I heard of Rod Rees’s new series, The Demi-Monde quite a while ago. It has an intriguing and original premise and setting – a virtual reality “training” world that features some of the most difficult environments for warfare, populated by some of the worst of history’s psychopaths… Which is pretty cool. With the second book in the series now available, I thought it would be a good time to ask him some questions about his work. Turns out, he’s not a fan of the editing phases…
Rod Rees is the author of The Demi-Monde series – currently standing at two novels, Winter and Spring (published by Quercus in the UK and William Morrow in the US). With the release of the second novel in the series, I thought it a good time to invite him to talk about his influences and inspirations…
It’s an interesting question: what are the influences and inspirations that inform The Demi-Monde series of books, and it’s one I’ve never really thought about before.
But before I answer the question, maybe I should give a quick synopsis of what the Demi-monde is. It’s a virtual world, designed by the US army to train grunts in the art of urban guerrilla warfare, inhabited by thirty million digital duplicates of real people (none of them aware they are Dupes), who live in five city-states locked in eternal civil war (“the last thing we want is peace breaking out in the Demi-Monde”). It’s planned to be a dystopia so every city-state is overcrowded; linguistically, religiously and ethnically distinct; and led by a coterie of the über-psychopaths from history who, during their lives, visited such misery on humanity. Everything has been done to turn the DM into a living hell.
So what were the inspirations I drew on when designing the world?
