Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "speculative-fiction"
Book Review: Third Party: Volume I: Starting in the Middle by Steven Nemerovski
Third Party: Volume I: Starting in the Middle
Steven Nemerovski
Publisher: Wasteland Press (August 15, 2016)
ISBN-10: 1681111349
ISBN-13: 978-1681111346
https://www.amazon.com/Third-Party-I-...
Reviewed by: Wesley Britton
Steven Nemerovski’s Third Party: Volume one: Starting in the Middle is obviously fiction, but it reads more like journalistic non-fiction. In part, that’s because the first quarter of the book is full of detailed back-stories of the major participants in the establishment of a Third Party in the U.S. Most of the book to follow is apparent news clippings from fictional Illinois newspaper, The Back Bench (with the tag line “If you let it slip, we’ll catch it”) and transcripts of e-mails and phone calls. Verisimilitude is established quickly and the story is both believable and convincing.
Things are set in motion when self-made billionaire Alex “Atlas” Stein invites a handful of movers and shakers to his Aspen estate to talk about creating a viable third party. In that initial conference, two key components of his plan are established: to set the party’s sights on winning local legislative races in the Illinois General Assembly and create the party’s issue-based agenda. The party is quickly dubbed the “E Party” because of their three main objectives, to emphasize education, economics, and ethical reform.
Because of Stein’s wealth, fund raising isn’t a problem but rather finding viable candidates to serve in the Illinois State Senate and House of Representatives. While we learn precious little about those candidates, we know most of them are teachers wanting to push the issue of educational reform. Winning enough seats to become an important presence in the Assembly, the E Party quickly pushed their platforms of supporting education and putting the state budget on solid footing.
In short order, the two major parties strike back, not because of ideology or issues but rather to maintain the political status quo. Despite its small size, the E Party is well organized and innovative as it battles entrenched power players like David Kennedy, the long-running Speaker of the House who is a mastermind at maneuvering and manipulation. So the book becomes a long lesson in the processes of state governments, sadly not just those of Illinois.
The book then traces what happens the first year of the E Party’s involvement in working to pass their chosen legislation and then describes the next election cycle when dirty tricks become part of the campaign mix. The E Party’s goals increase, including finding candidates to run for the highest state offices and expanding into other states, although nothing is explained about how or what is going on outside Illinois. At first blush, it might seem their victories are too localized to be all that dramatic, but mastering their baby steps is what volume one of the saga is all about. What happens next, including nationally, seems to be addressed in volume two, Strange Bedfellows, which was published on August 9 if you’re ready for round two.
Along the way, some ideas are glossed over, notably just what’s in those supposedly well-written and significant white papers. We get only occasional splashes of non-political personal relationships as in the story of besieged ex-baseball player turned youth advocate Tom Robinson and the surprising love story of Atlas Stein that seems to come out of nowhere.
In the main, readers drawn to The Third Party will most likely already be political junkies, especially those with some experience in ground-level politics or have tried to urge responses from their own elected representatives. Despite the optimistic conclusion, witnessing state politicians function the ways they do is rather depressing. After this year’s elections, this literary x-ray of how things work, or don’t, suggests solutions to our problems are not going to be an easy fix, if our two main parties have anything to say about it.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com, Dec. 1, 2016 at:
goo.gl/eqZDbp
Steven Nemerovski
Publisher: Wasteland Press (August 15, 2016)
ISBN-10: 1681111349
ISBN-13: 978-1681111346
https://www.amazon.com/Third-Party-I-...
Reviewed by: Wesley Britton
Steven Nemerovski’s Third Party: Volume one: Starting in the Middle is obviously fiction, but it reads more like journalistic non-fiction. In part, that’s because the first quarter of the book is full of detailed back-stories of the major participants in the establishment of a Third Party in the U.S. Most of the book to follow is apparent news clippings from fictional Illinois newspaper, The Back Bench (with the tag line “If you let it slip, we’ll catch it”) and transcripts of e-mails and phone calls. Verisimilitude is established quickly and the story is both believable and convincing.
