Writing the Apocalypse

So why write an online novel? And why pick the subject of apocalypse, of the end of the world as we know it?

Well, the theme of my website is human change. Change and the changing nature of human identity has been one of my consuming interests for as long as I can remember. As a professional writer I work on the basis that the central theme of all stories is change.

A narrative in which nothing happens is not a story. We follow stories (in books, theatre, television, cinema … or even on the Internet) because we want to know what happens next or what the tale is about: will justice prevail? Will 'good' triumph over 'evil'? will the hero triumph? will boy meet girl? will we get a satisfactory explanation of why things have happened, who the characters are, etc.? will the story be resolved? Narratives explore change.

I also trained as a social worker and worked much of my life as a Probation Officer - the unifying theme underlying all forms of social work is the objective of change, the role of the social worker being to help people change their lives or lifestyles, the professional basis being the conviction that change is possible and that people can and do change in the course of their lives.

And, of course, as a human being my life has been one of change, of countless transitions from birth, of new roles adopted and old roles lost, of places and people encountered and reframed as memories. We have fragile identities - change can happen without warning, the unexpected and unanticipated can transform our lives out of all recognition. Life is a process of adaptation, painful or pleasurable, often chaotic or haphazard. It is a central feature of the human condition.  

But why apocalypse?

Well, because it's the ultimate change, the world as we know it swept away and the survivors having to re-establish not only their own lives, but the nature of human life itself.

It's also because I suspect stories about survival are amongst our earliest influences as human beings. The question of how we'd cope if everything was taken away from us is both one of the root fears and one of the most compulsive challenges in human life. We hope for something better, we fear something worse.

The world, as we know it, ends. We are left to our own devices. We quickly learn that we can't play god, but we have to find a way of coping. At worst, we survive. At best, we become masters of our own destinies (and the destiny of others, possibly even the whole of continued human existence). Do we take control, do we take charge … or do we look for someone or something to follow?

What becomes of us as individuals if we no longer have roles and structures, routines and certainties to define us? In the modern world we're wholly dependent on others to supply food, build and maintain our shelters, deliver gas, water and electricity, make our clothes, provide the luxuries and the necessities, exchange cash for goods, buy our labours, sell theirs.

We define ourselves as writers or social workers or fathers or football fans, or any one of the million other social identities and self-images which describe our lives and lifestyles. What would happen if we had to supply everything for ourselves? What happens if our only identity becomes that of 'survivor'?

Does the notion of being left alive after some global apocalypse fuel our fantasies, offering the vicarious freedom to loot and murder, to take what we want, do what we want with no authority to deny us? If it brings out the macho in the male, what does it do to the female?

Or does it invest us with responsibility? We have to take charge of our own lives, take responsibility for the lives of others, discover new responses to cataclysmic change. How do we cope with change when there is no one to show us how, when we are thrown back on our own fragile and limited physical, emotional and intellectual resources?

We're not left with a blank slate. We carry into this emptied world a legacy of knowledges (and of ignorances), of hopes and fears, prejudices and assumptions, truths and lies. We're plunged into that quandary of what do we really know and what have we never had to think about - how many of our taken for granted, 'common sense' truths will crash in flames?

Could you light a fire? Could you bury your dead? Could you grow or catch your own food, make your own clothing, maintain your own shelter, defend your own space, preserve your own identity and sanity and health? Could we relearn the skills of smelting metals, making pots, sowing seeds?

Would you have the confidence to experiment, to learn, to find new solutions? Would you have the confidence to trust others, to share, to cooperate? The learning process becomes one of unpicking ourselves as individuals and reconstructing our knowledges and skills to forge a new being.

As a writer, exploring an end of the world scenario suggests total freedom yet places you under intense pressure - you have to start questioning your own assumptions, your own knowledge(s), your own prejudices. It forces you to approach character development critically, for the people to whom we offer rebirth have to metamorphose into a wholly new psychological integrity and not simply be vehicles for the story or embodiments of our own prejudices.

