Cosmere.es
How was Perfect State born? Will you come back to develop the idea?
Brandon Sanderson
Perfect State grew out of me wanting to... a lot of the classic sort of cyberpunk idea, Matrix sort of idea, is: we live in a simulation, and this is just a terrible thing. And that's a pretty cool story, right? I don't know that I would want to discover I'm in a simulation. But, as often is the origin of some of my stories, I am thinking about, "Well, can I reverse that trope? What if living in a simulation, there was a really good reason for us to do it, and it actually turned out pretty well?" The idea of being: we solve overpopulation by giving everybody their own perfect place to live, in which they get to be some sort of cool hero and/or political figure. That felt like it was a cool thing to explore, where the story was not talking about how terrible this was, but was instead talking about the natural problems that arise. And I consider those two different things. Like, if I espouse a specific political philosophy (not to make this political), it is not me saying that political philosophy is without problems. (Because it probably is.) It is just I feel like the problems that philosophy has are ones that I would rather deal with, and are easier to deal with, than the problems another political philosophy might have. So, with Perfect State, the point of the story was not, "Hey, this would be perfect!" (Even though it's called Perfect State. That's kind of the irony of the title, right?) It's that "This is gonna have some problems. Let's explore what those problems would be and how the people who live in the system deal with it."
I could see myself coming back. Like, the two main characters of the story definitely have different goals and philosophies, and that is not resolved at the end of the story, even though the story itself is resolved. So I can see coming back even to those same characters. But there's a lot on my plate, so I can't promise when or if. I do know where the story would go. But that's very common for me.