So why write
an online novel? And why pick the subject of apocalypse, of the end of the
world as we know it?
Well, the theme
of my website is human change. Change and the changing nature of human
identity has been one of my consuming interests for as long as I can remember.
As a professional writer I work on the basis that the central theme of all
stories is change.
A narrative in
which nothing happens is not a story. We follow stories (in books, theatre,
television, cinema … or even on the Internet) because we want to know what
happens next or what the tale is about: will justice prevail? Will 'good'
triumph over 'evil'? will the hero triumph? will boy meet girl? will we get a
satisfactory explanation of why things have happened, who the characters are, etc.?
will the story be resolved? Narratives explore change.
I also trained as
a social worker and worked much of my life as a Probation Officer - the
unifying theme underlying all forms of social work is the objective of change,
the role of the social worker being to help people change their lives or
lifestyles, the professional basis being the conviction that change is possible
and that people can and do change in the course of their lives.
And, of course,
as a human being my life has been one of change, of countless transitions from
birth, of new roles adopted and old roles lost, of places and people
encountered and reframed as memories. We have fragile identities - change can
happen without warning, the unexpected and unanticipated can transform our lives
out of all recognition. Life is a process of adaptation, painful or
pleasurable, often chaotic or haphazard. It is
a central feature of the human condition.
But why
apocalypse?
Well, because
it's the ultimate change, the world as we know it swept away and the
survivors having to re-establish not only their own lives, but the nature of
human life itself.
It's also because
I suspect stories about survival are amongst our earliest influences as human
beings. The question of how we'd cope if everything was taken away from us is
both one of the root fears and one of the most compulsive challenges in human
life. We hope for something better, we fear something worse.
The world, as we
know it, ends. We are left to our own devices. We quickly learn that we can't
play god, but we have to find a way of coping. At worst, we survive. At best,
we become masters of our own destinies (and the destiny of others, possibly
even the whole of continued human existence). Do we take control, do we take
charge … or do we look for someone or something to follow?
What becomes of
us as individuals if we no longer have roles and structures, routines and
certainties to define us? In the modern world we're wholly dependent on others
to supply food, build and maintain our shelters, deliver gas, water and
electricity, make our clothes, provide the luxuries and the necessities,
exchange cash for goods, buy our labours, sell theirs.
We define
ourselves as writers or social workers or fathers or football fans, or any one
of the million other social identities and self-images which describe our lives
and lifestyles. What would happen if we had to supply everything for ourselves?
What happens if our only identity becomes that of 'survivor'?
Does the notion of being left alive after
some global apocalypse fuel our fantasies, offering the vicarious freedom to
loot and murder, to take what we want, do what we want with no authority to
deny us? If it brings out the macho in the male, what does it do to the female?
Or does it invest
us with responsibility? We have to take charge of our own lives, take
responsibility for the lives of others, discover new responses to cataclysmic
change. How do we cope with change when there is no one to show us how, when we
are thrown back on our own fragile and limited physical, emotional and
intellectual resources?
We're not left
with a blank slate. We carry into this emptied world a legacy of knowledges
(and of ignorances), of hopes and fears, prejudices and assumptions, truths and
lies. We're plunged into that quandary of what do we really know and what have
we never had to think about - how many of our taken for granted, 'common sense'
truths will crash in flames?
Could you light a
fire? Could you bury your dead? Could you grow or catch your own food, make your
own clothing, maintain your own shelter, defend your own space, preserve your
own identity and sanity and health? Could we relearn the skills of smelting
metals, making pots, sowing seeds?
Would you have
the confidence to experiment, to learn, to find new solutions? Would you have
the confidence to trust others, to share, to cooperate? The learning process
becomes one of unpicking ourselves as individuals and reconstructing our knowledges
and skills to forge a new being.
As a writer,
exploring an end of the world scenario suggests total freedom yet places you
under intense pressure - you have to start questioning your own assumptions,
your own knowledge(s), your own prejudices. It forces you to approach character
development critically, for the people to whom we offer rebirth have to
metamorphose into a wholly new psychological integrity and not simply be
vehicles for the story or embodiments of our own prejudices.