Things are set in motion when self-made billionaire Alex “Atlas” Stein invites a handful of movers and shakers to his Aspen estate to talk about creating a viable third party. In that initial conference, two key components of his plan are established: to set the party’s sights on winning local legislative races in the Illinois General Assembly and create the party’s issue-based agenda. The party is quickly dubbed the “E Party” because of their three main objectives, to emphasize education, economics, and ethical reform.
Because of Stein’s wealth, fund raising isn’t a problem but rather finding viable candidates to serve in the Illinois State Senate and House of Representatives. While we learn precious little about those candidates, we know most of them are teachers wanting to push the issue of educational reform. Winning enough seats to become an important presence in the Assembly, the E Party quickly pushed their platforms of supporting education and putting the state budget on solid footing.
In short order, the two major parties strike back, not because of ideology or issues but rather to maintain the political status quo. Despite its small size, the E Party is well organized and innovative as it battles entrenched power players like David Kennedy, the long-running Speaker of the House who is a mastermind at maneuvering and manipulation. So the book becomes a long lesson in the processes of state governments, sadly not just those of Illinois.
The book then traces what happens the first year of the E Party’s involvement in working to pass their chosen legislation and then describes the next election cycle when dirty tricks become part of the campaign mix. The E Party’s goals increase, including finding candidates to run for the highest state offices and expanding into other states, although nothing is explained about how or what is going on outside Illinois. At first blush, it might seem their victories are too localized to be all that dramatic, but mastering their baby steps is what volume one of the saga is all about. What happens next, including nationally, seems to be addressed in volume two, Strange Bedfellows, which was published on August 9 if you’re ready for round two.
Along the way, some ideas are glossed over, notably just what’s in those supposedly well-written and significant white papers. We get only occasional splashes of non-political personal relationships as in the story of besieged ex-baseball player turned youth advocate Tom Robinson and the surprising love story of Atlas Stein that seems to come out of nowhere.
In the main, readers drawn to The Third Party will most likely already be political junkies, especially those with some experience in ground-level politics or have tried to urge responses from their own elected representatives. Despite the optimistic conclusion, witnessing state politicians function the ways they do is rather depressing. After this year’s elections, this literary x-ray of how things work, or don’t, suggests solutions to our problems are not going to be an easy fix, if our two main parties have anything to say about it.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com, Dec. 1, 2016 at:
goo.gl/eqZDbp
Book Review: The Dictator of Britain: Volume One: The Rise to Power by Paul Michael Dubal
The Dictator of Britain: Volume One: The Rise to Power
Paul Michael Dubal
Paperback: 430 pages
Publisher: Outskirts Press (April 26, 2013)
ISBN-10:1478712686
ISBN-13:978-1478712688
https://www.amazon.com/Dictator-Brita...
Volume One –
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
A review of a book that came out in 2013 might seem woefully behind the curve. While that may be true, I’m going to be reviewing book two of this series—The Dirty War—that came out in April 2017 and the third volume of the trilogy, The End of Days—which came out this June. I didn’t think I should bypass the first part of the series so my reviews of volumes two and three can be as informed as possible.
I have both good and bad news. The good news is that The Rise to Power is a powerfully written epic that is absorbing as it builds and builds with changing settings, evolving characters, and a wide panorama of events that demonstrate what England might become if the country undergoes such a social collapse that voters bring in a far right government that promises, at the very least, to make life difficult for immigrants and reduce the impact of the welfare state.
The bad news is that this not-so-brave new world is unnervingly realistic and seems much too believable and prophetic. In 2013, Paul Dubal seemed to see Brexit coming. His prime minister, Lawrence Pelham, has a lot in common with America’s Donald Trump. The main difference is that Pelham has a five year plan which is much more sweeping and destructive than Trump’s immigration cuts, proposed wall with Mexico, and deportation of illegal U.S. residents.
Dubal’s Pelham has a far tighter grip on power than any leader of a Western democracy has had since Hitler. Young brutal British males on the prowl, calling themselves FREE—the Fight to Return England to the English—are more than evocative of similar Nazi thug squads in the 1930s. Donald Trump may complain that news items he doesn’t like are “fake news”; Pelham’s government suppresses any news stories they don’t like. In addition, the internet and social networks are severely censored. Further, Pelham plans to create a totalitarian state with measures like deportation camps, the Minority Registration Act, ethnic cleansing and the end of pretty much all civil rights.
