2102: Pretense, the Play by William E. Jefferson
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” famously wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It. And in 2102: Pretense, the Play, William E. Jefferson takes this concept to an entirely different level with the strange world of Onglander — a country of the future swept up in grotesque theatrics where AI “discarts” sits in judgment of a dwindling cache of “carnite” humans, forcing them into command performances that often end in torture and death.
It’s within these dire straits that Jefferson crafts a high-stakes narrative that tackles topics all too relevant in the modern day: technology, AI and how it all affects the human experience. Read below to see what we asked the author about this timely novel and why he thinks it’s important to discern that 2102: Pretense, the Play is fictional realism, not fantasy.
Q: 2102: Pretense, the Play is the follow-up to Presence, the Play. What has happened in the interim between the two books and why did you decide to skip ahead in time for the sequel?
A: 2102: Pretense the Play is not a sequel to Presence, the Play; they are totally different in stories, no overlapping characters or plot.
The hero of Presence, the Play is a monk named Script, who happens to be a playwright. The heroine of 2102 is Margin, alias Joan of Arc, at least so it seems. Readers never really know if the gallant character is, in fact, she, Joan incarnate once again waging a very different war in futuristic Onglander.
Common to both novels, though, is the importance of human presence, opposed to distant, digital, discarnate connectivity.
Q: Neither your previous book, Presence, the Play, nor this one, 2102: Pretense, the Play, are plays; they are novels. Yet theater is woven into each book in unique and clever ways. How has the dramatic form influenced your writing style in general?
A: Theatre is a form of presence, where the aura of presence is a shared experience between those in the stalls and those on stage.
In my novels, the story begins with a mental casting call for characters suited to tell the story. Once characters appear I do not dictate their lines. Rather, I listen as they begin to speak. They enter the drama not unlike players cast in a play.
Thus, my role is from the wings as I watch and listen, capturing their lines as they live and move. They are truly as alive as any living being that has ever lived.
Q: 2102: Pretense, the Play depicts a world where AI and algorithms have run amok, where your online avatar has a life of its own and social pretense is terrifyingly enforced. How realistic do you feel such a world is in the future, all fiction aside? How will life change in the next 75 years or so?
A: Very realistic I dare to say. Author Mustafa Suleyman speaks of the “revenge effects” of technology. And contends that “AI and synthetic biology are already entangled, a spiraling feedback loop boosting each other. While the pandemic gave biotech a massive awareness boost, the full impact — the possibilities and risks alike — of synthetic biology has barely begun to sink into to the popular imagination. (Suleyman, 2023. P.91)
I clearly see the year 2102, as through a glass dimly, but see it I do.
Q: In 2102: Pretense, the Play, we are thrown into a world where faith and technology are at odds, where AI attempts to negate spiritual belief. During the “trials” our characters undergo, they must act out parts in well-known Biblical stories. Why did you choose the particular stories you did?
A: In the words of Neil Postman, without a narrative life has no meaning. AI has no narrative, no moral compass, no soul, no mind. The wisdom of ancient tales provides buoyancy in perilous times. I like those ancient line.
Q. On the front cover of 2102, there’s a prominent mask image of a gold mask, and, in the novel, you offer a detailed description of an extraordinary mask museum beneath Onglander’s Theater Pretense. What’s up with masks?
A: In the title, 2102: Pretense, the Play the word Pretense is a code word for AI. AI chat presents a disquieting pretense of interpersonal communication, when in reality, there is but one real person involved, a lone initiator of the chat staring at a pixelated screen relaying words that allow AI programming to predict what might be said based on a massive database of actual human communication. Beyond the mask of AI there is no face, no brain, no being, simply modern tech wizardry.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from your novel?
A: My work is fictional realism, not fantasy. Empirical findings from non-fictional works are woven into the storyline offering relevant for the here and now, even though the setting might be 2102.
Q: What are you working on now? What’s next in your Isle of Estillyen universe?
A: At some point, I hope to bring the two titles together, perhaps in a non-fictional work, titled Presence or Pretense, Being or Being not?
For more information about 2102: Pretense, The Play, watch the trailer here:
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About William E. Jefferson:
William E. Jefferson holds an MTh in Theology and Media from the University of Edinburgh, and an MA in Communication from the Wheaton Graduate School. He serves on the board of the Marshall McLuhan Initiative (MMI) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and is an active member and supporter of the Media Ecology Association, as well as the Institute of General Semantics. The author of several books, Jefferson is the creator of the mystical Isle of Estillyen, beyond of the Storied Sea, introduced in his debut novel, Messages from Estillyen (www.estillyen.com). Concerning the worth of words, Jefferson offers the following: “When one considers that Edgar Allan Poe used a mere thirteen words to write ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream,’ the notion that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ comes forth as naught.”