It's easy to regurgitate caricatures or write cardboard cut-out figures when what you need, as a writer, is to explore the intensity and the desperation of recreated creatures. Every person who appears in your story is going through turmoil, is disintegrating as a 'civilised' being and reconstituting themselves in new social roles … or is discovering their feral self.

Each character is beating out a new identity on an anvil of doubt, fuelled by confusion, fear, and bereavement – loss of loved ones, loss of roles, loss of purpose, loss of social identity, loss of hope. It's easy to fall into the trap of seeing the story as plot driven - how do your characters survive, what do they do? But the real challenge is to explore the characters, to dissect their minds in order to discover what is meant by survival, and what survival means for them.

Can an apocalyptic novel break new ground - isn't it just a hackneyed old cliché? the world ends, some people survive … are we going to have an optimistic new beginning or a pessimistic end?

There is a long tradition of apocalyptic writing, visible throughout recorded history, and I'm sure continuing a timeless oral tradition. Conventionally, it has religious dimensions (I'll briefly look at the history of apocalyptic writing later in this introduction).

However, I'd argue that end of the world scenarios are possibly as old as the emergence of human consciousness and human language, that they predate our invention of magic, creation myths, or religions. Throughout virtually the whole of human evolution, the expectation of life was that it could be 'nasty, brutish, and short'. The end was always in sight, despite efforts to keep it out of mind.

The possibility of violent death at the hands or claws of predators, the potential for accident and disease, the ever present threat of natural disaster, drought, famine, fire, flood, or just human error - there were plenty of reasons to be concerned about the continued survival of yourself, your family, your clan or tribe. An end of your world nightmare was always on the horizon - and, in primitive societies survival was a daily fact of life, not a fictional scenario.

In fact, for many people on the planet, finding food, water, clothing, shelter and safety still remain daily challenges. It's only a relatively small, privileged few in the West who can enjoy safety and who have the resources to consume what they want and what they need.

If you're not one of the privileged, do you view each day with optimism or with pessimism? If you're struggling to cope, struggling to feed your children or keep a roof over your head, life is very different from that led by the rich and powerful.

I suspect speculation on the nature of the future was one of our first adventures into, if not fiction, at least attempts to answer questions. Trying to explain the inexplicable - why disasters happen, why weather happens, why the sun rises and sets, why we can hope there will be food tomorrow or next year, why we experience death, why life happens - is at the root of the emergence of religion, magic, or even the political and economic organisation of social groups.

In advanced, 'civilised' societies, continuing to explore themes of apocalypse remains an expression of our human and social values. If we imagine that there is a meaning to life beyond simple material consumption and the pursuit of our own pleasure, then we must speculate on what that meaning entails - we don't have to have a fully drawn blueprint for the perfect society or world (either our own vision of 'utopia' or some religious model of salvation), we needn't have an alternative vision of a worst case scenario (some 'dystopia' or 'hell'), but we can have a perspective on what it is we value, what it is we abominate.

I can recognise 'good' in human life, I can recognise 'ill' (or possibly 'evil'), although I can't draw a road map to the 'perfect' society or even suggest how we eradicate all the ills we face. Apocalyptic writing is a vehicle to explore our hopes for 'utopia', our fears of 'hell'.

So what of the history of apocalyptic writing?

There are two major strands:

The original religious concept, familiar in the West in Christian and Jewish writings, conceived of apocalypse as some form of divine revelation in which a god reveals secrets to a chosen prophet or group. This is not confined to Christianity or Judaism - many religions portray their founders, prophets, or priests as being uniquely placed to interpret the will of god(s) or as acting as conduits for some divine plan.

So the revelation of the god's desires came to be seen as a revelation of purpose - why are we here, what is the meaning of life, what will happen to us after death? The 'chosen' prophet is trusted with an insight into the god's intentions for and requirements of humanity, leading ultimately to the god's plans for the end of the world and the translation of 'the chosen' or 'saved' to a heavenly or spiritual dimension where they will be free of mortal pain and suffering.

The apocalyptic tradition in the West came to embody the notion of 'The Apocalypse' as the end of the world as we know it in a final battle between the forces of good and evil. It is a tradition most frequently rehearsed in times of social turmoil, where it expresses a dissatisfaction with or fear of the current state of affairs, explaining this in terms of human kind having fallen into a life of sin, or as being held in the grip of some malign force or evil.

