Carol Marsh is the main character in the near future timeline of Ada’s Children. Here are her biographical details:
Born: 2003 (so she’s 37 when this timeline opens)
Hometown: Minneapolis
Upbringing: orphaned at age 17 during the COVID pandemic, adopted by an aunt
Occupation: freelance college writing tutor and curriculum designer, occasional activist (formerly a writing instructor at the University of Minnesota, then at a small liberal arts college in Minneapolis, before instructorbots replaced her)
Relationship profile: straight, never married, serially monogamous, usually single
Hobbies: writing novels only her friends read, organizing for peace, justice, and the environment
The main thing to know about Carol is that she’s a bit of a loner, though not necessarily through a conscious choice. Her prickly, sarcastic demeanor drives all but a couple of close friends away. This psychological armor — and her whole pessimistic outlook on life — goes back to losing her parents and her only sibling in the pandemic. She’s learned that it just doesn’t pay to let anyone get too close.
The other thing to know is that she’s an activist at heart, starting with the protests over George Floyd’s murder and then with the climate protest movement. She becomes involved with Extinction Rebellion, which I imagined growing into a larger movement in the US than it is now and engaging in more direct actions against pipelines and other oil facilities (and certainly not the pointless and even counter-productive protests at Europe's museums and on Broadway in recent years).
Her activist nature and primary interest in the climate movement help to explain why she was still an adjunct instructor in her mid-thirties when the bots pushed her out of a job. In background that didn’t make it into the novel, I imagined her trying for a job with a climate think tank in DC. When that didn’t pan out, she turned to teaching, but by then it was too late to get on the tenure track. (Which wouldn’t have helped her anyway, since even tenured full professors, like her friend Michael, were pushed out of their jobs by instructorbots. I haven't quite figured out how that would work, but I can imagine university administrators coming up with all sorts of shenanigans. Cutting out all humanities, for instance.)
Despite, or because of, being such a loner and having no family of her own, the two most important people in her life are her friends, Michael and Shondra McBride. Before being laid off and starting a political podcast, Michael was a professor of African American Studies at the same college where Carol taught. Shondra is, perhaps ironically, an AI researcher who led the way in making AI less racist and more inclusive. That Shondra’s work led in some way to redundancy for both Michael and Carol is awkward for all three of them. They try not to talk about it much, and when they do, Shondra tries to reassure her husband and her friend that people will still want the “human touch” in “certain areas.” Which Carol can’t help turning into a snarky joke.
If you watched in horror on election night in 2016 as the results shifted toward the faux billionaire, then you should relate to Carol and her friends as they watch the returns on election night of 2040. Except that Richard Cass is far worse than Lyin’ Donnie can even imagine being, and his supporters — Casshats — are even more virulent in backing him, no matter what. Cass’s plans for a shrunken, whites-only United States will rip Michael and Shondra from Carol’s life, undo the already inadequate measures to fight climate change, and bring the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. All of which sets the stage for a newly self-aware AI to take power in order to save humanity.
One thing I worried about with Carol, and with the arc of this whole timeline, was that she might be too passive, just an observer as the world falls apart. Which seems strange for an activist! So I kept inventing ways to make her more active. (As an aside, here are Donald Maas’s thoughts on passive protagonists.)
Given that events are sliding toward dystopia, none of Carol’s actions are very effective. If she somehow stopped them, then it would be a very different novel. She does end up affecting the future, but almost by accident. Still, whether Carol is active or passive, effective or ineffective, readers tell me that they were moved by her arc, some of them to tears.
You can read the first chapter in which she appears here, or start at the beginning of the novel here.
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What do you think? Do characters always need to be active?