It is often said that science fiction reflects the realities, anxieties and hopes of the time in which it is written more than it illuminates the future, and recent events have shown this to be true of a book I read several years ago during one of the Covid lockdowns. This book is ‘Two Tribes’ (Chris Beckett, Corvus, 2020), a relatively short and unusual work of fiction that would probably fit most closely into the cli-fi genre, but also has elements of sci-fi, drama, romance, and perhaps most importantly, political commentary. After not having thought about it in some time, what brought this story back to the fore for me were the events which shook the UK political establishment and the general population to their cores during late July and early August 2024.
Two Tribes is a story that explores the social, political and economic fault lines that can come to divide and polarise societies and different groups within societies, the events and actors that can serve to drive wedges into these fault lines to generate widening schisms, and most perhaps importantly, speculates about how such forces could potentially play out and echo long into the future. Rising resentment about the increasing difficulties faced by ordinary people, and the social divisions that can emerge from this, appear to be gaining an increasing momentum in many parts of the world. This is driven to a large degree by our destabilising and increasingly fraught global predicament, and the riots in the UK (important note: these took place in England and Northern Ireland only) this summer are arguably one manifestation of this.
The violent unrest erupted in the immediate aftermath of the terrible tragedy which happened in Southport in northwest England at the end of July, and was stoked up by a range of anti-immigrant and far-right actors and groups (from within the UK, and potentially beyond as well). These actors tapped a well of existing anti-immigration views (abetted by this being a political football for the establishment and media), along with more nebulous frustration and opportunism, and also cynically co-opted prevailing anger and grief arising from the tragedy. They directed all of these feelings to their own ends with shocking speed and apparent ease, using a tidal wave of social media misinformation and culture war memes as the accelerants to the conflagration. The result was the viral-like emergence and spread of running battles between large numbers of masked and hooded rioters and armoured police, causing huge amounts of disruption and property damage, and most disgracefully, the targeting of asylum seekers with threats of extreme violence.
The organised violence petered out rapidly in the face of police action and counter-protests, and the response since has focused on rapid and severe justice for the perpetrators, but there has also been discussion and analysis of the deeper drivers of such an explosive emergence of unrest. What is increasingly clear is that although every aspect of the rioting was utterly inexcusable and a blight on the UK’s reputation, it did not occur in a complete vacuum. Deeper and longer term dynamics likely created the conditions for these events, and have potentially far-reaching implications for the future. It was in this context that the central message of Two Tribes came back to mind for me; the following is a summary and appraisal of this story, along with discussion about what it might have to say to us about the potential dangers ahead for the UK and the wider world.
The story in Two Tribes is structured around two sets of narrators living in two far-separated timeframes; a group of people living in the UK in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 Brexit vote, and that of a ‘archivist/historian’ living in an impoverished, totalitarian, climate change-ravaged version of Britain 250 years into the future. This historian (named Zoe) is tasked with recording and reconstructing the past using surviving records, and through this work comes across the preserved physical diaries (which are supplemented by digital records surviving into that time) of Harry and Michelle, two people alive in the contemporary, post-Brexit era. The story of Harry and Michelle is hence recreated and brought to life by Zoe, and it is through this prism that a bigger picture is painted of how the actions and beliefs of people alive in the early 21st century trace all the way through to the much-transformed and degraded lives of those in the 23rd century.
Harry is a Cambridge-educated architect based in London, whilst Michelle is a small-town hairdresser living in a forgotten corner of rural Norfolk. Their paths cross due to circumstance but they find common ground and attraction due to similar tragic life trajectories, but they soon part ways due to the clear differences in the worlds they inhabit and the circles they move in (which are thrown into sharp relief by the context of Brexit). Harry’s circle of family and friends are educated, liberal and wealthy, and engage in prolonged, self-congratulatory and self-affirming diatribes against what they see as the ignorance, narrow-mindedness, lies and xenophobia that drove the Brexit vote. Michelle’s local and familial circles on the other hand are tight-knit, provincial and working class, and to them Brexit represents a brave and meaningful fightback by salt-of-the-earth Britons against remote and arrogant elites who have ignored them and their concerns for too long.
