A lot of the novel writing advice out there will tell you that writing pop culture and music into novels is a bad idea. The reason behind this advice is fairly solid. First off, it dates your novel. If you were to open a book with Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump references abound, that would squarely put the novel in a bygone area and remove its ability to be contemporary.
I think the same would be true even without references to pop culture. My wife read a novel recently that was set in the 90’s and she was really captivated by how well it portrayed the nineties. People were leaving handwritten notes on people’s doors, and they were writing letters. Later, she realized the reason it felt so 90’s was that it was published in the 90’s! Even though the book was contemporary at the time it was written, it was historical fiction by the time my wife read it in 2023.
The same will be true of anything contemporary that comes out now. While selfie sticks and smart phones will be a defining characteristic of this era, the advances in AI, quantum computing, and everything else will change everything. Will text messaging be quaint like letter writing? I don’t really know. I’m mostly a sci fi writer and not a futurist. A writer, even science fiction ones, take liberties with reality for their storytelling. Think of the Matrix movies. People were used as batteries, that’s not very efficient especially because you must feed them, and whatever was used to feed them could probably be used as a fuel source that doesn’t require keeping humanity alive or giving them the possibility of revolting. That fact doesn’t change that they were fun movies to watch.
Simply put, writers will bend reality for the sake of storytelling. Conspiracy theorists do the same thing. The problem with most conspiracies is they require the commitment of many people to keep them going. Most movie studios can’t make a movie without something being leaked to the public. So, imagine how many people would have to keep the secret about alien bodies, reptiles infiltrating the government, or shadow organizations ruling the world. In order to believe in them you have to believe that anywhere from thousands of people to a small city’s worth of people wouldn’t say anything, or made a mistake, or took picture on their phone, or went drinking and said too much.
The point is, the bigger the conspiracy, the less likely it is to be true because it requires too many people to be committed to its continued secrecy. That’s even harder to believe in the world where we live were information can be sent very far and wide very quickly. However, that doesn’t mean a good conspiracy isn’t fun to think about or isn’t like a good book.
Speaking of books. Check out The Theft.
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