The event of 9/11 put a weird spin on my post apocalyptic tendencies though. Before, the idea of total destruction was in the abstract, and I always considered it from the survivors' point of view. You know, the plucky kids emerging from the bomb shelter, ready to create a new world from the rubble of the old. A sort of pastoral version of Mad Max where supremely competent, Heinleinesque heroes would take on the challenge of doing civilization right.
Since 9/11, though, and all those awful images of the buildings coming down, my post apocalypses have been much more about the grief. A post apocalyptic world is empty because all those lives have been snatched away. That's an entirely different emotional underpinning to the stories than I used to have, and I think that is because that is what 9/11 did to me. For folks about my age, the world has taken numerous, painful hits. I don't believe I have to go back to the trio of assassinations: John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, but I can certainly start the grief clock kicking with the explosion of the Challenger. After that would be Columbine (an event that the schools are still reeling from) and the culmination of 9/11. The tragic hit parade wears down the inner optimist.
I remember a cartoon about a year after 9/11. It showed the cartoonist bent over his work table trying to come up with a cartoon to commemorate the event. What he had done instead was to write the words, "When will it end?"
I think about that a lot. Today's anniversary reminds me to think about it.
- Current Mood:
indescribable - Current Music:"The River," Bruce Springsteen
Comments
When I started trying to sell the novel in the mid 90s, I was told by a couple of publishers that they liked the book, but that the market for apocalyptic books was "soft."
I don't know how the heck they decide a broad pronouncement like that! What I figure is that telling me the market for this kind of book isn't very good was a nice way to say no to a book they didn't like enough. All conditional "nos" are that way.
If anything, 9/11 has turned me into a darker writer, which hasn't been a good thing. For one, it makes it harder to sell, and two it makes it harder to write because I now see such a grim future for humanity that I don't always see the point.
I do like the cartoonist's question..."When will it end?" Sadly, I think "the end" may really be the end.
Afterwards I decided to stop surveying, go back to school and get a degree in physics so I could teach science. And that's exactly what I did, for seven years in high school.
I suspect it's started to affect my writing by now...three years of exposure to middle school kids. They're a tough audience, but I find them to be the most fun.
(Note: I teach middle school special ed. Not self-contained--resource room. On the flanks of Mt. Hood. Some years the kids are into snow. Other years they aren't. I do better when I have a flock of skiers and snowboarders. Just get them talking about riding. I do the Ski Nights, and the kids have fun laughing at me when I fall under the lift lines....)