Financial Fallout! 21 Futures Podcast S2 E1 - DJ Bodden Talks about his story 'The Big Slash'

oh, I love it. I love it.

But when you get that story right, it's, it's counter to life because life ultimately progresses. And so I, I get that as, as science fiction writers and as fiction writers in general and as thinkers, We are supposed to look at bad things in the world and tell people, look, I know this is not a priority for you right now. You've got a 1-month-old son and he's taken over your office. And maybe, you know, the economic future that's going to happen in 20, 30 years is not a huge priority for you, but this is how bad it could get.

Sure, sure.

And, um, and I think, uh, if I look at Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, for example, it's a great example of the world gone wrong. But she individually progresses. Um, and so what I need in a story like that is I'm fine with the world burning, but my protagonist has to find a way out of it, has to progress. It can't just be doom and gloom forever.

That is fascinating. You know why? Because I, I text— so me and my dad, we have this wonderful relationship where we can talk about books, right? And, uh, in the, in the first lockdown in the UK, I read every dystopia in the bloody world, right? All the way back to We by Yevgeny Jam Yatin, and I text my dad and I just said, I'm trying to, I'm going to keep reading one until the good guys win.

And

he's like, you're going to be reading for a while, you know. But that's interesting because what you're talking about here is, are you going to be the guy that sort of creates the happy ending for dystopia? Because what we wanted, um, sorry to interrupt a bit, but— No, no, no. What we talked about in this call to submissions was actually that little glimmer of hope, right? That little spark. Yeah, and I think, you know, you're gonna be the guy that nails it, huh?

Well, I, I don't know if happy is, is the goal, right? I, I think, um, I think I'm, I'm definitely fine with the idea of realpolitik. I, I, I was a Marine, I studied, uh, uh, international relations and whatnot, so I'm, I'm there for the realism and, and the grittiness. I think it's more down to Um, whatever we as humans are doing, um, even down to the way we think, we're looking for meaning, right? We're looking for, for some sort of progression.

Yeah, of course.

And, and so, um, again, if, if the end of the story is just going to be like we went through all this effort and everybody dies, why did I waste my time?

Interesting. Some, some would say the journey is more important than the destination though, right? And, and also Rogue One, the Star Wars film— bit of a spoiler— they all die. Great film though.

They do, but they, they accomplish something, right? And, and actually, I really like that one. I like The Book of Eli. Um, I was on a panel with Hugh Howey, and he pointed out that both of those were written by the same writer, and maybe I just have a hard-on for that writer.

Hugh Howey, the Silo guy?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, amazing, amazing. His, um, Wool— The Wool looks fantastic. The Apple TV show starring Rebecca Ferguson, who I am a personal fan of, my wife would not mind me saying. Um, it's very good. We're having a bit of a sort of sci-fi renaissance, aren't we?

Well, it's become mainstream. Um, and I think it's, it's because of, uh, great shows like, for example, the, the Star Trek movie reboot, um, that kind of hopped on the Marvel vibe and, and made it accessible to everyone. Then going on to shows like The Expanse or Battlestar Galactica kind of brought that in, Firefly. I think it's more that budgets have gone up. If you look at the old Dune miniseries and you look at the stuff and you're like, ah. From there we went to Stargate which I started rewatching that with my wife recently.

Oh yeah.

Well,

SG-1. I didn't love Atlantis, but, uh, SG-1, old school, old school. I think we've watched a lot of the same stuff. Yeah, I used to love The X-Files.

Yeah, I mean, that was really good too.

So Fringe, Lost. Um, so all of these things, uh, that we're talking about have this kind of central mystery, don't they? This, this kind of, um, uncovering and discovery about, uh, other humans, the society in which they operate, the world in which they live. Um, so when it comes to like your writing and, and your inspiration, is that something you always explore? Or, you know, I'm aware that you have a, a bunch of novels with, uh, more coming, right? And short stories as well. You know, is, is there a theme that kind of runs out through all of yours?

Yes, absolutely. Uh, there's, there's one kind of, uh, red line that, that runs through all my books. And that's ultimately, there's someone who starts out fairly powerless but clever and ends up kicking the ever-living swear word out of people who have a lot more power than them. You can swear, we'll beep it out. So I'm a big underdog writer. I like to pit my characters against big problems, whether it's forces of nature or forces of government or forces of corporations, and have them just think outside the box and find a way to get where they're going.