It's easy to
regurgitate caricatures or write cardboard cut-out figures when what you need,
as a writer, is to explore the intensity and the desperation of recreated
creatures. Every person who appears in your story is going through turmoil, is
disintegrating as a 'civilised' being and reconstituting themselves in new
social roles … or is discovering their feral self.
Each character is
beating out a new identity on an anvil of doubt, fuelled by confusion, fear,
and bereavement – loss of loved ones, loss of roles, loss of purpose, loss of
social identity, loss of hope. It's easy to fall into the trap of seeing the
story as plot driven - how do your characters survive, what do they do? But the
real challenge is to explore the characters, to dissect their minds in order to
discover what is meant by survival, and what survival means for them.
Can an apocalyptic
novel break new ground - isn't it just a hackneyed old cliché? the world ends,
some people survive … are we going to have an optimistic new beginning or a
pessimistic end?
There is a long
tradition of apocalyptic writing, visible throughout recorded history, and I'm
sure continuing a timeless oral tradition. Conventionally, it has religious
dimensions (I'll briefly look at the history of apocalyptic writing later
in this introduction).
However, I'd argue that end of the world scenarios are possibly
as old as the emergence of human consciousness and human language, that they
predate our invention of magic, creation myths, or religions. Throughout virtually the whole of human
evolution, the expectation of life was that it could be 'nasty, brutish, and
short'. The end was always in sight, despite efforts to keep it out of mind.
The possibility
of violent death at the hands or claws of predators, the potential for accident
and disease, the ever present threat of natural disaster, drought, famine, fire,
flood, or just human error - there were plenty of reasons to be concerned about
the continued survival of yourself, your family, your clan or tribe. An end of
your world nightmare was always on the horizon - and, in primitive societies
survival was a daily fact of life, not a fictional scenario.
In fact, for many
people on the planet, finding food, water, clothing, shelter and safety still
remain daily challenges. It's only a relatively small, privileged few in the
West who can enjoy safety and who have the resources to consume what they want
and what they need.
If you're not one
of the privileged, do you view each day with optimism or with pessimism? If
you're struggling to cope, struggling to feed your children or keep a roof over
your head, life is very different from that led by the rich and powerful.
I suspect
speculation on the nature of the future was one of our first adventures into,
if not fiction, at least attempts to answer questions. Trying to explain the
inexplicable - why disasters happen, why weather happens, why the sun rises and
sets, why we can hope there will be food tomorrow or next year, why we experience
death, why life happens - is at the root of the emergence of religion, magic,
or even the political and economic organisation of social groups.
In advanced,
'civilised' societies, continuing to explore themes of apocalypse remains an
expression of our human and social values. If we imagine that there is a
meaning to life beyond simple material consumption and the pursuit of our own
pleasure, then we must speculate on what that meaning entails - we don't have
to have a fully drawn blueprint for the perfect society or world (either our
own vision of 'utopia' or some religious model of salvation), we needn't have
an alternative vision of a worst case scenario (some 'dystopia' or 'hell'), but
we can have a perspective on what it is we value, what it is we abominate.
I can recognise
'good' in human life, I can recognise 'ill' (or possibly 'evil'), although I
can't draw a road map to the 'perfect' society or even suggest how we eradicate
all the ills we face. Apocalyptic writing is a vehicle to explore our hopes for
'utopia', our fears of 'hell'.
So what of the
history of apocalyptic writing?
There are two
major strands:
The original religious
concept, familiar in the West in Christian and Jewish writings, conceived of
apocalypse as some form of divine revelation in which a god reveals secrets to
a chosen prophet or group. This is not confined to Christianity or Judaism - many
religions portray their founders, prophets, or priests as being uniquely placed
to interpret the will of god(s) or as acting as conduits for some divine plan.
So the revelation
of the god's desires came to be seen as a revelation of purpose - why are we here,
what is the meaning of life, what will happen to us after death? The 'chosen'
prophet is trusted with an insight into the god's intentions for and
requirements of humanity, leading ultimately to the god's plans for the end of
the world and the translation of 'the chosen' or 'saved' to a heavenly or
spiritual dimension where they will be free of mortal pain and suffering.
The apocalyptic
tradition in the West came to embody the notion of 'The Apocalypse' as the end
of the world as we know it in a final battle between the forces of good and
evil. It is a tradition most frequently rehearsed in times of social turmoil,
where it expresses a dissatisfaction with or fear of the current state of
affairs, explaining this in terms of human kind having fallen into a life of
sin, or as being held in the grip of some malign force or evil.
