Sci-Fi novels aim to be prophetic, the closer to the present time they're situated the greater the likelihood that the prophesies will come about. It's predictions that this piece is focused on, those that work out and those that don't.
Omar El Akkad’s novel American War is a work of modern political history disguised as science fiction. Actually, even from the book jacket you know it’s fiction, since the war of the title takes place in the late 2000’s, starting about fifty years from 2025 when I’m writing this.
The book is premised on the consequences of irreconcilable political polarization, with the clear implication that what is happening in the America of 2025 shows all the possibilities of ending in a second and even more brutal civil war than the one of the 1860’s. El Akkad’s novel is an omen. Our weapons will be more powerful and more deadly and the hatreds that war breeds in the opposing sides will make each side more revenge oriented and deadly. We’ve got the weapons right now to make that so and future weapons will pack even more lethality.
El Akkad anchors the story in the person of a misfit figure, a Southern girl born into the hurricane decimated coast of Louisiana, much of it already lost to the renamed Mississippi Sea, formerly the Gulf of Mexico. The country is already fractured and at war and our heroine and her family are forced into a Southern refugee settlement near the active battle line with the North. It’s her experience there that radicalizes her and sets off the conditions that ultimately, many years later, ends the war but not the hatreds.
The novel suggests seriously that the war’s formal end, with the South clobbered into submission, may not ever end the thirst for revenge from both sides. El Akkad bases the high probability of such an outcome on the 150 year history following our first Civil War. The battles may be ideological now, but they’re still being fought.
So American War is clearly not just science fiction. It’s a cautionary tale about where we’re headed. Events could conceivably go where El Akkad is taking his story, but given all the other divisive forces at play, there could be other scenarios. Not any of them rosy.
The book plays right into my own poor prognosis for the future of the United States. I’ve told friends that I believe by 2050 the country will have split along ideological lines, not just North vs South, but more Red vs Blue, with the Red encroaching to the north and west. It’s an easy bet that I make because no one will be able to congratulate me on my foresight or bust me for my pessimism. I don’t intend to make it to 2060, given I’d be pushing past 100 by that date. I’ve never anyway been driven to think that life is an endurance test, a game to play for its own sake. Life was always for me an opportunity to engage the faculties I had, but past 100 those faculties would likely be only up to getting out of bed and making it to the toilet. And even those “accomplishments” might be more wishful than achievable.
So what’s the point of prognosticating about some place and time I won’t see? Ironically, I see it as an opportunity to engage in ways that will, in fact, make use of what present day capabilities I still do have. It’s not an opportunity to stop caring. And oddly enough, it’s launched me into a likely quixotic effort to yet make some big difference in my life. Since big differences necessarily come about through forming an intent and then formulating a plan and then carrying it out, I have to look back on all the unsuccessful efforts I’ve made through the years. If just to remind myself of the efforts that led up blind alleys.
My ambitions early on to be a force didn’t pan out, precisely for two reasons. The first is on me. My early adult years were involved largely in making mistakes and starting over—several times. When my age peers were treading assuredly to their life goals in their late 20’s, I was still in school wondering if, as I approached 30, I was going to need yet another new start. But somewhere in between I found the determination to complete something and at 32 I finished with schooling—a PhD in linguistics. I was going to start my teaching and research career at an age when my linguistic age mates were already half way up their career ladders.
But I did have the chance to step into the only career that a PhD in linguistics was trained for, that being an entry level position in linguistics at a name school with a newly formed department. It paid peanuts and heaped a punishing course load on me, but then the second reason hit and threw my ambitions back into uncertainty. I wasn’t going to get on a tenure track and it was because I fucked up royally on an academic presentation of my research. I was castigated publicly by an up-and-coming young Turk for a lack of academic rigor. And I have to admit, he was largely right. But the denunciation was brutal and the department chairman gave me the realistic consequence. No tenure. Just a few more years at the same step of the ladder, after which I would have to be let go by university policy. I decided to start over instead and quit and moved across the country to begin again.
The next few years were dicey. Some great, some scary. Since another university appointment wasn’t going to be a wise move, I landed some gigs in the area of applied linguistics. Basically, this is an area where you’re not expected to publish or perish, but you’re tied to grants and contracts to build your career. But grant getting then put you at the mercy of funding sources controlled ultimately by the unsettled waves of the Federal government. And that sadly is still the reality today in 2025. You only have to compare the previous Biden administration priorities with those of the current Trump administration. Good luck on reaching career stability in research on government grants.
So this brings me back to speculating about El Akkad’s book. I survived through my period of klutzy equivocating and made it into a successful old age. But I’m not sure, and neither is El Akkad, that the country is going to weather the next set of forces bent on tearing us apart
The forces pushing me a half century ago were ultimately more benign than those I would face today as a 20 year old. There’s the violence that’s associated with cramping more of us into less livable space; there’s Mother Nature taking her revenge on screwing up her planet; there’s the ever widening wealth inequality, with billionaires aiming to become trillionaires at the expense of the already have-nots; there’s the AI threat not just to job security, but to jobs period; there’s the mistrust of liberal and humanistic education in favor of a reliance on teachings of the Good Book and the technology deities.
I faced only microdoses of those forces compared to now. It seems all too clear, now that I’m out of the fray, that the me who I was then wouldn’t make it to the me I am today with the same tactics. But, then again, maybe I would, but what would I have to do differently? I think I’d have to become a wildly different individual than my nature inclined me. Would I like myself? Would others like me? How much do these two questions matter anyway?