Great, great. Okay, that's very interesting. And have you found previously some of these financial elements come in, or is The Big Slash kind of the first time we're looking at a story where people's money and the economy, uh, gets touched upon?

No, I, I'm, you know, I, I'm, I'm one of those annoying intellectuals who's, who's generally had a little bit of an easier time than many people starting things and then had to figure out how to work my way through stuff. But I had a good friend, and we'd talk about brainy stuff, and he said something that really resonated with me, which was, I don't really care about money, but it's how I keep score.

Oh, interesting.

And so I think every book I've written accounts for that, where at some point my characters run into limitations because they don't have cash. Um, and then they have to figure out, how do I get some store of value, uh, that is going to allow me to live the life that I want to? And I've never written a character that was so wealthy that they just didn't have to think about it.

Right. That's really interesting because in so many books, right, money might just be called like a generic unit or something. And then, you know, my mind's going straight to Harry Potter where He's just infinitely wealthy because his parents conveniently left him so much cash, right?

But yeah, holding of gold.

He's also shown to be frugal. He buys them gifts and it's like, that's your Christmas and birthday for 5 years. And I gave my friend of mine's son some Bitcoin for his first birthday. And I was like, that's Christmas and birthday. But yeah, you know, we've got to think about it, haven't we? Because if you want a realistic world that isn't too far from our own, then money has to— it has to be a thing. It has to be a consideration.

Or you need a really damn good reason why it doesn't exist.

Yes, yes, that's true. And interestingly, you know, and I, I— we are here to talk about you, but there are some stories in the, uh, new anthology that are of a more fantasy sort of bend than the sci-fi bend. And we're actually really okay with that because the guys did such a good job. There's 2 in particular that I can't wait for everyone to read. And the way the writers handled the money element. Because money, or what we think of as money, is sometimes different to a fiat currency, right? Money could be a bar of gold. It could be a silver coin. And actually how we think about money hasn't always traditionally been correct. We don't get a great deal of education about money, or certainly we didn't here in the UK. Yeah. So it'd be quite interesting to talk about Do you think there's room for, uh, education around money in fiction and in storytelling? You know, there's this big cypherpunk movement currently that we're all talking about on Telegram, which, you know, we really, uh, we really love the privacy, uh, we really love the financial independence. So yeah, how does that fit for you? Do you think you'll be telling more Bitcoin stories in the future?

Probably. I think for me, you know, I don't necessarily call it Bitcoin because sometimes that feels like you're name-dropping a little bit disingenuously for a particular audience. And the kind of pseudo-intellectual writer in me shies away from that.

Okay.

But it's very clear in The Big Slash, the story I did for the anthology, that none of the bad things that are described in that could have happened if Bitcoin was the primary form of digital exchange.

Yeah.

Because there are all elements that are not possible in a truly decentralized network. Yeah. And so I think what's most important for my type of science fiction writing, you know, there's Golden Age sci-fi, which was more about women in bikinis and, and guys sleeping with aliens with a, with a laser pistol. Yeah. It was really kind of the tabloid stuff. And then we went through an era where a bunch of very smart people were trying to teach us how to live. I'm thinking Ayn Rand, I'm thinking Heinlein, and, and some of that is entertaining if you really want to know about that particular thing. But I think, you know, the newer era of sci-fi before we went grimdark, before we went, you know, most recently kind of eco-dystopian, the world is going to be—

Did you just do a Warhammer reference there? Oh

yeah, yeah, sure.

Because I love that. I'm a huge Warhammer 40K fan.

I like Warhammer too. I'm a big fan. Dan Abnett's one of my favorite writers. Yeah, it really is. But I think in the intermediate period, there was a phase of sci-fi that I really like, which is we are going to show you how technology works and you're going to experience it without needing to know exactly how it is. And we're going to have little snippets of what some writers, when reading me, have called tech porn. Okay. Which is just, I show you the inner workings of this thing in a way that it's very obvious how it works just by what the impact is. And if you know about it, it's great. If it's not, your eyes can glaze over and a paragraph later it'll be done.

Sure.

Um, yeah.

So my, my mind's immediately going to 2 things, right? You've got Frank Herbert's Dune. Yeah. Obviously spice is analogy for, for money. And you have the, the Tleilaxu in the later books and the Ixians and the—

Oh, it's not actually. Uh, you don't think? No, no, I, I don't think spice is analogy for money. Spice is valuable because it allows prediction. Um, and it allows trade.

Okay, so the outcome— Slightly different.

