My Dystopian Novel is Already Becoming a Reality

By Tom Galvin

When I sat down to write a dystopian novel set 30 years in the future where young people are bought and sold like stocks and those deemed not valuable are used as spare parts for the elite, I wrote it as fiction. Now, just as it’s being published, it’s already showing hints of becoming true.

In my debut novel The Auction, twenty-two-year-olds are evaluated and bid on by a cartel of corporations that control the economy. The elite, such as the book’s protagonist Sasha Cross, are worth tens of millions of dollars, which goes to their parents to pay for retirement. In this Draconian system, young people’s financial future is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Unrealistic? Not anymore. College students today can auction off their future earnings in exchange for tuition payments.

Those without a bright future face a different destiny. I won’t give away too many plot details but will point out that a London tribunal in 2019 found that China is harvesting the organs of detainees in prison camps, some while they are still alive.

In the pages of my novel, people’s activities — what they do, every thought they express on social media or in messages, everything they purchase — is put into a database to determine their “societal value.” Today, countries are testing social credit systems and Google put together an internal “Selfish Ledger” video that conceived of a database that could shape and control humanity by collating all the digital information about the world’s population.

When I started writing this novel in 2016, I envisioned how technology and a “fantasy sports” culture could warp society. I explored the implications of this society. How it would distort parents’ views on how to raise their children. For example, if your daughter is your ticket to retirement (in this dystopian society, there is very little government and the Social Security system dismantled), then you’d steer her to a career that paid handsomely and deemed valuable. In such a world, what parents would aspire their child to be a teacher, police officer, or social worker?

When the elite are treated as stocks, the companies that “own” would likely be fixated on their activities, creating a massive surveillance state, dwarfing what we have today. Tracking devices implanted in the elite would become the norm and there would be a need for a new class of “fixers” to protect these assets, formerly known as our children.

What of those at the bottom rung of society? In The Auction, they receive paltry access to health care, their parents — having received nothing for their children and no safety net — would have to work until the end of their lives. The lower class rises, putting the very existence of this economic system, and indeed the country, in question. In today’s world, the bleak prospect for many Americans is fueling a populist movement on both the political left and right. Where will it end?

Even if The Auction is but a shadow of the future, it’s a disturbing picture. And it’s only pre-ordained if society lets it be. If we do nothing, then we have only ourselves to blame. Over the last several years, we’ve started a debate about technology and its role in society. I’m not a mere participant. I lived and worked in Silicon Valley during the early years of the internet and over the last decade have raised alarm about the risks and harms on digital platforms.

In 2018, I raised the fable of the frog and boiling water as an example of what can happen if we don’t wake up. In that fable, if you place a frog in boiling water, it will leap out. But, if the frog sits in water that is gradually heated, it won’t realize the danger and get boiled to death. Right now, when it comes to technology, we are the frogs. Over the last two decades, technology has reshaped society, often without us even realizing it. Not that technology is evil. It’s not. It’s amoral, meaning it’s neither good nor bad. It’s only how it is used that determines the ethics and virtue of technology.

As a society, we get to choose how it’s used. But if we don’t others who may see the future differently than we do, get to choose for us.

And the clock is ticking. I held off publishing the book in 2020 because it didn’t feel right to publish a dystopian novel in what felt like a dystopian time of pandemic and disinformation. But if I waited, it might not feel as futuristic as when I first penned it years ago. Truth might no longer be stranger than fiction.

Tom Galvin is an author, former political journalist, technology executive, and founder of the Digital Citizens Alliance. His website is tom-galvin.com.

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