Kickstarter Launch - The American Fathers Podcast

We would like to tell you a story. It takes place in the year 2032. It involves four dynasties, a Lebanese-American Journalist, an impassioned college professor, a security contractor, a flamboyant hitman, a rebel hacker, a megalomaniac, and a smart, idiosyncratic heiress. 

And when I say WE, I mean separate narrators as part of a large cast of voice actors. Get ready to experience a movie in your ear. Audio storytelling. Every image, every action, conveyed entirely through voices. 

That is our vision for The American Fathers Podcast. My name is Henry L. Sullivan III, and I am the author of The American Fathers serial. Adrianne Cury, the director, and I are excited to share this vision with you. With your help, we will make this amazing podcast available for free to the world. 

We are based in Oak Park, IL, a suburb just outside of Chicago. Everything about this project is local. Howling Sow Studio, where the podcast will be recorded, is located in Oak Park. Steve Downes, Eric Lynch, and Fawzia Mirza are based in Chicago. There are about twenty five roles to cast, and we're looking forward to hiring the best voice over talent we can find in the Chicago area.

The best description of my writing is Near Future Fiction. I love technology, and I also believe social issues can be addressed in fiction, without compromising the strength of the story or lowering the entertainment level of the work. In his Listmania!List, Carlos Baez says Near Future Fiction writers "usually extrapolate imaginatively from present trends." Since we are narrating stories that take place sometime in the next one hundred years, they may include strange, intriguing, and even frightening technologies and phenomena, but our worlds are familiar in a way that makes the events in the stories feel immediate, and therefore avoidable. 

Although current social trends may include Monsanto and others lobbying congress for the ability to obtain patents on human genetic sequences, it is still possible for us to avoid the world of The Windup Girl, in which 'calorie companies' devastate the global population through plagues caused by genetically enhanced, treatment resistant, disease causing organisms. 

In some ways, Dystopian Narratives are great metaphorical expressions of our fears. Stories like The Hunger Games and Divergent open to worlds that are economically, socially, and politically screwed up. There is also typically the presumption that it’s been that way for a long time. 

For the characters, the time before global catastrophe is a distant memory. This creates chronological distance between our world and that of the book’s hero, making it easier for readers to live vicariously through these engaging characters, as they stand up to fascist societies and battle despotic leaders. 

Like Fantasy, Dystopian Science Fiction transports the reader into a completely different world. One which is often far simpler than our own, in which seven percent unemployment characterizes the same economy that also supports a booming stock market, and selfies and twerking have been placed upon media shelves alongside Duck Dynasty and a Whites only Santa Clause. 

I acknowledge that our world is confusing, but to me it's also incredibly interesting. Interesting in a way that can be entertaining, and enlightening. This is evident in well written shows like Homeland and House of Cards. 

Characters like Carrie Mathison and Francis Underwood inspire me to write Sheila McKinley, Victor Daco, Jasira Said, and Devin Wayne. I hope you enjoy them and learn as much as I have in creating them.

Henry L. Sullivan III