Sep 23 2014

Can You Handle ALL The Apocalypses? End is Nigh and End Has Come

I’ve mentioned here before how much I enjoy the End Of The World As We Know It (EOTWAWKI) branch of science fiction. I’ve talked about Alas, Babylon and the TV shows “Jericho” and “The Walking Dead.” Love the movies “Testament,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” “World War Z,” “Contagion,” “Outbreak” to name a few.

BIG fan of the genre.

So last week John Joseph Adams let me know about the exciting new trilogy of anthologies he’s edited with Hugh Howey – THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, of which two volumes – THE END IS NIGH and THE END IS NOW – have been issued. I read straight through both books and I am here to tell you this is a LOT of apocalypse goodness. The idea for the trilogy is that for the most part the same authors will be writing stories for each anthology, describing their apocalypse from the time right before the Big Bad happens, during the events, and then the aftermath. These books have everything from your basic nuclear war and killer flu to aliens to comets, volcanoes, brown stars and advanced nanotechnology. There’s even one that will make you very afraid of bread mold. Very. Afraid.

Reading so much disaster and death over just a few days was a bit overwhelming. I probably should have paced myself but the stories were so good. I also couldn’t resist reading THE END IS NOW right away to see how things were turning out from the first installments in THE END IS NIGH. Some of the authors pick up the action in the second story literally right after the first story ends. Others tell the second portion of their apocalypse from the POV of someone else who was mentioned in the first story or who could have been in the same vicinity. And a couple of the stories are standalone (for now anyway, don’t know what will be in the third and final book). There were some twists I didn’t see coming (no spoilers from me), which kept the reading fresh.

I didn’t fall in love with every single story but that’s the beauty of an anthology – much to choose from.

Some of the stories which stand out in my memory, in no particular order:

Goodnight Moon and Goodnight Stars by Annie Bellet. Absolutely heart tugging.

Spores and Fruiting Bodies by Seanan McGuire. There shall be no bread mold in my house. EVER. (Gets out the Lysol, starts scrubbing)

The Fifth Day of Deer Camp and The Sixth Day of Deer Camp by Scott Sigler. He gives the reader a twist that I never saw coming but loved. Can’t wait to see what transpires in the third installment, if there is one.

System Reset by Tobias S. Buckell. I loved the two main characters in this, Charlie and Toto (not a dog) and was eagerly anticipating more about them in the second book but alas, no.

In The Air and In The Mountain by Hugh Howey. SO good, with a twist and then another even darker twist…I wish this was a full length novel because I was totally drawn into the story and the characters. Can’t WAIT for part three.

Enjoy The Moment by Jack McDevitt. Seemed like a set up for a super, classic EOTWAWKI story but no second installment so far.

I have to mention This Unkempt World Is Falling to Pieces and By The Hair of the Moon by Jamie Ford. The author created a very noir, very cool alternate reality for May 1910 and the return of a certain comet that we know as Halley’s here, known as “the Tramp” there. The world building included steampunk elements woven into the stories and although these two connected tales weren’t among my top favorites, they stay with me. (I’m not usually much for noir but the setting tugged me in anyway.)

There were many other stories included in the two books, including a pair by Charlie Jane Anders that took aspects of current social media and Generation Z and extrapolated into a chilling but highly believable future….YMMV as to which ones really grab you and won’t let go. For me, apparently the bread mold is THE winner LOL. (It is a scary scary pair of stories.)

Another excellent aspect of these anthologies is the diversity of the characters in meaningful roles, which I very much appreciated. Tananrive Due’s heroine Nayima in Removal Order and Herd Immunity is one outstanding example, and Jake Kerr’s couple Em and Lynn in The Wedding are another.

So if you never get enough of reading apocalyptic tales with strong characters of all types, I recommend checking out the two anthologies. Me? I’m waiting with bated breath for the third one!

Here’s a cast photo from the gone-but-not-forgotten “Jericho,” which I loved and which SO reminded me of Alas, Babylon in the early episodes.

Jun 30 2014

Favorite Apocalyptic SF Movies

Over at the USA Today HEA blog, I’m running a second column where I’m asking SF&F authors for their favorite science fiction or fantasy movies and TV shows. For my post here today, I thought I’d narrow in on some of my favorite End Of The World As We Know It (or EOTWAWKI) movies. I was reading Entertainment Weekly at breakfast and they have an “Ultimate Apocalyst” of 52 movies, which is what started me thinking along this vein.

On the magazine’s list of 52, I’ve seen 37, which I guess tells you how much I do enjoy this subgenre. EW might be missing a few but probably nothing too major. I mean, they’ve omitted the 1955 “Day The World Ended” AND the 1967 TV movie remake, entitled “Year 2889”, both of which I’ve seen. “The Day After” is missing. They only include one version of “War of the Worlds”, the original in 1955 (sorry Tom Cruise) and they include “The Thing,” which I’m not sure counts because the world doesn’t actually end…

EW includes a lot of big budget flicks, like the Terminators, World War Z and Hunger Games, plus some lower budget classics. I’m not sure I would have included “WALL-E” but seeing it on the list did make me stop and ponder for a moment.

