Meanwhile…

I’ve always had a fascination with post-apocalyptic stories. People staggering amongst the ruins of our great civilization, scrounging to live, with a few  clinging to humanity as the rest of society regresses around them. Who doesn’t like a little Mad Max every now and then? One of the things that intrigues me most about the Terminator franchise isn’t the idea that soldiers are traveling through time to try and prevent the fall of mankind, but the fact that ultimately they fail.

I didn’t get a chance to see The Road, but I’m reading the book now and it is bogglingly good, one of those “why does anyone bother to continue writing in this subgenre after this” sort of books. (Though the fact that it’s listed as “literature” instead of “science fiction” is an example of arrogant genre-dismissive bullshit that I can’t stand.) For a fun exercise in seeing people entirely missing the point, take a gander at some of the negative reviews over at Amazon. I particularly enjoy the one that thinks the lack of punctuation was perhaps an accident.

I did get to see The Book of Eli on Monday. There were a few things that could have been improved, but overall I thought it was quite good. I’m kind of surprised at the overall negative reviews it’s gotten. Many immediately complain that they’re tired of apocalyptic movies, at which point I pretty much stop reading. Isn’t that your own fault for becoming a movie reviewer? Stop whinging about your comfy, trivial job.

Anyway, I am interested in the place of religion in these settings. Would people turn their backs on the old religions, since they appear to have failed? Would they cling to them, desperate for salvation? Would they invent new ones to try and explain the horrible events that took place?

The third option is a sticky wicket to me. We tend to think of religion as something that humans naturally develop per a basic need to explain the unknown, but I have to wonder if new religions would arise at all. In these scenarios, humans are barely surviving, primarily off the remnants of the dead, and a landscape so inhospitable makes long-term survival for the species unlikely. When would these people have the luxury of inventing new gods?

Here’s the beginning of a new piece I’m working on. It was originally intended to be a flash, but it may grow beyond that. Continue reading

I started this mostly as a pretty basic post-apocalypse story, survivors living among the ruins of civilization type story. I kind of like the direction it’s taking, though, so maybe at some point I’ll work some more on this concept. A little over 800 words. Continue reading

I haven’t posted a writing sketch lately, so this seems like a good time. To be fair, I haven’t had much to post. I’m still working diligently on my Chuck Chaykin space western (which is shaping up well, I think). But I managed to churn out this little prompt during some downtime at work.

Prompt: Write about a post-apocalyptic world (doesn’t have to be post-nuclear war – could be a world after the financial system collapsed, after a deadly plague, after the zombie apocalypse, etc.).

I went with a zombie story, pretty much. I’ve talked plenty about zombie stories in the past, so I’ll just post the clip and move on. I’m not sure ambassadors actually have any sort of power like this in real life. The idea of a civilian whose job is to help secure peace (presumably) forced to make the difficult decision of whether to wipe out an entire city (or country even) to which he’s been assigned struck me as a powerful one. About 500 words or so. Continue reading