Years after writing A Lovesome Thing, I’ve finally realized it’s about the internet.
How did I miss it at the time? A magical land where you can build anything you want, be anything you want … where nothing has real-world consequences … a place where people who have to be ‘good’ in real life can shed their inhibitions and act just like the monsters they conquered.
But then it turns out to be a place where in fact, each of your million different personae is trapped in the consequences of its own actions, dragging around the hates and resentments of those its path has crossed. And those heroes who thought they were just playing at villainy find that they’ve become the demons, after all.
When I wrote this book I had been on the internet for over 20 years. I started using it before it was a thing, when scientists were first transmitting data sets to one another. I got onto the first internet service established in Milwaukee, back when you could crash someone’s computer by sending them an image file. I’d been through the usenet groups, the bulletin boards, the first trolls and pitiful demands for kill-filing capability, Eternal September. But I had no idea I was writing about it.
I wonder what I’ll discover the new book is about, ten years down the road? And is this normal for authors? Anybody else have the same experience?
