Babel Clash

It’s been a lot of fun writing about apocalypses for the last two weeks. It was a chance to survey that (sometimes blasted) terrain and talk about why so many of those mostly fatalistic visions for humanity have enjoyed continued popularity, as well as an opportunity to offer up some books and movies that I think have slipped under the radar.

It’s also afforded me an opportunity to organize my thoughts on the nature and appeal of postapocalyptic stories in general. These scenarios have fascinated me since I was a child, and have played a role in shaping a great deal of my own fiction.

I’ve enjoyed our exchanges in the post Comments as much as I’ve enjoyed writing the posts themselves, and I hope that my sometimes-playful, sometimes-academic takes on these themes will lead readers to check out my postapocalyptic fantasy novels Ariel and Elegy Beach.

Ariel posits a sudden, simple Change in which our present technology simply stops, and a new set of laws (let’s call them magic) takes its place. There was nothing quite like Ariel when it was published in 1983 — a combination of contemporary landscape and quest-fantasy archetypes — and I am enormously gratified at the cult status the novel has garnered over the years. That it is back in print and well-received (and with restored material and a nice long afterword, too) is just big moby kewl.

Elegy Beach is a more mature examination of the scenario in Ariel, taking place nearly 30 years after this Change and dealing with the sad and sometimes angry puzzlement of an older generation as it realizes that the newer generation feels no sense of loss toward a world they never experienced, nor any obligation to preserve it. Alien encampments regarding one another across a gulf.

For all this highfalutin’ talk it’s also a road movie up the California coast, with warrior-poet centaurs, resurrected Goodyear blimps and Amtrak sleeper cars, a postapocalyptic rave in the ruins of the Del Mar racetrack (much of it written in 4/4 time), and a lyric obsession with the poetry of decay.

You’re also invited to visit the Ariel website and the Elegy Beach website, where you can read chapters, listen to audiobook chapters, and even follow the route of the books with real-time satellite imagery using customized Google Earth maps. It’s all downloadable, too.

I want to thank Morgan Burns and Borders for inviting me to talk about one of my favorite subjects (and for two weeks!), and thank you all for your comments and for coming along on this journey into the stark, brilliant, disturbing, and sometimes funny terra incognita at world’s end. Perhaps if I come knocking at your bomb shelter one day, you’ll let me in.

Related posts:

• And our next guest is…
  I”m very pleased to welcome Steven R. Boyett, author of Ariel and the brand new Elegy Beach.   Steven will be joining us to debate our “Favorite ways for the world to end.” The Apocalypse is getting a lot of attention thanks to 2012 and the upcoming release of Cormac McCarthy’s...
• Thank you!
  Steve, Thank you for taking the time to join us on Babel Clash these past two weeks.  I’ve enjoyed the posts, and I’ve spoken to others who’ve really liked them, too. Sometime before you go, in the next couple of days, is there anything more that you’d like to say...
• Not with a blog but a writer
  Thanks so much, Morgan! I just wanted to give a shout out and introduce myself before we jump into the deep end of the apocalypse pool tomorrow. My first novel, Ariel, and its sequel Elegy Beach a quarter-century later, are a bit unusual in that they’re postapocalyptic fantasy novels. The...
• The End of Daze
  So I’ve dipped my toe in the postapocalyptic water over the last week to offer a brief survey of books and movies that I think are important in the After-the-Fall canon. Of necessity I’ve left out a bunch that I’d love to discuss because they’re just plain fun (Night of...
• Books to die for (part 2)
  Finishing my list of postapocalyptic books I think are standouts in the field. Tomorrow we’ll cover movies. Then we’ll get to the nitty gritty. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells. So often considered as a time-travel classic that it’s easy to forget that this timeless (yuck yuck) novel of social darwinism...