Post Apocalypse – Page 2 – Lights In The Sky

Irrational behaviour

By C. E. Stevens | 8th February 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental twenty three: Irrational behaviour
Apologies for not blogging last month, but I’ve been rather busy…
Maya, my seventh novel (the final part of the Lights in the sky sextet), is, amazingly, nearly half way through. Though an issue has arisen with the title of the previous volume. While doing the SEO on this website I found there were two very similar books; a Scandinavian novel whose title (when translated into English) is also After the Flood, plus a home-grown novel (also made into a film) called Flood, which has a very similar premise. How closely the two novels resemble mine I’m not sure, yet. However accidental plagiarism is an occupational hazard in creative writing as the zeitgeist tends to generate similar artistic responses to it.
What this has done is make me re-evaluate the title of my last novel, and I’m thinking I may return to the original title, The Great Flood, which would emphasis the historical echoes implicit in the work. Flood (on first glance) would appear to be a thriller set in very near future, and thus a different sort of animal. But more research is needed…
The SEO on my website is something I’ve been meaning to get around to for some time, and I’m enjoying the exercise, which fills in time between finishing chapter ten of my current book, and starting chapter eleven. Rob is currently in the process of revamping the website, which should soon boast a new landing page with a revolving gallery of images, and tabs giving easy access to my latest blog entries and excerpts from the books.
Out in the wider world things seem to go from bad to worse, as if the fates are determined to bring my fictional predictions to pass. The case of the man in India who is suing his parents for conceiving him without his permission is both completely barking, and an illustration of a philosophical tendency that I hadn’t previously been aware of, that of antinatalism.
Now, I’ll confess there are elements of this philosophy in the series, at least one of the protagonists characterises the human species as ‘a virus on the skin of the Planet!’ But these are individual points of view in what is essentially a pluralist work. Lights in the sky is at bottom both humanist and positive; humanity is tested and the biosphere threatened with extinction, as a result of our selfish actions. But both survive, and a better, more ethical (and non-Abrahamic) society emerges, with a little outside help, but then I’ve always been partial to a nice Deus ex machina!
Back in today’s grim reality it occurs to me that Trump may really be the Antichrist, and this probably accounts for all the support he receives from those US Fundamentalists, who see him (presumably) as a necessary precursor to the Last Days!
On that cheery apocalyptic note…
The Author February 2019

After the Flood

By C. E. Stevens | 21st December 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental twenty two: After the Flood
At last, it’s here!
After promising you the first chapter of my sixth novel, I’m finally in a position to deliver. After the Flood is (as regular readers will be aware) also the fifth novel in the Lights in the sky sextet.
The opening is very much in the tradition of ‘it was a dark and stormy night’, although we a very quickly plunged into the world of 2043. I wrote the four lines of verse that provide an epigraph for the chapter, and the novel is book-ended by a much longer poem which closes the narrative. The story is about the Great Flood of London of 2043, and was originally called ‘The Great Flood’, but the title changed (as they often do) to be replaced by the rather less matter of fact and rather more evocative present title, with its Biblical connotations (and indirect reference to Bob Dylan).
After the Flood is also more appropriate because almost the whole of the novel is about what happens next. We follow a group of people, most of whom we meet in this opening chapter, who survive the Deluge, and we see how they cope and how they attempt to repair or in most cases remake their lives in the chaos and the loss that follows the inundation of London.
In chapter one we see the arrival of the Great Wave which devastates London from the point of view of our diverse group of protagonists. All of whom survive (in one case miraculously), while others around them perish. These people are ordinary and flawed; they are not necessarily the right people (i.e. those that deserve to live), and all suffer from what you might term ‘survivor’s guilt’ at various times and to various degrees.
All are changed by their experiences (though some more than others), and most become better people.
Chapter one is necessarily episodic, as I try to portray the implacability and the sheer inevitability of the cataclysm as it unfolds (at times almost in slow motion). Thus we have a fractured narrative; unsurprising as the events are told from a variety of perspectives, but also because I want to put over how such an event would be experienced by those caught up in it, and convey the overwhelming feelings of shock and dislocation they would feel.
A friend who is reading the novel described it as ‘your disaster movie’, and (like all Lights in the sky novels), it is written with adaptation in mind. Dialogue is important, but it is balanced by the interior monologue of the main characters, the pace (initially at least) is frenetic, and I have tried to convey visually the impact of the Event on the ancient city of London.
And on re-reading this chapter I am convinced more than ever that I have succeeded in my aims. See if you agree…
The Author December 2018

