Speculators are the only individuals permitted to engage in this behavior. Speculators are essentially detectives, but are so named, because, in order to do their jobs, they must analyze and discuss possibilities, weighing relevant known details against others, and forming entirely new interpretations of events. The novel’s protagonist is Laszlo Ratesic, a Speculator, whose job embodies another of the state’s internal contradictions. The term “Golden State,” the eponymous setting of the novel, thus ends up embodying the very semiotic relativism to which the Golden State is opposed. The term “state” can mean both, “a thing’s current configuration” (“state of being”), and “a form of political organization” (“the United States”). The term “golden” means both “perfect” (as in “golden child”) and “truthful” (as in “the golden rule”). The phrase “Golden State” is the slogan for the state of California. My favorite element of the novel is the semiotic conflict within the title itself. With a record of all recorded events, it becomes possible that all citizens may agree on what is “Objectively So” at all times and about any conceivable topic. The goal is not to proactively search out disobedience, but rather to capture all of reality and store it into an objectively true record (referred to throughout the novel as “the Record”), so that consistency of the truth can be ensured. “Raining like cats and dogs” would be perfectly permissible, while, “the rain is cats and dogs,” would be illegal.Ĭitizens of the Golden State are recorded at all times, although not actively monitored ala 1984. A complex system of laws and bureaucracy delineates exactly which kind of speech constitutes actual lying, as opposed to sarcasm, metaphor, and other forms of harmless verbal wordplay.
In the Golden State, it is illegal to lie, that is, knowingly and intentionally speak a falsehood. Winters is set in the eponymous Golden State, a country whose borders seem to comprise some portion of modern-day Southern California. It is tempting, then, for members of each side to imagine us harkening back to some “pre-post-truth” world, one in which everyone was capable of making judgments based on “plain facts.” Fortunately for us, as long as the world has good science fiction writers, we will maintain the ability to examine such societal impetuses critically. Hence, the term “post-truth.” On the surface, it seems to members of one side that the other is ignoring “truth.” In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, a meme boiled up to the surface of our cultural dialogue about us having entered an age of “post-truth.” As the election showed us, we have arrived into a societal configuration, in which two major ideological groups do not just vote for different parties, but also interpret the world in completely different ways.
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