Ancient Logic

The next chapter for "Agent Shield and Spaceman" is available . Marcus and Spaceman interview Dr. Duchampski about the contents of the Anti-Cerebrist vials and learn about one of the most fearsome of all cryptozoological creatures - the Burmese Tiger Snake. In other news, Gwendolyn Kiste published an interview with me on her blog yesterday. I have tremendous respect for Gwendolyn's talents as a writer and fan of weird fiction and enjoyed her questions greatly. Check it out if you get a chance and while you're there read some of her work and the other interviews she's posted. Great stuff! On more of a personal note, I have finally finished the door to my chicken coop. In terms of tool-use, I rank somewhere between an Australopithecus and H. Habilis, but by repeatedly banging heavy objects into slats of wood, this crude contraption some how resulted. Plans to open my own boutique catering to aficionados of crappy post-apocalyptic carpentry are in the works. ...

Despite some obvious flaws, Fallout 3 remains my favorite video game of all time. Never before or since have I spent nearly so much time in one world, drawn to exploring every nook and cranny of post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. Never before did every random side-quest, minor skirmish, and unopened door feel so integral to the story I was involved with. So to say that I’ve been eagerly anticipating Fallout 4 is to put my mood the past sixth months in the mildest possible terms. Having played about 12 hours (which seems like the barest scratch of the surface of this game), I can say that Fallout 4 has met my expectations. It has not exceeded them quite yet, but I am certainly playing the game that I thought I would be playing. To start off, the basic set-up of Fallout 4 is similar to most (though not all) of the previous post-apocalyptic sci fi epics. You start out exploring the wastelands after escaping from a Vaultec survival shelter. The twist here is that your protagonist is s...

After watching the majesty of Mad Max: Fury Road, I decided to revisit some classics of the post-apocalypse over the last couple of months. I’m not sure what I was looking for, precisely but my rough outline was - the work (movie, television show, book, whatever) had to involve the end of the world as we know it and spend a significant portion of its narrative examining what sort of society would exist after such an event. Obviously, there is no shortage of the post-apocalypse. To go out on a limb, the collapse is even in a bit of a growth cycle. Before even watching Mad Max, I read five novels all published last year that addressed TEOTWAWKI in some respect. Whether following spore zombies in post-collapse London (The Girl With All of the Gifts) or the slow crumbling of social order in The Book of Strange New Things, I was already in this catastrophic state of mind. As far as books go, the post-apocalypse has a long history. Mary Shelley wrote “The Last Man” way back in 1826 but I’d...

Picking up The Leftovers because it seemed vaguely tied into my interest this year - post apocalyptica - I discovered a work of unprecedented wonder. It's a show that's depressing because it is about depression. The Departure event where two percent of the population vanished one October 14th didn't just deprive the survivors of loved ones. The show details a very special sort of doomsday: the collapse for all meaning. What seems normal on the surface is already crumbling away beneath.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a novel about endings both big and small. It begins with the last moments of Arthur Leander, a Hollywood actor who suffers a fatal heart attack during a production of King Lear and then goes from there to describe the end of the entire world. The “Georgian Flu” wipes out 99% of the human race, as well as many of the characters prior to that collapse. Although the novel orbits around the world created by near total end of the human race, it also circles back to the lives of characters before the Flu, hopping back and forth through time with such regularity it’s impossible to say that the novel is truly “post-apocalyptic.” Much of the novel seems to take place pre-apocalypse. Strange coincidences and relationships unify these narratives as does the sense the novel is concerned with the theme of endings. While the beginning of the book might be considered the beginning of the end, it’s purpose is the same as later sections, to descr...