Uranium Fist | Page 2

to that was a notion I wished to express in the book: that the capitalist class is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. I was playing with the notion that threatened with a revolution, they would use these weapons as a desperate attempt to crush any revolutionary uprising. Hence, the revolution on my colony world of Greyermede was nuked4.
Among my influences there was also my readings about the Bolshevik Revolution. That revolution was crushed (though not so intensely as my fictional one) and rotted into the bureaucratic state capitalist regime established under Stalin. That one that had so recently collapsed before I began my book.
I had also been influenced by reading the Iron Heel by Jack London, and this added a certain simplistic heroic adventurism to the tone of the novel. I never worried about the simplistic nature of the politics of the book. For one thing, I had never written novel, for another I was young and idealistic and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. The book set out to do what I wanted. Mostly.
Then I forgot about the book and moved on.
So did the world.
Until 1999.
No sooner had I done the re-write, than the international anti-capitalist movement burst into the open at Seattle. The twentieth century ended with an unprecedented revolt against global capitalism. Suddenly socialism was no longer 'dead'; but a vibrant part of an amalgam of opposition that was challenging all the precepts and pinnacles of a global economic system that was said to have been validated beyond all doubt by the collapse of 'communism' in the Soviet Union.
Suddenly radical social change was back on the agenda. And it followed through, across the globe, with a resurgence in radical politics not seen since the Sixties and in many ways never before seen. The world was rocking, if still a long way from revolution.
Well, the world is still a long way from the kind of revolution seen in my book (and of course it was fictional and will bear no relation to one in reality), but revolutions grow from such political and social soil as is being ploughed today.
So that brought the comment that Uranium Fist was ahead of its time. It might have focused on but one strand in the current anti-capitalist mood, but I hinted within that book at many more strands. It has reflected, in a simple and perhaps naive form, the anti-capitalist movement that has emerged so dramatically.
Uranium Fist was and is an anti-capitalist novel.
In that sense, I guess it's true that it was ahead of its time, though I will forever remain sceptical myself.
That said, I trust that one part at least will never be ahead of its time nor contemporary, but remain a fantasy -- and that is that nuclear weapons will never be used to suppress humanity's desire for social justice and freedom.
As they all too easily could be.
Here's to the future. Here's to being ahead of times. Here's to a better world.
If by some miracle, Uranium Fist can play a part, however small and trivial, then I shall be pleased. But I must emphasis it remains what it always was -- a novel and (I hope) a damn good story.
Mark Cantrell, Bradford, 11 September 2003
COMING SOON...
Presented By Writers of Worlds: Two Novels By Mark Cantrell
CITIZEN ZERO
SINCE the early decades of the 21st Century, when society was scarred by the traumas of globalisation and a protracted war on terror, Britain has become a peaceful and prosperous consumer society.
Historians are already talking of a Golden Age, but under the security-driven authoritarian regime of Alexander Carlisle - Britain's longest serving PM - they know not to say anything else.
But this Golden Age masks a rotten core - and it is about to come crashing down.
On the fringes of society are the 'zeros' - the poor, the unemployed, the destitute - who paid the price for society's affluence. Lurking in their midst is Clute, one of Carlisle's former comrades-in-arms who helped him seize power. He has turned self-styled prophet of revolution, but behind his rhetoric of a better world is a nihilistic vision of apocalyptic proportions.
Clute is about to destroy the technological chains of social control by attacking its weakest point. In so doing, the zeros will be unleashed to rampage through the consumer citadels in an orgy of violent rage. So will begin a catastrophic struggle between society and those it exiled.
David Mills is about to become a central player in this world-shattering power struggle. He is a zero, ordered to take part in the JobNet global recruitment scheme. To begin with, it seems to fulfil all its promise as he finds a woman to love and prospects for a better life through this artificial world, then it all goes insane and he is struggling to save both his sanity