While going through my old DOS-based word processor files from the 1980s, created on my very first computer (an IBM PCjr), I stumbled upon notes for a dystopian science fiction story I called Americana 2025. Set 40 years in the (then) future, it was to be about rebels battling for freedom against a corrupt, fascist, corporate-controlled dystopian U.S. government. It was your basic run-of-the-mill mid-1980s cyberpunk stuff, which is why I ended up never writing it. I had, in fact, completely forgotten about it.
That was until a few weeks ago, when I converted that old WordPerfect 4.1 document into something I could read in a modern app.
Stumbling upon it, I sat there in front of my computer, feeling a bit stunned. The story idea and plot notes I described were close enough to our present reality that they gave me chills.
This, I thought, is no longer fiction. It’s reality. And staring at the title, I decided I had to write this now-true story as a journal. This had to be a firsthand look at history as it happens, told personally through commentary on daily headlines and interviews about how these coming changes to American society affect people — not celebrities, not the rich who can afford to escape, but the common person who will be the most affected by what is about to happen.
I want to find what the actual reality is, beyond the anger, the fearmongering, the division, the shock, the jubilation of the MAGA supporters. What is actually happening, who is it affecting, and is it as bad or good as people hoped or feared? Will Donald Trump, America’s first convicted felon president, enact the Project 2025 plan he claims he knows nothing about, despite it being put together by his own people?
I don’t know what is going to happen. No one does. For those reading this online as a blog, we’re all going to find out together. For those future people reading this in book form, this is a record of what happened as it happened.
Either way, this is history, and I just hope I can do it justice.