Inspiration

I first had the idea of Alien Nation in the summer after high school. I was writing a short story titled The Artifice, inspired by 1984 and The Matrix, and as soon as I finished it, I thought about what I would write next. There was a feeling that had occupied my mind for some time, amplified by the uncertainty I felt after high school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life; everything seemed so distant and unreal.

I asked myself, if I had only one word to describe my perspective on the world, what would it be? The word ‘alienation’ almost immediately came to mind. And in retrospect, I can understand why. Not only was I literally an alien living in a foreign country, everyone around me was in some way alienated from the world, natives and foreigners alike. The bubblegum pop of the late 90’s was starting to fade, the War on Terror carried on, and the postmodern era had arrived.

And so, it was only fitting to break the word in two. Alien. Nation. Just like how a soldier would feel coming home, to a country he can barely recognize. The world was moving faster than anyone could understand. Perhaps by design.

Then came college and work. Obligations piled up to the sky. But nearly ten years later, I started writing again. I went through hundreds, if not thousands of iterations, writing down ideas, passages, characters, and storylines before landing on a unified direction. And the whole time I was asking myself, how do I create a new, exciting dystopian world when we were already living in one?

It couldn’t just be the story of the Chosen One. It couldn’t just be mass surveillance and totalitarian governments. When the hero triumphed in the end, it was nearly always by design (and this was the great revelation in the Matrix sequels), which implies that heroes were manufactured to advance a narrative. So one would have to ask, what is that narrative? Who does it serve?

Alien Nation was my journey to answer these questions. And in doing so, the world of Anthem came to life.

As for the psychopath part, well, I’ll share that story another day.