Sci-fi September: Science Fiction Influences (Part XIV)
As a not yet teenager, there were some things that scared the bejesus out of me:
Killer bees: Why did I go watch the movie “The Swarm” by myself? Wait. Why did my parents let me?Bigfoot: Some big creepy ape man in the woods? C’mon.That creature in “Space: 1999” that sucked in people and spit out a smoking dried up corpseThen there were the radioactive cockroaches and giant scorpions in the hit movie “Damnation Alley.” Okay, maybe it wasn’t a hit, but the Landmasters were pretty cool:
I loved when the tri-wheel assembly flipped when the Landmaster went over rough terrain.
“Damnation Alley” was my first exposure to the post-apocalyptic genre and it would be decades later when I would finally be able to spell post-apocalyptic on the first try.
Then the 80s happened and along with it came the movie rental place where you could rent a VHS movie, and if your parents said that they wouldn’t buy a VHS player because watching movies at home was a “passing fad”, you could also rent a machine that came in a silver case that looked like it contained top-secret documents.
This allowed me to dive into this genre with movies like: Logan’s Run, Mad Max, Andromeda Strain, Planet of the Apes, Zardoz, and Soylent Green.
I would be amiss if I didn’t mention the first post-apocalyptic book I read, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr., which is about an order of monks who are tasked with keeping scientific knowledge alive after a nuclear war.
So, when I began to write, the genre was an influence.
And why not have some fun as well…
-Leon
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words, and his latest sci-fi mystery, Euphrates Vanished.
My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/
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