Harry and Michelle meet again following their initial drunken tryst, and in time attempt to build a relationship (which Harry chooses over a nominally better suitor who more closely resembles those cultured members of his own circles). However, as their lives mix to greater extents, it becomes clear that they represent ‘flag bearers’ for their respective and opposing ‘tribes’, and the difficulties they face in finding common understanding are symbolic of the wider growing divide and mutual suspicion and incomprehension between these social and political groups. As the story progresses it moves between the contemporary and future worlds frequently, and the context of the world that Zoe inhabits, and the big events that led to it, are painted and fleshed out. This is a clever plot instrument, as it becomes clear what may seem like relatively petty squabbles between Britons of different backgrounds in one era actually set in motion far larger and more sinister forces, thus laying the foundations for history to take a specific path.
What lies in the future for the Britons of the early 21st century in this story is civil war, the very earliest rumblings of which can be seen in the post-Brexit conversations and interactions explored directly between Harry and Michelle, and subplots involving their friends and families. Though the timelines are not made clear, the differences between these cultural and political tribes at national scale seemingly become irreconcilable, and lead in time to them morphing into militias eventually engaging in open civil warfare. At some point a direct military intervention on behalf one of the warring sides is staged by China (which is implied to have become the dominant global superpower by that point) which results in massive destruction of what is left of the cities and infrastructure of Britain. The rubble of contemporary London becomes the bedrock for the future slums which characterise Zoe’s era, in which Britain exists under semi-colonial conditions with foreign surveillance and occupying soldiers being part of the background.
Another key influence on this future setting is labelled as The Catastrophe, which describes global-scale climatic changes which by the 23rd century have rendered large parts of the world uninhabitable, and Britain is described as a steamy, subtropical, partially submerged land in which most people eke out a hardscrabble and impoverished existence. The wastefulness and obliviousness of the people of Harry and Michelle’s time from the perspective of the future becomes another viewpoint; although the narrator Zoe is fascinated by the lives of the long-dead Harry and Michelle, and how they occupied an inflection point in history (though they scarcely realised it), many of the other narrators from the future timeframe express contempt or disbelief at the lives they led.
Overall, this book creates a detailed, well-researched and complex world, with (mostly) well-developed characters, and a well-paced, layered and engaging story with a nuanced message, in just under 300 pages. Some of the plot devices do not feel fully believable (e.g., the survival of mass digital records through a prolonged period of global destruction and instability), and the mechanisms by which the social tribes move down a pathway towards all out-war are not explored in any detail and are therefore largely left to the readers’ imaginations (likely involving some form of loss of democratic systems and subsequent breakdown in civil society). Nonetheless, the story holds together, and you do get the sense of being witness to events that could be the fabled beats of the butterflies’ wings which reap future storms.
Indeed, one of the most effective things this story does is in conjuring up a vivid ‘telescoping’ effect, linking the emerging patterns we’re familiar now (whether political, social or environmental) with imagined sweeping future transformations in ways which feel very believable. The distant past and distant future (depending on which perspective you take) are shown to be linked in many different ways through clever descriptions, such as a future slum dweller aghast at images of the glittering apartment building which occupied the same space in London 250 years before. This illuminates the scope of the transformations that Britain, and presumably much of the rest of the world, will undergo in this imagined but plausible world.
Coming back round to the recent events, the message of Two Tribes is particularly thought provoking because of the parallels with real-world dynamics. Years after Brexit was finally ‘delivered’, many in British society still feel left behind by merciless, pervasive neoliberal capitalism and repeated empty political promises (e.g. ‘levelling up’) which continue to deliver so little for so many. It is in these sorts of contexts that resentments and divisions of the type described in Two Tribes are so prone to grow; although it would require a pathway of many (mis)steps to reach such a drastic scenario, it is one history shows us is possible. One of the first is when communication between dissenting groups breaks down, and they retreat fully into their own echo chambers. Social media and the nature of many western political systems are supercharging this, and although this process is not complete it remains a major risk, and is one of the reasons why the forthcoming US election will likely be so consequential.
Overshadowing all of this is strengthening (and potentially runaway) Earth System destabilisation. This will increasingly drive a polycrisis of interlinked and self-reinforcing environmental, economic, social and technological dangers which are and will continue to be the ultimate causes of phenomena such as inflation, scarcity and mass migration. However, mis/disinformation means that this truth is mostly lost in a cacophony of conspiracy, distraction and trivial nonsense. History also teaches us that times of uncertainty and instability are fertile conditions for populists and those with dark agendas, as people under stress often seek simple answers to complex problems, which often dredges up an instinct to blame and see ‘us and them’ divisions. This looks to be bubbling to the surface as unrest in many parts of the world, of which the UK is now exemplary. This moment in history increasingly appears to be a crucial inflection point, and for anyone keen to understand the nature of the forks in the road, Two Tribes is recommended reading.
