I’m not just about pulpy sci-fi featuring aliens, coffee and time-travel. I’ve also got some great political satire in the tradition of Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Animal Farm and The Handmaid’s Tale.
The novel that George Orwell wrote – which gave rise to the term ‘Orwellian’ – is 1984. He was inspired by the autocratic regime of Soviet Russia for its attempt to strip away freedom of thought. In Orwell’s novel the government has strictly defined what people are allowed to think, believe and say. Expressing opinions considered politically unacceptable is a thoughtcrime, a term that Orwell first coined in his novel.
It’s beginning to look disturbingly possible in America sometime soon, doesn’t it?
I don’t think I’m being overly dramatic, either. Suppressing freedom of the press, freedom of thought and dissent, is fascism 101, straight out of the fascist playbook.
Watching the direction that Trump and his oligarch buddies are moving, it’s not going to be very long before they aggressively go after the free press, free social media anyone who dissents.
They recently sued ABC for publishing information Trump didn’t like.
The Tolerance Bureau and The Heretic, while not a series, are both set in the same world about 25 years from now in which right-wing extremists are in control of the government and have set up an all-powerful agency to shut down and suppress dissenting opinions on social media – The Tolerance Bureau.
In my novel of the same name, Jim Rogan is a social media skip chaser working for the Bureau. His job is to track down and arrest dissenters who make politically incorrect postings. He loves dragging them away in the night to re-education camps, thinking he’s really doing them a favor, until he learns the dark and horrible truth about what really happens to them in those re-education camps.
A satirical look at censorship in The Tolerance Bureau
Imagine an autocratic regime that’s gone mad (I know, hard to imagine, right?), and posting dissenting opinions on social media (like what I’m doing now, and many of us do daily on Bluesky) will get you not just cancelled by the government, but arrested for “cerebral terrorism”. That’s where the Tolerance Bureau comes in, the new federal agency responsible for policing the internet.
Think you can just say whatever you want on social media and get away with it? Think again! The Tolerance Bureau is watching everything you post. Dissent against the autocrats of the New Order gets you labelled a Cerebral Terrorist, and the Bureau will bring you in for mandatory re-education. Try to run, and social media skip chasers will track you down and lock you up in one of the Bureau’s re-education camps.
That’s Jim Rogan’s job, and he’s one of the best at it.
The story follows Hillary Wells, a famous astrophysicist who runs afoul of the government when she makes a few dissenting comments on social media that offends the Supreme Leader. Now she’s wanted for Cerebral Terrorism and a warrant is issued for her arrest. And the Tolerance Bureau has assigned Special Agent Jim Rogan to bring her in.
The Tolerance Bureau is set in a near future that is all too plausible…
Published February 20, 2023
“Fahrenheit 451” meets Orwell’s “1984” in The Heretic
Heretic is set in the same dark dystopian future as The Tolerance Bureau, an Orwellian world in which saying the wrong thing can get you sent to a re-education camp, and possessing books not approved by the government is a criminal offense.
Intellectual courage in the face of censorship.
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The government, under the influence of the New Order, has strictly defined what is acceptable to believe and think, and has banned all books and social media platforms it does not approve of. Dissenters are arrested as intellectual terrorists and sent to re-education camps.
Libraries are no longer for making books freely available to the public, but for burning them. Anyone in possession of a book not approved by the government is expected to drop it off at the nearest library. The librarian’s job is pretty simple: make sure all offensive books get properly incinerated.
Intellectual Heretic
It follows the story of Jack, whose father goes missing after being denounced for making offensive social media posts. A short time later he’s presumed dead in a suspicious car crash.
But Jack’s life is turned upside down when he finds evidence that his father is still alive – and on the run from the Tolerance Bureau. Jack risks everything to look for his father, and soon finds himself in a deadly race against shadowy agents of the Bureau who are also trying to find him.
Heretic is about intellectual courage in the face of autocracy and government censorship in the tradition of “1984” and “Fahrenheit 451”.
