A Prequel to What?

I read The Hunger Games shortly after it was released in 2008. Back then, reality TV was still in its early stages, and the dystopian premise of a show where kids fought to the death was darkly original. 

It's hard to remember how perceptive and novel Suzanne Collins's concept was because, since then, the book and movie franchises have become a part of our cultural fabric: the name is shorthand for any brutal, unfair competition, and the term tribute is widely recognizable as someone immorally sacrificed by the powers that be. 

In the 17 years since The Hunger Games was published, reality TV has also evolved into a cultural phenomenon; by some reckonings, 80% of American adults who watch TV watch at least one hour of reality TV per week. Many producers, cable stations, celebrities, and politicians (ahem) owe a considerable measure of their success to the genre. Arguably, its popularity also paved the way for people's willingness to share so much of their lives on social media.

Now Suzanne Collins is back with a new novel in the series. Sunrise on the Reaping is a prequel to the original trilogy and tells the story of Haymitch Abernathy and his experience in the 50th Hunger Games, 24 years before he mentors Katniss and Peeta. Despite its foregone conclusion, it's a really good book, in my opinion, almost equal to the first novel, which was my favorite.

I'll spare you any spoilers; what caught my attention was an almost toss-away line in a minor scene. Talking about editing footage for the broadcast, a character "sighs when he mentions the tools that were incapacitated and abolished in the past, ones deemed fated to destroy humanity because of their ability to replicate any scenario and any person, and in mere seconds." 

He's talking about deepfakes and AI, of course, and his words made me wonder just what we might be saying about those topics in 17 years.