Most novels cover a certain span of time, and we see characters develop over that timeline, regardless of flashbacks or foreshadowing. Some science fiction is set in the future so we begin the story ahead of the present. For writers of science fiction, this can be tricky. Far enough in the future and the author will be long gone and perhaps the copyright expired and the work forgotten so it won't matter how the years turn over after the book is published.
However, writers setting a story in the near future - close enough that readers only a few years from the publication date will be able to look back and read of events which did not happen as the author wrote about them - are screwed. Unfortunately, I've fallen into that trap with the second and third volumes of my vampire trilogy. I failed to predict how the years 2020 and 2021 would actually unfold.
My vampire trilogy begins with A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, which is the first symptom of vampire transformation our hero Stefan Szekely notices. The book is set in 2014, which is also the year in which I wrote it, and set in the same city where I lived. I actually "lived" our protagonist's experiences week by week so I was up-to-date with whatever events were happening. I included a tornado that actually struck my city. Then I wrote two more novels that were unrelated to this vampire novel.
Eventually I had pondered enough what may have happened to our hero 13 years later - thirteen being an ominous number. So I began writing the sequel, SUNRISE. I knew at the time that it would be a trilogy and I loosely planned the third book (SUNSET) while writing the second book. With the second book beginning in 2027, I felt I was sufficiently far in the future that I wouldn't need to worry about the future catching up to me. But wait!
At one point a character from the first book reappears [trying to avoid spoilers] and because they have been apart for so long, the arriving character tells our protagonist what has transpired during the absence. The narrative switches to a first-person account of the misery the character has lived through. Remember I wrote this second book in 2018, with the story set in 2027-2028. (SUNSET opens in 2099 so we're good.) Then we learn in the pages what happened in 2020: nothing particular. No virus, no pandemic, no lockdowns, no vaccine - as we have seen play out.
Here's the scene, where Penny Park is explaining to Stefan:
Then
I got the reality check for real: the mirror.
Remember
the mirror, Stefan? We used to stand naked in front of that wide mirror in my
bathroom, side by side, staring at ourselves. One woman, one man. You were
slender, a geek. Me with no boobs. We were a couple. Those were good days. But
you know mirrors can lie. You told me that more than a few times. Especially
when you started poking at those dry patches on your face. You cursed the
mirror. Then you turned them down or covered them, you said. You refused to
look at yourself. But I saw you. I looked at you, Stefan. I was your mirror,
and I saw you falling apart. Every single day. I still went ahead and put my
eyes on you, no matter how bad you looked.
March
15, 2020. The next worst day of my life. I stared at myself in the mirror. I
saw the patch on my cheek. Brown. Scaly. Itchy. Mottled edges, sort of
diamond-shaped. If I had never met you I wouldn’t have a clue what it was or
how I might have gotten it. I would try what you did, what I first suggested: apply
some lotion. Dry skin needs lotion. And hydration. I can’t laugh anymore at how
many times I told you to hydrate. Your skin was too dry, so hydrate. Remember?
You
know me: I hydrate like a fish. So that was not my problem. I tried lotions,
which softened the patch—patches, eventually, on my face, shoulders, back, also
my chest. There didn’t seem enough lotion in all the stores of the mall to cover
my needs.
But
I did know you, so I had a clue. A creeping feeling started to run up my spine.
I
know what you’re thinking: Why does she have this problem? She is not
Hungarian. She doesn’t have those genes. And she eats a ton of garlic in that
Korean food. I wondered that, too. It made no sense. But there I was, naked in
front of the mirror in the bathroom, examining myself, staring at my
brown-patchy skin, wondering what to do.
And
my mother walked in!
“What
are you doing?” she asked, half in shock to see me naked.
“I
was about to take a shower,” I told her. “I was checking these . . . a few
spots of bad skin.”
She
stepped closer and took a look at them. She doesn’t have any medical training,
but she is a mother. That must count for something, right? But she had no idea.
Then it was déjà-vu all over again: “You better see dermatologist.”
So she gets some medical problem, sure, but she doesn't mention the entire world having a medical problem. Yes, everything is serious in 2027, as though there is a world-wide problem, but nothing is mentioned about what we have all come to experience in 2020-2021.
What to do? I could explain it away as her focusing only on her own personal issues and not bothering to say anything about a pandemic. I could go back and add a couple sentences to cover it, then republish the novel. Or I could let the trilogy fade into the sunset and write something new.
Well, my latest work-in-progress is about what happened in 2020-2021 and the years after. It's the pandemic novel I tried to start in March 2020 but didn't get far. We sci-fi writers are used to imagining scenarios, even truly awful situations. So when something awful actually happens, we may not feel that it's so real. I wanted to wait and see how it unfolded. More than a year later, I've seen enough that I can write my own version of a post-apocalyptic novel. This one is about a boy and his mother and a tuba. Should be out in 2022...if we live to see that day.
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