A few years ago, I drafted a novel that imagined a dystopian future where books are banned, information goes missing and libraries are under attack. Now the novel, Saturation, has been published, I find that future is already here. The current US Government is attempting to eviscerate funding for libraries, museums and archives. Thousands of web-pages have disappeared from US Government agency sites, a process beginning on the second day of President Trump’s second term. And there is a growing number of attempts to ban books in the US (the state of Iowa is trying to ban George Orwell’s 1984, for example). Given the influence of the internet, this is a global issue.

Currently, the Trump administration is being sued by the American Library Association (ALA) to stop an order to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The IMLS is the national body that funds public libraries, archives and museums in the US. According to ALA, programs likely to be affected by the dismantling of the IMLS include those that support childhood literacy development, enable internet access, help job seekers and provide Braille and talking books.

Book bans are at an all time high, new report finds

Also affected could be the ‘preservation, maintenance and digitisation of collections’. Meanwhile, thousands of US government web pages containing data – particularly regarding health, climate, social justice measures and foreign aid – have been taken down. This is potentially a great loss to policy-makers, historians and scientists, with detrimental effects reaching far into the future. Organisations such as the Concerned Archivists Alliance, initially formed in 2017, have renewed their activities to preserve and make accessible ‘records documenting our societies’.

This conflict over access to information is, of course, a new battle in an age-old war. In Saturation, librarians defend their collections against the rise of a totalitarian state that seeks to destroy libraries. The state orders the elimination of the Philosophy, History and Fiction sections from all libraries. In one scene, a librarian flees his library as it is physically destroyed. The preservation of the society depicted in the story ultimately depends upon the retrieval of knowledge lost. Requirements to remember are pitted against requirements to forget.

Libraries are essential to providing opportunities in our society. When I go to the local library, I see children learning, socialising and being creative. Jobseekers are using the internet and printers. Students are accessing tutoring. The library is a community centre, a place where information and ideas can be accessed in a safe, cool space – and free of charge. However, the Australian Library and Information Association reported in 2023 “a significant increase in challenges to the freedom to read in Australia”, with an “unprecedented number of complaints, challenges, and protests targeting books, library displays, programs and events”. The great majority of these complaints are not coming from concerned locals or parents, but organised groups, often located offshore. They are an extension of what has been happening in the US for some years. It is a trend also increasingly evident in the UK.

That a US president should sign an executive order for the IMLS to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law”, and that data concerning public health, the environment and the climate should be taken down from US government websites, may have seemed implausible a decade or even a few years ago. Such a scenario would have been relegated to a dystopian future. But this is happening now.

Surely one reason it is happening is that too many people failed to see what was coming. We need to be able to recognise when things are changing, the moment a possibility is becoming a reality. Otherwise, we are not seeing our world.

The novel form can teach us about this, because it is able to explore our experience of time. In Saturation, the past erupts unexpectedly into the present: a football game morphs into a gladiatorial contest, a single plane flying overhead multiplies into a hundred bombers conducting an air raid. The novel form is supreme in its ability to explore the relationship between past, present and future. And this is a relationship we must try to learn.

Life changes in the instant, Joan Didion said, but what if we cannot recognise the instant? We may not necessarily understand or believe what we are seeing. At what instant did the demise of free speech begin in the world’s largest democracy? The moment a presidential candidate appeared at the top of his golden escalator?

Book review: Saturation, William Lane

It is one thing to notice change, another to act on it. Libraries, museums and archives, and their staff, should not only to be appreciated, they should be supported and protected. Because our world just changed. And the golden escalator will keep coming around.

is available now, published by Transit Lounge.