| *Read to the end for a pic of me with a very large pizza :).The Times just announced Elon Musk as the 2021 Person of the Year. Elon Musk is a polarizing figure. The kind of person that the media crafts their own story around, in some eyes the icon and hero, and in other eyes the villain and egotistical asshole. I think as always in life, the gray area (somewhere in between the black and white view we like to hold of Mr. Musk) is where he is in reality. As a science fiction thriller writer, the future visions that Elon Musk promotes and invests in are especially interesting to think about. Will there be a human space colony on Mars with 1 million people at some point this century? Will Tesla, a techno-fix to climate change work to solve what may be the greatest social and political issue of our time? And I’ll admit I’m biased, but I don’t think these questions are just fun. They are necessary to consider in order to craft narratives and push forward knowledge that can better all of humankind in a just, equitable fashion. And as a science fiction thriller writer, my job is to understand enough of the knowledge so I can write a thrilling narrative. A story that can help us explore our collective futures and dare us to ask questions with a new perspective about the world of today and the vision of the good we want in our world tomorrow. So how does this connect to the Character of the Year? Well, instead of inserting my own opinion on if Elon Musk is worthy of such a title, I’ll make my own subjective claim on the fictional character this year that was my favorite. Or as I’ll call it The Character of The Year. I don’t have a fancy magazine or awards to give out. But I have my love. And for my fictional friend. That will have to be enough. And the award goes to…. Seong Gi-hun, the main character of the Netflix show Squid Game. This is a pic of him :). |
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| He’s my favorite character for a very personal reason: his financial struggles mirror much of what I witnessed in my own childhood. Seong is a gambler, betting on horse races incessantly to the point that his debtors threaten his life. Entering the Squid Game, a competition where one winner is awarded millions of dollars and everyone else is killed is his one chance to dig himself out of his hole. This back story is heartbreaking for me. I remember watching Squid Game almost unable to get past the first episode. Because when I saw Seong I saw my father. A man addicted to sports gambling, who just wanted to do what was best for his family, but the monster of his addiction had no mercy. My father had no Squid Game to enter. My family lost everything and for a decade my mom worked nonstop as a single parent to put food on the table for me. I covered in My Life in Story more about how this made me the writer I am today. But it’s safe to say, I connected to Seong and I was rooting for him. I won’t spoil the rest of the story— that’s not my place. But I fell in love with this character and found me rooting for him unlike any fictional character before. And it got me thinking, what if I were to create my own world that involved a high-stakes game where the losers die and one winner is victorious. And what if I used my life story to inspire the main character of the series? Meet Cameron Lewis. He’s 18 years old and from Long Island, New York. He’s caring and intelligent but has never quite fit in being a football player interested in computers and engineering. Up until the day of his graduation he lived a pretty normal life with a happy, loving family. That’s until he discovers his father died from an overdose. He soon finds out every penny to his family’s name had been gambled away. And in the world of the Millennium Game, when you run out of money you die. It’s a future in which the technocrats are unable to save humanity from climate change. Instead, after resource wars and natural disasters led to World War 3, the United Nations creates a global currency based on carbon. Everyone is allotted a specific amount. And when you run out you are poisoned. It’s a dystopian way to cull the population and maintain a “sustainable” carbon output for humanity. And ultimately, it’s supposed to bring the visions of technocrats like Elon Musk into question (along with questioning ideas of sustainability and power over the future in the first place). When conversations about the future and solutions to solve collective problems are led by a small group of elites with an agenda (in this case to boost their stock price), there are always dangers that can lurk in these visions. And that’s where Squid Game comes in. The high-stakes game they designed is something that I used as inspiration for when designing Millennium Game. In the novel 100 people who have run out of carbon are given a second chance at life by competing in a massive scavenger hunt in an abandoned Walt Disney World. It’s an exciting thrill ride and in the end there is only one winner… everyone else dies. I hope you do read it when it comes out Summer 2022, and if you’d like to be added to my Alpha team to get a chance at reading the draft before it’s published, let me know :).At the end of the day, awards like Person of The Year from The Times may seem trivial, but they do matter in one key aspect: they spark conversation. Elon Musk has been at the center of the conversation; he often IS the conversation. And Squid Game, where my Character of The Year comes from, similarly has been central to a conversation around wealth inequality. The irony in bringing these two forces together is not lost on me. It’s precisely the point. Squid Game has sparked interesting real-world conversations around inequality, with a MrBeast remake on YouTube garnering 160 million-plus views and costing $3 million dollars to make (essentially Squid Game in real life). If you’d like to read my analysis of the story as an author you can read that here. With these narratives being brought together, one thread is clear: inequality. Whether it’s the richest man in the world, a game show having broke people compete for money, or the world’s richest YouTuber creating one of the most successful YouTube videos of all time while spending millions of his own money, we live in a world where conversation and capital tend to go hand in hand. And at the end of the day, the question we have to ask ourselves is who do we want to have power in the conversation? What conversations do we value? And ultimately, who will be our character, our person, and our story of the year? I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, don’t forget… |
| ~Together we are boundless~ All the best, Michael Evans |
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| P.S. This year I actually had a close run-in with the world’s current richest human. I was trying to deliver pizza to Dave Portnoy in a hotel lobby in Los Angeles and ended up meeting the executive assistant of Elon Musk.Two days later we returned to the hotel with a 54” pizza custom-made for Elon Musk. I won’t tell you what happens next… but just know this real-life story does have a happy ending (hint: I’ll be sharing this more in the coming weeks along with everything else from my year-long adventure so stay tuned).Author’s Note: I am writing this to you after completing my last final of what is technically my freshman year in college. I’m headed to Chicago and then to Detroit for a road trip before headed home. I’ll be with some creator friends. Hope to update you all on that soon :). |