Financial Fallout! 21 Futures Podcast S2 E6 - The Editors

Yeah, absolutely. And I think if we expanded on that even further, one of the big questions would be, do people know the difference between currency and money? What do we mean by value? You know, you talked about sound money just then. Does everyone know that sound money means it's a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value? You could argue that lots of fiat currencies no longer fit the definition of sound money. Certainly. Digital tokenized gold, Uh, it's getting, getting towards being pretty sound, right? Ethereum gets towards it, but Bitcoin ultimately is probably the soundest money in the world, which is insane. You know, people— there are people that still think it's a scam, which is, which is just absurd. But one of the things that I like about, um, Financial Fallout is, uh, it's a lot more accessible to people that are interested in, in sci-fi who may not know what we know about economics and money and Bitcoin. You know, I had amazing conversations with DJ Bodden and Graham Shimmin, and when we talk about sci-fi, you know, in Star Wars they just have credits, right? And they just say, hey, we've got, you know, this bounty hunter wants a million credits, and you just know that credit means, means money. Right? And some of these stories treat money in such an interesting way. Like I'm thinking of We Are Living Well, right? I mean, without giving any spoilers, the money in that is very unusual, isn't it? Because it's not, it's not money per se. It's seeds that grow. And it's so creative and clever. So I'm really excited for people to read. some of these stories because they're so good.

Let me jump in and walk back a little bit on what you said about, do people know what a currency is and what sound money is? My background is somebody who was born into a middle-class family in the UK, a top economy country. I like to think that I'm quite smart. I got good grades at school and went to university. Got a job afterwards. Until a couple of years ago, when I got orange-pilled, I knew nothing about money. I knew nothing about financial markets. I knew nothing about what money is. I knew nothing about the terminology. So that in itself was a steep learning curve and a lot of things to learn. That's not even talking about Bitcoin and learning the myriad of rabbit holes that there is to go down on that and to learn about. The ultimate issue with people who are stuck in the fiat sort of slave mindset is that they're so busy and they're so under pressure and they're so— Under stress. challenged with just making ends meet and getting to the end of the month and getting through their life that they don't care. They don't care about finding the root of the problem. They don't want to do hard study, hard discovery of all of these problems and solutions. That's totally understandable. Who does? Sure. I hope that this fiction project can get into the hands of a few people who just like sci-fi. They just like reading about crazy dystopias. The kind of person who's going to turn on the television and watch Terminator. It doesn't mean that they're thinking about the philosophy of whether machines should be taking over the world or not. They just think, I want an escape. I want

to

put myself in a dystopian world and have a character really fighting to survive and saving the day. And it so happens that these stories are about finance and that may make people think about their own financial situation and system that they live in. That's really the idea of the project is they're just stories, they're entertainment, and yes, they have a message, but I hope that people just enjoy the stories.

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of, it's going to enrich your experience if you understand that, uh, you know, I think The Matrix did such a good sort of Plato's allegory of the cave. Um, it did such a good job of showing us that and, and people that know what that means will appreciate that, but you're right. It's still at its base level, an entertaining story and that's what we like. And that's what we're here to talk about. So one of the things I'd like to know, I mean, I've, I've been editing this collection with you. It's been a great privilege and honor to do so, but you are an editor, you're an experienced editor, and I'm aware that you're also very familiar with writing competitions, as I am too. Uh, why don't we talk a little bit about, um, what editors do, how we can be impressed by, uh, stories? And I, I think it would also be fun to talk about how to immediately disqualify yourself. Sometimes people do, right? Because you get a lot of— all editors get a lot of submissions, right? And unfortunately, some will be disqualified. So I think what we can talk about is what makes them good, you know, opportunities, areas to explore, but then also the challenges that people tend to— the hurdles people tend to kind of fall at. And then sadly, not perform particularly well. What do you think?

