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Ectopia

Ectopia, a dystopian novel set 16 years into a future in which no females have been born, is written in response to such works by other modern novelists (e.g. Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro) and other classic authors in the field, such as Zamyatin, Huxley, Burgess and Orwell. Its genesis preceded P.D.James’s Children of Men (1992), which foresaw future depopulation through mass infertility. In its focus on the absence of female births, Ectopia finds more association with the feminist representation of birthing females in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). Ishiguro’s dystopian take on cloning in Never Let Me Go (2005) was firmly rooted in mid-twentieth century England. That potential genetic scientific element was updated to the twenty-first century. From Zamyatin’s We (1921) through Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Ishiguro and Atwood, the genre has been used by writers to reflect on an endangered literary culture. Ectopia shifted the genre away from that debate, using filmic references rather than literary ones in tune with the experiences of its teenaged protagonists. It projects a future dictated by climate change and so utilizes environmental science and examines advances in brain science (particularly chemical additives, using articles in The Heffter Review http://www.heffter.org/hrireview.htm). Ectopia drew on a study of the gay protagonists in the oeuvre of James Purdy, supported by a visit to Brooklyn for two extensive author interviews, which focused on Narrow Rooms (1978) and In a Shallow Grave (1975) for examples of breaking bounds in gay representations in fiction. A strong teenage demotic as a central driver of the narrative was developed in response to models in Anthony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange (1971) and Jack Womack’s Random Acts of Senseless Violence (1995).