Human life
therefore requires revolutionary transformation in order to return to the more
godly ways which will inevitably lead to ultimate salvation. Hence the notion of a final battle
between good and evil - Apocalypse might mean the destruction of the planet and
all physical life, but it leads to the salvation and recreation of the chosen
in a new and perfect environment ('heaven').
The second major
strand in apocalyptic writing is a more secular one, currently most readily
associated with the science fiction and horror genres of writing. I say 'more
secular' because horror writing often employs religious scenarios for its end
of the world visions - "The Omen" series of films is perhaps the most
famous example, while television's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
combined elements of science fiction, religious references or metaphors, and
iconic horror, culminating in a final battle between the damned and the saved.
However, both
science fiction and horror have embraced a wholly secular interpretation of
apocalypse - in fact, the genres merge in their vision of the ultimate terror
embodying the end of the world. Science fiction has regularly explored the
theme of 'this is the way the world ends' - the threat of nuclear extinction was
a prevalent theme in the mid and late 20th century, giving way in
the latter decades of the century to concerns about pandemic and environmental disaster.
Within science
fiction, writers have explored how people might cope with the threat of extinction
- on the one hand H.G.Wells sees human kind surviving an attempted Martian
invasion, on the other we have Neville Shute's "On the Beach", a
bleak warning of the dangers of nuclear war which follows the last few months
and last few moments of the last few survivors.
Science can lead to salvation,
science can damn us to extinction. The writing can be pessimistic or optimistic
- do we sink into a bunker mentality, strike out as bold conquistadors, or
contrive some Noah's Ark?
Secular
apocalyptic writing leads naturally into a question of pessimism or optimism. Prior
to the 20th century, we did not have the technology to extinguish
human life from the planet - well, not very efficiently at any rate. Machine guns, heavy artillery, poisoned
gas, and aerial bombardment demonstrated in the 1914-18 War just how effective the slaughter could
become.
Hitler then proved that we had both the administrative skills, the
mentality of blind obedience, and the industrial capacity to eradicate whole
sections of humanity. Hiroshima and Nagasaki unleashed the potential of
apocalypse on an unprecedented scale and, throughout the Cold War and beyond,
remain bywords for human extinction.
But in warfare,
man is at least the active participant in slaughter. The immediate aftermath of
the First World War saw a major flu pandemic kill millions across the globe. In
the course of the 20th century we've learned that neither war nor
plague respect boundaries. We've now discovered that even our passive lives
have a lasting impact on the Earth's ecology - while people might recycle the
odd bottle or newspaper, it would be political suicide for any elected
government to tax fuel or restrict land, sea and air travel enough to reduce
pollution to the point where we could postpone environmental collapse, never
mind reverse the process.
Faced with
environmental disaster, it's quite natural that the role of the writer (and of
art in general) should embrace concerns about survival. Given the recent
dramatic growth in literacy and education, given the parallel impact of photography,
film, television, the Internet, global communications systems, and the
limitless potential of technology, it's not surprising that concerns about
human survival should not only remain major themes in literature and the arts,
but should take on a full-blown political dimension.
Has
apocalyptic writing moved from the religious or sacred to the political?
As a writer, you
have to recognise the political context of your writing. Many of the
apocalyptic novels of the past have been passively political - they serve up
warnings, they pose moral questions, but they do not embrace any partisan
political stance.
What happens,
then, when we are confronted with the collapse of ideologies? We've seen
extremes of corruption and evil in any number of totalitarian regimes, but does
anyone have any real faith in democracy? Can we trust conventional political
parties to do anything other than feather their own nests and strive to remain
in power? Lack of vision and deafness to warnings are the symptoms of a
pandemic of apathy and narrow interest.
Do you view the
future with optimism or pessimism? In writing about apocalypse, do you look to
the breakdown of human society as being caused by social ills (apathy,
totalitarian government, consumerism, the secularisation of life, Thatcher,
Blair, Bush, whatever)?
Do you hope that
survival will bring out the best in us?
Do you present
warnings of the future in terms of bleak certainties or do you offer up a
manifesto for change?
