Meet james
Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1987, James Belmont was lucky to have a love of reading and writing thrust upon him by his early English teachers.
After being medically discharged from the British Military due to cancer, James moved into the commercial world, working for some of the biggest tech business in the world. These broad experiences, and his love for technology and philosophy, inspired the LIFEline series.
When not writing, James still works in Talent Acquisition.
Why I started to write the LIFEline Series.
It All Began with an idea
What if one of these huge tech organisations ran the world?
Before the idea though, there was a reader who wanted to write! I grew up loving the worlds of C.S Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, and too many fantasy authors to name. I even tried to write some fantasy, but it was never original. It was a pale shadow of a story of all those amazing writers I had read. Then an idea struck: what if, instead of magic, I wrote about what could be? Instead of wands, we have mobile phones. In place of an all-seeing Sauron eye, we have drones. What if technology is our magic?
So, back to the question at hand, “What if one of these huge tech organisations ran the world?”
My first thought went to a dystopian future. One where there is a Mark Zuckerberg-esque leader sitting in a chair, like a Big Brother figure, making sure we are all good boys and girls. That didn’t feel right. It felt cliché. It’s too easy to think about how everything could go bad - there are hundreds of books, movies, and shows with that exact topic.
But I am a fan of technology and its potential. I’m old enough to have watched people move online as I grew up. They created MySpace, Bebo, and eventually Facebook accounts, as they moved from the real world into the wardrobe of a digital Narnia. I was there in the early days of MSN chats, with people all over the world, connecting in chatrooms. There was chaos, but there was beauty. I guess I was never just a fan, I was an optimist. I could see the good these advancements were doing.
Fast forward to 2016-2017 and I watched as Pokémon GO! had a phenomenal impact on the streets of London. It was common to see people outdoors, yes, on their phones, but in a social way. They battled together, walked together, and traded, so they could catch ‘em all. Then it all clicked:
I’d write about a utopian world.
But one person’s utopia is another’s nightmare. One idea blossomed into many, as I started to craft this new world. Everything has changed, but it has undercurrents of the familiar.
As I built the world, I wondered how we’d find love? How would we be governed? hOW WOULD WE WORK? hoW WOULD WE COMMIT CRIMES.
iN A WORLD WHERE WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED, ARE WE ACTUALLY SATISFIED?
Advanced technology makes everything possible. now I get to have fun asking not “can we do something?” but “should we”?
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