Many characters are actors in specific scenes and passages that illustrate one aspect or another of the chilling vista of Pelham’s new Britain. One continuing and important figure is disgraced journalist Harry Clarke who becomes the center of a far-reaching manhunt when he is given a disc containing Pelham’s secret five year plan before it’s revealed to the general population.
But it’s not official “law enforcement” who capture Clarke. It’s a small cell of the Independent Socialist Party led by Clarke’s former girlfriend, Julianne. Can a small, ragtag group of untrained rebels accomplish anything against the might of England’s military and political might? Can they act more humanely than Pelham’s forces?
While the era we live in is filled with often depressing if very readable dystopian novels, I can’t help but think of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 It can’t Happen Here where circumstances very like what happens in Rise to Power take place, only in the U.S.. Depending on an author’s own political stance, their books either worry about
a too socialist left wing takeover or a right wing Fascist regime. More sci fi oriented writers explore the impact of climate change and global warming. Whatever a book’s themes, few speculative novels are very optimistic beyond offering us the independent and rebellious natures of future heroes and heroines opposed to whatever authoritative rule has taken control.
If you’re like me, you’ll find it difficult to read The Rise to Power and not plan on going on to delve into The Dirty War and The End of Days. Perhaps that’s where I will find an reasonably optimistic outcome. It can’t happen here, whether the U.K., the U.S., wherever you live? Why not?
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Aug. 18, 2017
http://dpli.ir/TX1GNt
Paul Michael Dubal
Paperback: 430 pages
Publisher: Outskirts Press (April 26, 2013)
ISBN-10:1478712686
ISBN-13:978-1478712688
https://www.amazon.com/Dictator-Brita...
Volume One –
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
A review of a book that came out in 2013 might seem woefully behind the curve. While that may be true, I’m going to be reviewing book two of this series—The Dirty War—that came out in April 2017 and the third volume of the trilogy, The End of Days—which came out this June. I didn’t think I should bypass the first part of the series so my reviews of volumes two and three can be as informed as possible.
I have both good and bad news. The good news is that The Rise to Power is a powerfully written epic that is absorbing as it builds and builds with changing settings, evolving characters, and a wide panorama of events that demonstrate what England might become if the country undergoes such a social collapse that voters bring in a far right government that promises, at the very least, to make life difficult for immigrants and reduce the impact of the welfare state.
The bad news is that this not-so-brave new world is unnervingly realistic and seems much too believable and prophetic. In 2013, Paul Dubal seemed to see Brexit coming. His prime minister, Lawrence Pelham, has a lot in common with America’s Donald Trump. The main difference is that Pelham has a five year plan which is much more sweeping and destructive than Trump’s immigration cuts, proposed wall with Mexico, and deportation of illegal U.S. residents.
Dubal’s Pelham has a far tighter grip on power than any leader of a Western democracy has had since Hitler. Young brutal British males on the prowl, calling themselves FREE—the Fight to Return England to the English—are more than evocative of similar Nazi thug squads in the 1930s. Donald Trump may complain that news items he doesn’t like are “fake news”; Pelham’s government suppresses any news stories they don’t like. In addition, the internet and social networks are severely censored. Further, Pelham plans to create a totalitarian state with measures like deportation camps, the Minority Registration Act, ethnic cleansing and the end of pretty much all civil rights.
Many characters are actors in specific scenes and passages that illustrate one aspect or another of the chilling vista of Pelham’s new Britain. One continuing and important figure is disgraced journalist Harry Clarke who becomes the center of a far-reaching manhunt when he is given a disc containing Pelham’s secret five year plan before it’s revealed to the general population.
But it’s not official “law enforcement” who capture Clarke. It’s a small cell of the Independent Socialist Party led by Clarke’s former girlfriend, Julianne. Can a small, ragtag group of untrained rebels accomplish anything against the might of England’s military and political might? Can they act more humanely than Pelham’s forces?