Displacement activities

By C. E. Stevens | 15th December 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental twenty one: Displacement activities
So what happened to all those submissions you promised by the end of 2018, I hear you ask? Well, the honest answer is displacement activities have taken over, and rather than wait until the New Year I’ve already started the next novel, Maya, in fact I’ve already completed the first five chapters (and one hundred pages). And this is always the way; I love writing far more than promotion. There are a number of reasons for this; let’s be honest, I really don’t like being told what to do by other people, and the search for autonomy has been the keystone of my existence. By passing my work on to others (agents, publishers, a wider readership), it ceases to be wholly mine, and other people start to assume ownership and start to make demands. Professional demands come first, ‘…we don’t like this, could you change that etc etc, then if you do start selling to significant numbers of people, your new found readership starts to make its own demands!
Aren’t you being arrogant, I hear you say? Who says that your work is any good anyway? Well, I just went back on my website and re-read part of A Children’s Crusade, and I am convinced more than ever of its merit. You cannot be objective, people will say! Well not entirely, I will admit, but I’ve read an awful lot of literature and in my usual autodidactic fashion made an extensive study of SF, and I am dispassionate and I do know the difference between good writing and bad. What I would concede is that possibly my work is not fashionable (though I doubt this, as well), and I am probably not the average agent or publisher’s idea of a marketable modern author. But more fool them…
Anyway, Maya picks up the story of Marta Camacho, otherwise known as Tata, where we left it at the end of novel four. She is safely ensconced in the free communities in Amazonas close to the Peruvian border, behind the mysterious barrier that protects them from the outside world (if this all sounds a bit Harry Potter, I ask for your forbearance as scientific explanations will follow!).
However Tata is never happy anywhere for long, and her relationship with the other David (Rodrigues) has hit the rocks, and the forces of the provisional government of Novo Brasil know where she is and are now massing outside the Discontinuity that protects them…
Maya also introduces new characters, an earnest young Canadian citizen astronomer called Karl, and the other members of his online group, and a discredited Korean astrophysicist, ‘Nancy’ Park, who’s now working as an online ‘hostess’.
In Maya the world has recovered (to a certain extent) from the shock and dislocation of the Collapse, and some nations and their citizens are starting to look forward again, albeit tentatively…
Finally, the opening chapter of After the Flood will be hitting this website imminently, and I’ll blog again when that happen…
The Author December 2018

