“Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin with art, and very often in our art – the art of words.”
Ursula Le Guin
My quirky, weird, sci-fi novel, New Gillion Street, came out over a year ago. It’s been a wonderful and illuminating ride. I’m very proud of that book. A lot of time and energy went into it by both myself and Fly on the Wall Press.
The hardest part about publishing is that you almost feel like a book is out of your hands after the first frenzied months of promotion are over. It’s so easy to start thinking about the next thing (like, say, my second novel, which is coming in 2026 with Northodox Press, don’t you know - EXCITING!) The machine moves on, and so does everyone’s interest, but I’d like to take it back and talk about New Gillion Street a bit to celebrate its belated anniversary.
(Expect mild spoilers ahead and some strong political opinions. If you haven’t read my book yet (SHAME!) - and if don’t want to be subjected to a rant - do not read any further).
New Gillion Street has been on my mind quite a lot recently, especially since Trump won the 2024 U.S. Election… I honestly can’t believe I’ve just written those words. It feels completely insane to me that Trump has made a comeback after the awful shitshow that was his first term. I lived in Texas for the whole duration of his first tenure, and it was a mess, culminating with the January 7th attack on the Capitol Building. (Call it whatever you want, but I’ll call it what it was: an attempt at a soft coup).
I wrote New Gillion Street in 2018 in the middle of Trump’s first term, with Brexit still fresh in my mind from 2016 (another disaster that desperately needs to be dealt with, especially in light of recent events.) Yes, my book is a bit quirky, weird, and possibly a little quaint, but it’s obviously political. If you look past the cups of tea in the garden, the foul-mouthed gnome, the moss hive-mind, civilised sloths, ancient malevolent entities, and strange forest creatures, you will see a community in crisis, mirroring our own with the modern rise of authoritarianism.
Humans will find conflict, always, but especially if there’s someone there to inflame it for their own ends. In steps the antagonist of this tale, Mr Zand - that dastardly bastard - who slowly, over a great many years, poured poison into the ears of his side of the Street. He stoked the natural distrust between humans, our need to think of other people as something different to us. In New Gillion Street that’s represented by different sides of the road, Odd and Even numbers, since there’s nothing else.
Yes, Mr Zand’s nature is to disrupt, but honestly, he could have been human. In the story, he’s a Being of Chaos, an entity from the fiery universe before the current temperate one, and he uses tried and tested tactics of authoritarianism: demonise the other, sow discord, enflame hatred, stoke outrage, feed suspicion and, above all else, LIE. Yes, it’s in his DNA to cause bother, but he also learned extensively from humanity, having spent aeons in their presence. He even had books written by humans on the subject in his personal library in Number 13! I didn’t include that by accident!
Mr Zand fuels the distrust of the Odds but also pulls off another authoritarian trick: he sprinkles in a tiny bit of the truth. In this case, New Gillion Street does need to expand because they’ve reached their limits of their one-street colony. That’s obvious to everyone, despite the agreement with the People of the Forest when the colonists first arrived. He takes some truth to get the Odd’s attention and then adds his own answer to what they need to do and why they can’t, saying it’s the other’s fault. Just like Trump now and four years ago. He talked about corruption in government, in the media, and ingrained in the system – remember Fake News, which is ironic since he is the largest spreader of bullshit, followed now closely by Elon Musk - pretending to be the maverick, the outsider, and then used it to win power, twice, and then speckled the usual hate-mongering of foreigners, immigrants, LGBTQ+ and the “other.” Mr Zand aims it at the People of the Forest and, to a lesser extent, the Even side of the Street. They are his “other.”
During the events of the story, he uses the deaths of two of the Evens to whip everyone up into a frenzy. Of course, he created that event with the dog whistle to bring a dangerous beast from the forest, knowing what would happen after. Another tactic of authoritarianism is fashioning an outrage or situation (always baseless) and then harnessing the reaction. Trump did this when he lost the election, fairly I might add, by stating it had been stolen despite him being the president at that time!! He then rode that all the way back into the White House. Mr Zand did a similar thing, securing his position as mayor and de facto ruler of New Gillion Street by using the tragedy he himself had created.
Next, when Mr Zand is in power, what does he do? He positions himself to be worshipped. Yes, he half-heartedly began the expansion, but that was by-the-by for him – just like Trump’s Wall and now with his insane suggestions of annexing Canada and Greenland. He had what he wanted: power and the worship that comes with it. You only need to look at Trump’s most ardent supporters to see that he has become a cult. They believe anything he says, even when there are videos to the contrary. They believe the serial liar and felon despite all the evidence against him. That is a classic example of a cult.
And now, the final coup de grace, something very important for the wannabe king: keeping that power. And that will involve gaming the system. In Mr Zand’s case, he puts an Odd into the Even side of the Street, basically guaranteeing that a future election is now lopsided. Trump did this in his first term when he stacked the Supreme Court and what he’s doing now with Project 2025 (look it up. This is the most terrifying element of this new regime.) I’ve no doubt he’ll do something similar again since that same Court has given him the powers of a king to do what he wants when he wants. It makes me wonder whether he’ll be satisfied with just two terms - perhaps claiming that his first was stolen, so he should get another… we shall see.
I’m sure you’ve found this to be grim reading, so I apologise, but there is always hope! Albert and his friends and family on the Even side of the Street resist. At first, they tried to use the system itself, and when that failed, they asked for help from elsewhere. It will take our participation and the help of our friends and allies. We need to be vigilant here in the U.K. because, as a country, we often follow the U.S. (see the Afghan and Iraq invasions.) And let’s be brutally honest here: Farage and Reform are waiting and watching (aided by the wealthiest (for now) man in the world, Elon Musk. I knew he was going to be trouble when I quit Twitter in 2023. I’ve never been less happy to be proved correct).
In the end, Albert and Co reveal Mr Zand for what he truly is, a shit and a liar, and it breaks the spell within the Odds, especially after they’d be under his thumb for a short time and now understand what that actually means. And that’s what it will take. Resistance to the hate and lies and conspiracy theories. But it will also need a collective stirring on both sides. Just like at the end of New Gillion Street. Both Odds and Evens found a way to coexist or, more accurately, remembered that they could already!
Ursula Le Guin said it perfectly, and I think it’s worth saying it twice: Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin with art, and very often in our art – the art of words.
I have and will resist this modern lurch toward authoritarianism the only way I can with my words.
So, there you have it. What was billed as a celebration of the belated first anniversary of New Gillion Street has become a massive, self-indulgent rant, but I think you’ll agree that even though I wrote this book in 2018, it’s still relevant now, seven years later, and it will continue to be relevant for the next four (or more) years.
Thanks for reading.
Elliot J Harper
Author of quirky SF novel, New Gillion Street, published by Fly on the Wall Press, the weird horror short story collection, The Strange Tales of Gillion, and upcoming novel, The Peculiar Journey of Cecil Tabiner, to be published by Northodox Press.