While the era we live in is filled with often depressing if very readable dystopian novels, I can’t help but think of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 It can’t Happen Here where circumstances very like what happens in Rise to Power take place, only in the U.S.. Depending on an author’s own political stance, their books either worry about
a too socialist left wing takeover or a right wing Fascist regime. More sci fi oriented writers explore the impact of climate change and global warming. Whatever a book’s themes, few speculative novels are very optimistic beyond offering us the independent and rebellious natures of future heroes and heroines opposed to whatever authoritative rule has taken control.
If you’re like me, you’ll find it difficult to read The Rise to Power and not plan on going on to delve into The Dirty War and The End of Days. Perhaps that’s where I will find an reasonably optimistic outcome. It can’t happen here, whether the U.K., the U.S., wherever you live? Why not?
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Aug. 18, 2017
http://dpli.ir/TX1GNt
Last Day for the 15% Off Sale of the Beta-Earth Chronicles!
Three earths. One is dominated by an ancient plague that kills three out of four male babies their first year. One is home to human pairs that share thoughts and feelings simultaneously. One is our planet 40 years in the future. One last day to get the six-book epic in a box-set for a 15% discount . (Sale ends midnight tonight, EST.)
To get the 15% discount, visit BearManor Media’s ebook store on Selz.com at:
http://bit.ly/BMboxBEC
Fill out your shopping cart, then enter the discount code:
X05RCWUZ
Happy New Year from the multi-verse and the earth of your choice!
To get the 15% discount, visit BearManor Media’s ebook store on Selz.com at:
http://bit.ly/BMboxBEC
Fill out your shopping cart, then enter the discount code:
X05RCWUZ
Happy New Year from the multi-verse and the earth of your choice!
Book Review: Futura: A Novella by Jordan Phillips
Futura: A Novella
Jordan Phillips
Print Length: 84 pages
Publication Date: January 8, 2018
ISBN: 1974066916
ASIN: B078WWBBDB
https://www.amazon.com/Futura-Novella...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
It seems appropriate the last book I reviewed here was Maxwell Rudolf’s dark and grim The Arkhe Principle: A Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller. It was completely at the opposite end of the sci fi futuristic spectrum from the much lighter and brighter Futura: A Novella by Jordan Phillips. That’s by design. Publicity for Futura claims the 90 or so page read “pushes back on alarmist views of technology and artificial intelligence” in the future.
The story is set in the year 2050 in the city of Paris which has become something of a museum to the past on a planet which has largely forgotten history. All other cities have become much more technological and ultra-modern. Humans have little they need or have to do as the “invisibles” do all their work for them. Some “invisibles” are microscopic chips embedded practically everywhere, others power the ubiquitous robots.
The lead character is an American girl named Ruby who has fallen in Love with Paris and its synthesis of technology, love of nature, and foster ship of the arts. In the past, futurists had projected this sort of world would be “disorienting and depressing,” but in the view of Ruby and presumably Phillips, things are actually quite “liberating” where humans have countless and comfortable choices in their lives.
In many ways, Futura is a pleasant exercise in descriptive world-building as there isn’t much of a story. We see Ruby remembering the past relationship that brought her to Paris, her interactions with two friends, and her internal debate over whether or not she wants to get naturally pregnant. That’s the only conflict in the story with a rather, well, pleasant resolution.
Clearly, author Jordan Phillips wanted to blend her love of Paris, cutting-edge technology, and the arts in a very romantic-flavored project. If you’re an old softie at heart, this story might be a, once again, pleasant diversion from all the other and heavier offerings by countless pessimist pumping out all those dystopian yarns. And if you see the future as one full of bright possibilities, you may well want to spend time with Jordan Phillips.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 12, 2018 at:
http://1clickurls.com/XwyiHrh
Jordan Phillips
Print Length: 84 pages
Publication Date: January 8, 2018
ISBN: 1974066916
ASIN: B078WWBBDB
https://www.amazon.com/Futura-Novella...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
It seems appropriate the last book I reviewed here was Maxwell Rudolf’s dark and grim The Arkhe Principle: A Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller. It was completely at the opposite end of the sci fi futuristic spectrum from the much lighter and brighter Futura: A Novella by Jordan Phillips. That’s by design. Publicity for Futura claims the 90 or so page read “pushes back on alarmist views of technology and artificial intelligence” in the future.
