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3W4DW: Defcon 'Verse Introduction
Apr. 25th, 2011 11:31 pmAs I mentioned in an earlier post, back in December 2009, I stumbled across some reprints of the first few books in the Endworld series. This rekindled my interest in post-apocalyptic stories, particularly the cheesy men's adventure stories (like Endworld) written back in the 1980s. And I got it in my head that I wanted to write my own homage/parody/riff on such books, putting my own particular spin on the tropes they used and feature characters who weren't straight, white, cisgendered American men with 1980s-style middle-class, conservative values (even guys who were born into a world 100+ years after 1980s-style, middle-class, conservative values got nuked into dust).
So, I went on the hunt for examples of the genre, figuring that I should have a nice sampling of what was out there to better be able to parody/riff on things. Since, y'know, nothing is more annoying than a parody written by someone who only thinks they know what they're talking about. I set my mind to collecting 10 series, preferably all the first books of each, to get a good sampling. I've ended up with...more than 10 series. Some are surprisingly good but most are...problematic, to say the least.
To be honest, a lot of this was cat-vaccuming since it was a lot easier to read novels and take notes and think thinky thoughts than it was to actually write something. I'm hoping to change this by posting during Three Weeks For Dreamwidth. What I'll be posting will be some background materials – what amounts to a story bible for my world. Because I'm finding that I need to have the history/setting of the world down before my brain is going to let me move ahead and start playing with my characters. I'm planning on posting some snippets of story ideas that are fiction rather than meta – or at least of posting some background stuff that's fictionalized meta.
Here's the least amount you need to know in order to follow along: the Defcon verse is a post-apocalyptic alternate history set in 2083, one hundred years after a series of mishaps and misunderstandings started a nuclear war that devestated the planet. The main setting is the United States of America, which is now a balkanized country still struggling toward recovery. Some areas are better off than others – specifically, Las Vegas is now the new headquarters for what is the recognized continuation of the pre-war US government and is the staging area for attempts at assisting the rest of the country in recovery. Some areas are more receptive to this assistance than others, especially since a lot of the help is coming from the newest incarnation of the UN – which is dominated by nations from the Southern Hemisphere as well as some former Third World nations in the Northern Hemisphere that managed to bounce back faster than the former superpowers. And there are transgenic artificially engineered humans because any good 1980s-style post-apocalyptic adventure novel needs mutants and super-science.
Some of this may be subject to change as I start getting my thoughts written down and posted, but for now, this is where my head's at. Please feel free to post questions, comments, critiques or suggestions.
So, I went on the hunt for examples of the genre, figuring that I should have a nice sampling of what was out there to better be able to parody/riff on things. Since, y'know, nothing is more annoying than a parody written by someone who only thinks they know what they're talking about. I set my mind to collecting 10 series, preferably all the first books of each, to get a good sampling. I've ended up with...more than 10 series. Some are surprisingly good but most are...problematic, to say the least.
To be honest, a lot of this was cat-vaccuming since it was a lot easier to read novels and take notes and think thinky thoughts than it was to actually write something. I'm hoping to change this by posting during Three Weeks For Dreamwidth. What I'll be posting will be some background materials – what amounts to a story bible for my world. Because I'm finding that I need to have the history/setting of the world down before my brain is going to let me move ahead and start playing with my characters. I'm planning on posting some snippets of story ideas that are fiction rather than meta – or at least of posting some background stuff that's fictionalized meta.
Here's the least amount you need to know in order to follow along: the Defcon verse is a post-apocalyptic alternate history set in 2083, one hundred years after a series of mishaps and misunderstandings started a nuclear war that devestated the planet. The main setting is the United States of America, which is now a balkanized country still struggling toward recovery. Some areas are better off than others – specifically, Las Vegas is now the new headquarters for what is the recognized continuation of the pre-war US government and is the staging area for attempts at assisting the rest of the country in recovery. Some areas are more receptive to this assistance than others, especially since a lot of the help is coming from the newest incarnation of the UN – which is dominated by nations from the Southern Hemisphere as well as some former Third World nations in the Northern Hemisphere that managed to bounce back faster than the former superpowers. And there are transgenic artificially engineered humans because any good 1980s-style post-apocalyptic adventure novel needs mutants and super-science.
Some of this may be subject to change as I start getting my thoughts written down and posted, but for now, this is where my head's at. Please feel free to post questions, comments, critiques or suggestions.
