Steve’s Update 4/12/2020

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Hey everyone let’s catch up on my projects!

So what have I done since last time?

  • Way With Worlds: The Conspiracy book is looking good.  I think I can get it out in May!
  • A School Of Many Futures: I’ve started rewriting the book and have finished the re-outline.  I’m giving the outline one more go-over as I write, but this is going to be good!
  • Seventh Sanctum:  Continuing the rewrite, but I’ve wanted to do a generator, yet have lacked inspiration.  I’m also using this to learn Python in more detail.  I should take up some of the challenges in the random generator groups.

What’s next?

  • Way With Worlds: Keep writing the Conspiracy book. I should finish the rough draft next week! Then it’s 1-2 weeks of editing, 1-2 weeks at the editor, and we’ll see.
  • A School Of Many Futures: Keeping at it of course! Though at this rate it won’t be prereader-ready until end of May.
  • Seventh Sanctum: Continuing the rewrite, and trying to get back to a generator or two.
  • More: Getting the mojo to do other projects, but trying not to overdo it.

Steven Savage

The End Of The World As We Don’t Know It

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

My friend Serdar talked about about his disinterest in writing post-apocalyptic fiction at his blog. I wanted to add my own thoughts on this because most apocalyptic stuff and even post-apocalyptic stuff feels boring and inaccurate. As Serdar puts it, its best to take things as Mad Max like mythology, a sort of lesson or metaphor.

As for the rest of the apocalypses . . .

Most fictional post-apocalypse tales are boring, repetitive, and the same stuff. I’ve been watching enough bad-movies that took Mad Max and gave us so many battles in tight leather pants that it’s like 80’s hair bands went to war. There’s so many Zombie movies it’s a running joke that rarely explores the implications of having zombies. Most of our fictional apocalypses have been done so over and over again there’s nothing to learn or take from it – if there ever was much in the first place.

We’ve recycled our apocalypses and our post-apocalypses, so most of them are going through the motions. Most of the apocalypses are zombies, even if they lack zombies.

In addition, real post-apocalypses don’t fictionalize well.

First, some apocalypses are boring. We’re living through a low-level apocalypses now with COVID-19, and it’s not that interesting. Disasters are often not action-packed or dramatic tales, they’re the slow grind, the surviving-enough, the unending grayness of endings. Fiction doesn’t cover that.

Other apocalypses and post-apocalypses ignore or glorify the horror. We’ve had plenty of apocalyptic bombings and and disasters, we’ve had horrors and terrible mass deaths. So much fiction either grinds our face in the blood and turns it into a show, leaving us with that queasy sense of watching apocalypse pornography. Others try to ignore the horror, because it’s so horrible, building fiction around it until it’s drained of meaning.

Good apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction exists, but it takes a person that can write, that explores, that understands the subjects. It is rare, because it is difficult.

This is why my current fiction, the Avenoth series, is what I call post-post apocalypse. I’m not interested in the end of the world (in this case, a devastating war that killed 3/4 of the planet) or the immediate post-apocalypse. Instead it’s about a rebuilt world, so we see the impact of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse, but are far enough in the future to see the meaning of it all. I want a tale of healed scars and a new society with memory, where we understand the past by looking at the present.

Besides, some of these post-post apocalypses have powerful impact. When the world is grinding away or the blood is spilling, it’s hard to see what it means in the whole.

But afterwards? Afterwards is when you can look back on the works of the past, and despair properly.

Steven Savage

Working At Home Isn’t Working from Home

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

(This is also part of a Twitter Thread.)

Right now a lot of people are working from home during the COVID crisis. @Neilmwebb noted “You’re not working from home; you are at your home during a crisis trying to work.”

I’d like to expand on this observation. Because people are not just home during a crisis working, there’s a lot more going on we need to consider.

THE CRISIS: Yes, we’re at home during a crisis working, and it’s a big crisis. It’s everywhere, affecting everyone – no one will be unaffected, even if they think they aren’t. This makes everything else more complicated.

NEWCOMERS: A lot of people are working from home completely for the first time. Sure they did a day or three here, but now it’s long term and all the time. Help them out.

FAMILY: Now a lot of us are at home with our spouse, kids, parents, etc. We have to learn to work with or around them – and they with us. We worry about them. We need to support each other.

CARETAKING: Friends and family may need help, aid, and care – and some of us are providing it on top of working. We may have increased caretaking duties. We have to understand others are in this situation.

TECHNOLOGY: We’ve got to learn new technology to work from home, or deal with limits and challenges we haven’t experienced before. We need to share, teach, or work around problems.

SCHEDULES: We’re working from home, we’ve got a crisis, and we’ve got other people’s schedules to deal with. We all have to work out new schedules – we best cooperate to do it.

SAFETY: We’ve now got to wash our hands, practice social distancing, clean surfaces, etc. We have new practices we have to do to prevent infection. That takes up time and mental bandwidth.

TASK CHANGES: We might be cooking more, or we’re ordering online more, or eating out less, and so on. Our usual tasks for daily life are disrupted, and that’s hard to adjust to. We have to be aware of this.

FINANCES: The economy has a hole blown in it, unemployment jumped, and we don’t know what’s going on. We’re worried about the finances of ourselves and others. We’re trying to figure it out – while working at home.

STRESS: Let’s face it, this is a mess. It’s awful. It didn’t have to be that way. We need to back each other up, help each other out, and take breaks.

UNPREDICTABILITY: We don’t know when this ends, which means not only is all of the above happening, we have no idea of when it stops. That brings many pressures onto us.

So we’re not just working from home. We’re not just home during a crisis working. We’re home during a crisis working while having our lives massively disrupted by that crisis. We need to understand this in order to do better, to help others, and to stay mentally and physically healthy.

Steven Savage