Human life therefore requires revolutionary transformation in order to return to the more godly ways which will inevitably lead to ultimate salvation. Hence the notion of a final battle between good and evil - Apocalypse might mean the destruction of the planet and all physical life, but it leads to the salvation and recreation of the chosen in a new and perfect environment ('heaven').

The second major strand in apocalyptic writing is a more secular one, currently most readily associated with the science fiction and horror genres of writing. I say 'more secular' because horror writing often employs religious scenarios for its end of the world visions - "The Omen" series of films is perhaps the most famous example, while television's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" combined elements of science fiction, religious references or metaphors, and iconic horror, culminating in a final battle between the damned and the saved.

However, both science fiction and horror have embraced a wholly secular interpretation of apocalypse - in fact, the genres merge in their vision of the ultimate terror embodying the end of the world. Science fiction has regularly explored the theme of 'this is the way the world ends' - the threat of nuclear extinction was a prevalent theme in the mid and late 20^th century, giving way in the latter decades of the century to concerns about pandemic and environmental disaster.

Within science fiction, writers have explored how people might cope with the threat of extinction - on the one hand H.G.Wells sees human kind surviving an attempted Martian invasion, on the other we have Neville Shute's "On the Beach", a bleak warning of the dangers of nuclear war which follows the last few months and last few moments of the last few survivors.

Science can lead to salvation, science can damn us to extinction. The writing can be pessimistic or optimistic - do we sink into a bunker mentality, strike out as bold conquistadors, or contrive some Noah's Ark?

Secular apocalyptic writing leads naturally into a question of pessimism or optimism. Prior to the 20^th century, we did not have the technology to extinguish human life from the planet - well, not very efficiently at any rate. Machine guns, heavy artillery, poisoned gas, and aerial bombardment demonstrated in the 1914-18 War just how effective the slaughter could become.

Hitler then proved that we had both the administrative skills, the mentality of blind obedience, and the industrial capacity to eradicate whole sections of humanity. Hiroshima and Nagasaki unleashed the potential of apocalypse on an unprecedented scale and, throughout the Cold War and beyond, remain bywords for human extinction.

But in warfare, man is at least the active participant in slaughter. The immediate aftermath of the First World War saw a major flu pandemic kill millions across the globe. In the course of the 20^th century we've learned that neither war nor plague respect boundaries. We've now discovered that even our passive lives have a lasting impact on the Earth's ecology - while people might recycle the odd bottle or newspaper, it would be political suicide for any elected government to tax fuel or restrict land, sea and air travel enough to reduce pollution to the point where we could postpone environmental collapse, never mind reverse the process.

Faced with environmental disaster, it's quite natural that the role of the writer (and of art in general) should embrace concerns about survival. Given the recent dramatic growth in literacy and education, given the parallel impact of photography, film, television, the Internet, global communications systems, and the limitless potential of technology, it's not surprising that concerns about human survival should not only remain major themes in literature and the arts, but should take on a full-blown political dimension.

Has apocalyptic writing moved from the religious or sacred to the political?

As a writer, you have to recognise the political context of your writing. Many of the apocalyptic novels of the past have been passively political - they serve up warnings, they pose moral questions, but they do not embrace any partisan political stance.

What happens, then, when we are confronted with the collapse of ideologies? We've seen extremes of corruption and evil in any number of totalitarian regimes, but does anyone have any real faith in democracy? Can we trust conventional political parties to do anything other than feather their own nests and strive to remain in power? Lack of vision and deafness to warnings are the symptoms of a pandemic of apathy and narrow interest.

Do you view the future with optimism or pessimism? In writing about apocalypse, do you look to the breakdown of human society as being caused by social ills (apathy, totalitarian government, consumerism, the secularisation of life, Thatcher, Blair, Bush, whatever)?

Do you hope that survival will bring out the best in us?

Do you present warnings of the future in terms of bleak certainties or do you offer up a manifesto for change?

Do you suggest that we have the potential to discover our own, secular salvation - that collapse will lead to reconstruction?

Do you bury your head in the sand and believe that your god will save you?

Do you suspect that if the human world was largely wiped out tomorrow we would survive in isolated cells of self-interest and it would take centuries before a new wave of philosophers emerged to question ethics and values and purpose?

The history we learn is very much one of emergence from apocalypse - the classical era is seen as giving us Plato, Aristotle, Socrates … the role of philosophy and learning, with respect for the primacy of the human intellect suddenly emerging in a handful of Greek states faced with external threat and the possibility of extinction.

The Romans give us the triumph of engineering and the centralised state. We become lost (so the story goes) in the so-called 'Dark Ages', with Western civilisation kept afloat by the monasteries, before we reach the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of art and literature and thought, and the intellectual questioning of the Reformation.

And then (in what's been described as 'the Whig interpretation of history') we grow more and more civilised through science and education, the darkness is behind us and we move towards the light. History is often portrayed as the battle between gloom and glory, triumph and defeat … human life inevitably leading (evolving) to some perfect state.

Apocalyptic writing leads quite naturally into writing about utopia or about dystopia - representing dystopia as the root of apocalypse is quite logical, but does it also allow you the opportunity to search for utopia, to discover the best of human potential, to unearth an ideal alternative?

In the 14^th century, if you were a simple peasant in a European village, awareness that the Black Death was spreading across the continent may not have been possible (or even relevant), but if it was in the next village you would be well aware that you were facing imminent death and the likelihood of the extinction of your family and friends. Would there be any room for concern about the survival of 'civilisation' … or would you blindly hope to wake up in 'heaven' and eternal happiness?

We might today have a much broader, better informed view of pandemic, holocaust, nuclear obliteration, or whatever, but apocalypse is no more nor no less real to us today than it was to the 14^th century peasant … or, indeed, to any primitive Stone Age human caught in a famine or natural disaster or outbreak of disease.

We are mortal. We die. And we are aware of the certainty of death. How we make the best of life, how we make things better for our children, how we cope with the horrors real life throws at us - these are recurrent themes in our lives. They are part of our consciousness, they are certainly not the monopoly of writers and artists. But they are inevitably themes which the human imagination has explored, from time immemorial, whether in dreams, in neurosis, in religion, in politics, or in art.

What science has bequeathed to us is the recognition that change is possible, that we can shape our own destinies. Modern medicine enables many of us to postpone death, modern science provides us with solutions and opportunities primitive humans could not even dream of. Conversely, the Stone Age or medieval warrior could only kill people he could physically encounter - the modern warrior can destroy whole cities on the other side of the planet.

I've lived through the Cold War, with two massively powerful armed camps poised on the abyss of mutual assured destruction - you might destroy us, but we'll destroy you (and probably extinguish life from the planet). We continue to endure the threat of nuclear war, but now we have a 'war on terror' to take our minds off the fact. Can we really trust, not just the politicians, but their electorates to make rational choices, to act in a 'just' fashion, to pursue human good rather than self-interest?

What we have, today, is a confrontation between an ideological belief that, because we are rational beings, matters are best left to 'the free market', to some logical emergence of a better, richer world, or, alternatively, the fear that self-interest and greed will drive us deeper into the blind consumption of increasingly scarce resources and the inevitable consequences of nations and empires destroying one another as they try to protect their share of a finite pie.

How do we regulate greed, or even demand? How do we reach consensus on action to save the planet when we can't even stop a single war? How do we collaborate? How do we organise? How do we take action?

It's seductively tempting to see apocalypse as a solution - if only a handful of people are left, we can start again, we can get it right next time. Shame about the billions of dead, but, hey, you can't make an omelette without seeing the yoke!

Trouble is, who survives? Do you think they will all be 'good' people? Do you think the survivors will all be committed to sharing and cooperating and collaborating to ensure world peace, altruism, and the emergence of a benevolent humanity?

In all probability, though I see myself as a 'good' person, I'd probably kill anyone who got between me and a can (never mind a hill) of beans! After the apocalypse, the personal will remain political.

So is there a 21^st century apocalypse?

