I’ve had some questions from readers about a few things in the novel that I thought I’d address in this blog post. Like my earlier blog post titled “Relevant Scientific Research to Oceania: The Underwater City,” this blog post will be updated and/or added to when more questions or concerns arise about the novel from my readers.
T2N (Top 20 Nations)
Why the T2N not the UN?
I choose to create a completely different organization to establish the underwater city of Oceania for two different reasons. The first was that I wanted to refrain from using any real-world organizations in my novel. However, the main reason was that in the futuristic world, I envisioned that a lot of things in our world would change. Looking throughout history, very few organizations have lasted several hundred years. Since the UN was formed in 1945, at the time of the novel, it would have been 331 years since its inception. Although I do hope that a worldwide organization like the UN does continue for many years into the future, it is not the case in Oceania: The Underwater City.
Also, I foresaw that the Great Plague would change things as well. Usually, in the case of catastrophic events, the world changes drastically (think of WWII). Anyway, the T2N is a group of powerful (rich) nations around the world who joined together to try to prevent another Great Plague and address the issues that lead up to it. The identity of these countries will remain ambiguous. I want the readers to imagine which 20 countries would be the most wealthy and influential in a world very different from the one we know today. The intergovernmental organization uses its collective funds to help with worldwide issues such as universal healthcare and access to clean water that smaller and less fortunate countries could not afford after the devastation of the plague. One of the main consequences of the plague was the realization that although humans may look different, have different preferences and values, that all of humanity can all be susceptible to disease. The result ended a lot of inequalities of all kinds around the globe as all of humanity had to band together to heal. Some countries’ populations were severely decimated, leaving very few people left to clean up the aftermath, which lead the countries still in good fortune to aid those who weren’t. Thus, the birth of the T2N.
The Declaration of Independence
Why is the word “united” not capitalized?
In a part of the book, there is a historical reference to the Declaration of Independence in which Allie notes the following:
“Near the top of the parchment were the words “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,” written in beautiful script….Funny, I’d never realized that the word “united” wasn’t capitalized in the title.”
-Allie, Oceania: The Underwater City
When I wrote this section, I looked up images of the real Declaration of Independence from the National Archives in Washington D.C. What I found shocked me too, which is why I thought it would be interesting for Allie to note the same thing in the book. In fact, my editor tried to correct me on the lack of capitalization of the word “united” more than once, leading me to go ahead and add Allie’s statement for clarification. Besides, I didn’t want Grammarians sentencing me to death for it (just kidding, I know no Grammarian would commit murder). I never found any solid reasoning for why united isn’t capitalized but it’s something I found interesting nonetheless. So it is not a typo, just merely a direct quote from one of the most important documents in US History.
If you want to read the National Archives’ complete unedited transcript of the American Declaration of Independence, you can click here.
You’ve reached the end of the blog post for this week. Stay tuned (or subscribe to the blog) to be notified of next week’s post. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you have any comments, you can leave them here on my blog or email me directly at elizataye@gmail.com. As always, I love hearing from my readers.