A question of attribution

By C. E. Stevens | 8th October 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental twenty: a question of attribution
I’ve finally finished After the Flood, well almost. I’m still playing around with the ending, but it’s in a condition where I can now start submitting to agents.
However a new issue has arisen. After the Flood is a Lights in the Sky novel; although the fifth to be written, it’s actually the first chronologically, set in 2043 (i.e. twenty five years from the present). But I’ve used my mainstream pseudonym, Stephen Clare, whereas all the other LITS novels are under the pen name, C.E. Stevens.
So something has to give; I’m minded to abandon the C.E. Stevens moniker altogether. It has always sounded clumsy to me, whereas Stephen Clare sounds like an author. I imagine him living in a thatched cottage somewhere in the Cotswolds, or tramping the Yorkshire Moors in green wellies and a tweed jacket like a latter day Ted Hughes. Naturally he’ll have chiseled features and probably smoke a pipe, or at least he will have done until told to give up on doctor’s orders.
Anyway, Lights in the Sky started out as a humble trilogy, expanded to a tetralogy, but has now become a pentalogy, and there will be a sixth. The LITS novels are (in order of writing), A Children’s Crusade, The Fixed Stars, The Lost Colony, The Leftover Girl, plus the current volume. The final part of what will be a sextet has the provisional title Maya (or Illusion), and I’ll start this in the New Year.
After the Flood is set in the fictional world of LITS, but in form and subject matter it’s very much a mainstream novel, which just happens to be set a quarter of a century in the future. This continues the trend established with The Leftover Girl, which is mainstream science fiction as opposed to genre SF. The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed the title has changed (formerly it was known as The Great Flood), but I prefer the new title, which is more elegant with its Biblical connotations.
I have made use of a number of literary sources, specifically High-Rise by J.G. Ballard, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, and Dickens’ last completed novel Our Mutual Friend.
These are deployed as thematic references rather than mined for plot or storyline, Every chapter (apart from the first) is prefaced by quotation which refers to the narrative or thematic content in some way. The majority of these quotations are taken from the four main sources, but I do quote other people (including Joe Strummer!).
There is an element of intertextuality at work here. Karen, a journalist, did her degree in English Literature at Birmingham, and the subject of her dissertation was Conrad. Mariyam is deeply affected by reading High-Rise while at University, and the literary interests of other characters impinge on the narrative.
So far, so postmodern, but After the Flood, as well as being a character-led drama is also an adventure story, or rather it’s a series of individual adventures. Some (but not all) intersect, but they are all set against the climate change wrought cataclysm that is the Great Flood of London 2043. In a case of real-life imitating (my) art, I recently read a number of recent articles talking about this very possibility, predicated on our not (as a species) doing anything effective to halt global warming, and sticking our collective heads in the sand rather than planning for the consequences of this.
After the Flood is also my London novel, and before you ask, I did live in London while studying for my first degree, and I also lived in Chelmsford in Essex (a London dormitory town) for a number of years beforehand. A lot of the action in the novel takes place in East London, from the City and the Tower of London, up to Stratford, Forest Gate and Ilford in the north, taking in Wanstead and Dagenham, and proceeding along the Essex side of the River as far as East Tilbury. But there are detours, to the Palace of Westminster, to Teddington Lock, south to Maidstone in Kent, and north to Milton Keynes. And the central part of the narrative is the voyage of the container vessel Ulysses from the Pool of London to Dover. So, a novel about the sea, the River, and London, based in part on first hand knowledge, but also relying on the imagination to conjure its fictional world…
I hope to include an extract on the website in the near future…
Stephen Clare October 2018

Goodbye and good riddance!

By C Stevens | 31st December 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental fifteen: Goodbye and good riddance!
I find it difficult to remember a year that I’ve wanted to see the back of more than 2017, although 2018’s not looking too promising!

This year we’ve had the full horror of Donald Trump’s populism unleashed on the world, and the full implications of Brexit (as well as the sheer ineptitude of the current government!), have become clearer by the day…

Add to that the now widely accepted belief that the environmental cataclysm and the accompanying mass extinction event are underway and that there’s nothing we can do about it! Apologists are even now saying that this the way of the world and we should embrace the natural order of thing;, I would like to point out to these people that the species likely to disappear includes our own! Oh and President Trump thinks that some good old Global Warming would be good for his country! Maybe he should tell that to Californians…

Signs of optimism for next year include the possibility of a Democrat majority after the US midterms followed in short order by Trump’s impeachment, and a snap General Election that sweeps away the Maybot, and leads (at the very least) to more rational variety of Brexit… But I’m not convinced!

But hey, Birmingham’s got the 2022 Commonwealth Games!

My response to all this has been to take refuge once more in my fictional futures; Lights in the sky is finished, but Tales of the Collapse is well under way…

So far this consists of four short stories, with another one, The Great Flood, well underway!

