Governments, Worldbuilding, and Dictators oh my

[dictatorshandbook-blog]

Things Authors Forget When Writing About Generation Ships

Space! The next adventure! The final frontier! A cool excuse for you to make your character’s hair get all floaty!

And if there’s one thing spacefarers all love, it’s generation ships. Generation ships (sometimes known as sleeper ships) are vessels that can carry hundreds to thousands of people at slower than light speeds. If faster than light (FTL) travel doesn’t exist in your story, then this is the only way humans will be able to colonize distant star systems. A man boards; his great-great-great grandchild exits on an alien world.

For more about what generation ships are, see TvTropes. 

Before everyone sets sail (or flees Earth, depending on the circumstances), you’ll want to take into account a few things about the biological and psychological nature of having, quite literally, a “city in a bottle.” Below are a list of things to consider, or, more honestly, “Everything that Could Go Wrong on a Generation Ship”:

Population control. This one is obvious: a generation ship can only support so many people for so much time.  A strict system may have to be in place—perhaps a two child policy—to make sure that the population doesn’t change significantly over time.

Genetic drift and the bottleneck effect. In small populations, the overall genetic makeup of the population will change more rapidly than in large populations. This is due to pure chance, not natural selection or mutation, and is called genetic drift. Combine this with the bottleneck effect (when a population has very low genetic diversity after experiencing a period when the population was extremely small) and after a few generations, you might have a population with a very different, but far less diverse, genetic makeup than those who originally boarded the ship. For example, maybe the original passengers were of a variety of different heights and with histories of different genetic diseases (or no history of genetic disease), but within a few generations, all of them are average height and there is an alarmingly high proportion of people with Cystic Fibrosis. Thus the overall genetic makeup of the population has changed significantly (from low proportion of CF --> high proportion of CF), and there is little genetic diversity (many heights --> all one height). For more about both of these concepts, you can read here. Without serious genetic engineering and intervention, this is likely to happen on a generation ship.

Infectious diseases. In part because of the loss of genetic diversity, and also in part because of the closed, sealed space everyone is in, the spread of infectious diseases will become a lot more serious. Even in the ship, bacteria and other pathogens will exist. Worse, they too are subject to genetic drift, and so changes in microbial genetics could rapidly create new strains of bacteria. The wrong strain doesn’t even need to kill all of the population. Killing just 25% might be enough to make it impossible to have enough people to keep up with food production, ship maintenance, and ship navigation. The rest of the population might just slowly die off as their means of survival disappears.

Self-reliance. The ship must be able to be self-sustaining, as it will be impossible to get any help once it’s far from Earth. This not only means ship maintenance must be able to be conducted on the ship, but also food and water production (where do they get the water? Do they mine icy comets for it? Do they produce it with chemical reactions?), finding fuel sources for electricity (nuclear power? What happens in the case of a nuclear accident? Solar can work, but only if they’re near a star system), etc. All items must be able to be made on the ship, as anything brought onboard with the original passengers won’t last hundreds of years. If you’re writing a generation ship story, take a few days to analyze every object you use in your life, figure out roughly how it is made, and determine if that’s sustainable on a generation ship with few people and few resources. Fabric? It’ll probably all be synthetic materials, unless your ship has cotton fields or sheep. Plastic? It’s made from crude oil, which you probably won’t find in space.

Ethical concerns. This may be one of the biggest issues you’ll run into with a generation ship. Sure, the people boarding the ship get the excitement of setting sail to a new world, and the people exiting get to sink their feet into alien soil… but what about the generations in between? How do they find meaning in their lives, knowing that they can never be more than the ship? Exaggerating the importance of the ship may be one way. You’re not just there because you’re a collection of genes chosen to further the human race. You were chosen by divinity, ordained by the stars. Maybe you were destined to set an example for future generations of humans so that humanity can rise to its true moral status, or maybe you’re there to devote your life to the purification of the human race, and your whole life revolves around genetically engineering a “better” human species. For the middle generations, dealing with the futility of life onboard can quickly result in the rise of religious cults, eugenics, and other forms of extremism in order to make sense of their lives. Humanity may be very different when they get off the ship.

