HBO MAX new drama "Task" with Mark Ruffalo, wanna know why I can't enjoy it?

[roscoeroscoe]

5. Agreed

There's a crack in reality, and over here on Earth 1 it's impossible to pretend everything is the same. William Gibson tried to deal with this in one of his novels, after Trump beat Clinton.


The William Gibson novel with a split timeline after the 2016 election is Agency. The book is a companion novel and "sequel and a prequel" to his 2014 novel, The Peripheral.
The novel's plot is split between two different "stubs," or alternate timelines:
A 2017 timeline where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Brexit did not happen. In this version of San Francisco, an app tester named Verity is hired to beta-test an advanced military-developed artificial intelligence named Eunice.
A post-apocalyptic 22nd-century timeline in London, after a series of cataclysms known as "the Jackpot" has killed 80% of humanity. Characters in this era use advanced technology to manipulate the past, interfering with events in Verity's 2017 timeline.
Gibson's decision to create this storyline came after he was surprised by the results of the actual 2016 election. He had already been writing the novel with a different near-future plot, but the election result forced him to completely rewrite the story and create an alternate 2017.

As for us, we love Mark Ruffalo (see Begin Again!) but just can't take mopey dramas anymore. We're more likely to re-watch The Crown, Masters of the Air, Shogun, etc.