How to Covey the Distant Future in the Middle of the Wilderness

Spy_on_the_Inside · May 4, 2019

I am having an issue with establishing place within the first few chapter of my story. Geographically, the reader can tell where they are and they are able to tell that, even though all the places I name on a map, that it is not the time and place they themselves live. What I am specifically struggling with is how to convey the when of where the story takes place (over 300 years in the future).

One of the biggest issues standing in the way of this is that even though the world I have built does have large cities with all the wondrous futuristic technology you can imagine, the main characters all live in a village in the middle of the wilderness, without electricity, running water, or even formal currency. Outsiders from the larger cities do come to the village from time to time, but their ability to use their own 'modern' technology is inhibited.

It also doesn't help that the person who is narrating to the characters isn't in the most...sober state of mind. So she can't launch into long historical discussion with the reader, and is pretty limited to describing what she sees to the reader.

How can I convey the when of my story given these limitations?

Brightdreamer · May 4, 2019

First off, it's good that your character can't "launch into long historical discussion with the reader" - this kind of infodump, especially early on, can be a real turn-off for readers.

Secondly... when do they need to know the "when" of your world? You can dribble in enough hints early on to hint at the greater world. As a quick bad example, if your drunk character has ever been in one of your futuristic cities, she could lament the lack of night lighting or automated transportation as she stumbles her way home at 3 AM (but maybe not enough to actually want to live in such a stuffy, crowded, stuck-up place, where you can't even see the stars... or puke in an alley and kick dirt over the mess.) This lets the reader know that there are cities and advanced tech, but not here, and that's about all the reader needs to know at that time.

You can also pull the "lost tourist" bit where the character has a brief encounter with one of those city folk while drinking (there could be some conflict where they try to pay for booze with city currency, for instance), but this could easily spill into infodump territory if it goes on too long.

indianroads · May 4, 2019

^^^^ THAT.

You can also have your drunk character hassle with a technological artifact left behind by a visitor - maybe toss it in the garbage because she disapproves of the way of life that goes with it.

Food for thought.
In my WIP, (occurring about 150 years in the future) there are a group of people who have left the cities behind in favor of a simpler life. Most became farmers, and the highest tech one of them possess is a tractor - powered by an old gasoline flat head engine. Many in this group believe that technology was a soft tyranny - it enslaved them by making their lives too easy. Once they came to rely on it, they were caught and unable to return to a more natural life.

Margrave86 · May 4, 2019

"They don't have to deal with this in the arcologies, I bet," she grumbled.

Her booze-red eyes wandered around their sockets, so she narrowed them into slits, corraling them into focusing. Her hands were shaking, as much from the bitter cold seeping through the uninsulated wooden plank walls as from the alcohol coursing through her body.

"With their flying cars and their food pills and their instaheating homes...."

Her trembling fingers finally ignited the lighter. A paltry lick of flame danced atop it. She stopped talking and held her breath to keep from accidentally blowing it out. As cold sweat beaded on her forehead, she reached down ever so gently to touch the lighter to the pile of kindling....

A stray breeze waltzed through the walls and extinguished the flame with the same casual contempt as a flick behind the ears.

"Dammit!"

Howling with rage, she threw the lighter across the room and shook her raised fist in the general direction of the distant arcologies.

As he watched her rage, he tightened the blanket around his shoulders and kept out the cold the old-fashioned way: hard spirits straight from the bottle. It wasn't as good as the synth-spirits churned out by computer, but it had a certain quaint, folksy charm that could only come from a rustic, handbuilt, and almost-certainly illegal basement distillery. But that was the way they did it out here in the tech-deprived rural provinces. And as they said, when on Splornplatt IX, do as the Splornplatters did.

That's how you do it.

When you need to get tricky exposition across, don't underestimate the power of a schlub. Readers can easily identify with them, and since put-upon people tend to vent their frustration in a way that makes others want them to shut up, it allows you to easily get across exposition that would sound unnatural and stagey as a more-formal infodump.

BillL · May 5, 2019

Does pollution still exist in your future? You could make reference to the crisp wilderness air being different from the post-urban smog, if such a thing exists. Light pollution in cities outshines and obscures the stars in the night sky while the wilderness shows all kinds of stars. Noise pollution is also a thing.

MaeZe · May 5, 2019

Margrave86 said:
That's how you do it.

When you need to get tricky exposition across, don't underestimate the power of a schlub. Readers can easily identify with them, and since put-upon people tend to vent their frustration in a way that makes others want them to shut up, it allows you to easily get across exposition that would sound unnatural and stagey as a more-formal infodump.

Very good.

I have villagers who live in the wilderness on another planet while the bulk of the settlers live in a modern city. The planet was colonized ~150 years ago.

Chapter titles can give the age/era things are happening in.

Also I have satellites and aircraft flying overhead. In my case it lets the reader know that the whole colony is not fresh off the boat.

And of course there is talk about the people in the city. That can be dribbled in, doesn't need to be an info-dump for the readers to get the picture.

And what has changed in 300 years? Big wars, climate change, medical advances the villagers have to go into the city for if someone gets ill or injured (limb regrowth?), there are many options one can reference.

kwanzaabot · May 8, 2019

It's been a few years since I last read Echopraxia, but IIRC Peter Watts started his novel out in the desert with a biologist noting how EVERYTHING was swarming with nano-machines. The dirt, the animals, the bacteria inside the animals, the trees, everything had been altered fundamentally by the setting's transhumanist dystopia.

I thought that was an absolutely brilliant way to establish a setting.

How to Covey the Distant Future in the Middle of the Wilderness

Spy_on_the_Inside

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist

indianroads

Wherever I go, there I am.

Margrave86

BillL

MaeZe

kwanzaabot