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"We all called him One-Eyed Ed but no one knew his real name. His family had a fortified compound near the railroad tracks on the edge of town, with excellent sight lines in all directions. I watched his youngest son tracking me through the sights of an AR-15 as I made my way to the entrance. When the heavy metal door swung open I stood face-to-face with the grizzled man staring me down with one good eye. Negotiations commenced over three cans of beans, one for each of my children waiting hungrily. I offered money but he laughed. I offered gold but he dismissed that silliness with an impatient wave of his hand. I offered ammo but Ed growled that he had all he needed. Wincing, I handed over my most valuable possession: my last roll of toilet paper. At least we would eat that night."
Ma! Grandpa's got his mask on again! Why does he do that?
When he was young, Donald the First's enemies told a terrible lie to try to harm him. But the Lord smote them down where they cowered in their ratnest cities, and Donald made America great again.
Go clean up for supper. I put a fresh batch of toilet leaves in the outhouse.
I can't believe that it finally happened. The humans are all gone. Now we cats are finally in our rightful place as rulers of this planet. Only one problem, now we have to teach dogs to clean our litter boxes.
She tried to remember what it was that had originally bothered her about being quarantined. Her son had done a good job of explaining it to her back then. She recalled being very resistant throughout that (and subsequent) conversations. She recalled frequently using words such as "overreaction" and "nonsense" to justify her righteousness. But as the time went by, even though she fought tooth and nail over the restrictions and belittled her son at every opportunity, her life had actually become more and more comforting. If she were to be honest (a novel idea for her) she needed to admit that she was enjoying having to do so little (nothing, really) in order to bask in such care.
She turned toward him in acknowledgement of his request that she please just try to cooperate with him today. His slumped posture enraged her and before she could stop herself, her favorite and most frequently used reply escaped. "Why should I?"
Last edited by LilyMae521; 04-07-2020 at 06:59 AM..
Reason: two paragraphs, but the separation seemed appropriate.
Calvin flipped his bloodstained smartphone over in his hand, its screen reflecting the waving fingers of raging firelight that roared nearby. The phone clock marked the nearly five minutes since the cleansing had begun. He looked up at the house again, once a beautiful turn of the century craftsman, now only a chaotic inferno of fiery destruction. In spite of the deaths, inflicted by his own hand, Calvin felt no remorse. Instead he felt reassurance. Reassurance that as long as he didn't touch his face with his bloodied hands, he could keep the deadly Covid-19 his family had brought home, at bay and under control.
Boom. Horror thriller with New York Times written all over it. Next!
There was an excellent novel that was written in 2014 that's about a pandemic that brings on a collapse of civilization.
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel.
I highly recommend it. The story takes place after a new disease very much like this one has decimated humanity, but the plot jumps around in time. This time-jumping is a clever device that informs the reader of the disease, its effects and after-effects, and it knits the story together very nicely.
All the main characters are connected to each other in ways some never realize, and they all go back to the very first days of the outbreak.
17 years later, some of them were children when the pandemic came, while others weren't born yet. Some are adults who survived and other adults did not. The story is not as much about survival as it is living in a completely changed world.
The author did a really good job of envisioning what the probable outcome would be if there was a general collapse of our technology that came along with the pandemic.
When millions of people die, there won't be very many left who can still make all our marvelous things work any more. Once they are gone, so are all our devices. And our dependency on them.
A lot of the book takes that up. Part of it takes place in an airport that's remote, about 20 miles from the city it once served. When passengers became stranded forever there, the place became their home out of default, as there was no way any of them would ever reach their destination, and all the places they left were beyond any possible return.
Their flight was one of the last out of a stricken city, and by the time they arrived, the airport was empty too. Their landing was unplanned; the pilot had just enough time to land the plane before he died at the controls.
Now- is that a great set-up or what? I really admired how the author walked me into that scenario.
The book was a very interesting picture of what a post-apocalypse life might be like for the survivors a generation after the collapse.
Last edited by banjomike; 04-09-2020 at 10:50 PM..
There was an excellent novel that was written in 2014 that's about a pandemic that brings on a collapse of civilization.
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel.
I highly recommend it. The story takes place after a new disease very much like this one has decimated humanity, but the plot jumps around in time. This time-jumping is a clever device that informs the reader of the disease, its effects and after-effects, and it knits the story together very nicely.
All the main characters are connected to each other in ways some never realize, and they all go back to the very first days of the outbreak.
17 years later, some of them were children when the pandemic came, while others weren't born yet. Some are adults who survived and other adults did not. The story is not as much about survival as it is living in a completely changed world.
The author did a really good job of envisioning what the probable outcome would be if there was a general collapse of our technology that came along with the pandemic.
When millions of people die, there won't be very many left who can still make all our marvelous things work any more. Once they are gone, so are all our devices. And our dependency on them.
A lot of the book takes that up. Part of it takes place in an airport that's remote, about 20 miles from the city it once served. When passengers became stranded forever there, the place became their home out of default, as there was no way any of them would ever reach their destination, and all the places they left were beyond any possible return.
Their flight was one of the last out of a stricken city, and by the time they arrived, the airport was empty too. Their landing was unplanned; the pilot had just enough time to land the plane before he died at the controls.
Now- is that a great set-up or what? I really admired how the author walked me into that scenario.
The book was a very interesting picture of what a post-apocalypse life might be like for the survivors a generation after the collapse.
I read that book. It was interesting but I did not think some of it reflected how people would act. It is a well written book, and worth reading.
I read that book. It was interesting but I did not think some of it reflected how people would act. It is a well written book, and worth reading.
Who knows? I share your thoughts, but we might disagree on what we think was accurate or not.
Dystopian fiction is all conjecture, so there's always something that might seem unrealistic.
But every story has to have a dramatic arc in it to make it readable; the author has lots of choices to make to achieve that goal.
For sure, her vision was a lot more placid than Cormack McCarthy's was in The Road, which is a very similar novel that's based on essentially the same themes.
The most interesting aspect to me is the time frame. The story takes place long after the end-of-the-world calamity. Most dystopian novels take place much sooner after the collapse of civilization.
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