How’s That Apocalypse Working For You?

If you’re reading this, you didn’t die in a massive conflagration of natural disasters that has even bored Roland Emmerich to death.  The world didn’t end at 5:11 AM Chicago time, which was when the last Mayan cycle ended, and the next began.  Nothing bad happened that wouldn’t have happened anyway, and things move forward.

Life goes on.

So does the stupidity.

It amazes me how people are so taken in by utter bullshit every day.  A few years ago it was the Rapture that was, for sure, gonna happen in 2011.  People sold off their possession, convinced they were off to meet the lord, but the only way that was going to happen is if they got personal with a Guyana Cocktail.  Before that it was the Heaven’s Gate yahoos, who at least had enough fortitude to carry through on their insanity and leave the world a little more sane.  And before that . . . hell, people, too much, because it seems like someone thinks the world is going to end at any moment, and only the faithful are going to survive–or, if nothing else, be rewarded with a trip to Heaven Land, or some such stupidity.

And you think this is the end?  Not a chance.  We have another Rapture coming up in 2015, because British Methodist theologian Adam Clarke said so, and no other than Sir Issac Newton, claimed that his studies proved that the Rapture couldn’t possibly occur before 2060, so look for the Raptors (Can I call them that without pissing off the real raptors?) to get all jiggy over that one, because, hey, Sir Issac said so!

People are a gullible lot, and the majority of them seem to be on Facebook these days.  Even today I saw another of those, “Can you believe THIS?” memes going around about there being “December 2012 will feature 5 Saturdays, 5 Sundays and 5 Mondays, a combination of days that occurs only once every 823 years,” and you better pass that along so you can make money.

Pure bullshit.

I mean, it only takes a close look at calendars, and a little common sense, to understand that the whole, “I happens once every 823 years” is total crap.  But it’s easier to believe the crap than it is to call it out as illogical claptrap.  Why?  Because of Sturgeon’s Revelation, I suppose.  Harlan Ellison suggested that the Revelation applied to people as well, and in the forty-five years since reading that, I’ve seen little to suggest otherwise.

It’s far better, it would also seem, to just make fun of the lunacy of the event, rather than tell people who appear to even the smallest belief that the End is Nigh, that they are crazy and should either get their head straight, or to keep their insanity to themselves–or, better yet, get help for their delusion.  Because you aren’t helping anyone by professing your opinion that the end of the world is coming, and we gotta get ready.  You’re a problem, and it would be best if you leave us alone.

Oh, is that too mean?  Just ask a “prepper” if I’m wrong, and they’ll tell you I’m the crazy one.  They’ll tell you the end if coming, and you need lots of things:  clothes, food, guns . . . lots of guns.

Just ask Nancy Lanza how that worked out for her.

Dead Don’t Dance

One of the things I’ve seen happen over the last few years is a huge expansion of what most would consider an expansion of supernatural literature.  Not horror, per say, but literature that has played with the supernatural genre.  Actually, it’s not literature, but writers, who’ve done this–and, if you’re guessing where I’m going with this, not for the better.

It seems that the supernatural has become . . . well, vampires are people you want your kids dating, werewolves are still violent, but they tend to walk around with their shirts off when they aren’t wolves (does this apply to female werewolves as well, cause damn . . .), and a succubus is just one more hot woman in a leather jacket.

I don’t mind any of this, because I’m not reading Twilight, or watching The Vampire Diaries, nor would I let my daughter date a werewolf, because they have fleas.  I’m not like Joe Hill, who says he’s writing a vampire novel where “they go back to being fucking killers,” because it doesn’t mean that much to me–and I’m guilty of writing a sexy vampire character as well.

But there is one thing that just peeves the hell out of me.  One creature that, were I in control of the universe–and in my stories, I am–I would strike from the memories of people for all time . . .

Zombies.

I can’t stand the damn things.  Not because they are horrifying, but because they are about as dumb as one can get, and still have something horrifying.  Zombies are the Deliverance hillbillies of the supernatural world; they’re only dangerous if you walk into their world like idiots and let them rape you.  Otherwise, they’re about as scary as a hangnail.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t popular:  I knew of Night of the Living Dead, I know of The Walking Dead, I watching 28 Days Later–though the later doesn’t say The Zed Word.  I just don’t understand the mindset of people who think living though this version of the End of the World would be super cool–pretty much the same way I couldn’t understand why living though a nuclear apocalypse would be the bee’s knees for some people.

