Books & Writing
THE CAGE
The world as we know it is gone.
There are the remains of it.
In some places, life seems almost normal.
Before COVID, many people thought the premise behind The Cage was far-fetched. That was then. Now we know better.
But The Cage is not about the news. In one sense, it’s about the future, a future possibility that may be more likely than we used to think. Yet it’s really about how to make a world—any world—fit for human beings. Or at least how to start. Because the problem with human life is that survival is only the beginning.
Individuals face this problem too, but those lucky enough to live in the developed world, where survival is not a daily question, are surrounded by diversions and distractions so pervasive and compelling that they seem to be the fabric of life itself. Years might slip through your fingers until you wake up one night wondering what really happened. Unless that’s too frightening to contemplate.
So imagine someone from whom the distractions are taken away, who has little and is entitled to nothing, and who now has to decide, unexpectedly and alone, whether anything really matters. And why.
Set in the not too distant future among the remains of the world, the story involves the City, a shadow of its former self but clinging tenaciously to an organized existence, and a nearby settlement of Exiles living off the land and beginning to make their own steps toward organized life. There are other cities and other settlements, and the small contact between them is leading a new generation of leadership to begin thinking of war as something unavoidable, even inevitable—and a few to believe there has to be a way to start over. This is the background for events leading up to a crisis of power in the City, one that collides with the harrowing moral crisis of one Exile.
The Cage took much longer to write than I expected, and the fact that it is being released after a year of pandemic is purely coincidental. Still, the time seems right. I’m glad it’s now.
“Profound, sobering and wholly fascinating…
“One of those novels that demands thought, compels the attention, and refuses to be dismissed, The Cage is the kind of novel that makes Dystopian Fiction so unique, with Smith pulling off a relative rarity in the genre by creating a genuinely original read.
“Cuttingly intelligent, from its cast of characters down to its immersive plot structure, Smith refuses to use emotions conventionally, demanding instead that we keep a constant, intellectual grip on things. Intended to seduce us, mess with our heads and leave a lasting impression, The Cage is a fine example of how an author who is passionate about their genre can redeem its mainstream clichés...
“Profound, sobering and wholly fascinating, The Cage shares enough of Orwell’s bleak and angry vision that it’s hard not to draw connections between them. But The Cage is its own thing, and Smith’s ideas are wholly original, taking us far beyond the genre’s basic doom-laden parable. He plants thoughts in our heads that disturb us, and, like all the best dystopian fiction, they serve as a magnifying device for an examination of the present as he explores what it really means to be free.”
The Salvation of Faust – A Comedy in One Act
A light-hearted jab at the idea of Christian redemption, this play introduces a Faust I’d like to meet.