Yeah,

yeah, okay, I understand that. Um, and then what I was going to say about the Ixians is they have this incredible technology. They try to make the Navigators obsolete in later books, and that's kind of obfuscated as well because Herbert's not going to spend all the time explaining you how they fold space-time. He's just going to tell you that they do it. Exactly. Futurama does a lovely, uh, sort of parody of this in one episode if seen it. Um, but that's also an analogy. I mean, we, we said Bitcoin, but we could also say blockchain technology, right? We could say nobody knows how, uh, necessarily how an email works. We just know you send an email and an email arrives. Blockchain, you send a coin and the coin arrives, or an NFT arrives, or whatever, right? Similar kind of thing. So you can go and explore it if you want to. And perhaps the people with that interest are going to have a richer experience,

but

it's got to be optional, right? It should still be a great story. And what I see, I mean, I'm aware that we both work in the crypto space and a lot of the time a website or a white paper will talk about the technology itself rather than what the technology enables. And I would say that's bad, right? I don't know what you think, but I don't think tech for tech's sake is great.

I think when it comes to stuff like that, I think of how you treat those sort of things in writing is the same way as you should treat guns and explosives in action movies, which is the rule of cool should prevail. But if the real thing is cooler than what you wrote and you're just lazy for not having found out how it really works, then that's on you.

Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Because I mean, I think the John Wick films are a great example, right? But the scenes where he's in the armories and they actually explain the guns is also cool because you feel like you're learning.

See, that's the essence of tech porn.

Yeah. Oh, amazing. Amazing. Okay. Well, we should get into some John Wick fan fiction. Um, but before we do that, let's talk about 21 Futures. So, you know, clearly you're involved in the collection. as a sort of prize-winning writer now. And let's hope and pray to our friends at ConsenSys Network there'll be future collections. I'm not saying there will be or won't be, you know, hopefully you'd stay attached and enter those as well. But would you tell us a little bit about how you heard about the project and decided to get involved?

Yeah, absolutely. So I was talking to a writer friend of mine, you, and we had exchanged on a number of things. One was a love of writing, which we both have, and two a love of crypto in general and Bitcoin in specific. And I think even when we consider just crypto itself, a lot of early involvement in projects is down to being part of the community, knowing the right people so that they introduce you to things when they're coming off the ground, right?

Mm-hmm.

And this was not the first anthology. It was— there was one before it that was more centered around time travel, which, you know, I recommend everyone pick up and see how things go, especially since there's some authors who are in both, right? So, yeah, as well.

And the website does also offer some free great short stories on there. Actually, I wrote one as well. So I'll just quietly plug Satoshi's Ghost. I like to write ghost stories.

Nice.

Anyway, please continue, sir.

And so you brought this up to me and said, hey, would you like to write in this antho? You know, I think for me, fun projects in writing have always kind of been an intersection of someone saying you could do this and me being at a place where I had the time to do it. And I was between writing a couple articles. It sounded like fun. It wasn't too long. And I like the idea of exploring something in a particular theme, and the brief was very well put together in that sense. Yeah, I agree. And so I just sat down, and I think I think I drafted it in, in an evening, um, so it went fairly quickly, um, and then did a quick rewrite on it and, and talked to you about it, and, and then we shipped it. So, um, you know, definitely worthwhile and something I wouldn't necessarily have written unprompted.

Yes, yes. And I, I also happen to know that you've, um, you've come and joined our community, you've been active, you've spoken to the guys in there, you're, you're aware of our editor-in-chief Phil, who put the submission brief together, who's a fantastic writer. One thing I'd like to take an opportunity whilst we're here, because what's really nice about this project is it's not just for established writers. Like, anyone with an interest can get stuck in. I myself personally am probably a kind of middle-grade writer/editor, and I would suggest you are slightly above me in the hierarchy, in the pecking order. So let's take this opportunity— Thank you. to say, DJ, you know, you mentioned that you were able to do this quite quickly. It was quite comfortable for you. Would you have any advice for a writer who was maybe thinking, oh, that sounds a little scary, a little difficult? Just any wisdom for somebody looking to just get stuck in and have a go?

Yeah, absolutely. So take 2 sheets of paper. And this is something you do long before you ever want to write. Write down all the stuff that you love. Robot dogs, spaceship popcorn machines, the color blue. You just, you make an infinite list. You just let that stream of thought go through.

That's where your mind goes.

And fill a piece of paper with all the things that just make your heart glow.