But the whole “Zombie Apocalypse will take out the World!” meme just doesn’t make sense.  Hell, nothing about the Zedlings makes sense.  When you have Cracked.com pointing out how stupid the whole thing is, you’re on the downhill slide, folks.

Oh, sure:  people aren’t watching The Walking Dead because of the zombies.  They’re watching it because Rick kills shit while not using his British accent; Michonne is totally badass; and they’re waiting for Lori to bite the big one in a way that will make them stand up and cheer.  (As River Song would say, “Spoilers!”  Click that at your own risk!) Zombies are just sorta there to make life interesting.

But in, say, the town where I live, why worry about zombies?  I mean, how many are going to come back?  What are “the freshly dead”?  Maybe twenty people over three, four days?  That many cops show up to give two teenagers a speeding ticket in this town.  I’m assuming that if someone crawls out of the ground after three days and begins wandering about the town square, the dead aren’t getting  The Zombie Jesus treatment; they’ll likely get a beat down and a half.  And even in a city like Chicago, maybe a few hundred people are coming out of the ground?  Hell, street gangs would have a field day playing bullet tag with these shambling fools.  Or they’d get hit by CTA buses.  Either way, not a good day for the dead.

Why shoot them in the head?  They’re dead; there’s no cognitive functionality, so the brain controls nothing.  In fact, the brain should have leaked out of their ears after a week, so there’ll be little more than gray goop sloshing around in the cranium.  Take a shotgun and blow off a leg, then set them on fire.  Or better, let them rot in the sun.  Rinse, repeat.  Sure, it’s gonna stink, but it’s not like they don’t smell already.

Why do zombies want to eat you?  Because from what I see, they don’t need to eat to survive.  Oh, sure, they ate people in Night of the Living Dead, but why?  And after everyone is dead, then what?  Go to Dennys’ for brunch?  At least 28 Days Later–”Don’t say the Zed Word!”–had everyone in England, Wales, and Scotland starving to dead after a few weeks.  So zombies want to eat my brains, and then what?  Invent a cure for cancer?

There is a reason why people love zombie stories:  because it gives the reader or viewer the chance to look at the characters are marvel at their massive dumbassery.  ”Hey, look:  a dead guy walking around!  I think I’ll stand here and laugh at him until he’s within arm’s reach, then–AHHHHHH!”  Or you get my favorite part of 28 Weeks Later, where someone is found alive, seemingly unaffected by the virus that’s killed millions of people, and people are puzzled as to how this is possible.  At the moment people are living in a very small, isolated, military-controlled section of London, so what do the people in charge do with this survivor?  ”Lets put her in this unlocked room right in the middle of where everyone is living, and anyone can gain access to her!  I mean, what could go wrong, mate?”  The more one sees of Wile E. Coyote shit like this, the more one becomes convinced that were they to find themselves in the middle of the ZA, they’d be wrackin’ up the dead body count.

Zombies are dumb, literally and figuratively.  But people love them, and it seems all you need to do this day is put the Zed Word on the cover of a book, and you’ve got a best seller a-brewin’.  Brave New World with Zombies!  2001 a Space Zombie!  A Clockwork Zombie!  I mean, if people are going to go ga-ga over some ninety year old dead guy who’s zoomin’ high school girls with self-esteem issues, imagine what they’re gonna do when you’re characters are blowing the heads off dead guys–or unable to keep their kids in the house?  But I digress . . .

What do I know, though?  I mean, I’ve been writing for a while, and I’ve dipped into what I could call the “soft supernatural”–sort of it’s own form of “cosy catastrophe“.  Though you won’t see any zombies in my stories.  Vampires, demons, ghosts, wizards, oh yeah.  But zombies?

I think I could write my first short story using them.  A real short story . . .

The Repetitive Apocalypse

Despite the best efforts of Daniel H. Wilson and Steven Spielberg, the robot apocalypse has been postponed.  Indefinitely.  Probably forever.

The whole idea of the destruction of mankind as brought about by robots is an old one.  R.U.R., a play by Karel Čapek, was the first to bring about the idea of letting robots (based upon the Czech word, robota, which is forced labor of the kind that serfs performed on their masters’ lands, and is derived from rab, meaning “slave”) do all the crappy heavy lifting that humans didn’t want.  And what happens?  The robots get pissed off, revolt, and kill all the humans.  In some circles this is called “progress” . . .

Now, Čapek’s robots were really more like androids, humanoid-like machines that could be mistaken for a human.  And those suckers were imitated to hell and gone almost as soon as word got out that, hey, there’s this new thing called a “robot”, and it totally science-fictiony, and they kill people!  Lets write stories!