The story is set in the year 2050 in the city of Paris which has become something of a museum to the past on a planet which has largely forgotten history. All other cities have become much more technological and ultra-modern. Humans have little they need or have to do as the “invisibles” do all their work for them. Some “invisibles” are microscopic chips embedded practically everywhere, others power the ubiquitous robots.
The lead character is an American girl named Ruby who has fallen in Love with Paris and its synthesis of technology, love of nature, and foster ship of the arts. In the past, futurists had projected this sort of world would be “disorienting and depressing,” but in the view of Ruby and presumably Phillips, things are actually quite “liberating” where humans have countless and comfortable choices in their lives.
In many ways, Futura is a pleasant exercise in descriptive world-building as there isn’t much of a story. We see Ruby remembering the past relationship that brought her to Paris, her interactions with two friends, and her internal debate over whether or not she wants to get naturally pregnant. That’s the only conflict in the story with a rather, well, pleasant resolution.
Clearly, author Jordan Phillips wanted to blend her love of Paris, cutting-edge technology, and the arts in a very romantic-flavored project. If you’re an old softie at heart, this story might be a, once again, pleasant diversion from all the other and heavier offerings by countless pessimist pumping out all those dystopian yarns. And if you see the future as one full of bright possibilities, you may well want to spend time with Jordan Phillips.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 12, 2018 at:
http://1clickurls.com/XwyiHrh
Book Review: The 36 Watchers: Book I: Fall by Dan Bar Hava
The 36 Watchers: Book I: Fall
Dan Bar Hava
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
Release date: May 1, 2019
ASIN: B07RF1G1ZZ
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07RF1...
Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton
Dan Bar Hava's first novel is a dense, richly imaginative first book in a projected series of at least three parts. It is an epic that is ruddered by the journey of Jenna Berg, starting with her professional life in New York, then through a series of alternate realities, looks into historical events that might have been different and world-changing, and then takes her into her surprising and unexpected changing identity.
Jenna's life story includes her uncle Josh, a man who turns out to be one of the ancient 36 watchers. He's grooming Jenna, and her latent powers, to replace him in the order. Along the way, Jenna and we readers learn quite a bit about global myths as recorded in holy scriptures, especially the Talmud. We see important milestones the watchers set in motion like the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It had to happen to ensure the eventual fall of the Roman empire.
We learn the watchers crossed over millennia ago from a realm that included no matter. They were "energy creatures, swimming in the cosmic ocean. Flickering across time and space, not even that. Maybe non-time or non-space is a better description." Transformed into beings composed of matter, they became mankind's guardian angels to battle the evil that could overtake the world if not for their vigilance.
Bar Hava paints his portrait with considerable detail, bringing his characters to life as well as the descriptions of the changing perspectives Jenna encounters and crosses through as her evolution into becoming a reluctant watcher drives the story forward.
One weakness, for this reviewer, was the confusion I felt when the story shifts gears and not always in a clear, understandable transition. Readers hoping for a lighter kind of sci-fi will find themselves challenged and perhaps unsettled. For me, one future for the United States the Watchers want to ensure doesn't happen is a very frightening possibility that is a horror far different from more typical fictional dystopias.
Readers who like cerebral, intellectual stories will likely fall quickly in love with this novel. Me, I'm looking forward to the sequels.
On Fri. Dec. 13, reviewer Wes Britton participated in an author interview/ review video for Jasveena R Prabhagaran's International Book Promotions. You can meet author Dan Bar Hava and hear the reviews at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBfGt...
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Sat. Dec, 14, 2019:
https://waa.ai/OMLi
Dan Bar Hava
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
Release date: May 1, 2019
ASIN: B07RF1G1ZZ
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07RF1...
Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton
Dan Bar Hava's first novel is a dense, richly imaginative first book in a projected series of at least three parts. It is an epic that is ruddered by the journey of Jenna Berg, starting with her professional life in New York, then through a series of alternate realities, looks into historical events that might have been different and world-changing, and then takes her into her surprising and unexpected changing identity.
