It’s not every day one creates the future, but ten years ago today, on a muggy August morning, Hachette published my debut novel, METAWARS: FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE, and it eerily predicted much of what’s come since.
The book was the culmination of years of research to create a fictional world that I believed might be plausible; a story-world where most people interface with one another digitally instead of in real life; and the consequences of living life online instead of living for real.
This was long before Mark Zuckerberg re-branded facebook ‘Meta’ and declared the company a metaverse company, before the pandemic when we all stayed at home and zoomed with one another, and before the rise (and fall?) of crypto currencies and the various virtual worlds that have sprung up to create a consumer metaverse.
The book found a loyal audience and spurred three sequels and went on to explore big themes around choice & consequence. At its core, the MetaWars saga is about personal choice; and taking full responsibility for our own choices and actions. But it also explores wider themes, including what I termed the ‘MetaTrends’; ten trends shaping the world that all seem to be playing out in real time now.
At a school event, talking about the 10 Meta Trends shaping our world
This week, ten years later, Hachette has republished the books, in time for a new generation of young readers (the books are aimed for anyone aged nine to ninety) to discover Jonah, Sam, Granger and the all too real realm of the virtual metasphere.
I set the novel thirty years in the future, and we’re now a third of the way into that trajectory.
What will the coming two decades bring?
See you in the metasphere!
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