America At War With Itself and With Me
Omar El Akkad’s novel American War is a work of modern political history disguised as science fiction. Actually, even from the book jacket you know it’s fiction, since the war of the title takes place in the late 2000’s, starting about fifty years from 2025 when I’m writing this.
The book is premised on the consequences of irreconcilable political polarization, with the clear implication that what is happening in the America of 2025 shows all the possibilities of ending in a second and even more brutal civil war than the one of the 1860’s. El Akkad’s novel is an omen. Our weapons will be more powerful and more deadly and the hatreds that war breeds in the opposing sides will make each side more revenge oriented and deadly. We’ve got the weapons right now to make that so and future weapons will pack even more lethality.
El Akkad anchors the story in the person of a misfit figure, a Southern girl born into the hurricane decimated coast of Louisiana, much of it already lost to the renamed Mississippi Sea, formerly the Gulf of Mexico. The country is already fractured and at war and our heroine and her family are forced into a Southern refugee settlement near the active battle line with the North. It’s her experience there that radicalizes her and sets off the conditions that ultimately, many years later, ends the war but not the hatreds.
The novel suggests seriously that the war’s formal end, with the South clobbered into submission, may not ever end the thirst for revenge from both sides. El Akkad bases the high probability of such an outcome on the 150 year history following our first Civil War. The battles may be ideological now, but they’re still being fought.
So American War is clearly not just science fiction. It’s a cautionary tale about where we’re headed. Events could conceivably go where El Akkad is taking his story, but given all the other divisive forces at play, there could be other scenarios. Not any of them rosy.
The book plays right into my own poor prognosis for the future of the United States. I’ve told friends that I believe by 2050 the country will have split along ideological lines, not just North vs South, but more Red vs Blue, with the Red encroaching to the north and west. It’s an easy bet that I make because no one will be able to congratulate me on my foresight or bust me for my pessimism. I don’t intend to make it to 2060, given I’d be pushing past 100 by that date. I’ve never anyway been driven to think that life is an endurance test, a game to play for its own sake. Life was always for me an opportunity to engage the faculties I had, but past 100 those faculties would likely be only up to getting out of bed and making it to the toilet. And even those “accomplishments” might be more wishful than achievable.
So what’s the point of prognosticating about some place and time I won’t see? Ironically, I see it as an opportunity to engage in ways that will, in fact, make use of what present day capabilities I still do have. It’s not an opportunity to stop caring. And oddly enough, it’s launched me into a likely quixotic effort to yet make some big difference in my life. Since big differences necessarily come about through forming an intent and then formulating a plan and then carrying it out, I have to look back on all the unsuccessful efforts I’ve made through the years. If just to remind myself of the efforts that led up blind alleys.
My ambitions early on to be a force didn’t pan out, precisely for two reasons. The first is on me. My early adult years were involved largely in making mistakes and starting over—several times. When my age peers were treading assuredly to their life goals in their late 20’s, I was still in school wondering if, as I approached 30, I was going to need yet another new start. But somewhere in between I found the determination to complete something and at 32 I finished with schooling—a PhD in linguistics. I was going to start my teaching and research career at an age when my linguistic age mates were already half way up their career ladders.
But I did have the chance to step into the only career that a PhD in linguistics was trained for, that being an entry level position in linguistics at a name school with a newly formed department. It paid peanuts and heaped a punishing course load on me, but then the second reason hit and threw my ambitions back into uncertainty. I wasn’t going to get on a tenure track and it was because I fucked up royally on an academic presentation of my research. I was castigated publicly by an up-and-coming young Turk for a lack of academic rigor. And I have to admit, he was largely right. But the denunciation was brutal and the department chairman gave me the realistic consequence. No tenure. Just a few more years at the same step of the ladder, after which I would have to be let go by university policy. I decided to start over instead and quit and moved across the country to begin again.
The next few years were dicey. Some great, some scary. Since another university appointment wasn’t going to be a wise move, I landed some gigs in the area of applied linguistics. Basically, this is an area where you’re not expected to publish or perish, but you’re tied to grants and contracts to build your career. But grant getting then put you at the mercy of funding sources controlled ultimately by the unsettled waves of the Federal government. And that sadly is still the reality today in 2025. You only have to compare the previous Biden administration priorities with those of the current Trump administration. Good luck on reaching career stability in research on government grants.
So this brings me back to speculating about El Akkad’s book. I survived through my period of klutzy equivocating and made it into a successful old age. But I’m not sure, and neither is El Akkad, that the country is going to weather the next set of forces bent on tearing us apart
The forces pushing me a half century ago were ultimately more benign than those I would face today as a 20 year old. There’s the violence that’s associated with cramping more of us into less livable space; there’s Mother Nature taking her revenge on screwing up her planet; there’s the ever widening wealth inequality, with billionaires aiming to become trillionaires at the expense of the already have-nots; there’s the AI threat not just to job security, but to jobs period; there’s the mistrust of liberal and humanistic education in favor of a reliance on teachings of the Good Book and the technology deities.
I faced only microdoses of those forces compared to now. It seems all too clear, now that I’m out of the fray, that the me who I was then wouldn’t make it to the me I am today with the same tactics. But, then again, maybe I would, but what would I have to do differently? I think I’d have to become a wildly different individual than my nature inclined me. Would I like myself? Would others like me? How much do these two questions matter anyway?
The end is near!
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