After the Apocalypse

(Narrator)

What runs through the mind of a dog? 

Not just a dog, but a soldier and a veteran.

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF BILL THE DOG (think of him as a soldier grunt. He speaks simply and mostly in the present tense, but with urgency:

Now.

It is quiet. I am alert. 

My pack is safe. 

I see them on the roof of the building. The large cat waits below. 

The pack is my duty. I protect the pack. I fight and die for the pack. 

I hold here out of reach of the cat, waiting. It is hot. I am thirsty and hungry. 

But I will wait. Until my new man says otherwise. 

The new man commands less than my soldier. 

The new man gives commands. 

But the woman acts like pack leader.

There is only now. There is only the mission.

I can fight. I can harass. I can run. 

But I must protect the pack. 

...

Hello my survivor friends. How’s the apocalypse going? The is Chris your host fro this apocalyptic after-party. Thank you for showing up and joining the old man and KJ for an adventure! 

https://shows.acast.com/after-the-apocalypse

I really liked Robert’s read of this one. I think he got the dialogue just right. I had written these two chapters about the animal farm in 2020 during the height of the pandemic while I was experimenting with this universe to see if it merited the effort of my attention. 

I wrote it originally as a two-parter with the cliff-hanger. This time around I tried to cram it into 1 episode but it would not be crammed so we left the original 2-parter structure with the cliff hanger and fleshed out the dialogue a bit. 

I think it works.

We are 2 episodes away from wrapping up season 1. Like I said before, we are going to take a break after episode 20 and turn the first season into a paperback, ebook and audio book. The mechanics of this are not unfamiliar to me. I have done it before, but not for a couple years. 

I contracted a starving artist to work on a cover for me and another to edit it back into book form. The difference between writing for an audio read and a regular read is minor but I think it’s worth the help. 

When I write for audio I break up the paragraphs into smaller chunks and phrases to reinforce the cadence. So I’m having a nice lady from Jamaica go through and pull some of those back together for readability. Also she’ll delete all the audio instruction notes, look for typos and blatant grammar issues, like dangling participles. 

I would love to have any of you who are readers support the book launch if you’re game. I could use typo hunters. You get a pre-release of the book. Come over and join the FaceBook group for After the Apocalypse and join the team. 

I’ll apologize for making you work hard, but There are a bunch of Facebook groups and pages called After the Apocalypse, mine is https://www.facebook.com/groups/oldmanapocalypse/

Another thing I’ll be recruiting for is a book launch team. In couple months when all this comes together I’ll need help in, for lack of a better word, marketing.  Again, FaceBook, After the apocalypse.

Since we last talked I’ve been reading a Robert Heinlein, retrospective called Requiem, which if you are interested you can procure on Thriftbooks for $5.29. It a collection of “unreleased” stories and other stuff. One of the stories is a novella he wrote in 1950 called Destination Moon.  

You may know him from his more famous works, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

This novella or short story depending on your appetite is followed by piece, penned by Heinlein about the making of a movie from the story.  

So I, curious as I am for the literary obscura, of course went out and hunted down the movie, which you can watch on Youtube.

It’s interesting because it is such a time capsule, (pun intended), of a sort of religion of hard science that came out of American engineering culture in this post world-war 2 time. This golden age of science fiction. 

Heinlein was involved in the movie production and they worked really hard to make sure that the science of it made sense. That the gravity and the exit velocities and all the other stuff actually made sense. It ends up as almost a documentary of sorts. 

These guys were one of the big influences in turning the American cultural knobs towards space. Cheerleading, if you will, that going to the moon was not fantasy, not fiction, but science. And if the incompetent bureaucratic government would just get out of the way of industrialists and engineers it be done. And it could be done before the Russians did it!

But, it’s a great example of what the sci-fi of the time was all about. They loved hard science. They thought every problem could be solved by smart, brave, independent minded engineers. It was this vision of reimagining the world as a fact-based, science-based libertarianism. 

Heinlein is famous for the following quote:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

And, yes, if all this sounds sort of pseudo religious, religions were founded based on this scientific-libertarianism. These guys believed that the soft-sciences of psychiatry and religion could be fed into the logically precise meat grinder of science, and that what came out the other end would be free of all the emotional clap-trap of society. 

I bet you’ve all heard of Dianetics which grew out of this process by golden age sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard. But, you probably haven’t heard of the Church of All Worlds a neopagan religion that was founded in California (of course, because all the crazy head for the coasts) based on the writings of Robert Heinlein. 

So, I guess the moral here is be careful what you imagine, be careful what you write, be careful what you believe because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. These golden age writers, by pouring their beliefs and realism into their writings made them compelling, more than stories for boys, and, quite literally, changed the world. 

Sorry for the long screed, but I find it all very interesting and thought you might too.

Remember to make a donation at the Patreon Group, I am reading extra credit stories into audio for members there. 

Join the Facebook group and volunteer to be a typo hunter or a member of the book launch team.

Maybe you and I can change the world.

But above all else, put one foot in front of the other, confront each morning with joy and Keep Surviving.