Worrying, this last piece seems to want to grow beyond a mere short story and is threatening to become a novella (or maybe even a novel!)…

Happy New Year

C.E. Stevens December 2017

Blog entry supplemental thirteen: The rise of unreason

By C Stevens | 24th October 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Back in the late 80’s, in more innocent times, I wrote a song based on a common minor key blues progression called The Rise of Unreason; this charted the rise of Christian fundamentalism and the religious right in America, and elsewhere. Over the years I have revised and added to this song, both lyrically and musically, in response to changing times; but after 9/11 it acquired a new resonance and urgency as Islamic Fundamentalism cast a growing shadow over both the West and the Muslim world.

The song is now in its fifth or sixth iteration, and has never seemed more relevant…

But, I think we’ve gone beyond the relatively well thought out irrationality of the religious fundamentalists (which at least has some basis in belief, scripture, and ideology, however extreme and archaic!), to something deeper.

The rise of narcissistic populists in the political sphere seems to have coincided with (or maybe unleashed!) a more general outbreak of irrational behaviour on the part of ordinary people not linked to any particular belief system. Everybody seems to be angry, but why should this be so at this point in our history?

Outbreaks of delusional behaviour are not new, and characterised much of the Mediaeval period, persisting into the early Modern Age. But the Enlightenment and the triumph of rational economic systems was supposed to have put paid to them. So what’s happening to bring them back to the fore?

Well, there are a number of suspects…

It’s worth revisiting Clarke’s dictum that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and apply it to our own societies. Technological change has been so rapid and so remarkable in recent years, that ordinary people are being left behind; marveling at what their new handheld devices can do, but not understanding the science that lies behind the tech. Not so long ago any reasonably well-read lay person could be expected to comprehend in broad terms the technological and scientific principles that underpin his or her civilisation; this is no longer the case! And irrationality has a habit of rushing in to fill such lacunae in our understanding…

And then there are the various existential threats our civilisation now confronts…

Some of the more improbable; the asteroid strike or the erupting supervolcano, are essentially beyond our current power to mitigate, and thus not worth considering, but others are clear and present dangers. Climate change, resource depletion, pollution and the potential impact of AI on employment are all things that human activity is responsible for, but rather than address the issues, large sections of the populace seem to want to deny they are happening altogether, or slip into a kind of helpless apathy.

Reaching for the irrational belief system is a symptom of all this…

Demagogues and despots have always known the emotional appeal of the irrational when times are tough and the solutions demanding and difficult, hence the election of right wing populists.

In our cultural life the appeal of the supernatural and of the superhero is strong at the moment; fantasy worlds to visit and fantasy heroes to rescue us.

Fundamentalist religion, I’ve mentioned, but there is also the growing popularity of pseudoscience, which rather than offering solutions re-frames the threat in mythic terms; the oft-promised arrival of Nibiru functions almost like a giant metaphor for the real dangers that we face. The next global extinction event has already started according to many scientists, and there’s plenty of evidence to support this view. The old chestnut of finding a new home for the human race has leapt off the pages of science fiction and into popular discourse, something I have referenced in previous blogs.

So what’s all this got to with your SF saga, I hear you ask?

Well, Lights in the sky anticipates the coming ecological cataclysm, but I’m thinking that my fictional doom is (in the best traditions of British SF), a rather cosy catastrophe! By the end of the series Gaia and her allies have staged a successful counterattack, and the biosphere is recovering nicely.

In the real world ‘the civilisation of the world as we know it’ would appear to be coming sooner than expected, and the cavalry doesn’t appear to be about to ride to the rescue…

C.E. Stevens October 2017

Blog entry supplemental twelve: New Earth and other fables

By C Stevens | 16th September 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

I eventually got round to watching The Search for a New Earth…

Hearteningly I had anticipated most of the issues and challenges outlined in the programme in my similarly-themed tetralogy Lights in the Sky…

What I hadn’t anticipated were: plasma rockets as a means of space propulsion rather more efficient than chemical rockets (I may substitute these in the relevant chapter, as it would only be a modest change), Proxima b as the Earth-like planetary destination, and artificially-induced hibernation as a means of dealing with the length of time needed to traverse the distance between here and the Centauran system…

But overall, not bad!

