrong.