Slans

Finished reading: AD16

Speaking of apocalyptic literature, I've just finished reading a "apocalypse" story called World War Z by Max Brooks. The premise of the novel is a "Zombie Holocaust" -- Zombies overwhelm the world and humanity struggles against them. The book is written in the form of individual accounts. The fun part is that if you look carefully, you can see George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Paris Hilton, Bill Maher, Ann Coulter, Colin Powell, Howard Dean and others and find out how -- and if -- they survived "World War Z".

(* * *)

We're back in the proverbial saddle for about five more parts of "Apocalyptic Daria".

Daria and Jane prepare to leave the swinging bachelor bad and get on the road, with clean clothes (from a working washer and drier) and hit the road listening to the sounds of Ray Stevens and Weird Al Yankovich.

While on the road, the two find a pack of dogs eating some large animal. They don't know what it is, but first Jane and then Dari begin firing on the dogs. Some dogs are killed, and some are wounded, and Jane determines that the animal might be a horse or a cow. Daria wants to try to kill as many dogs as possible, but Jane convinces Daria to let it go.

The two drive to a refugee center at a Methodist church in a town called Carthage, looking for a doctor for Daria's wounds. They meet Dr. Kathy Wilson, who as it turns out is a fan of survivalist novels and happens to be stocked up with rabies vaccine. (Daria is concerned that she might have contracted rabies from the scratch.)

Unfortunately for Daria and Jane, Dr. Wilson insists that Daria take the full course of the rabies treatment, which is five shots over twenty-eight days. Daria and Jane resign themselves to remaining in Carthage over the course of the next month.

(* * *)

We've already categorized some of the sins of "Apocalyptic Daria" and I'll simply mark a tally and go on:

Lesbian fanservice: 1
Daria crying: 1
Needless exposition: 1

However, none of those sins are egregious enough to spoil the series for me. Besides, this segment of AD is a little bit of filler designed to move the plot forward and get the Dynamic Duo to the next stop on the Apocalypse Train. We'll take a look at Carthage next time when we review AD17.

"Ben Raines" is mentioned in this story -- he was also mentioned in one of the earlier comments threads -- and I looked into the writings of William W. Johnstone, the man who wrote a series called the "Ashes" series with the title of every book "X in/from/of the Ashes". Johnstone must have written two hundred books of various genres in the period slightly over twenty years, which makes me wonder how good any of those books could be. (I remember reading a few books of "The Executioner" series by Don Pendleton, a series which would partially inspire Marvel Comics to create "The Punisher", so I'm not immune to the charms of a well-crafted pulp.)

There are a couple of theories as to why apocalypseliterature is so mesmerizing, and neither of them are flattering. The first sort of comes from the "fans are slans" attitude of science fiction from the 1950s. A "Slan" was a sort of superbeing invented by science fiction author A. E. van Vogt, and fans of the time invented the slogan "fans aer slans" -- namely, that science fiction fans are, well, smarter and better than the "mundane" non-fans out there. The theory is that many of these apocalypse fans see themselves in the "smarter and better" group, namely, "when the world falls apart, I will survive, because I've seen 'A Boy and His Dog'."

The other theory comes from Kurt Vonnegut. In "Hocus Pocus", part of the plot deals with the escape of several black prison inmates into a college town. The racial element is important, because Vonnegut writes that the hunkered-down inhabitants of the rural college town finally had what they had secretly wanted -- to turn the entire area into a "free-fire zone" where killing the kinds of people you had never liked was legal and justified.

In the same sense, one could hypothesize that apocalyptic literature appeals to the same wish-fulfillment -- that now that society has collapse, I can get my boomstick and "the world will be cleansed", becoming a place where I can be James Bond 2007 with a "license to kill".

I suppose my big problem with apocalypse lit is that I never experience the sheer terror of what a post-apocalyptic setting would be like. Johnstone's hero in "Ashes" is a mercenary, f'r pete's sake, undoubtedly skilled with all kinds of firearms. I can load a gun and fire one, but I'd no sooner call myself a gunfighter than put on a cowboy hat and strap a six-shooter to my side.

The closest anyone ever got to describing post-apocalyptic terror was Stephen King in the first half of "The Stand" -- the half I could read before the religious/metaphysical part of the book kicks in and it becomes standard horror-book tripe. Max Brook's "World War Z" comes close to what King accomplished.

What did they do that other apocalypse writers fail to do? They convey the fact that you can do everything right and still die, that life in the post-apocalypse is grossly unfair, that the strongest men perish and the weakest somehow surive, and that without society, like is nasty, brutish and short and we are all playthings of chance.