The, the success that I've had in competitions came when I just submitted the right piece to the right judge, the right editor, the right competition, when there was a particular fit on theme. So if it is a themed competition, as this Financial Fallout one was, that's pretty important, really nailing the theme. And I'd even suggest to writers, think about why has that theme been selected? In the case of Financial Fallout, it's because we make no secret of the fact that ConsenSys Network and 21 Futures, we are a publisher with an agenda. And so the financial fallouts and the dystopia which are presented should probably present some kind of explanation of why we're in a bigger hole than we think, plus some kind of solution or hope to that particular dystopia. Of course, it's about the story first. Story comes first. We want to follow a character doing great and interesting things and saving the day, or overcoming great challenges. But yeah, consider the theme. I mean, other tips I have are do as much homework as you can. Mm-hmm. Again, with 21 Futures, we have a pretty small operation at the moment and small team, so people can probably stalk me and read my work and see what I like. You can trawl the 21 Futures website and see all read most of the previously published works and reviews and many more things on the website. So yeah, I don't want to give the typical advice of like, pay attention to the rules and check your work for errors.

Yeah. So there are two, there are two, um, there are two ways of talking about writing, right? There's the, there's meta, what I call meta writing, which is writing about writing and learning about writing and reading about writing. And then there's the writing itself. So with the meta, what you're talking about is a great idea. Do your homework and yes, nail the theme. And we'd like it if you stick to the brief, you know, the, the word count is, is pretty pretty set, you know, don't send 5,000 words for a 3,000-word story. Um, but ultimately what I'm thinking about as well is when you're in the weeds of the writing, you know, I have different conversations with different writers who are writing the same type of story. Some— sorry, my cat's come to say hello again. Um, some people will struggle to write 3,000 words and others can do it in an afternoon. Like, I'm happily one of the latter, and I think that comes with, um, you know, experience and time invested into it. But what I found with some of the stories, and I, I wonder if you agree with this, Phil, but many writers will become self-conscious and kind of do like an exposition dump and just tell you everything that happens in the story, which is not really a story. You know, what we want to look at is things with Clear beginning, middle, and end, ideally with some dialogue. It's very unusual to get stories that have no dialogue in them at all, right? But that sometimes happens. I think people really, one of the great things to do is, like you said, go and read great stories, great books, um, and ultimately think, instead of just telling people what happens in my story, how can I examine my own storytelling? Yeah. I think that's important. What do you think?

Yeah, we have a good variety of writers submitting to 21 Futures. Some are experienced and even acclaimed sci-fi writers who have gotten into high-end publications, magazines, won competitions, published their own books and novels. Collections, and some are completely new writers. Some, you know, people come from all over the world, people have different levels of fiction writing ability, let's say. So I, as a— as somebody who was an editor who would like to showcase some of the different perspectives that we get. Sometimes I'm willing to pick stories which are not so technically sound and not such wonderfully written pieces if they demonstrate a— what's the right word— just a strong ethic and a strong message and a passion in the writing.

Sure, yeah.

I totally agree with you, Alex. You read a story and it's all dialogue and you think, this is not a play, you know, this is a piece of fiction that we're reading, so that's not going to go in the book. But, you know, sometimes newer writers will, you know, and we work with writers as well, you know, we do various levels of editing to get stories into the best shape they can be.

Yeah, I think what you're touching on there is the idea that you can tell a great story without being a great writer, and you can be a great writer who doesn't tell great stories. And the ones that are going to win have a good combination of both, right? So you don't need—

Yeah, sure.

I have a master's degree in English and creative writing from Kingston in London, but not everyone needs that. That is a nice thing for me to have because I'm privileged. I did pay for it and earn it, but I understand not everyone has that. But to become truly excellent at something, you must learn about it, but then apply your learning. You know, that's what wisdom is. It's the application of what you've learned. And, and I would encourage all readers to not be humbled by, oh, there are really established writers in this, but to like sort of roll your sleeves up and have a go because we are accessible, right? Anyone can enter. Um, and anyone can also, thanks to the powers of the internet, learn a lot for free. You know, you don't necessarily need higher education anymore. really, if you can read and write, then you can enter this and do well if you put the time and the effort in. And I think what we'd both love to see from the future is more Bitcoin stories, more sci-fi dystopia, and ideally, how do these things marry each other? Do you think I mean, our little growing Telegram community, new things are coming out all the time, right? And we're finding new stuff, but we're also reexamining old things and thinking, hey, you know, this is like a precursor to what we've been looking at, you know. So if you had to sort of make some predictions about, you know, Bitcoin fiction, sci-fi dystopia, do you think 2025 is going to be A good year for us.

I hope so. I think sort of libertarian ideals and the concept of freedom fiction is mostly expressed through sci-fi because you are extending the current restrictions to the nth degree to show people what an awful totalitarian state can do, like in 1984. or what a nanny state can do, à la Ayn Rand. I don't think— I mean, Bitcoin fiction is new and somewhat limited in its scope. In 20, 30 years, it won't be a genre because if we live in a hyper-Bitcoinized world, that would be like saying money fiction or dollar fiction. Yeah. I mean, money is just a part of stories because it's something that we that we use. So in that sense, it's limited. I do think there is a— this cycle is sort of the time when we'll get more full-length books, we'll get more novels, we'll get more, you know, maybe a bestseller. We had a sort of bestselling author, not we, but there was a bestselling author called Steve Berry who wrote a— Bitcoin thriller that was published last year. So just that means you've got the Bitcoin symbol and a plot about— I haven't read the book, I probably should do, but a book about that on the front, in the window of Barnes& Noble and front and center on Amazon and thousands of reviews, people reviewing it in the New York Times, whatever. So I mean, I think That it will certainly gain legitimacy as a type of speculative fiction. Yeah. And it's going to be important going forward, I think. My idea is hopefully the barriers come down and people just see it as a book. And at 21 Futures, we want to support people to make that happen. So if you have manuscripts, if have stories, submit them. I mean, we're getting off topic, I guess, a little bit about— we were talking about competitions because I want to ask you as well about what is an instant decline or rejection from you when you've got your editor's hat on and you open that email and you're like, what just makes you mad and makes you go, no, you're

out? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple for me. You know, the wall of text is always a challenge. You know, if people have read Ulysses by James Joyce, stream of consciousness style writing, and think that that's appropriate, because it's almost never appropriate, right? And I've got to say, I really, uh, it's a sort of pet peeve, but one that, because, because I'm, you know, we're professionals, right? We work in this industry and we make our livings in this industry. We are allowed to say that actually clichés are pretty bad. We don't want 4 clichés per paragraph.

Right. As well, maybe.

Yeah, and, you know, people, um, people sometimes write as if they were speaking, and I know, I know sometimes they've been sort of told to do that, but that's not always appropriate either. And, you know, they'll use so many filler words, and they, you know, there's this, this saying, isn't there? Less is more. I'm quite a minimalist writer personally, but it's When something's just stuffed with, um, sort of flowery description that adds— has no meaning or relevance and doesn't drive the story forward, I— what I find and what I see, and this is a generalization, but I think more inexperienced writers do their best writing where it doesn't matter, and then they get sort of quite self-conscious and quite aware that they're the writer doing the writing. In the bits that matter. So they put all this effort into, you know, a 500-word description of a flower, and then they just rush through the dialogue, or they rush through an action scene. And you just think, slow it down, trim the fat, and frankly, cut the bullshit. There's normally a fair amount of that, right? So I think if people are going, well, of course, You know, obviously, actually how I'm feeling is really, really upset about this. I'm going, that's just too many words in that. Just cut that right down. You just say I'm upset, right? Um, uh, there's one thing, um, I don't know, did you ever read the Harry Potter books?

I've read the first one.

Okay, so you know there's 7 and they're, they're weighty tomes and, and Rowling, uh, Regardless of whatever her views or whatever is, obviously a successful writer. Um, and I believe you can see her writing improve through the books. But after every piece of dialogue for like a whole book, everyone just murmurs. And it's like, Ron murmured, Hermione murmured, Harry murmured. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, either just say said, right, and have said each time. Well, get some synonyms. So these are the sorts of things that go through my mind because it shows them a sort of, you know, this is the one time it's appropriate to flex your vocabulary, demonstrate a wide awareness of the language you're writing in and your sort of command and mastery of it. You know.

I mean, that can be at the editor's behest, to be honest. I'm more of a minimalist and I would prefer to cut everything out possible and to have the reader do a lot of the writing.

Yeah.

I mean, I love stuff like Raymond Carver, which is almost— there's nothing there, or Chekhov or something. There's like nothing there, but you have to put a lot of the work in. And I think that goes back to what I said about if you know who the judge or editor is of a competition or a publication, Read some of their work, read some of the things that they have published, and you'll get an idea for what kind of pieces you have that may fit the bill or how to craft something for that writer. I mean, just going back to what makes a piece acceptable or not, I think there's 2 things. Mm-hmm. There's the writing craft that you've been talking about, And then there's getting into the mind of the editor. And, you know, small bugbears for me are like just stuff that grabs your attention, that gets in the way of the actual story. Anything authorial, like using fancy words that the author wants to use, using fucking ellipses, if you're talking in French, at the end of every long dialogue.

I thought you were gonna say em dashes. But yeah, ellipses.

You know what, I'm not too anti-em dash. I do think that—

I hate an em dash.

You know, with punctuation, my tip— in fact, with the form of your writing, my tip is this: zoom out. Like, press Ctrl-minus-minus-minus until you get to see several pages of your work on the screen, and you'll be able to see the size of the paragraphs. If you've got a bunch of dialogue all together that doesn't run very well. Compare it to a book. Open the nearest novel and say, does this look like a book? Does the text look like it? Or does this have 15 em dashes on the page? Because if you don't, you don't see that in books because it's not optimal writing. They're getting in the way. They're costing the reader their attention. They're taking them out of the storytelling. Totally agree. So anything that takes the editor or the reader at that moment out of story and puts them into questioning. Why have you used another ellipsis? Like, I don't need to know that there was some— I mean, there's always some kind of pause after you— after one person finishes speaking and another's starting.

The comma is normally fine, right? Don't be afraid of the comma.

Attention-grabbing punctuation, the terror bangs can just wind me up. So

if you're going to use colons, semicolons, Get them correct, uh, you know, things like that. But that's all form and function. On the other side, really, a short story, um, has a clear beginning, middle, and end. But even if you read some books by writers like Dan Brown or, um, James Patterson, who do wonderful shows on MasterClass, um, even their chapters are like little short stories that all fit together. to form a bigger narrative. So there's definitely a piece for people to look at around narrative. Narrative must fit the theme. The theme must have messages within it that convey the narrative and the theme. Yeah, so there's actually quite a lot to writing, isn't there? It's sort of, I don't know if people sometimes think it's easy. It can be easy, but if you want it to be good, It should be quite difficult, shouldn't it?

I mean, short fiction is difficult. It's difficult to read and difficult to write well. It's definitely a wonderful challenge. I think the reason why we haven't shifted and everybody's listening to short stories or reading short stories, I mean, that would very much fit our modern lifestyles, right? Mm-hmm. But good short stories have as much message and thought and participation from the reader as a novel. And they're not just compressed 3-act stories. They are built in a different way. And I think crafting over the years a lot of different short stories, reading a lot of different short stories, Is the way to go about that challenge if you're going to submit that kind of work. And think about the scope as well because, you know, a piece of flash fiction that's 500 words or 1,000 words, you have a different possibility of what you can actually achieve to— Mm-hmm. a short story, you know, up to 6,000 words, let's say, and a novella up to, you know, 20,000, 40,000 words, and then a novel. I think many novice writers only know one kind of story, and that's the kind of story that does not work very well.

