Category Archives: Fiction

W.S.H.T.F #1

July 13, 2015 6:24 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  Put this in the “I don’t really have a topic even though I thought about this for the longest time so here is some filler material” category.  You might also note that I added a #1 to this as I think this may become a series of posts.  I don’t know.  We’ll see.]

 

WSHTF of course is the acronym for “When (expletive deleted) hits the fan”.  I was on YouTube the other week looking for a link for the Cowboy Bebop post and the search algorithm popped up a series of survival-preparedness videos as something that YouTube thought that I might like.  Apparently there is a whole category with this acronym.  I don’t know. I guess some people are bored and have nothing to do.

But there’s a writing topic here (for at least one post though I am already regretting this and now I’m unsure if I want to write more than one of these), so let’s plow ahead and see what happens.

For our first WSHTF scenario we will deal with the current flavor of the month, zombies.  What will you do when the global zombie apocalypse explodes and your family and friends turn into brain eating ghouls (though that’s disparaging to ghouls as ghouls are much more advanced than zombies and… never mind, another time).

Apparently this topic gets more play than you would imagine as there are various civilian groups of enthusiasts preparing for a zombie apocalypse and even some government agencies and the military use the zombie scenario as a stand in for large-scale civil disasters.

It has been argued that the evolution of civilization can be broken up into five distinct phases: Survival, Building/rebuilding, Expansion, Maturity, Collapse.  In this scenario you are either in the collapse or survival phase.  With that in mind, you can choose to handle this in distinctly different ways.

You can choose to throw out all the rules of modern society and focus on your own survival because in a society in free fall collapse you will only survive by using your wits and by being willing to throw out altruism (preferably from a tall building) and looting as many pre-disaster goods as possible while kneecapping as many people you come across and insuring that the zombies will go for them rather than you.

Or you can choose to stubbornly cling to a few choice shreds of civilization and try to maintain some semblance of law and order as well as fanning the flames of empathy and humanity to rebuild a shattered world.

I think the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes.  In a dog eat dog (and dog eat cat and dog eat human and human eat possum and I guess what I’m trying to say is just don’t turn up your nose at it, okay?) world we will have to make some hard choices in order to survive and trying to do the “right thing” may just be one of those hard choices.

Sure, sure it might be easier to hit that guy with a lead pipe and take his box of mac and cheese.  But maybe you can share that mac and cheese with your can of tuna and make a tuna casserole bake and maybe it won’t be as gross as that possum fritter you had for breakfast (I’m just saying maybe it won’t, there’s always a chance).

Sooner or later you will have to cooperate with other humans.  Why not start as soon as possible?

I could go into the specifics of machete versus katana as the best bladed weapon or 12 gauge shotgun versus AK-47 but really those are details.  The important thing in this scenario is your state of mind.  Your philosophy and world view is what you will leave behind to future generations.  Make it a philosophy that incorporates kindness, caring, and forward thinking leadership.

 

Or you know….

 

At least hire a good biographer that can edit out all the bad bits.

Posted in: fiction, humor, life in general, thought

Fiction: Definitions of magic user classes

March 14, 2015 6:53 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Author’s note:  A story shard

The use of “magic” is not a monolithic practice without distinctions.  The paths to using eldritch energies vary almost from user to user.  However we can qualify some generalized practices and loosely define some “schools” of thought concerning these practices.

What follows is an introductory study into these schools of magic.

Eldritch energy is a narrow band of electromagnetic radiation found in high energy regions just beyond gamma radiation.  As it is difficult to observe it has not generally been accepted that it is its own form of energy and not a part of gamma radiation.  Eldritch energy is characterized as being fairly easy to manipulate by certain individuals with mental powers, beings from other dimensions, and certain types of alien life forms.

Eldritch energy may also be manipulated using a complex combination of theoretical logic equations and invocations to certain “deities” or in reality alien beings with massive reserves of this type of energy (known hereafter as mana).  The distinction between these two schools of practice is what we will mainly discuss.

The Mageic school

The mageic school of eldritch thought is what most people think of when they talk about magicians, wizards, sorcerers, etc.

The mageic school was an attempt to philosophically describe, define, and expand upon generalized concepts and ideas that proposed that certain forms of energy can be manipulated by means of logical arguments and thought.  The two main branches dealt with two of the basic building blocks of the universe; matter and energy.

Researchers who looked into this school noted how similar some of the “spells” in magic books are to modern programing code.

The Wizard branch of the school deals primarily with energy and the manipulation thereof using complex logic equations centered on in essence “persuading” energy particles to condense together and flow in directions that they might not have done so otherwise.

The magician side of the school focusing more on affecting matter and invoking matter into action in a similar fashion as the wizards do with pure energy.

The Shamanic school

The shamanic school of eldritch thought involved mainly the invocation of power borrowed from other beings or from the elemental forces of nature (the earth, water, trees, etc).

Shamans could come with various titles depending on what part of the world you were looking at.  Druid, medicine man, spirit guide, witch, high priest, or of course shaman.

This is a more informal and often a more oral tradition of magic use that depends on the invocation of power from another source.  The shaman in effect borrows these powers temporarily and does not own them.  The privileges can be augmented over time or revoked depending on circumstances.  Typically there will be a gift or tribute involved (sacrifice) in the transaction.

 

There is some argument as to which school is the more “powerful” school.  Undoubtedly the shamanic school can call upon greater resources but as has been noted above these powers are borrowed and are not too reliable whereas the mageic caster does not need to ask for power but rather relies upon his own skill.

 

Posted in: fiction, short story

LaMOEs

March 7, 2015 7:00 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Dystopian fiction is one of my favorite forms of science fiction.  The exploration of circumstances after a major civilization collapses and how people deal with it.

Not so much for the actual catastrophe that causes the world to collapse but rather how people deal with the catastrophe afterwards.  How do we go on?  The last man on earth (LaMOE) scenario.

Some people turn feral and break every rule to survive.  Some people roll up their sleeves and get to work trying to put things back together.  Some people just curl up and die.  I think it’s somewhat telling how some people choose to cope after a catastrophe and in a similar vein I think it’s telling which scenario that people want to read about.

I picked up a short story anthology about apocalyptic fiction the other day.  Most of the stories followed the first option.  The mindset of the characters in the book was that the rules and social mores of the old world had been swept away and that anything was now justified in the name of survival.

But is it true?  Do we all revert to some more primitive state when pressured by catastrophe?  For the most part I am going to say that this is not true.  We’ve seen some examples of catastrophes around the world in the last few years and for the most part people seem to want to cooperate and to rebuild rather to pillage and loot and lookout only for themselves.

In some cases of course it did prove to be true that people would act pretty savagely to keep themselves alive but for the most part people realize that cooperation and compassion will do a lot more to insure their own survival that brutal self-interest.

I think it’s millions of years of being social and cooperative creatures that has brought us to the point where we no longer see things in stark and brutal terms and see that our own survival is more closely tied to one another than to trying to be that last people left alive.

Posted in: fiction, thought