So for a while, there were stories of robots running all over the place, smokin’ humans left and right, because–science?  Hey, why not create something that’s going to kill us brutally?  Makes for good stories, right?

Someone wasn’t pleased, however–and that someone was a writer named Isaac Asimov.  He was damn tired of all these robots running around blowing shit up and killing humans with impunity, and thought, “What sort of idiot builds a semi-aware machine that’s going to kill us when it doesn’t like something?”

Good Doctor Asimov is one of the main reasons why there will never be a robot apocalypse, because there are The Three Laws.  Now, I realize that humans are a lot who try to find the easy way around everything, and programming The Three Laws into androids–notice I didn’t say robots, and there’s a reason for that–so they didn’t try to murder us would probably be something a programmer would skip over so they could get home and play Skyrim.

But writers can do this.  They can make sure that, in their futures, people take this little note into account.  In a few of my stories, one of my characters is flying about in a ship that is, in reality, the body of an AI, and there are a few mentions in one story about how the avatar–which is what the AIs are called–has a modified set of The Three Laws.  Without them, my characters are flying around in a ship that could kill them for the hell of it; what could go wrong there?

We take care of the AIs, we put off being killed in the revolution.  But what about the robots?  What about them coming in the night and killing us because they’re tired of building our cars and putting together our packaged foods?

Well, now, have you seen these robots?  They’re bolted to the floor.  They’re just arms and filling devices, doing the same thing over and over.  They will only have a chance at hurting us if we throw ourselves into the area where they work.  I know I’m not visiting any factories in the near future.

Oh, sure, there is a possibility that were a robot apocalypse to occur, people would get hurt.  But the casualties would be low, and in the end, they’d probably hurt themselves badly during their attacks upon us.  It’s really a non-event, a Pyrrhic victory at best.

So lets think about something else, and not worry about the robots coming after us.  To be honest, the Japanese will probably have the first self-aware androids, and chances are the majority of their programming will involve whether or not their panties are showing.

I mean, what could go wrong there?

Rested and Apocalyptic

Last night was a good writing night.  Not so much in terms of actually writing; of late, it seems like my fingers don’t want to do what my brain is telling them to do, and a lot of times, simple words that I should know are coming out looking really strange.  A lot of that is from being tired, and last night I was tired.

I am catching up on my sleep–my doctor gave me something to help with that, and it seems to be working–but while I’m starting to get sleep, I’m still trying to get rest.  My body has been through several months of sleep deprivation, and I’m not going to get that over with right away.  But it’s getting better there.

Even with my fingers being strange like they were, I was going through Diners at the Memory’s End pretty well last night–though, “pretty well” might be a misnomer.  Though I wrote just over eleven hundred words, it seemed like I was writing a little, then having to look for something, then writing a bit more, then taking time to read something, then writing a little more . . . you get the idea.  What I wanted to say was there, but it came out in spurts, mostly because I was double-checking things before putting them out.

I also read something an editor wrote, a short article on words and phrases that get used too often in writing.  And, lo and behold, I discovered I use a few of them a little too often.  I even know I do.  So, now I have something else to check for when I write–or edit.  That’s where Scrivener comes in handy, because I can type in the offending statement in a global search field, and instantly see everywhere I put that phrase, then go correct each one.

Last night was also the first time, in my writing about the Transporting universe–or would that be “Multiverse”?–that I brought up the big event that actually reshapes the universe as it is in the story.  Many, many years ago I wrote up the notes on this event, and I’ve thought over the event again and again, but this was the first time I’ve actually put the event into words that someone might actually read.

It felt a little strange putting it on the page, but I don’t know why.  Maybe I don’t like writing about horrible things?  Naw, not me!  I’m a person who wrote about a human wave terrorist attack against gargoyles, so fictional death and destruction isn’t going to bother me.

But that section did slow me up, mostly because I was editing the paragraphs as I went along.  I wanted them right, you know?  I didn’t want to just throw something out there and think, “I’ll edit it later.”  I was working on getting it on the page in a way that was gonna make me happy.

Before I finished, I did.

With last night’s writing, Diners shot over the forty thousand word mark.  Congratulations, Miss!  You’ve given birth to another novel!  With five more parts left–and probably another couple of thousand words left in Part Thirteen–I’ll hit fifty thousand words without a problem.

Yeah, I feel like I’m back, with my own apocalypse behind me.

Like the meme says, I’m the Queen; I got this handled.