The formula.

Within 1,000 to 4,000 words. So I guess, like, Learn different kinds of stories and put those in.

Totally agree. I mean, it's nice to write outside your genre as well. Like, I'm a ghost story writer, I do gothic horror, but I wrote a country music young adult romance novel as an exercise, and that was awesome. That was great fun. It's really important to do these things, and, you know, it's really— it's like Really nice for me to speak to— speak about writing. Um, but, but we could do that all day. And, um, you know, I want us to make sure that the people listening, uh, understand who this is, who this is for, who we're doing it for, the kind of people we want to get stuck in, how they might get stuck in in the future. Um, And then also, when can we expect to hold a physical copy of Financial Fallout in our hands? So if you can answer all those questions.

What were the first questions? I only heard the last one.

Yeah, so the last one, the last one being the most, uh, the most immediately pressing. So we can start with that if you want, but really just a reminder of who 21 Futures is for, the kind of people it's for. Right, our audience. And then should people want to move from being perhaps a listener of the podcast to, hey, I want to write something, I want to get stuck in, yeah, how should they do that? How do you want them to do that?

Who's 21 Futures for? Curious minds. If you are somebody who enjoys fiction, be it in films, be it in short animations like Love, Death and Robots. I think that's— there's some kind of synergy between Love, Death and Robots and 21 Fichiers. I can't put my finger on exactly, but something that I like anyway. Yeah, if you are somebody who enjoys stories where you ask questions and you don't take things for granted. Those stories are often high-concept sci-fi stories or stories of rebellion or stories of freedom. So, I think if that has ever resonated with you, stories of freedom, if you have any kind of interest in a better monetary future,

Mm-hmm.

Then check out some of the stories. There are some really interesting concepts, there are some terrifying ones, there are some hopeful ones. And I hope that, you know, in the future, these stories will get into the hands of lots of people and the project will get much bigger. And a book is out, probably when you're watching this video. Alex and I are recording this before launch, but it will be already out. So go to 21features.com. Um, or bitcoinbook.shop, um, or Amazon and, uh, look for the book.

Amazing, amazing. And also, uh, people can join our Telegram group, right? Uh, we have Twitter, uh, and some more esoteric social channels. Um, follow the— subscribe to the YouTube, like the video, share with your friends. One of the nice things about what we were talking about is Is this how you take something like Bitcoin mainstream? Do you obfuscate it entirely and just tell great stories that, uh, you know, underpin new technologies? There's, there's always been exciting new technology to explore. So this, this project is for the people who are looking to the future, uh, rather than necessarily the past, right? And I think that's really exciting. So if people are watched Star Trek and thought, how do those materializers just create stuff? You know, the people that ask those sorts of questions probably are going to like this kind of thing. But yeah, I think, Phil, let's, uh, we'll wrap it up there. Um, and we'll say thank you very much for your time and your hard work on this project because it's been 2 years you've spent on this, maybe longer.

Uh, on 21 Features, yeah. Uh, Since 2023. So yeah, it's probably been 2 years. We launched the idea and we'll have at least 21 more. That's all I can promise. And thank you for your work too, Alex, and your expert opinions and hosting the podcast. And very much looking forward to everyone reading the book, And being part of the show as well. Like, if you want to submit something, you're welcome. This project is not just built by pompous authors to put their work into the— into a cool anthology. Uh, it is for everyone to come on board and participate. So if you're an up-and-coming writer, um, just follow us on socials, visit 21features.com, get in touch, and You may find your work published.

Amazing, amazing. All right then, Phil. Well, it's great to chat. You have a wonderful day and we'll stay in touch. Talk to you soon.