Okay.

And then that's the first sheet of paper, and you want to write as much as you possibly can. Like, I know if I can fit some puns or a dad joke into a story, it's gonna happen, right? It can be the gloomiest, worst moment, but it's—

We love a pun.

We love a pun. And so that's on my one sheet. And the second sheet is keep a running list of all the story ideas you've ever had. And I think if you combine the two, and I mostly keep this in my head at this point, but it's a great exercise to do if you're trying to figure out something meaningful. But if you have the combination of these are the elements, rollerblades with rocket boosters, you know, I want to have that, that leads to Big Hero 6. Or

Jet Set Radio Future on the original Xbox. Yeah.

And so if you have these 2 things, all the premises that you ever wrote, some of which can be dumb, right? But usually dumb premises evolve into better ones once you you have time to chew over and all the elements you want to brick into that. That's how you can know that you're gonna write something that you're gonna love. And, and that, that passion and affection for your, your work, even if you're not the best writer in the world, is going to bleed through. And especially if you're starting out and you're just showing it to friends and family, you will at least get a smile because they'll be like, oh yeah, this is you. I get this. That's your fancy.

Yeah, amazing, amazing. That's incredible advice. Is that, is that from your, uh, career as a writer, or was— did someone teach that to you?

So that's from, uh, John Trudy's Anatomy of Story. Um, okay, uh, he, he starts that, and, and it's actually something that's good for, for more experienced writers as well, in which he's essentially trying to say there's commercial writing, right? We, we have a theme, we have an audience, we need to crank out as many books in, in that marketing channel as possible. Uh, and, and actually the readers don't want you to be too creative. They just want you to give them more of what you— what they want. And if you depart from that too much, they'll stop reading your series. But every once in a while, I think most of us sit down and we say we want to write something really meaningful. Yeah. And we want to write something original, and that's just us. And so the more of those elements that you write that are personal to your experience and that you're passionate about, and the more of them that you can reasonably and realistically brick into this great, you know, uh, novel that you're working on, then the more unique it's going to be, uh, because no one else is going to have the same lists as you do.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. I love that. And I, I haven't heard much like that before. So thank you for sharing that with us. What I tend to hear is you've got a million bad words, so go and get a job as a copywriter and get them all out, which is what I did.

I, I I think that for most of us, unless you're willing to do 100 rewrites— like, I know one guy who did 170 rewrites on one manuscript.

That's insane. It

was really, really niche. So it was a question of finding the right door that was going to accept that particular genre and theme. I don't have the patience for that. So what I tell most people, especially people who might have attention deficit disorder like myself, or just don't have that much time available is just write your first book with the intent of shelving it. Um, and then you won't worry about it so much and the second one will be better.

Yeah, I have this, um, this piece of advice I give, uh, writers because like Phil, I coach writers on their novels, short stories, um, and even speech writing, things like that. I just love, I love it, you know, and, um, I have, we're gonna do swearing now. Uh, which is gonna— when we say you've got to get to the point where you just don't fuck with it. Yeah. Okay, you know, and I think we're talking about a similar thing, you know, you finish it and then you don't fuck with it and you, you got to move on. So many writers— I was, I was totally guilty of this about 15 years ago, just always revisiting the first one. Yeah. Right, it's killer. It's gonna kill you. It's gonna, it's gonna waste years of your time that you don't have. Right? So I love this great advice, but we can't only talk about advice. We've heard, we know you've got the theory. Let's have some in practice. Would you please consider reading us just a little bit of your story, The Big Slash?

Absolutely. Let's see if I can—

In your best British accent.

