Veronica Roth is the writer of the bestselling Divergent novels, which have been tailored right into a sequence of standard movies. Her new novel Poster Girl tells the story of Sonya Kantor, a younger girl raised in an authoritarian society in near-future Seattle.
“I wanted her to be not a typical hero figure, but to be someone who’s complicit in the authoritarian regime that fell, and struggling with how she understands that, and how she’s been manipulated by this system,” Roth says in Episode 528 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
Poster Girl imagines the final word surveillance state, the place each motion is recorded and judged by ubiquitous ocular implants. Roth says it was all too straightforward for her to think about how Sonya would possibly get pleasure from being consistently monitored and rewarded for her good habits. “I was definitely one of those students who loved to be rewarded in school, and I was always good at tests, and I was always well-behaved,” she says. “It’s appealing to know that you’re doing the right thing, and you’re doing everything that you’re supposed to be doing, to a certain type of personality.”
The guide was additionally influenced by Roth’s frequent journeys to go to her husband’s household in Romania, a rustic that was dominated by the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu till 1989. “Even now, if you go to the Christmas Market in Romania, they sell little magnets with Ceaușescu’s face on it, and this man was brutal and horrible to a lot of people,” Roth says. “But there are some people who have communist nostalgia, because for them it maybe wasn’t so bad during that time—maybe it was even better. But for everyone who benefits, there’s someone who doesn’t.”
Roth says the United States is nearer to changing into a surveillance state than we’d wish to assume, and that researching all of the methods through which our gadgets are monitoring us has made her more and more paranoid. “Basically you have to choose your poison—no system is particularly amazing,” she says. “We kind of have put this on the user to find ways to keep creeps out of your data, but I think that really shouldn’t be our responsibility, it should be protected on a grander scale.”
Listen to the whole interview with Veronica Roth in Episode 528 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And try some highlights from the dialogue beneath.
Veronica Roth on privateness:
With the current Supreme Court stuff about abortion, this has turn into extra relatable to individuals. A variety of girls have an app on their telephone that helps them observe their interval, and there was quite a lot of discuss, “Oh, you should delete that app now,” as a result of if the federal government can entry your app knowledge, then they might conceivably observe once you final menstruated and decide whether or not you’ve had an abortion. And that’s deeply unsettling, but it surely’s simply an instance of how issues can change in a single day. … I went to the Women’s March in Atlanta after Trump was elected—my presence there was logged by my telephone, and by social media—so if there was a big regime change and abruptly it was criminalized to have gone to these protests—or not even criminalized, but it surely simply places you on some sort of checklist someplace the place you’re being watched—that’s nearer at hand than individuals I feel want to imagine.
Veronica Roth on her upcoming novel Arch-Conspirator:
It’s a sci-fi retelling of Antigone. … It’s post-post-post-apocalyptic. There’s one final settlement on Earth, they usually’re all dying on a regular basis. Basically I feel the principle distinction [from the play] is that I needed to ask myself how I used to be going to deal with the incest, as a result of Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus, who famously killed his father and married his mom, unwittingly, after which had youngsters, and Antigone is a type of youngsters. The incest of the play is vital as a result of she appears like she’s cursed from delivery due to it, and different individuals in her society deal with her that method. So I had to determine if I used to be going to straight-up try this, and I made a decision to not as a result of I needed to create extra surprise and mysticism round why she feels she’s cursed. So there’s fairly rigorous gene enhancing on this future, due to how everybody’s deteriorating on this Dying Earth atmosphere, and she or he just isn’t edited. So that’s the taboo that she carries along with her as a curse.
Veronica Roth on endings:
I despatched [Courtney Summers] an early model of the define of [Poster Girl] with two endings. One was happier, and one was much less glad. I selected the much less glad one as a result of she was like, “I don’t think the way you’ve set this up, that this is actually an ending that feels true to the book or feels earned.” … [The happy ending] simply felt low-cost to me. I felt the wrongness of it. I used to be attempting to make it work, and I used to be like, “Well, what about this other thing I could do that’s way more of a risk for me emotionally?” And she was like, “You have to do that. That’s a great ending.” And I used to be like, “But I don’t know that I can bear it.” I bear in mind saying that to her. Emotionally, as the author of it, I didn’t know if I might stay in that actuality for that lengthy. And she was like, “You can. You must.”
Veronica Roth on introverts:
My mom was a mannequin when she was youthful, so after I was a child she was all the time attempting to offer us recommendation—like for headshots for highschool—she would attempt to give recommendation: “You need to do this or do that.” And I simply bear in mind getting the prints and being like, “Wow, none of what I was trying to do appeared on my face.” I don’t know what my face is doing at any given time. So I feel that discrepancy between how you are feeling and the way you come throughout is one thing that lots of people can relate to. Especially introverts, I really feel like. You really feel this wealthy and complicated interior world inside you, after which externally individuals are like, “Hmm, kind of a quiet person.” And it’s like, “Wow, what a bummer, to be described that way.”
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