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I wrote this story right immediately after I finished teaching a science fiction residency at the Oyster River Middle School in my (then) home town of Durham, New Hampshire. The State of New Hampshire Arts Council used to send me into schools to talk about the future with kids and then get them to write about it. I worked with the entire eighth grade twice a week for five weeks at ORMS; I remember it was one of my first and most difficult residencies. I had about a third of the kids in the palm of my hand, another third would tune in and out as the mood struck them and the last third was pretty much out of control. I have since gotten a lot better at teaching, but that particular experience was the stuff of nightmares.
Toward the end, we were talking about the future of war. In 1987, Ronald Reagan’s contra war was still raging, and some of the boys wanted to write about fighting to overthrow the Sandinistas. I was stunned by the cold-blooded savagery of these student stories, but when I tried to explain why, nobody wanted to listen. Maybe because I’m a better writer than I am a teacher, I continued the conversation with “Home Front,” first published in Asimov’s in June of 1988. It’s doubtful that any of the kids I would have liked to have read this story ever got to look at it, but here it is again, so maybe there’s still hope.
By the way, at the time I considered “The Johnny America Show” to be an authorial conceit – something that was useful for plot purposes but could never really happen. In these times of “Survivor,” I’m not so sure anymore.
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