Do you suggest
that we have the potential to discover our own, secular salvation - that
collapse will lead to reconstruction?
Do you bury your
head in the sand and believe that your god will save you?
Do you suspect
that if the human world was largely wiped out tomorrow we would survive in
isolated cells of self-interest and it would take centuries before a new wave
of philosophers emerged to question ethics and values and purpose?
The history we
learn is very much one of emergence from apocalypse - the classical era is seen
as giving us Plato, Aristotle, Socrates … the role of philosophy and learning,
with respect for the primacy of the human intellect suddenly emerging in a
handful of Greek states faced with external threat and the possibility of extinction.
The Romans give
us the triumph of engineering and the centralised state. We become lost (so the
story goes) in the so-called 'Dark Ages', with Western civilisation kept afloat
by the monasteries, before we reach the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of
art and literature and thought, and the intellectual questioning of the
Reformation.
And then (in
what's been described as 'the Whig interpretation of history') we grow more and
more civilised through science and education, the darkness is behind us and we
move towards the light. History is often portrayed as the battle between gloom
and glory, triumph and defeat … human life inevitably leading (evolving) to some perfect state.
Apocalyptic
writing leads quite naturally into writing about utopia or about dystopia - representing
dystopia as the root of apocalypse is quite logical, but does it also allow you
the opportunity to search for utopia, to discover the best of human potential,
to unearth an ideal alternative?
In the 14th
century, if you were a simple peasant in a European village, awareness that the
Black Death was spreading across the continent may not have been possible (or
even relevant), but if it was in the next village you would be well aware that
you were facing imminent death and the likelihood of the extinction of your
family and friends. Would there be any room for concern about the survival of
'civilisation' … or would you blindly hope to wake up in 'heaven' and eternal
happiness?
We might today
have a much broader, better informed view of pandemic, holocaust, nuclear
obliteration, or whatever, but apocalypse is no more nor no less real to us
today than it was to the 14th century peasant … or, indeed, to any
primitive Stone Age human caught in a famine or natural disaster or outbreak of
disease.
We are mortal. We
die. And we are aware of the certainty of death. How we make the best of life,
how we make things better for our children, how we cope with the horrors real
life throws at us - these are recurrent themes in our lives. They are part of
our consciousness, they are certainly not the monopoly of writers and artists. But
they are inevitably themes which the human imagination has explored, from time
immemorial, whether in dreams, in neurosis, in religion, in politics, or in
art.
What science has
bequeathed to us is the recognition that change is possible, that we can shape
our own destinies. Modern medicine enables many of us to postpone death, modern
science provides us with solutions and opportunities primitive humans could not
even dream of. Conversely, the Stone Age or medieval warrior could only kill
people he could physically encounter - the modern warrior can destroy whole
cities on the other side of the planet.
I've lived
through the Cold War, with two massively powerful armed camps poised on the
abyss of mutual assured destruction - you might destroy us, but we'll destroy
you (and probably extinguish life from the planet). We continue to endure the
threat of nuclear war, but now we have a 'war on terror' to take our minds off
the fact. Can we really trust, not just the politicians, but their electorates
to make rational choices, to act in a 'just' fashion, to pursue human good
rather than self-interest?
What we have,
today, is a confrontation between an ideological belief that, because we are
rational beings, matters are best left to 'the free market', to some logical
emergence of a better, richer world, or, alternatively, the fear that self-interest and greed
will drive us deeper into the blind consumption of increasingly scarce
resources and the inevitable consequences of nations and empires destroying one
another as they try to protect their share of a finite pie.
How do we
regulate greed, or even demand? How do we reach consensus on action to save the
planet when we can't even stop a single war? How do we collaborate? How do we
organise? How do we take action?
It's seductively
tempting to see apocalypse as a solution - if only a handful of people are
left, we can start again, we can get it right next time. Shame about the
billions of dead, but, hey, you can't make an omelette without seeing the yoke!
Trouble is, who
survives? Do you think they will all be 'good' people? Do you think the
survivors will all be committed to sharing and cooperating and collaborating to
ensure world peace, altruism, and the emergence of a benevolent humanity?
In all
probability, though I see myself as a 'good' person, I'd probably kill anyone
who got between me and a can (never mind a hill) of beans! After the
apocalypse, the personal will remain political.
