The world has changed. This came up again on a writing subreddit. Charlie talked about it on his blog, particularly post-BREXIT. The world has changed and writers have to react.
The world always changes, but much of it is in cycles; the worst pendulum swings usually reverse. Things settle into a new status quo in which the names of the empires may have shifted around but the basic pattern of life is still the same.
And most fiction isn’t that topical.
But that’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be topical. Cellphones are ubiquitous and you have to plot around them now. This isn’t like changing the word “taxi” to “uber,” this change in the world means your characters (unless you specifically do something to stop them) are always in contact, always able to call the cops, and always know where they are.
And have a flashlight and a compass.
That’s the thing about a contemporary setting; it needs to reflect the world of the reader. The reason you do a contemporary setting instead of a historical one or an alien planet or whatever is so you can get on with the story without having to order a pizza like David Weber.
If you change or omit key aspects of that modern world (like pretending cell phones aren’t a thing), you’ve put the reader back into those speculative fiction shoes where they have to keep asking how things work here.
And why your heroine can’t just call “one to beam up,” when trouble starts.
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-david-weber-orders-a-pizza/606473
I set out to write archaeological thrillers. When I eased into the globe-trotting with a slow character origin story, it morphed the series into more like a travel adventure.
Already, in the first book, I was noting the overcrowding, the damage tourists were doing to old monuments, and the reaction in places like Venice (there were two characters and even a song about the problem of the “big boats" in that book.)
I started a year or two before COVID. That was bad enough. Now, this year, there's a world-wide reaction to tourists (and particularly the plague of Instagrammers, which is more-or-less how my protagonist is depicted making a living between stealing Golden Idols).
And for an American in Paris (or elsewhere in the world of 2025) the combination of tariffs, new VISA requirements, our already hostile TSA and ICE on top of that, has made not only America a less popular tourist destination, but Americans in particular less popular tourists elsewhere.
Sure, the option is on the table to just pretend none of this is going on, or somehow hasn't happened yet in the world of the story. That line can get a little fuzzy; do you pretend that certain wars aren’t happening?
But there’s another problem. As I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with the next book, or the series, and as I’ve been reading discussions on Reddit and other places, I realize that this is the very stuff I want to write about.
It was never going to be jungle adventures and golden idols without context. It was always going to occur within the framing of our real world. Real history, real places. Even real archaeological practices. The London book was about how a city changes in war and under economic pressures. The Paris book was about how history has made its mark on the city. The Japan book was about how changes in economics and society affect people and the way they view themselves. Okay, those were just some of the themes out there, but since the first book, ideas about the actual currents swirling about us and the way they change our lives was there.
The current book has the archaeological plot really revolving around NAGPRA and the associated issues. A true Indiana Jones type wouldn’t be worrying about the proper disposition of that mouldering corpse that just fell out of the spike trap.
So that leaves me with a fork.
I can continue as what is increasingly a period piece. How I would be showing world travel is both in a sense of what we’ve (currently) lost and, honestly, some of the things we did to fuck it up.
The other advantage is that since nobody is going to go to those restaurants (they closed them during COVID) or see those exhibits (they’ve already remodeled) I can let go of a lot of accuracy. Which is good, because it is increasingly difficult to get at detailed data for a period so near in the past.
The downside, besides the text becoming increasingly dated, is that there is so much cool stuff happening right now I’d love to talk about.
The other choice is to move the story. Let time pass. Or invoke magic. Or go to comic book time where it stops being specifically moored to a chronology (Tony Stark was always injured in a war zone, but the particular war has changed multiple times).
Oh, yeah. I’ve closed my order with 100 Covers. The result was rote. Both it and the communication was very literal, delivering exactly what was in the spec with no creativity and no joy.
I won’t be using it.
At this point I’m too dispirited to deal with cover people again. Plus I don’t like what the market is doing at the moment. I know the advantages in following the trends, but sometimes fashion goes down a dead end.
Last year, the prime look for “Archaeological Thrillers” (history-adjacent adventure and mystery) was low panorama of city or other story-appropriate environment, with a small figure in silhouette, back to the camera.
That didn’t seem to work with many people, and this year seems to have already moved to the same general idea (and still dark and crowded) but the back-to-the-camera figure moved closer and the lighting shifted for better modeling.
Really, I would be happier if the Urban Fantasy stalwart had stayed; same dark city, same dark figure, but in a much closer crop, the dark colors were mostly in the obligatory leather jacker, and the back-to-the-camera pose had an over-the-shoulder element to it.
In any case I’m thinking more of a Regional Mystery (apparently, not a category Amazon supports as a search term), with some rural setting in the same low panorama, and NO prominent human figure.
New Mexico desert, footprints in sand (superimposed on the sky if that works), the test tower of the Trinity explosion.
If I was going Full Hillerman I might be temped by using the NM flag instead of a sun…but since that is a well-known bit of cultural appropriation in the first place (Zia Pueblo did NOT give permission to use it)...
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