Set in 1984, London has barely advanced in terms of technology and class system since the beginning of the 20th century. Except for one thing —the King of England is now chosen randomly among the United Kingdom's population.
Written by G. K. Chesterton in 1904, The Napoleon of Notting Hill is one of the Dystopian novels that inspired Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Tropes:
- Chromosome Casting: The novel focuses on a fairly small group of main characters who happen to be all male. This is probably due to the genre's conventions at the time.
- Expanded States of America: In the first chapter we meet the exiled President of Nicaragua, which was conquered by the USA, and was apparently the last Latin American country to be overrun. This may also qualify as a Space-Filling Empire.
- Failed Future Forecast: The narration claims that this will always happen because children like to go contrary to what the wise, adult people say. So, when the children grow up, the now elderly or deceased adults' predictions will fail. The children up and went to do something else.The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, 'Keep tomorrow dark,' and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) 'Cheat the Prophet.' The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
- Foreigner for a Day: Not only does Notting Hill secede, it then proceeds to conquer the rest of the British Empire.
- Modern Stasis: The '80s are exactly like the present of circa 1900 (when the book was written). There are a few social changes (all small nations have been annexed by one of a handful of Great Powers, Britain is ruled by something close to a total despotism with the despot appointed at random off an alphabetical list, etc), but there has been zero technological progress. Justified in the foreword where Chesterton explains a game played by humanity called "Cheat The Prophet", in which the common men listen to what the clever men say the next generation will be like, then go and do something else: since the only thing nobody in the 1900s had guessed was that nothing would change, nothing did.
- Mundane Made Awesome: When Adam Wayne attempts to recruit the shopkeepers of Notting Hill, he makes speeches on how wondrous their surroundings really are. Belatedly effective in the final chapter years later, when the Notting Hillers have received Wayne’s vision, and transformed their shops accordingly.
- Royal Blood: Defied by the new system. The king is randomly selected because hereditary diseases tend to hamper the heirs' critical thinking skils.To avoid the possible chance of hereditary diseases or such things, we have abandoned hereditary monarchy. The King of England is chosen like a juryman upon an official rotation list.
- Still Wearing the Old Colors: The deposed president of Nicaragua goes to some trouble to wear the colours of his now-conquered country.
- Water Tower Down: Threatening to do this is how Wayne finally gets his enemies to surrender. Indeed, Chesterton described the use of the Waterworks as a weapon as part of the original inspiration.Waynes: In the event of your not doing so, the Lord High Provost of Notting Hill desires to announce that he has just captured the Waterworks Tower, just above you, on Campden Hill, and that within ten minutes from now, that is, on the reception through me of your refusal, he will open the great reservoir and flood the whole valley where you stand in thirty feet of water. God save King Auberon!
- White Man's Burden: An inversion is discussed. The narration ponders that nobody ever thinks that the white person needs to learn some stuff from their underprivileged charge in order to successfully tutor them. It ought to be a symbiosis, with both parties getting benefitted. Unfortunately, the whites don't have open minds and don't expand their own knowledge because they deem other cultures as inferior.If the Bedouin Arab does not know how to read, some English missionary or schoolmaster must be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever says, 'This schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel; let us pay a Bedouin to teach him.' You say your civilisation will include all talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when the Esquimaux has learnt to vote for a County Council, you will have learnt to spear a walrus?
- You Are Who You Eat: An extreme British nationalist who preaches cannibalism of non-British people discovers, to his horror, that this trope is true, and therefore he is now slowly turning into an Italian organ-grinder — which is apparently the only type of edible foreigner he could find in London.
- Zeerust: The prologue Lampshades this by pointing how any speculation about the future will be obsolete because children will always grow up to do something entirely different than what the adults predicted. So any futurism will feel dated sooner rather than later.