So is there a
21st century apocalypse?
Apocalyptic
writings voice the concerns of their times. The Christian bible records
historical concerns about the extinction or absorption of Jewish culture, from
prehistory through to colonisation by the Roman Empire. Indeed, early
Christianity presents itself as in a life or death struggle with Rome. The Book
of Revelations introduces the Anti-Christ (possibly the Roman Emperor Nero) who
will force the world into a final battle and confrontation between good and
evil. The psychotic ramblings of Revelation's author describe the threat of
extinction experienced by the early Christian Church.
Step beyond the
Roman era - and Rome converted to Christianity, adopting it as the religion of
Empire and using it as an imperial tool - and Revelations continues to play a dynamic
role in Western myth. It has, for two thousand years, been read as prophecy …
year after year, century after century, both apparently sane and clearly insane
individuals have claimed to have unlocked its hidden meaning, have claimed to
have heard the divine will. Year by year, century by century, their claims have
fizzled into nothing - the world, for instance, did not end in the year 2000
because of some technological time bomb!
And still there
remains a whole industry in the USA and beyond claiming to have finally
interpreted the 'true' message of the bible or some other sacred text. It would
not be unrealistic to claim that the USA nurtures a complex apocalyptic culture
- from Communism as the anti-Christ, to the rise of Israel as a trigger factor
in the coming Armageddon, or the Gulf Wars as evidence that the end is nigh …
even the Twin Towers play into this metaphor, pitting the USA as seat of
salvation, caught in a life or death struggle with the forces of darkness. (Google
'apocalypse' if you don't believe me!)
Apocalyptic
writings offer warnings and messages of hope - they typically emerge when a
society is facing a threat, an overwhelming threat … and plague, famine, war,
etc., remain ever-present.
Empires rise and
fall. The notion of the apocalypse has always been a potent motive force for
political and religious leaders, agitators and fanatics - from peasant revolts
to crusades and religious jihads.
Societies change
- they face both external and internal threats and challenges. It's quite
logical for such threats to be expressed in terms of 'apocalypse', as the
danger that the status quo will be swept aside to be replaced by something
alien and evil.
The threat of
apocalypse becomes a threat / reward mechanism which cements elements of the
society together and mobilises them to take action (as either preservers of the
status quo or as agents of change, legitimised by appeal to holy or divine scripture
or some shared value).
Christianity has
institutionalised the metaphors of apocalypse in the Western imagination. Natural
disasters, disease and plague, famine and drought, war and invasion have been familiar
since time immemorial - and I make no apology for labouring this point; it's
easy to use these threats to leverage apocalyptic ideas and make them credible.
You are saved if you are a true believer - when the apocalypse comes, the
faithful will be beamed up to heaven, the damned will be left to endure the
final turmoil as the earth ends and a new world is created, one in which sin
and hardship and evil are non-existent. It's an only too simple way to
terrorise people into following you!
History abounds
with astronomers, astrologers, theologians, mathematicians, priests, prophets,
politicians, ne'er do wells and conmen who claim to have had a revelation or to
have worked out a warning hidden in the stars / dates / numbers / names /
scriptures.
Again, I make no
apologies for repeating myself, but over a couple of thousand years of recorded
history we have scores of people who have come up with apocalyptic predictions,
all complete nonsense. How huge an ego do you need to be the next one on the
list, to claim that all these deluded fools got it wrong, but I'm right,
because (presumably) the others were false prophets but I really am the one god
has chosen to confide in?
How sad, lonely,
empty and terrified an existence do you have to live if the only positive way
you can make sense of things is to believe it's all going to end soon … but
that you'll be saved and the others will get what's coming to them?
In a sense,
therefore, we don't have a 21st century vision of apocalypse. We
simply continue, transform, and retransmit the institutionalised metaphors we
have learned from time immemorial. But I also suspect we may be seeing the
emergence of a new apocalyptic vision - not one based on appeal to some form of
revelation, but one based on a shared recognition of logic.
Throughout the 20th
century the religious Right in the USA has opposed the teaching of evolution in
schools, has insisted on a supposedly literal, fundamentalist reading of the
bible. The religious Right has attacked science, yet ironically has chosen to
cherry pick that same science.