Jenna's life story includes her uncle Josh, a man who turns out to be one of the ancient 36 watchers. He's grooming Jenna, and her latent powers, to replace him in the order. Along the way, Jenna and we readers learn quite a bit about global myths as recorded in holy scriptures, especially the Talmud. We see important milestones the watchers set in motion like the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It had to happen to ensure the eventual fall of the Roman empire.
We learn the watchers crossed over millennia ago from a realm that included no matter. They were "energy creatures, swimming in the cosmic ocean. Flickering across time and space, not even that. Maybe non-time or non-space is a better description." Transformed into beings composed of matter, they became mankind's guardian angels to battle the evil that could overtake the world if not for their vigilance.
Bar Hava paints his portrait with considerable detail, bringing his characters to life as well as the descriptions of the changing perspectives Jenna encounters and crosses through as her evolution into becoming a reluctant watcher drives the story forward.
One weakness, for this reviewer, was the confusion I felt when the story shifts gears and not always in a clear, understandable transition. Readers hoping for a lighter kind of sci-fi will find themselves challenged and perhaps unsettled. For me, one future for the United States the Watchers want to ensure doesn't happen is a very frightening possibility that is a horror far different from more typical fictional dystopias.
Readers who like cerebral, intellectual stories will likely fall quickly in love with this novel. Me, I'm looking forward to the sequels.
On Fri. Dec. 13, reviewer Wes Britton participated in an author interview/ review video for Jasveena R Prabhagaran's International Book Promotions. You can meet author Dan Bar Hava and hear the reviews at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBfGt...
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Sat. Dec, 14, 2019:
https://waa.ai/OMLi
Coronavirus and Tales of Future Passed
Coronavirus and Tales of Future Passed
Written by Dr. Wesley Britton
Very quickly after the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic began, I realized everything had changed for writers of futuristic fiction, especially all of us who have written post-apocalyptic stories. For one matter, before this pandemic, virtually everything we put into future-set stories was completely speculative. We based what we created on projections drawing from the best research we could find. Now, we have a baseline to work from, drawing from international experience on virtually every level: medical, economic, political, religious, environmental, sociological, and very personal, certainly psychological.
Before COVID-19, there was a deep well of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature we can now consider for comparisons between fantasy and reality. Stephen King’s 1978 The Stand or Michael Crichton’s influential 1968 The Andromeda Strain were examples of a genre grammaticizing virus outbreaks resulting from alien incursions, scientific accidents, as well as deliberately released terrorist attacks or war gone amuck.
From Atomic Age giant monsters to wayward comets to 21st century walking dead, we got cautionary tales about what might happen if we don’t do this or don’t do that. We were warned that humanity could pay a heavy price for ecological neglect, scientific carelessness, or unawareness of what weaponized plagues could be released if we’re not carefully watching groups willing to put our planet at risk to reach their nefarious goals.
Of course, a much older tradition goes to The Book of Revelation where Armageddon is what God has had in mind all along. Distinguished authors who have dealt with fictional pandemics in particular include Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley, who published The Last Man in 1826; Jack London’s 1912 The Scarlet Plague; Richard Matheson’s popular 1954 I Am Legend, and Gore Vidal’s 1978 Kalki.
I thought of all this when I watched the horror of coffins of unknown people being dumped into mass graves in New York. That was something I had used as a fictional trope in my futuristic Return to Alpha (2017) on an earth impacted by climate change as well as waves of weaponized plagues released by Islamic terrorist groups. One question at the core of my novel, and many others by other writers, is how would humanity handle post-apocalyptic life? Few such novels in a very wide genre paint optimistic portraits. Humans tend to largely revert to barbarism, or at least primitive tribal communities often cut off from the rest of the world led by powerful men with women as slaves or near-slaves. Deadly competition dictates who gets what resources. Frequently, our reliance on technology is reduced as in Machine Sickness: Eupocalypse Book 1 by Peri Dwyer Worrell where nearly every material on earth with any petroleum polymers from shoes to computers to transportation of all kinds breaks down. One word sums up what many futurist writers envision: grim. One recent example of such unrelentingly dark forecasting is Maxwell Rudolf’s The Arkhe Principle: A post-apocalyptic technothriller (2017).