Apocalyptic writings voice the concerns of their times. The Christian bible records historical concerns about the extinction or absorption of Jewish culture, from prehistory through to colonisation by the Roman Empire. Indeed, early Christianity presents itself as in a life or death struggle with Rome. The Book of Revelations introduces the Anti-Christ (possibly the Roman Emperor Nero) who will force the world into a final battle and confrontation between good and evil. The psychotic ramblings of Revelation's author describe the threat of extinction experienced by the early Christian Church.

Step beyond the Roman era - and Rome converted to Christianity, adopting it as the religion of Empire and using it as an imperial tool - and Revelations continues to play a dynamic role in Western myth. It has, for two thousand years, been read as prophecy … year after year, century after century, both apparently sane and clearly insane individuals have claimed to have unlocked its hidden meaning, have claimed to have heard the divine will. Year by year, century by century, their claims have fizzled into nothing - the world, for instance, did not end in the year 2000 because of some technological time bomb!

And still there remains a whole industry in the USA and beyond claiming to have finally interpreted the 'true' message of the bible or some other sacred text. It would not be unrealistic to claim that the USA nurtures a complex apocalyptic culture - from Communism as the anti-Christ, to the rise of Israel as a trigger factor in the coming Armageddon, or the Gulf Wars as evidence that the end is nigh … even the Twin Towers play into this metaphor, pitting the USA as seat of salvation, caught in a life or death struggle with the forces of darkness. (Google 'apocalypse' if you don't believe me!)

Apocalyptic writings offer warnings and messages of hope - they typically emerge when a society is facing a threat, an overwhelming threat … and plague, famine, war, etc., remain ever-present.

Empires rise and fall. The notion of the apocalypse has always been a potent motive force for political and religious leaders, agitators and fanatics - from peasant revolts to crusades and religious jihads.

Societies change - they face both external and internal threats and challenges. It's quite logical for such threats to be expressed in terms of 'apocalypse', as the danger that the status quo will be swept aside to be replaced by something alien and evil.

The threat of apocalypse becomes a threat / reward mechanism which cements elements of the society together and mobilises them to take action (as either preservers of the status quo or as agents of change, legitimised by appeal to holy or divine scripture or some shared value).

Christianity has institutionalised the metaphors of apocalypse in the Western imagination. Natural disasters, disease and plague, famine and drought, war and invasion have been familiar since time immemorial - and I make no apology for labouring this point; it's easy to use these threats to leverage apocalyptic ideas and make them credible.

You are saved if you are a true believer - when the apocalypse comes, the faithful will be beamed up to heaven, the damned will be left to endure the final turmoil as the earth ends and a new world is created, one in which sin and hardship and evil are non-existent. It's an only too simple way to terrorise people into following you!

History abounds with astronomers, astrologers, theologians, mathematicians, priests, prophets, politicians, ne'er do wells and conmen who claim to have had a revelation or to have worked out a warning hidden in the stars / dates / numbers / names / scriptures.

Again, I make no apologies for repeating myself, but over a couple of thousand years of recorded history we have scores of people who have come up with apocalyptic predictions, all complete nonsense. How huge an ego do you need to be the next one on the list, to claim that all these deluded fools got it wrong, but I'm right, because (presumably) the others were false prophets but I really am the one god has chosen to confide in?

How sad, lonely, empty and terrified an existence do you have to live if the only positive way you can make sense of things is to believe it's all going to end soon … but that you'll be saved and the others will get what's coming to them?

In a sense, therefore, we don't have a 21^st century vision of apocalypse. We simply continue, transform, and retransmit the institutionalised metaphors we have learned from time immemorial. But I also suspect we may be seeing the emergence of a new apocalyptic vision - not one based on appeal to some form of revelation, but one based on a shared recognition of logic.

Throughout the 20^th century the religious Right in the USA has opposed the teaching of evolution in schools, has insisted on a supposedly literal, fundamentalist reading of the bible. The religious Right has attacked science, yet ironically has chosen to cherry pick that same science.