Elsewhere in the magazine they discuss how each era creates EOTWAWKI movies around the particular threat that seems most looming at the time, so the 1950s was all about aliens and the 1960’s had a lot of nuclear wars and currently we’re having ecological/climatological disasters. (I can’t wait to see “Snowpiercer,” which sounds wayyy cool, set on a train that endlessly circles the frozen globe.) Oddly EW left off “Day After Tomorrow” and “Independence Day,” maybe because humans figure out ways to survive. “The Walking Dead” TV series is missing too.

The epic movie I’m waiting for would be about the effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Of course that might be due to my having the power suddenly and mysteriously go out in our area last week! (It did come back on in about two hours.) Maybe EMP wouldn’t be dramatic enough for the movie/TV folks but it sure would be hard to live through if it ever happens!

I don’t have a single favorite – what I watch and rewatch depends on my mood at the time. I occasionally pull out “Testament,” which was a very well done, grim little 1983 film starring Jane Alexander, where “the life of a suburban family is scarred after a nuclear attack” says the Internet Movie Database. That’s putting it mildly! The thing that’s fascinating about this movie is how it starts out like so many others – brave survivors, carrying on as best they can, neighborhood stalwart ham radio operator getting news of the outside for them, they go ahead and let the children perform their school play, everyone’s rationing, pulling together…and then things get worse…and worse…and it’s pretty clear no one is going to survive this.

Which leads me to “On The Beach,” neither version of which is on the EW list. Taken from the excellent, if grim, Nevil Shute novel, Australia is pretty much the last place on Earth anyone is left alive and the radiation is advancing with such mathematical precision that a person can literally count the days he or she has left. So they have the big road race, they open the fishing season early, they break out the blue poison pills…

I think part of the attraction of EOTWAWKI movies and novels is trying to figure out what we would do, what edge or knowledge or advance planning we have that would give us and our loved ones that tiny advantage, enabling us to survive. Because surely we would, right?

YES!

Do you have a favorite EOTWAWKI movie?

Dec 11 2012

What Goes In A Civilization Starter Kit?

As a science fiction reader from way back, who was always fascinated by End Of The World As We Know It (EOTWAWKI) scenarios, a recent news buzz about a guy who’d actually created a “Civilization Starter Kit” caught my eye!

While this might sound like something exclusively for doomsday preppers in case of electromagnetic pulse, nuclear incidents, fuel shortages, war, pandemics, zombies….the kit’s inventor., Marcin Jakubowski, has his mind primarily set on another purpose.

In 2007, Marcin identified fifty machines he feels are the most important for supporting modern life. With a list including such things as ovens, brick presses, cement mixers and tractors, his goal is to create a low cost, Do It Yourself (DIY) version of each. He built his tractor, for example, in 6 days, after which he made the designs and an instructional video available online for free. The details of his first four machines are now published and he and his team are steadily working their way through the remaining forty six, with 2015 as a deadline for having all 50 ready for civilization-building DIYselfers.

If the doomsday apocalypse hits at some point – on the Mayan calendar or otherwise – these fifty machines won’t immediately reboot civilization everywhere. But if you have his plans and the skills (like welding) to turn them into reality, your little pod of people will be in much better shape than the rest of us.

In old science fiction movies and novels about EOTWAWKI, the survivors usually go scrounging through the wreckage of civilization for machines and supplies to use. Jakubowski , who holds a PhD in nuclear fusion physics, states “If you’re going to try to build any kind of sustainable, model community, you find out quickly that the tools you need break down and are expensive,” he says. (Business Week, 11/1/12). Good point! I guess in the real world we’d be left with, it might not be as easy to repair all those fancy devices as the movies and TV shows make it look.

What Marcin and his supporters actually hopes is if “We can lower the barriers to farming, building and manufacturing…we can unleash massive amounts of human potential.” (TIME, 11/12/12) Highly critical of corporations because “…they spend too much time obsessing over patents, spending millions on commercials, and generally getting in the way of progress….” (BW, 11/1/12), Marcin hopes individuals all over the world will take his basic designs and figure out their own improvements. He’s made good use of such modern communication techniques as the TED talks, Kickstarter, YouTube, websites and other social media to spread the word about his concepts, share his designs and generate enthusiasm for addressing some pressing world issues.

He also tries to live his principles on the “Factor e Farm” in Missouri – the “land based facility where we are putting this theory into practice.”

You can check out his Civilization Starter Kit for yourself over at Open source Ecology. Me, I think I’d better go learn to weld!

What would you miss most if we get hit with EOTWAWKI?