The science which
enables you to use a computer, to read this page on the Internet, to drive a
car, catch a plane or train, make phonecalls, shop in supermarkets, watch TV or
listen to the radio, even read a printed bible, is the same science which has
confirmed evolutionary theory and issued warnings about environmental disaster.
If you can't
accept evolution and refuse to believe in our current environmental predicament,
then, please don't avail yourself of any of the trappings of the modern world
because the science which enables you to eat, drink safe water, find shelter,
stay warm, put clothes on your back, work, earn, spend, entertain yourself,
gain an education, and keep yourself relatively safe and healthy is the same
science which gives you evolution and environmental warnings.
If you think it
is fundamentally flawed, your only logical response is to conclude that all
modern science and technology is an illusion … so go live in a cave and drape
yourself in the skins of the animals you kill for food.
Warnings of
environmental or nuclear disaster are not based on scriptural interpretation or
the claims of some self-appointed prophet to have been made party to divine
revelation, they are based on cold blooded, factual analysis of the real world,
and they are subject to rigorous inspection and challenge. The reality is that
the truth is out there and we have a responsibility to listen to it and act
upon it. And, of course, we won't.
Apocalyptic
writing in the 21st century will take on a new dimension. We will
reinterpret history in the light of new knowledge, new ideas, new
perspectives. But we will also have to
come to terms with a rapidly changing world, and it is the ever accelerating
speed of change which will be the governing factor - and apocalyptic writing
emerges in societies experiencing threat. Any change can be threatening, and
the faster life changes the more destabilising it can become.
Economic and
political power is shifting to Asia. Military power will soon follow. New
political, ideological, economic, military, and environmental tensions will
emerge in the course of the next few decades. It's often said that generals
always refight the last war - that the military is never prepared for new
methods or theatres of warfare. Maybe the same is true of politics, economics,
or even science. Can art be any different?
Maybe it's true about
how we imagine apocalypse - much of the apocalyptic writing about the threat of
nuclear war seems misplaced, seems, in retrospect, either too optimistic (in
assuming there would be any survivors), or too decent (in assuming that survivors
might act with propriety).
I'm left
wondering if apocalyptic writing might step back from the brink - that in the
face of environmental disaster (which clearly concerns me), there might not
emerge a politically militant science fiction literature, concerned not with
post-apocalyptic scenarios but with pre-apocalyptic ones.
"Like Fleas
on a Dog's Back" is clearly post-apocalypse, but I'm developing a couple
of short stories about eco-terrorism. The most famous piece of fiction in this
sub-genre is probably "The Monkey Wrench Gang", but Rachel Carson's
non-fiction work, "Silent Spring" also inspired some eco-terrorism.
I suspect that
what we might see is an emergent science fiction which combines both a
fictional narrative and a manifesto for action - capitalism and the
military-industrial complex will experience escalating attacks from environmental
activists and the 21st century will be characterised not by 'democratic'
states engaging in a war against 'terrorism', but by a self-disenfranchised
electorate waging an eco-terrorist war in defence of the environment. Become an
eco-warrior - slash car tyres, disable petrol tankers and the pump mechanisms
in filling stations, or whatever (and that should get me noticed by Special
Branch).
I can foresee
apocalyptic writing becoming an exploration not only of how you live an
environmentally sustainable life (and here we're back to the interplay between
utopia and dystopia), but how you take action in support of the environment. The
focus, therefore shifts to pre-apocalypse scenarios, and might therefore be
strangely and ironically slightly more optimistic in tone.
Is there scope
for a workshop on apocalyptic writing?
That's the
question I've been asking myself in the years since I started developing this
novel. It's clear to me that there is a market for apocalyptic stories. What
would the world be like if it ended with a whimper tomorrow? What are the
practical problems? What happens when the electricity switches off and the
supermarkets empty and money ceases to have any value?
I'm half hoping
that "Like Fleas on a Dog's Back" will attract the attention of other
writers, that I can start putting together an apocalypse workshop - no, not a
school for survivors, but an information resource and discussion base for
anyone interested in writing about the subject as fiction. I'd welcome
responses from other writers - I know it would have been useful for me to talk
to other writers when I was starting this novel. But I'm not interested in
theological debates, it's the craft and politics of writing fiction which concerns me. If it
concerns you, feel free to get in touch. I welcome ideas!
