Event management

I have already begun, something happened prior to me starting this sentence, something that this whole essay is based upon. It was quite an event, but for reasons we shalln't go into now, it shall remain unspoken. Actually, given its relevance to what is coming up, I think I should give it a proper title: the Event.

Events crop up in fiction, they are an interdependent part of narration. To my untrained eye fiction is an event happening which causes a series of subsequent events, all of which may or may not resolve the issue that caused the initial or subsequent events. 

Various genres take slightly different approaches to their own internal events, and a creator might employ a direct linear approach to events, or swap and change through the sequence. There is no one rule when events are relayed to the reader, no one method better than another. Sometimes the event(s) are mentioned, sometimes they are not. Sometimes the first chapter will contain all the information one needs, sometimes one waits until the very last sentence.

However, there is a danger that the first event is overpowering. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John le Carré) starts with the fallout from a disastrous mission failure, and the first 60-odd pages can seem thick with detail. Snowden's secret in Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) is there early on in the book, and yet can you recall when you actually learnt it? Both are fascinating events, though given different readers' approach to books they can seem too much. 

What reward is there in seven unreliable characters when one just wants light-hearted comedy after a busy day of work? 

Of course there is never just one event, either in fiction or its pale imitator life, and that is what fascinates me. The cascading sequence of events in narration and how they trigger different perspectives on life.

I have never experienced a nuclear war, though through Judge Dredd and 2000ad I have a good, well thought-out speculation on what might happen next. Even though it seems there is a tendency for the zombie apocalypse to end the world as we know it, we've never been closer to a nuclear war (it is still a mad, MAD world).

So the nuclear war that created Mega-City One is more an excuse to explore human nature. Judge Dredd applies the law like a robot, avoids personal and sexual relationship (illegal for Judges, remember, like sugar for citizens), and will always get the perp. And yet, Dredd also ends the segregation of mutants. Through nuclear war an exploration of equality.

My history with Mega-City One goes back many issues, and each prog heaps another load of speculation into my mind. I have less of a history with Nonplayer and The Surface, so the events and speculation they inspire are different.

From what I gather the catastrophic event in Nonplayer is due to that most human of natures, artificial intelligence. At the start of issue one the reader is presented with something happening beyond the rules of an artificial construct. It is not an artificial construct as there is no control, and life is without artificial control, just humans.

At the start of issue #2 of Nonplayer the reader is treated to a visual feast. The Surface features an equally pleasing cityscape. While I am unsure of the actual event that predates the start of The Surface, all human life is there to see, personal relationships and the current state of our capitalist society. The Surface is a satire which sends itself up, a sharpened metadrama to help drawn attention to the hints the narration is trying to tell you.

For me, the strongest intertextual reference I had during my first reading of The Surface was the first Starship Troopers film. It is the almost hysterical propaganda items in the film, "would you like to know more?", though The Surface adds the modern dating app 'swipe right' if you would like.

Nonplayer is different in that sense. Here is the rabbit hole of Wonderland, though it is easier to follow the rabbit whenever you like. 

I can find so many intertextual references for Judge Dredd that I might as well pick my most recent. Dredd is composite of all detectives before him (and greater than Batman, there, I said it), heavily procedural yet flawed, closer to George Smiley than an automaton law machine might be willing to admit.