Now, we are going through an experience that changes everything. Writers will now have to touch what COVID-19 did as it impacts all of human history like nothing since World War II. To paint a believable future, the COVID-19 virus will have to get at least a passing mention in futuristic fiction as it will be a serious turning point in earth history.
Like--
Subscribers to Wes Britton’s newsletter will get an exclusive scene in the upcoming edition written for a post-apocalyptic short story featuring detective Mary Carpenter. It follows the ideas expressed in this “Coronavirus” essay describing how COVID-19 has affected earth – with a surprising twist at the end.
Sign up now – the next newsletter will be coming soon!
https://drwesleybritton.com/newsletter/
More on Return to Alpha:
https://drwesleybritton.com/books/ret...
More on Alpha Tales 2044:
https://drwesleybritton.com/books/alp...
Written by Dr. Wesley Britton
Very quickly after the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic began, I realized everything had changed for writers of futuristic fiction, especially all of us who have written post-apocalyptic stories. For one matter, before this pandemic, virtually everything we put into future-set stories was completely speculative. We based what we created on projections drawing from the best research we could find. Now, we have a baseline to work from, drawing from international experience on virtually every level: medical, economic, political, religious, environmental, sociological, and very personal, certainly psychological.
Before COVID-19, there was a deep well of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature we can now consider for comparisons between fantasy and reality. Stephen King’s 1978 The Stand or Michael Crichton’s influential 1968 The Andromeda Strain were examples of a genre grammaticizing virus outbreaks resulting from alien incursions, scientific accidents, as well as deliberately released terrorist attacks or war gone amuck.
From Atomic Age giant monsters to wayward comets to 21st century walking dead, we got cautionary tales about what might happen if we don’t do this or don’t do that. We were warned that humanity could pay a heavy price for ecological neglect, scientific carelessness, or unawareness of what weaponized plagues could be released if we’re not carefully watching groups willing to put our planet at risk to reach their nefarious goals.
Of course, a much older tradition goes to The Book of Revelation where Armageddon is what God has had in mind all along. Distinguished authors who have dealt with fictional pandemics in particular include Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley, who published The Last Man in 1826; Jack London’s 1912 The Scarlet Plague; Richard Matheson’s popular 1954 I Am Legend, and Gore Vidal’s 1978 Kalki.
I thought of all this when I watched the horror of coffins of unknown people being dumped into mass graves in New York. That was something I had used as a fictional trope in my futuristic Return to Alpha (2017) on an earth impacted by climate change as well as waves of weaponized plagues released by Islamic terrorist groups. One question at the core of my novel, and many others by other writers, is how would humanity handle post-apocalyptic life? Few such novels in a very wide genre paint optimistic portraits. Humans tend to largely revert to barbarism, or at least primitive tribal communities often cut off from the rest of the world led by powerful men with women as slaves or near-slaves. Deadly competition dictates who gets what resources. Frequently, our reliance on technology is reduced as in Machine Sickness: Eupocalypse Book 1 by Peri Dwyer Worrell where nearly every material on earth with any petroleum polymers from shoes to computers to transportation of all kinds breaks down. One word sums up what many futurist writers envision: grim. One recent example of such unrelentingly dark forecasting is Maxwell Rudolf’s The Arkhe Principle: A post-apocalyptic technothriller (2017).
Now, we are going through an experience that changes everything. Writers will now have to touch what COVID-19 did as it impacts all of human history like nothing since World War II. To paint a believable future, the COVID-19 virus will have to get at least a passing mention in futuristic fiction as it will be a serious turning point in earth history.
Like--
Subscribers to Wes Britton’s newsletter will get an exclusive scene in the upcoming edition written for a post-apocalyptic short story featuring detective Mary Carpenter. It follows the ideas expressed in this “Coronavirus” essay describing how COVID-19 has affected earth – with a surprising twist at the end.
Sign up now – the next newsletter will be coming soon!
https://drwesleybritton.com/newsletter/
More on Return to Alpha:
https://drwesleybritton.com/books/ret...
More on Alpha Tales 2044:
https://drwesleybritton.com/books/alp...
Wesley Britton's Blog
This just came in. My favorite two sentences of all time!
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
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