Magic and Mayhem... without the magic and mayhem?
Before I ever wrote my three books about the end of the world (The Man Who Watched The World End, A Different Alchemy, and The Hauntings of Playing God), I knew they had to take place in a world full of imagination and possibility—the type of stories I enjoy reading myself—but I also wanted them to be realistic, something I could envision actually happening. I wanted to write about the end of the world, but I didn’t want to create your typical apocalyptic books, which always seem to be filled with marauding gangs, children with special powers, and so on. Instead, I wanted to focus on simple things such as looking back on life and regretting how time was spent, about the importance of family, and about the everyday things we take for granted. In short, I wanted to write about the magic and mayhem of the apocalypse, only without any magic or mayhem!
To do this, I focused not on the fantastic and supernatural elements of mankind’s impending extinction, but of the human elements—people growing older each year, the human population slowly fading away. Instead of zombies terrorizing everyone or battles for the few remaining resources, my Great De-evolution stories have people reminiscing about the final movies they watched, the final vacations they took.
In my books, there is no hope for a better tomorrow, but there is still the marvel of realizing which few things in life are truly important. And although there are no warlords or flesh-eating zombies, there is still the quite human havoc of rats and spiders taking over basements, of water dripping through ceilings, of people feeling overwhelmed with day-to-day life.
When you read The Man Who Watched The World End, A Different Alchemy, or The Hauntings of Playing God, you won’t be given gift-wrapped happy endings in which the teenage hero has rallied against some grand villain. You won’t have the immediate satisfaction of an invasion being prevented. After all, my books are science fiction without the magic. They are the apocalypse without the mayhem. But in place of a feel-good story or a climactic battle, my hope is that you’ll find stories about real people and real concerns, and because of that, the stories will remain with you long after you’ve read them.
Originally published at the Magic&Mayhem blog site.
To do this, I focused not on the fantastic and supernatural elements of mankind’s impending extinction, but of the human elements—people growing older each year, the human population slowly fading away. Instead of zombies terrorizing everyone or battles for the few remaining resources, my Great De-evolution stories have people reminiscing about the final movies they watched, the final vacations they took.
In my books, there is no hope for a better tomorrow, but there is still the marvel of realizing which few things in life are truly important. And although there are no warlords or flesh-eating zombies, there is still the quite human havoc of rats and spiders taking over basements, of water dripping through ceilings, of people feeling overwhelmed with day-to-day life.
When you read The Man Who Watched The World End, A Different Alchemy, or The Hauntings of Playing God, you won’t be given gift-wrapped happy endings in which the teenage hero has rallied against some grand villain. You won’t have the immediate satisfaction of an invasion being prevented. After all, my books are science fiction without the magic. They are the apocalypse without the mayhem. But in place of a feel-good story or a climactic battle, my hope is that you’ll find stories about real people and real concerns, and because of that, the stories will remain with you long after you’ve read them.
Originally published at the Magic&Mayhem blog site.
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Daniel
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Jan 26, 2015 06:38PM
I was drawn to these stories when I myself was thinking about the possibility of the human species and "de-evolution". There are many factors that I think contribute to this theory but I was just wondering if this is something you also thought about and perhaps believed that inspired you to write these stories, or did you just think the idea itself would make for a good story?
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Hi Daniel,A couple factors contributed to me creating the world of the Great De-evolution. The first was being worn out on the same old apocalyptic stories, with zombies, gangs fighting each other, etc. It seems silly that the few survivors would go about fighting each other, so I wanted a quiet end where people had everything they would need, but the clock to extinction kept ticking anyway.
The other main factor was seeing stories on the news a couple nights in a row about the increasing rate of autism. I kept wondering what would happen to society if the rate not only kept increasing, but the affliction was changed to something even more severe. What would the last normal generation do if they realized the next generation couldn't take care of themselves? That was where the idea an end of the world without fighting or violence merged with the idea of 'Blocks'.
