Category Archives: The Grass is Always Browner
WHEN NEIGHBOURS COME TO STAY
250 years in the future, Australia’s small densely populated neighbouring country Bhakaria could cast envious eyes on large and sparsely populated Australia. Martin Knox has written a speculative fiction novel The Grass Is Always Browner.
Immigration is discouraged by Australia’s harsh climate and by strict border controls. Nevertheless, workers enter and a religion Yamism grows, with a majority of Australians becoming followers.
The nation has suffered severe droughts and famines, dispersing city populations for self-sufficiency. Low-lying areas are flooded by rising sea levels.
The story follows the epic rise of the Yabras, an indigenous family who become a dynasty ruling democratically with science.
Will Prime Minister Abajoe be able to limit immigration, end religious conflict, prevent civil war and maintain peaceful relations with Bhakaria? Siti, a feisty Bhakarian woman activist, becomes his partner.
The story continues through 50 years, with dystopian realism and rearrangement of the institutional furniture to accommodate future Australian society, trending now.
Abajoe leads his people to avert conflict, copying strategies that worked for historic statesmen: Chiang Kaishek, Mandela, Ghandi, De Valera and Parnell. Will he be able to create lasting peace?
The book is 462 pages of relevant content, delivered with page turning at a brisk pace.
Available: Amazon. See reviews: martinknox.com
PERFORMING BETTER IN OWNED TIME
Living in my time, not wearing a watch and doing things when I feel like it, seems to run against the self-control and personal interdependence that Norbert Elias, 1897-1990, called the civilizing process. He identified a dramatic reduction in homicides in England. The trend became the theme of Pinker’s tome ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature.’ He explained that youth rebellion worldwide is a counterculture against social time, when timeliness has become a personal battle, from A Clockwork Orange to the hippy movement.
In 2022 we have achieved historically low homicide rates worldwide, without the stress of obeying ‘Slessor’s little fidget wheels’ which would impose clock time. We can choose to have our cake of time freedom and eat it too, by allowing ourselves to flow timelessly, by optimal achievement, according to Mihaly’s theory of that psychological condition.
My novels ‘Time is Gold’ and ‘Turkeys Not Bees’ tell stories about high achievers who have let flow take over their time. Reviews: martinknox.com
AUSTRALIAN DISTANT FUTURE
ETHNICITY
The Grass is Always Browner is a fiction story by Martin Knox, author. Australia 250 years in the future is governed by an Indigenous dynasty, within a kinder and more scientific version of the current Westminster system of democracy. Youthful Abajoe is renowned for sharing his resources with others and eventually becomes Prime Minister. The story extrapolates trends from the early 21st century.
POPULATION
The protagonist Abajoe and Paula, his friend, experiment with cross-bred rossits, part rabbit and part possum, to discover the dynamics of human reproduction in adjacent territories where food and water supply are variable. The purpose is to identify, from experiments with the rossit model, human population limits in the distant future.
IMMIGRATION
Australia is secular whereas populous Bhakaria is a sectarian state with their religion Yamenism. The neighbours compete for living space and share resources with immigration and trade.
CONFLICT
The religious divide is a source of epic political conflict and civil war. Abajoe walks with his people on a long march of civil disobedience. He survives 15 years of imprisonment and torture, but returns to public life as an Elder, with his wife Siti as Prime Minister bringing peace.
The story balances possible realities of disasters and conflict. The novel extrapolates trends from the early 21st century. It is ecumenical, apolitical and concerned with practical problems. The solutions are relevant today on a continent beset by uncertainties.
Available on Amazon: The Grass Is Always Browner By Martin Knox
Reviews: martinknox.com
SIX SPECTACULAR NOVELS
Guy Debord (1931-1994) was a French philosopher. He observed modern society in which authentic social life had been replaced with its representation, or ‘spectacle’.
In each of my 5 books, there is a different spectacle appearing at the centre of attention.
- In my new book Turkeys not Bees, coming shortly, Megan and Chance are caught up in regulation of athletics and a pandemic. They want individual freedom and resist nanny-state controls.
2. In the satire Animal Farm 2, the focus is on a proletariat of farm livestock, representing ordinary people. The spectacle is of slavery, exploitation and totalitarianism.’
3. ‘Time is Gold’ is a fiction story about a marathon runner whose will is commodified by her training team.
4. ‘Presumed Dead’ has a government and parliament conducted as a spectacle with the appearance of democracy. When a politician disappears, search and investigation adopt innovative forensic methods which reveal corruption.
5. ‘Short of Love’ has Vicki and Tom in a commodified love relationship. He assigns her to a friend, in a short due for delivery later, to repay his gambling debt. It is a satire and when she delivers to his friend early, the arrangement fails.
6. The Grass is Always Browner is a spectacle of Australia 250 years in the future, apparently unified by population growth and an indigenous prime minister, but deeply divided by religion and politics.
Each book has social and economic conditions derived from a ’spectacle’ rather than from reality. Debord’s aim and proposal is ‘to wake up the spectator’ who has been drugged by spectacular images…through radical action in the form of the construction of situations…situations that bring a revolutionary reordering of life, politics, and art’. My stories entertain with exciting situations and new images.
Available on Amazon. Reviews: martinknox.com
