An Infinite Number of Monkeys

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/04/30/the-big-idea-brenda-w-clough-2/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60433

Imagine a world where political servants actually served us, and whose decisions were backed by the will of the people, rather than their greed. If it sounds like fantasy, you may want to check out author Brenda W. Clough’s newest novel, Off the Screen. Follow along in her Big Idea, and remember to vote!

BRENDA W. CLOUGH:

I began Off the Screen more than twenty years ago. There’s a couple major drivers of the work, but the big one is the reboot of American democracy. It’s set in 2160, and at that point I felt that the United States could have refurbished its systems somewhat. 

But, in those golden 2000s, I abandoned the work because I couldn’t imagine why we would need to tinker with the system of American governance. Everything was fine, the economy was good, Bill Clinton was president and running things reasonably well. I couldn’t figure out any way to get from here to there. And so I closed the ms.

Well! Hah! When I found the manuscript on a thumb drive in 2025, it was obvious why we had a crying need for a reboot! The problem was plain to see: the serious disconnect between the people and the rulers. We, down here, need stuff done, and we can’t get Congress to do it. The Founding Fathers designed the system to be a representative democracy – we elect our two senators and one congressperson, and they go to Washington and do our will. But it’s not working. We need a fix.

This is not a new idea. Many, many political commentators today are saying this. Every time Heather Cox Richardson talks about what we can do in this moment, she calls for new ideas, new thoughts. Oh honey. You are calling my name!

So for this novel I redesigned America. Congress, that useless buffer, is now drastically pruned back. They are our servants, remember. We pay them to do stuff for us, the same way you pay the guy to mow your lawn or fix your car. We do not pay them to fly in private airplanes and feather their nests with insider trading. 

In Off the Screen, the citizens vote. All of us, every American every single day, has to vote. A neat system called DiDem, Digital Democracy, is tied to your online life. What do you do when you get up in the morning? Slug down a cup of coffee perhaps, and pick up your cell phone or open your laptop? In this book, when you swipe your cell open, the first thing that comes up is your ballot for the day. You have to do this before you get to open your email, or text your daughter, or check in with the office – it’s the starter screen of every American, and so it gets done.

Every morning you vote on a simple five issues, so the process takes perhaps a couple minutes. You spend longer finding the creamer to put into your coffee, so this is endurable. Each question is a yes/no vote, a KISS feature (Keep It Simple Stupid) that keeps it down to five taps on the screen. Then you’re free for the rest of the day to download porn or work on your bitcoin, anything. But daily voting in this novel is a requisite for citizenship.

These five questions are necessarily rather crude. Shall we invest in the repair of the Pennsylvania Turnpike? Should we impose economic sanctions upon Boeing? What about invading the Seychelle Islands? Yes or no, make a decision. Once the American people decide, it’s Congress’s job to do it: find the money for the turnpike, declare war against the Seychelles. And then, if that war means we need a bigger Army and maybe a draft, it can go back to DiDem again for more decision making. Do we increase taxes for that bigger army? Do we institute a draft? Yes or no? If we demand the impossible – yes, I want the Seychelles bombed back to the Stone Age, but no I don’t want to pay for it – Congress comes back with another vote: since we won’t pay for this war, do we sue for peace?

And not all questions are important enough to submit to the entire population of the United States of America. If you live in Arizona you may not care about the Penn Turnpike. So, every American votes every day on five questions. But we don’t all see the same five questions. A color-coded system of ranking gets minor questions decided by a smaller segment of the voters. If that first set of voters decides it’s important, it goes up to be voted on by a larger number. So at the end of the day, that decision to invade the Seychelles may get approved by an actual numerical majority of Americans, but it has to pass through a number of lesser votes to get there.

What DiDem gets you is the levers of power in the hands of the people. Congress is demoted to servants, the waiters at the restaurant who take your order and then set the hamburger in front of you. This is delicious to contemplate, isn’t it?

Unfortunately DiDem also means that a lot of stupidity occurs. The international proverb, in this novel, is that Americans cannot agree on which way is up.  I think we acknowledge today that people are by and large dumb as stumps. We make idiotic electoral choices that are swayed by crashingly disastrous criteria like fame, race, gender, sexual orientation, wealth, or fingernail color. For heaven’s sake, the Brits voted for Brexit! Even a perfected democracy does not free us from humanity’s innate flaws. Bad political decisions continue to be made in the world of Off the Screen, and I drop my hero Edwin Barbarossa into their chippers.

But he mostly ignores it, because he’s busy with the other Big Idea in this book. Live theater has been slain by AI. Actors exist mainly to be scraped for voices, pretty faces, and luscious boobs. And then someone decides to create the first live original stage musical in a generation. Eddie’s going to write the lyrics and score. 

Which means that I had to write the book and lyrics, because they’re in ongoing development through the entire novel. To acquire the rights to quote Sondheim or Oscar Hammerstein would be impossible. Believe it or not, sometimes it’s just easier to write a musical yourself.

And, because the canons of theater demand it, everything comes to a head on opening night: the show, Eddie’s fate, DiDem’s survival. This is the biggest book I have ever written, and if it had appeared in 2000 it would have been magnificently prophetic. But just as well it didn’t. We need it today.

Off the Screen: Book View Cafe

Author socials: Bluesky|Facebook

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/04/30/the-big-idea-brenda-w-clough-2/

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Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/04/29/the-porch-2-0/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60425

You may remember that last month the Scalzi Compound was hit with 80mph winds and as a result part of our porch railing was blown out, which was the excuse we needed to replace it entirely with something more robust. That replacement is now here: the new post are thicker and heavier (6 inches by 6 inches, rather than the previous four by four) and reinforced above and below. The new railing (and the post cladding) is made from composites so it will last longer and look better.

Although I don’t want to tempt fate by saying this new porch railing and its support posts will laugh in the face of 80mph winds, in point of fact they should be fine in anything short of a tornado, and if we have a tornado, we will have a whole host of other problems, and the porch railing will be way down the list.

The porch railing taken care of, our back deck is next on our contactor’s list of things to renovate; stay tuned for that.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/04/29/the-porch-2-0/

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