I enjoyed the programme (…at least at first!), but after a while it began to strain credulity, featuring as it did; postage stamp-sized space probes capable of reaching another star system (and beaming back data!), hibernating bears immune to radiation sickness, and hibernation-inducing serum obtained from hamsters, for Christ’s sake! And I began to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t some kind of late April Fool’s joke! Then I remembered the original Tomorrow’s World (my favourite television programme growing up!), anchored as it was by overly-enthusiastic, manically-grinning presenters, and showcasing (on a weekly basis) ground-breaking technological developments that were never heard of again!

But seriously folks, there were a couple of important issues that weren’t raised by the programme. Firstly, any manned mission to Proxima b would appear to be asking the putative crew members to spend twenty years of their lives in hibernation, time they would presumably never get back! The question of whether being in hibernation would slow the ageing process was never discussed, but it doesn’t seem to do so in the case of bears (or indeed, hamsters!).

Secondly, we have the elephant in the room! The Proxima expedition (like my Alpha Mission!), would do nothing for the billions left back on Earth, presumably to die miserably in the impending ecological catastrophe! Eventually, a significant number of those billions would realise this and start to seriously oppose these plans, asking (quite reasonably) why the effort and the (billions of) dollars going into an expedition to the stars aren’t being spent sorting out the problems here on Earth!

I was also re-assured by the rather precarious prospect offered to any settlement on the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, with its one face permanently turned towards its primary (and being baked by its rays), while the other remains in deep freeze, and with only a thin strip of supposedly habitable planet between the two! I decided that, on reflection, I much preferred my world, Alpha 5, as the fictional destination for my explorers cum colonists…

Imaginary worlds need to be better than the one we live in, or why else would we invent them?

C.E. Stevens September 2017

Blog entry twenty four: The end of the road

By C Stevens | 6th September 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

I’ve finished Lights in the sky…

I’ll qualify that; I’ve finished the final novel in the series, the leftover girl, which (counterintuitively), is the first chronologically in the series. This is not to say that I’ll never return to the world of Alpha 5, I’ve left some loose ends and there are still stories to tell, but the main narrative is finished! It’s taken me four (or possibly five) years of living at least partially in a world of my own creation. The series covers a period of two centuries from the birth of Helen Choi right through to the death of last of the twins on Alpha 5…

So how do I feel?

Well, empty, grieving, directionless etc etc…

This is the first time that I haven’t had anything to write in nearly a year…

It’s like a bereavement, or possibly like the empty nest syndrome you get when your children finally leave home; the novels are like my children!

So how do I deal with this?

By doing the (to me) drudgery of promoting the series. I have a list of 15+ agents plus a number of independent publishers (you have been warned!). And I’m now looking to sharpen up my (rather blunt) act by making my website more visible and marketing my writing more effectively via social media (even!).

By writing something else!

Another volume of LITS (possible, but the safe option, and there’s always the danger of diminishing returns!)
By starting a completely new project (scary!)
By continuing the ‘Simon’ series (lacking enthusiasm for this at the the mo’, and compared to LITS it’s a teensy bit prosaic!)

