Category Archives: Animal Farm 2
WHY I WROTE SEVEN NOVELS
TURKEYS NOT BEES
I wrote this during the pandemic, because I was concerned about government overreach, within a spectacle of profit and votes from health, sport, food, employment and education. My purpose was to expose the bullying and racketeering.
ANIMAL FARM 2
I have updated Orwell’s 1945 political satire, with a sequel in which descendents of the farm animals suffer more totalitarianism, as the World reverberates from events controlled by Russia and the superpowers. My purpose was to reveal bullying and science fakery.
TIME IS GOLD
I wanted to celebrate human success using science, at the frontiers of athletic endurance, with the story of a marathon runner who in the future is able to use Einstein’s Special Relativity in her neural performances and break the World record.
SHORT OF LOVE
The story was conceived as a satirical love story which riffs on the usual conventions of commitment and monogamy, against his career as a high-powered executive, when her activism converges on the same ethical space. It is partly autobiographical.
PRESUMED DEAD
I wanted to celebrate the honesty of most public servants. An iconic politician confronts a self-seeking government and she mysteriously disappears. A novel transparent forensic investigation strategy is used to find her, exposing and arraigning the culprits.
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS BROWNER
This is speculative fiction, curious about Australia 250 years in the future, during dark times when the outlook for the people seems compromised by exigencies of population growth, energy supply, world trade, climate change, immigration, religion and political conflict. The epic story tells how indigenous national leaders deal with these creatively.
BRISBANE RIVER ANTI-MEMOIR
Coming. I investigate effectiveness of management river flooding.
Available from Amazon. Excerpts and reviews at martinknox.com
CAN ANIMALS FARM WITHOUT PIGS?
Animal Farm was published in 1945 by author George Orwell, satirizing collectivism at a time when western countries felt threatened by Russia’s totalitarian communism.
Animal Farm 2 by Martin Knox is a new sequel to Orwell’s satire, from Soviet to modern times, when western countries may feel vulnerable to Russian restoration and expansionism.
The farm animals are on Caruba Island under superpower influence. They have learned English and climate science, to challenge the ruling pigs who exploit them cruelly. They are forced to labour in the farm’s coal mine. When the pigs shut it down, they are without pay and energy. Will the animals revolt again and depose the pigs, who deposed the farmer?
The animals are seeking animal liberation but how would they govern the farm?
On Amazon. Reviews see martinknox.com
CHANGING THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION
Australians will vote shortly in a referendum for alteration of the constitution to have an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. There is no argument for a Yes or No position following. My intention is to draw attention to considerations that do not seem to be acknowledged in the official Referendum Booklet where the cases are compared. Novels I have written expound on three issues omitted from this official guide.
Is the proposed change overreach of Australia’s nanny state? I have presented disadvantages of our nanny state in my novel Turkeys Not Bees. A nanny state can benefit people but it can also lead to totalitarianism. My novel Animal Farm 2 is a satirical sequel to George Orwell’s expose of totalitarianism. The proposal is for more control of our democracy, reducing individual freedom.
Recognition in the Constitution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would increase their collective access to Parliament and Executive Government, reducing relative access of other other individual Australians. A case for Australian individualism is presented in Turkeys Not Bees. The referendum proposes a new social spectacle, described by De Bord, 1967. It could appear to have solidarity within the Aboriginal and TSI community, which could result in exploitation by organisations and politicians, unless checks and balances would be adopted later.
Athletes’ access to government support should be equal for all Australians. Establishing affirmative action by this referendum could prevent performances by all Australians from being potentially equal. We need more Cathy Freemans, not an underclass of performers selected by race. My novel Time Is Gold makes cases for competition and innovation in sport.
In summary, the referendum could affirm nanny statism, collectivism, social exploitation and segregation.
My novels are available on Amazon. Excerpts and reviews are at martinknox.com
ANIMAL FARM EPILOGUE
After George Orwell wrote Animal Farm (1945), Martin Knox wrote Animal Farm 2 (2021), The books satirize political and economic conditions, in a revolutionary setting from 1917 to about 2023, as one continuous narrative, paralleling historical events.
After the revolution had deposed the farmer, The animals were subjected to the oppressive control of a totalitarian regime. It had a pig dictator, a shambolic and arbitrary ideology and fearful animal masses.
A ruling class of pigs runs the farm corruptly in order to live luxuriously, keeping the other animals in penury. At the end of Orwell’s book, the animals are in a hopeless situation.
The sequel by Knox considers a microcosm of their predicament, magnified in a Cold War confrontation on Caruba Island, under pig rule. The Social Republic, which is a pig superpower and a Democratic Union of free nations, manoeuvre for geopolitical control of World energy supplies.
The animals learn climate science and question the pigs’ closure of their coal mine, the only income they have. The pigs use energy supply restrictions to make the workers superfluous and prolong their totalitarian rule.
To divert attention from internal hardship and dissent, the pigs enjoin the animals to invade a neighbouring territory, but they revolt again and oust the pigs. The animals get democratic rule at last.
Animal Farm is a story in which ordinary animals achieve, against the odds, liberation by reasoning, science and bravery. They learn to counter the misinformation of leaders, listening to each other and to elders. The setting is both familiar and dystopian. The books show the fallacy of totalitarian rule. The animals could operate Animal Farm much better. Pig rule is not needed. The animals succeed, in a story both uplifting and humorous.
Animal Farm 2 is available on Amazon. For reviews see: martinknox.com