These are just some of the many things that can become problems in a sealed metal space box. The population’s genetic makeup could drift to extremes, infectious diseases could also drift to extremes and kill everybody, common luxuries and even basic staples of civilization that we take for granted will not exist, and even if everybody survives, the middle generations could steer the ship towards extremism.

And that’s not even going into if your ship includes cryogenically frozen humans, which we’ll talk about later!

[dictatorshandbook-blog]

Six Main Elements of Totalitarianism

So you too want to have the chance to write brutal autocrats and the heroes that defeat them? Then let’s talk totalitarian dictatorships.

First off, autocratic doesn’t mean totalitarian. Russia is an autocracy, but it’s not totalitarian because dissent exists, the shirtless man whose name sounds like a Canadian dish and his bear hunting buddies just suppress it. Venezuela is autocratic but even though they lack toilet paper they’re not totalitarian. Really, when you think about, the majority of dictatorships or non-democratic states are autocracies, but not totalitarian states. For a state to be totalitarian it has to not only exercise control over political activities, but also hegemonic control over little nuances of everyday life.

Let’s take a moment to define some terms:

State: colloquially a country. It’s the organization that holds exclusive rights to the legitimate use of force over a given territory. It’s also defined as the organization that protects and enforces property rights. State is used to refer in particular to the government of a country and its institutions while a nation refers to a group with common cultural characteristics.

Hegemony: in international relations, the complete control (political, cultural, economic) of one power over another. In comparative politics, it refers to the ability of the state to exert itself in everyday life without question (do you wonder why you pay your taxes? Or drive on the side of the road you drive on? Hegemonic control)

Now onto the fun!

There are six main components of a totalitarian state:

·     Official ideology

o   First off, totalitarian states need a reason to exist. They need a reason to have been formed. People don’t wake up one day and say “hey, I’d love to create a country where people are crushed under the boot of the government because my fiancée broke off with me yesterday and it gave me the sadness”. Less snarkily, personal motivations may be an inciting event but they’re rarely enough to carry someone through the long and relatively arduous process of creating a totalitarian regime. This is where the ideology comes in. Be it fascism, communism, religion, or something else, it’s the underlying ideals that drive the state and all state actors (and runs the lives of civilians)

·      Single mass party

o   This ties into the idea of the ideology. Totalitarian states control the lives of their individual members and in doing so must make the individuals feel as if they have a stake in the survival of the regime or else they’ll overthrow it. This is why mass parties (Nazi Party, Communist Party, Korean Worker’s Party, etc) exist. They bring the people closer to the regime and allow them to buy into the prevailing ideology. Secret police only get you so far.

·      Monopoly of all means of armed conflict (in the hands of the party and its subservient cadres)

o   SPEAKING OF THE SECRET POLICE. What this truly means is that the party is superior to the military. While the military might be respected, it’s the secret police (which are distinct from the military and an arm of the party, not the state) that control domestic life and domestic violent activities such as the execution or torture of dissidents

·      Monopoly of all means of communication

o   This means not only no independent press but monitoring of electronic communication, mail, and conversations. This is done usually through encouraging neighbors or family members to keep an eye on each other and report any sort of dissident behavior to the authorities. It also keeps everyone too afraid of those around them to start a revolution.

·      System of arbitrary terror

o   Remember, arbitrary in this case does not mean random. The totalitarian regime must have a reason for every act of terror. Arbitrary means pervasive, frequent, commonplace. Telling on someone and in doing so sending them to the gulag for a bit should be as easy to do emotionally as tying your shoes so it has to be normalized.

·      Command economy

o   Totalitarian states must exact control over every part of one’s life. This includes the economy. Command economies simply mean that a centralized institution determines what is to be produced and when and workers follow through. No money needs to be exchanged.

While these are the six main components of a totalitarian regime there’s one underlying concept: complete control of the lives of citizens living under the regime. Without this, the state is not totalitarian.

