Not In My Pajamas

So it turns out that I'm not the only one in the world thinking about how things will be afterwards (that was a joke). I went through an extensive article in Foreign Policy that was actually a dozen writers thinking about the future of cities, which is something that has always interested me, even before. The Atlantic offers a dedicated feature called “Uncharted,” full of links to articles about the post-pandemic world: concerts, homes, handshakes, live theater, air travel, WFH, foodie culture and more.

And others. Disappointingly, most or all seem to be writers sitting home in their pajamas, petting their dogs and speculating about something we've only seen in post-apocalyptic books and movies, which are in turn the result of writers sitting home in their pajamas speculating about life after the crisis, with or without dogs.

The teaser for the “Atlantic” piece on concerts says, “I don’t know when it will be safe to sing arm in arm at the top of our lungs. But we will do it again, because we have to.” There's a lot of this kind of thing in new world writing at this point. No, we don't have to, and even if we did, that would not be the reason we resumed.

So there's a lot of this stuff around, and it tends to waste my time. I understand that I'm doing much the same thing, but I'm not being paid to help vast numbers of readers understand their future. I hope I'm just asking questions and letting the reader take it from there.

And when I write The New World, I am always fully clothed, for some reason.