Sweetland Trilogy

Book I —Sweetland

1989 —Joe Lar­ivee is born.

2004 —Bridge Whit­edeer is born.

2010 —World­wide depres­sion. Depleted oil, and short­ages trig­ger eco­nomic chaos. Lasts four years, and is ended when gov­ern­ments band together to pump bil­lions of dol­lars into tech­nol­ogy infrastructure.

2011–2014 —The Bicy­cle Wars. As oil scarcity forces more peo­ple to use alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion, reac­tionary motorists fight back, spark­ing vio­lent con­flict with bicyclists.

2012 —War breaks out between China and India, embroil­ing much of Cen­tral and South­east Asia in con­flict. The threat­ened use of nuclear weapons force and uneasy truce.

2013 —Jessie Lar­ivee is born. —The US becomes embroiled once again in a South­east Asia war, as the China-India con­flict con­tin­ues to cre­ate upheaval.

2014 —The Grid comes online world­wide, prompt­ing a renewed tech­no­log­i­cal revolution.

2016 —large swaths of North Amer­i­can forests, stressed out by cli­mate change, are infected with dis­ease. Urban forests are the first to go. Cities riot in face of war and envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion. A great methane belch from the thaw­ing Siber­ian per­mafrost, accel­er­ates global warming.

2017 —Green­land Ice Shelf begins to col­lapse in earnest. Riots con­tinue through the summer.

22 Oct, 2017 —Dic­ta­tor­ship of Peru is over­thrown, lead­ing to the con­sol­i­da­tion of the Boli­var­ian Alliance.

2018 —The Asso­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Island States votes to join the Boli­var­ian Alliance.

2019 —Antarc­tic glac­i­ers begin to rapidly dis­in­te­grate.  Mass migra­tions world­wide as coastal areas begin to flood, and drought makes much of the US South, South­east, and Mex­ico unin­hab­it­able. Anti-immigrant and anti-Bolivarian hys­te­ria sweeps North America.

2020 —The Free Mar­ket Party is elected, sweep­ing Con­gress and the Presidency.

2021 — Coor­di­nated fas­cist attacks in Europe destroy much of Paris, Lon­don, Berlin, Rome, and other cities. —Nation­wide riots in US and a dirty bomb in Chicago prompt  The Anti-Terror Act. The Com­mit­tee to Secure the Nation, made up of cor­po­rate and mil­i­tary lead­ers, is appointed by the pres­i­dent to admin­is­ter Mar­tial Law until the elec­tions of 2024. —New Life is founded, prompt­ing mil­lions of peo­ple to escape into its alter­nate reality.

2022 —Anti-Terror raids round up tens of thou­sands of Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Joe’s rad­i­cal par­ents, Frank and Amy Lar­ivee. —The Inter­na­tional Fed­er­a­tion of Dig­i­tal Artists recre­ate The Drowned Cities of the World with the help of the Boli­var­ian Alliance.

2024 —The elec­tions of 2024 are sus­pended by The Com­mit­tee, which promises to restore civil­ian rule “as soon as the ter­ror­ists are defeated.”

2024 —the planet called Sweet­land is dis­cov­ered, but kept secret by sci­en­tists. —The long-feared dis­rup­tion of the Gulf Stream begins to man­i­fest, fur­ther dis­rupt­ing agri­cul­ture in Europe and the cen­tral US.

2025 —The Boli­var­ian sci­en­tists dis­cover the means to safely trans­port humans to Sweet­land. First set­tlers arrive.

2027— Zap­atis­tas over­throw the Mex­i­can dic­ta­tor­ship, join­ing the  Boli­var­ian Alliance.  Civil War approaches in US, as rebels are embold­ened by rev­o­lu­tion in Mexico.

2027 — Octo­ber and November — This is when the action of the novel takes place.

Book II —New America

2033 ( Sweet­land Year SY 7) —Bridge Whit­edeer, explor­ing the forests of Sweet­land, dis­cov­ers evi­dence of a civ­i­liza­tion. At the same time, the colonists dis­cover that they are not the only ones from Earth to have set­tled on Sweet­land. Across the great south­ern con­ti­nent, a pri­vate com­pany, the New Amer­ica Cor­po­ra­tion has brought sol­diers and con­struc­tion bat­tal­ions, includ­ing mas­sive machin­ery for resource extraction. 

 

Book III —A For­tu­nate Plague

2048 (SY 20) —Joe Lar­ivee, now Coor­di­na­tor of Com­mu­nity Ser­vice for the Inde­pen­dent Repub­lic of Cas­ca­dia, sees a vis­i­tor who claims to be his grand­son from Sweet­land. The Sweet­land colonists are under siege by the New Amer­ica Cor­po­ra­tion, and the indige­nous pop­u­la­tion of Sweet­land is dying of a mys­te­ri­ous plague.

2049 (SY 21) —Joe Lar­ivee resigns his posi­tion to lead an expe­di­tion of sci­en­tists to Sweet­land to help the strug­gling colonists.