Multiple endings: what to choose?

10916216483?profile=originalEnding a dystopian-type novel has its problems. If you end on a cheerful note, it may spoil the nature of the rest, but if the ending is simply depressing, I fear the reader may not come back for other books on your list. I faced this problem in my novel Troubles. The backstory is that the world had done nothing much about replacing oil, all economies had collapsed, the world had descended into general anarchy but with local islands of relative stability for the rich, and the occasional one for the poor enforced by the gun.

The novel open with nuclear fusion being invented, whereupon the world would suddenly have energy and there would be a general economic recovery. This meant great opportunities to get rich, if you were ruthless enough, and some were. I have a range of protagonists: the "hero" who wants to see democracy, a fair go for everyone and law and order, even though he himself has used the gun to previously enforce law; his brother, a weak leech; the would-be oligarch; the more effective robber baron; the young woman who started with nothing and is working her way up, helped with a machine pistol; the new agent of the government, in the carpet-bagger model; and of course, the guns for hire. There is also a string of minor characters, mainly helped by the "hero".

One problem with discussing endings is that one has to be careful not to add spoilers, however I should add I have a further constraint, because I am writing a form of "future history" so while this is a stand-alone book, the overall background has to end in a fashion that permits the next book in the series, so the reader may guess that not everything ends well. However, the question relating to this blog post, and the question I agonized over, is whether the young woman should live or die? She has been an intermediate character, not evil, but not exactly virtuous either. She has "gone with the flow" so to speak, and hence has done some fairly nasty things, but she has also done some good things. As a consequence of a not very nice act, she inherits an old building that used to be a bank, and which contains a huge amount of aged currency that is not directly negotiable and would not be considered hers. At the time of writing, I actually had three endings. In one in she wandered off into the sunset, abandoning the money, and looking forward to a more anonymous life in the vicinity of a man who had both admired her and feared her. That ending was a bit "up in the air", but the reader looking for optimism could find it. In ending two, she tried for the money. That almost begged a sequel, in which there would be two sub-endings: she succeeded or failed. The third ending was that she was simply killed, the robber baron kept the money and some would say, justice was done, at least to her if not to the robber baron. There is a case for each of these, but the author can only choose one. Which would you choose? Why?

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