[dictatorshandbook-blog]

Military Physical Fitness Training for your Protagonist

So your YA protagonist (or any protagonist, really) has decided to join the rebellion! But before they can free their country from the oppressive dictatorship, they need to prove their worth.

Military training is a lot more than just learning how to throw a punch. In general, military training seeks to build up a cadet in several main areas: in this, we’ll talk about physical fitness.

A recruit is not going to be able to carry a heavy pack, armor, and a weapon through a combat zone without having at least a little bit of stamina and strength.  The training your character will receive will cover a few things:

Strength in a variety of places (upper body, core, etc) so that they can lift heavy packs, other soldiers, equipment, etc. Pushups are a favorite training method, but weights, pullups, and carrying a fellow cadet while screaming incoherently also work.

Endurance, which is often forgotten in fiction. After all, it’s not enough that your character can lift a 200-lb weight: if they can’t also carry their 140-lb fellow soldier out from under fire and back to a safe zone, then both of them will get killed. Runs, marches with heavy packs, and long obstacle courses can train for this. Teach your character to sprint, too—although it’s not endurance to run a short distance, they’ll need it when they’re scrambling to get out from under fire.

Flexibility. This is usually not explicitly tested, but if your character is super rigid, all their instructors will know as soon as they hit the obstacle course.

To get an idea of how intensely your character will be trained, you can look up “physical fitness standards” for any branch of any military in the world. 

Especially in YA dystopia, you will need to make some considerations about your character’s training and the army they join:

If your character was starving or otherwise malnourished (perhaps under heavy rationing) before joining their army, they will have a REALLY hard time keeping up in training at first. This could be a fun obstacle to have your character overcome to build up their courage and resolve.

The more desperate an army is for recruits, the more lenient it will be with its physical fitness standards. A ragtag rebellion army may not impose much fitness training, save for giving the character a gun and telling them to shoot any enemy soldier that moves. This is a sign your character should seek a better military career, preferably one with health insurance.

The less resources an army has, the less it will spend on physical training equipment. The US Army can afford to have well-stocked gyms on its bases used for training soldiers; other militaries and militias make do with less. Having a fancy gym makes training easier but is in no way necessary. Basic training exercises—running, situps, pushups, etc—can be done with no equipment at all, and obstacle courses can be made in the woods or the desert with little work. That means that if your world is impoverished, your character will be able to see in their training. UNLESS you want to show that the country is impoverished but it spends ridiculous proportions of its money on its military—then bring out the fully stocked gym.

Unless your characters live in a desert, they should have some swim training. They will thank you.

So send your character out on that three mile run, but remember to give them some water or else their drill sergeant will scream at them.

[dictatorshandbook-blog]

The problem with YA dictatorships

So YA fiction has an issue where all the evil/problems in an authoritarian regime (be it a dystopia, autocracy, totalitarian state, etc) are the fault of one person and thus you can solve them by punching that one person in the face (or killing them. Usually killing them). The issue with this is that it grossly simplifies the issues in authoritarian states (states in this situation referring to the governments/regimes of a country in the political science use of the term, not US states). Furthermore, it removes the fault and agency from everyone else complicit in the actions of the regime. Finally, it has real world repercussions as it causes people (who are/will become voters) to say “why don’t we just overthrow the dictator of Syria/Tunisia/North Korea/[insert country here] and then let the people naturally become democratic because that’s how this happens”.

The flip side of this problem is that the solution to these problems (that is, the thing that can save the country/destroy the evil leader) is usually one person as well. This comes in the brave, attractive protagonist that’s either dropped into a new world to save it, rises randomly from the bottom to overthrow the top, is told via a prophecy that they’ll save the world, and so on and so forth. The issue here is that it removes the agency of every other oppressed person existing under the regime. It teaches anyone who dislikes what their government is doing that all they can do is wait for their savior to come from somewhere, that they have no power over their own lives.

Fiction is fiction, yes, but people learn from fiction about how the world works. The problem with dictatorships in YA fiction is that they fundamentally misrepresent the way dictatorships and authoritarian regimes as a whole function and people learn from that consciously or not.