Building a Better Post-Apocalypse: Discussing Gamechanger with L.X. Beckett

The year is 2101 and after global cataclysm, humanity is bouncing back. In a mind-bending futuristic landscape in which luxuries are only experienced in VR and reputation is the ultimate currency, Rubi Whiting thinks she’s about to start an ordinary career as public defender. But her first client, the anti-social Luciano Pox, turns out to be a mystery—and draws Rubi into a chaotic adventure that will change her life forever.

This is the world of Gamechanger, the “debut” novel of L.X. Bennett—actually a pseudonym for award-winning fantasy author A.M. Dellamonica. We recently spoke to them about developing the novel’s post-climate change world, the merits of the reputation economy, and somehow making the end of the world a fun place to visit.

These are super-anxious times. We respond with denial and fatalism: among older people, the rationale is, basically, “I’ll probably be dead before the climate gets really bad, so I guess I’ll keep living as I always have and hope the odds are in my favor.” Meanwhile, I hear people under 30 actually saying things like “We are the last human generation” or “I figure the world will end around 2035.”

Both positions are less about facts and more about trying to shield ourselves against the harrowing and indescribable fear and pain that arise when you live in the shadow of massive, global, existential threats.

So this book’s meant to stand in traffic—naked or in a clown suit if it helps—and say, “Your feels are legit! But what if more of us used all the amazing and cool and stunningly high and low tech tools at our disposal and fought like hell to survive? What if we dared to believe we can make things better?”

The system you’ve created is vast. Can you describe the worldbuilding process?
The simplest answer is that I imagined a world where the climate is more stable and we get to keep many things that I really love about 2019—inclusive ideals, extreme connectivity, the ability to escape into lavish entertainment experiences, advanced medicine. In 2101, nearly everyone has equal access to these things. The number of people falling through the cracks is small (though we still fail with the mentally ill and the disabled, as Drow Whiting and Luciano Pox demonstrate.)

In my 2101, people like to say, “Everyone has a palace in VR.” Your online home is where you see your people—after all, they’re scattered around the world—and it’s in a custom-built neighborhood containing your @CloseFriends’ homes and customer service portals for trusted vendors. It’s spectacular and spacious. Want a garden? You can have ten! You can always expand your home and electronic possessions with add-in purchases, gaming quest items, and your own artistic creations.

Your body, when you happen to surface from VR, is staying in much more modest digs: a pop-in apartment. Your basic garment is a sheath of nanosilk that can be configured into various base layers, which you can dress up with recyclable printed accessories.

In exchange for everyone having the basics: food, shelter, medical care, educational opportunities and access to the next-generation internet—with all its wondrous VR sims—my future people give up some big things. Guns, for example, the right to get rich or leave your material wealth to your children, the right to home ownership, job security, and 100 percent of their privacy.

Like the most privileged slice of the present, this is a good world to live in but it’s not a utopia either.

Your society blurs the lines between VR and reality, until there is almost no distinguishing between them. The protagonist’s fame as a gamer in a VR depiction of Paris is in keeping with this theme, as is the mystery of whether Luce Pox is real. What are your thoughts about the role of VR in the story? 
Stabilizing our ecosystem could require rationing, along the lines of what was implemented in Britain during World War II. Those were very lean years—and they got leaner as the war went on. My concept for VR in this context is that it’s offered as compensation. The explicit trade-off is unfettered access to a sprawling digital landscape full of entertainments and delights. Physical deprivation is offset, somewhat, by having a high virtual quality of life. Material poverty is offset by access to digital communities and libraries full of books, music, art, learning apps, games, and other experiences.

The luxury economy is based on the idea that you have a reputation score. It’s like a bank account—you can spend those points to buy luxuries or to censor some random guy on the street you see yelling at his kid. Instead of judging them silently, you’re throwing them an actual strike.

This means everyone understands their public behavior is something of a performance. The idea of a certain kind of compassionate respectability is applied evenly to everyone. The higher you score, the less you pay for real-world perks like freshly baked goods or actual wine, or accessing a new gaming sim on its premiere date.

The drawback is that no matter how carefully you try to create a system for governing people, it’s going to be cruelly unfair to someone. In Gamechanger, that’s where the story starts: Luciano Pox has been hectoring people online, and some of his online privileges are about to be suspended for trolling. But is he a troll, or is he mentally ill? The book opens with a police raid on a meeting between him and the public defender who’s been assigned to adjudicate his support ticket with the reputation arbiter, Cloudsight.

Any plans for future stories set in this world?
I am hard at work on a sequel, Dealbreaker, as we speak!

Gamechanger is available now.