No, I won't make people suffer through that, but I will try to also not stumble over my words. So The Big Slash. I was in a grocery store when the big slash happened. I was bagging my own groceries at the self-checkout stand, as is the right of every post-AI human. It was the end of the workday and near closing time, so the place was packed with tired, oblivious office workers who'd gone from one rat race to another. Some of them were like slow zombies, and some of them were fast, shoving and snarling like they needed to get somewhere other than a honeycomb pod motel. I was uncomfortable and anxious. Some hulking gym bro was just buying a 6-pack, uh, was breathing over my shoulder, the smell assaulting my personal space like an uninvited back rub. I just managed to stuff the last of my groceries into a biodegradable bag, gray veggie plastic stretched almost transparent, and I just wanted to get out of there and back to my crappy apartment. I punched the checkout button. Swiped my hand over the reader, and grabbed my stuff. Hey, buddy, the dude with the beer can said, catching my elbow before I'd taken a second step. I flinched at the touch, turning with cosmic reluctance towards the possibility of a confrontation. But Mr. Pecs-Too-Big-For-His-Wifebeater was pointing at the register. Payment declined. Sorry, I said without making eye contact. I put my hand back on the terminal, made sure the RFID scanner got a good look at the chip in the meaty part of my hand, Payment declined. Cold sweat dripped down my spine. Have you ever had that feeling? Sudden impotence. I turned to apologize to the man I'd been belittling in my head only moments before, but again, he wasn't looking at me, so all I saw was the back of his head. He was looking at all the other registers where dozens of other formerly confident and self-sufficient customers searched helpless for an attendant. I don't think I ever saw his face. I just remember the smell— sweat and halitosis. It was the first waft of a new world. The big slash had come for us all.

Oh, it's just so real, isn't it? That everyone can imagine that happening. Yeah. Um, and the little details, you know, I, I, I say to a lot of writers, you know, details and examples, always good, helps us relate to it. So the sort of gym bro It's just perfect. Perfect. You know, you can really sort of see it in your mind's eye, but there's something really quite scary about it because you're not trying to scare us, right? It's not a scary—

Oh, I'm trying to scare you. It should feel like a hand gripping the chest bones. It's gonna— it's—

yeah,

like the only way I could have made it worse was if the guy was on a date.

Yeah, that's a good point. But I think the fear arrives after the disbelief and the confusion, right? So you're going through these motions with the character because you naturally think, God, how would I react like that? You know, how would that feel? There's something about it, you know, and I'm envious of all the people that are going to get to read that story for the first time because I've read it several times and I never get to read it for the first time again. But great work, sir. That is tremendous. And thank you for sharing, uh, not only your writing with us but your wisdom. And, um, we've, you know, we're very excited, um, about the future and our journey as writers. Tell me, if, if people wanted to read more from you or hear more from you or connect with you in some way, how would you like them best to do that?

I would say just go into Google, and I know it's AI and search is dead, but go into Google. And type in DJ Bodden and you will find me, whether it's on Twitter or Amazon or on my website. And feel free to reach out. My email or handles are not hard to find.

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. And to anyone listening, you can find both of us chatting away in the Telegram group. ConsenSys Network has a wonderful newsletter. There is a YouTube channel to like and subscribe to. subscribe to, and we will be having more podcasts like this in which I will be tremendously lucky to speak to writers like DJ. And this, this is great for me because I'm, I'm like writing notes in the corner trying to steal all the knowledge. Um, but in the meantime, uh, you know, because we'll— we won't take much more of your time, have you got any parting thoughts for, you know, we're in a new year now, it's 2025. Is, is this an exciting year? Challenging year. What sort of leaving thoughts do you want to depart us with?

Yeah, I think it also gets into a little bit why I got into writing, which is, you know, there's a couple different types of animals that we keep as companions. Some of them are kind of like cats. They mostly ignore you and they want you to feed them. Some of them are like small dogs where they want attention and they jump around a lot.

Are you saying this because you heard my cat come in a minute ago? Oh, no, no, no, but he actually did come and say hello.

And then you have working animals, like a German Shepherd, if you don't put it to work, will get depressed. And I'm like that, where, you know, you need to stick the weighted vest on me and take me for a walk or things are going to go poorly. And writing for me is like an infinite sump in which I can pour work. It's a, it's a little bit like Bitcoin where the, the amount of work required to make progress just scales with the level of activity of the network.

Yeah, difficulty go up.

Yeah, exactly. And so 2025 for me is going to be as challenging as every year, which, which boils down to how much effort can I put into something in order to progress at the rate I want to?

Yeah, amazing, amazing. I mean, you speak With the confidence of a man that knows himself extremely well, uh, and that's good. You've done that discovery, right? And, and I think that exercise you talked about earlier is going to help writers really go into that discovery mode, like you're a detective at the beginning of a case. What can I learn about me? You know, there's that thing, isn't there, called the Johari's window— the, the known knowns, the known unknowns. There's a lot of psychology that goes into this stuff, and I'm sure we could both talk about it for hours on end. But let's stop. Let's stop for the sake of our audience. Um, DJ, thank you so much. We're gonna say goodbye now, uh, but I look forward to our continuing conversations, and thanks again.

Likewise.

Take care, mate. Bye-bye.