The science which enables you to use a computer, to read this page on the Internet, to drive a car, catch a plane or train, make phonecalls, shop in supermarkets, watch TV or listen to the radio, even read a printed bible, is the same science which has confirmed evolutionary theory and issued warnings about environmental disaster.

If you can't accept evolution and refuse to believe in our current environmental predicament, then, please don't avail yourself of any of the trappings of the modern world because the science which enables you to eat, drink safe water, find shelter, stay warm, put clothes on your back, work, earn, spend, entertain yourself, gain an education, and keep yourself relatively safe and healthy is the same science which gives you evolution and environmental warnings.

If you think it is fundamentally flawed, your only logical response is to conclude that all modern science and technology is an illusion … so go live in a cave and drape yourself in the skins of the animals you kill for food.

Warnings of environmental or nuclear disaster are not based on scriptural interpretation or the claims of some self-appointed prophet to have been made party to divine revelation, they are based on cold blooded, factual analysis of the real world, and they are subject to rigorous inspection and challenge. The reality is that the truth is out there and we have a responsibility to listen to it and act upon it. And, of course, we won't.

Apocalyptic writing in the 21^st century will take on a new dimension. We will reinterpret history in the light of new knowledge, new ideas, new perspectives. But we will also have to come to terms with a rapidly changing world, and it is the ever accelerating speed of change which will be the governing factor - and apocalyptic writing emerges in societies experiencing threat. Any change can be threatening, and the faster life changes the more destabilising it can become.

Economic and political power is shifting to Asia. Military power will soon follow. New political, ideological, economic, military, and environmental tensions will emerge in the course of the next few decades. It's often said that generals always refight the last war - that the military is never prepared for new methods or theatres of warfare. Maybe the same is true of politics, economics, or even science. Can art be any different?

Maybe it's true about how we imagine apocalypse - much of the apocalyptic writing about the threat of nuclear war seems misplaced, seems, in retrospect, either too optimistic (in assuming there would be any survivors), or too decent (in assuming that survivors might act with propriety).

I'm left wondering if apocalyptic writing might step back from the brink - that in the face of environmental disaster (which clearly concerns me), there might not emerge a politically militant science fiction literature, concerned not with post-apocalyptic scenarios but with pre-apocalyptic ones.

"Like Fleas on a Dog's Back" is clearly post-apocalypse, but I'm developing a couple of short stories about eco-terrorism. The most famous piece of fiction in this sub-genre is probably "The Monkey Wrench Gang", but Rachel Carson's non-fiction work, "Silent Spring" also inspired some eco-terrorism.

I suspect that what we might see is an emergent science fiction which combines both a fictional narrative and a manifesto for action - capitalism and the military-industrial complex will experience escalating attacks from environmental activists and the 21^st century will be characterised not by 'democratic' states engaging in a war against 'terrorism', but by a self-disenfranchised electorate waging an eco-terrorist war in defence of the environment. Become an eco-warrior - slash car tyres, disable petrol tankers and the pump mechanisms in filling stations, or whatever (and that should get me noticed by Special Branch).

I can foresee apocalyptic writing becoming an exploration not only of how you live an environmentally sustainable life (and here we're back to the interplay between utopia and dystopia), but how you take action in support of the environment. The focus, therefore shifts to pre-apocalypse scenarios, and might therefore be strangely and ironically slightly more optimistic in tone.

Is there scope for a workshop on apocalyptic writing?

That's the question I've been asking myself in the years since I started developing this novel. It's clear to me that there is a market for apocalyptic stories. What would the world be like if it ended with a whimper tomorrow? What are the practical problems? What happens when the electricity switches off and the supermarkets empty and money ceases to have any value?

I'm half hoping that "Like Fleas on a Dog's Back" will attract the attention of other writers, that I can start putting together an apocalypse workshop - no, not a school for survivors, but an information resource and discussion base for anyone interested in writing about the subject as fiction. I'd welcome responses from other writers - I know it would have been useful for me to talk to other writers when I was starting this novel. But I'm not interested in theological debates, it's the craft and politics of writing fiction which concerns me. If it concerns you, feel free to get in touch. I welcome ideas!

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy "Like Fleas on a Dog's Back" … and, yes, I'd welcome feedback.