That is one of the questions on my mind, as I’ve been editing my three History Maps books: UI, VR and AI.
I wrote the first draft of book one (UI) through 2019, finishing in August, before any of us had heard of the virus, much less contracted it. I began book two (VR) in August 2019 and finished it at the beginning of May 2020, just as the first lockdowns were beginning.
Book three (AI), therefore, was the only one of the three that could, reasonably, have encompassed Covid and the lockdowns. This one took 15 months for me to write, from June 2020 until September 2021, a period that did contain lockdowns in several of their variations.
I did consider including it. We’ve been watching the wonderful American series This Is Us, which did feature masks, and someone’s spouse disinfecting him as he came in from work, plus lots of video calling between family members. I thought this was appropriate and authentic, as the series is very much of its time. I’d have liked to have been at the executive meeting in which they made the decision, though.
Much of Zoe’s work involves community meetings of one kind and another, which in lockdown would have presumably all moved online amidst great logical problems, I imagine, just as real life businesses and charitable endeavours were suffering as I wrote it.
I was tempted. But I’ve always thought of History Maps as being a slightly futuristic story, even if only by a few years. I didn’t necessarily want it even a part of it to be forever fixed in the year 2020. I wasn’t sure when I’d be publishing the books (I’m still not sure when that will happen) and I imagined, optimistically, that the whole pandemic might be behind us, by the time they are.
This Is Us was actually airing in 2021, when they covered Covid. My books aren’t set in that year (or any specific year) and might not be published until 2023 or even 2024. It made sense for the writers of that TV show, and others, not to ignore the virus that affected us all, in some way or another.
But does it make sense for History Maps to ignore it? In the end, I decided it did.