So a bit of thinking to do, but plenty to get on with…

’til next time…

Blog entry twenty three: On the road

By C Stevens | 18th March 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

On the road is the first chapter of The leftover girl, a companion volume to the Lights in the sky trilogy. This chapter is now available on this website as a taster for the new and so far uncompleted novel.
The title is an obvious literary reference, but our hero is an independent young woman rather than stereotypical male character normally found in the ‘road’ genre. We’ve met Tata before, and her narrative picks up a few months after when we last saw her, at the end of chapter five of The lost colony.
The novel is cast as a picaresque with Tata as the roguish proletarian heroine living on her wits among the corruption of post-Collapse Earth. She can shoot, fix her truck, scavenge, find work and fuel etc…
Occasionally she uses her body as part of the transaction, but always on her own terms. We learn little about why she’s on the road, apart from that she is fleeing unspecified ‘trouble!’ We do learn that she has hopes and dreams, poorly defined though these are…
The opening chapter also introduces to the post-Collapse world, characterised by migration, lawlessness, and the sense that towns and cities are becoming more isolated as communication between them breaks down.
The narrative takes the form of a picaresque odyssey as our hero journeys west from Olinda, her home of the last fifteen years, into the interior. We are introduced by dream sequence and flashback to one of the other narratives that will constitute the novel.
A dream the adult Tata has, while sleeping out under the stars in the high sierra, introduces us to her childhood self. We learn about her relationship with her over-protective mother, and we are also introduced to the other woman in her life, her mysterious benefactor, Mrs Choi. If this all seems rather Dickensian, this is, of course, my intention. The leftover girl is an adventure story; the emphasis here is on story, as much as on character, form, or mood. Lots of things happen, and the action is episodic, but this deliberate!
The plot of the opening chapter concerns itself with two chance encounters; firstly, with the mechanic who sells her the methanol she needs to move onwards in her quest. Tata doesn’t have the money to buy all the fuel she needs, so they settle on a different kind of trade. Although brief and perfunctory, the exchange has long term consequences that only become clear later on.
Her second encounter, with refugee family from Venezuela, lasts much longer (in fact it temporarily interrupts Tata’s quest), and has far more emotional resonance, especially as it reminds our hero of what she has lost. But in the end, the urge to move forward overcomes the temptation to stay, as Tata runs away again…
C.E. Stevens – March 2017

Blog entry supplemental six: The leftover girl

By C Stevens | 3rd February 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

As I’m now more than one hundred pages into the prequel to Lights in the sky, currently called The leftover girl, although this may change (mainly because the ‘such and such girl’ as the title of a novel has become something of a publishing cliche in the last few years!). If it does change it’s likely to change to The leftover world which is also apposite. One decision I have made is to use my SF non de plume C.E. Stevens, rather than Stephen Clare. This is practical reasons as I can continue to use this website, and I am less likely to confuse potential readers.
As I’ve probably said previously the new novel is written in a mainstream SF style with magical realist elements, and is set entirely on Earth. It has three narrative strands; opening with the story of the protagonist as an adult, continuing with a flashback to Tata’s childhood and adolescence, and then the third strand which follows the life of a third character, Helen Choi.
The Tata narrative dramatises life in Brazil, and by extension throughout the world, following the Collapse (a breakdown of civilisation resulting from climate change and resource depletion). Helen’s story is essentially the story of the Alpha Mission.
The book thus tells the story of Earth in the run up to the departure of the Alpha Mission probe, and what happens afterwards!
There obvious crossovers both within the book, and between this book and Lights in the sky. Tata knew Mrs Choi when she was a child, but never knew why the old woman had taken an interest in her. Her quest is geographical (to reach the fable ‘free communities in Amazonia), but also spiritual (to discover the truth about her own life and origins).
Both characters appear in Lights in the sky, although Helen Choi is only referred to (by Han, she’s his role model!). Tata appears on three separate occasions; twice in dreams/visions experienced by Marta Fernandes, and finally in a chapter of her very own!
One possible strategy I may employ is to use this chapter (The Jungle) as part of the text at the appropriate point in the narrative, which a nice exercise in intertextuality.
My intention is to post the first chapter of the novel on this website on the near future to act as an introduction, once I settle the question of the title!

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Category: Post Apocalypse

After the Flood

By C. E. Stevens | 21st December 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

A question of attribution

By C. E. Stevens | 8th October 2018 | Comments 0 Comment