Why the San Francisco setting?

by David Lindsey | July 17th, 2011

Share Tweet

The Marten Fane story was always a San Francisco story.

When I first began imagining Fane, San Francisco and the Bay Area were the locals that seemed most logical for the kind of story I wanted to tell. I knew from the beginning that the major elements that would dominate the narrative of the future novels in the Fane story would require something like the Bay Area’s unique cultural characteristics…Silicon Valley with its cutting edge technology, the young, highly educated population nurtured by the high tech research institutions at Stanford and UC Berkeley, the blend of international cultures that commingled in the peninsula and the city. The entrepreneurial spirit that feeds the San Francisco zeitgeist would be essential elements as well.

The importance of the nexus of the high tech industry and the fast-changing world of international intelligence outsourcing can hardly be overemphasized. Spying and technology have always had a symbiotic relationship, but now that global espionage has acquired a new urgency, technology has moved into the vanguard of global secrecy.

Silicon Valley is at the center of the rise of the Industrial-Intelligence Complex, though the general public is largely unaware of its role. This is ironic, since our own communication, that is, the public’s explosion of digital interconnectivity,  has also moved to the forefront in the new age of espionage that was born on September 11, 2001.

Of course, beyond these concrete reasons why San Francisco and the Bay Area are central to the Fane story, there is also the city’s internationally famous ambience. It’s an irresistible city on many levels. With its temperate climate, dramatic geographic setting, and rich cultural history, the city and its environs  has long held a seductive attraction for those creating music, art, film, and literature. The imagination is easily nourished by this magical and mysterious city by the Bay.