Ten Works of Science Fiction That Will Bring You to Tears or Heal Your Heart

Science fiction has been called many things, but I doubt that “highly emotional” is a label regularly applied. Even now – surrounded as we are by gadgets and gizmos so high-tech as to be almost unfathomable, living with and dependent on technology unarguably resembles a not-so-bygone vision of the far future, in which what was scientifically unthinkable yesterday need not necessarily be that way today, whereby science fiction’s terminology and motifs have become a kind-of shorthand for explaining and understanding the world we live in – the genre still too-often falls prey to accusations of shallowness, style-over-substance and spectacle-over-intimacy. It might often get a big tick for the inventiveness of its ideas, and another for its literariness and another for its socio-cultural influence, but it is sometimes still too easy to describe it as “emotionally dishonest.”

However, what’s true for some isn’t necessarily true for all. As an inquisitive and thoughtful reader, who doesn’t mind occasionally having a cry or having my sense of wonder reignited, I’ve been fascinated by science fiction’s potential to genuinely engage our emotions and move us deeply. After all, it just makes sense – one of the genre’s concerns is reframing the world we live in by asking a “what if?” question, opening our eyes to what is by showing us what it might be. And “what if?” is an emotional human question as old as time, followed closely by “what might have been?” If the big ideas and fantastical situations integral to science fiction are guided towards their emotional impact rather than their technological or physical, the results can sometimes bring us to tears or heal our hearts. They can show us our feelings anew by scrubbing away their regular contexts and then holding them up to the light; they can makes us remember that love persists, no matter what; they can remind us that simple human charity and kindness can exist even in the darkest times.

What the Family Needed by Steven Amsterdam

 What the Family Needed isn’t exactly science fiction per se (and so we’ll get it out of the way first), but it is undeniably based on ideas and concepts born of science fiction: superheroes. But it isn’t any old superhero story – Amsterdam makes a counterintuitive move and does away with the concepts of both a super-villain and the capital-H hero, concepts central to the sub-genre. Instead, the characters in What the Family Needed are simply normal people that just happen to possess superpowers. This conceit is almost unique and absolutely incredible, and will have you crying like the proverbial babe.

A family drama and story-cycle at heart, it follows, over the course of thirty-odd years, the lives of sisters Ruth and Natalie, their parents and their own children. Each chapter focuses on a different family member at a different point in time, detailing their struggles to cope with the stresses of their life and the interwoven nature of the extended family. During these struggles, each member inexplicably develops a typical superhero-style superpower – invisibility, flight, super-strength, psychic powers, time travel, etc. But unlike typical superheroes, no one in the family uses their powers to fight crime or protect the innocent. Instead, their powers act as metaphors for their internal and external lives. For example: Giordana, a typically awkward teenager torn between her warring parents, often wishes that she could disappear, and subsequently develops the power of invisibility; beleaguered mother Natalie, exhausted from the stresses of her life, develops super-strength; Ben, feeling trapped by domestic life and fatherhood, develops the power of flight; and so on.

While these power might seem to help each member better deal with their struggles – invisibility lets Giordana disappear, super-strength allows Natalie to carry her burden, flight gives Ben the ability to fly away – they ultimately prove inconsequential to the resolution of the family members’ struggles. The result of this is astounding, because it is so easily relatable – our own “powers,” be they intelligence or athleticism or practicality or beauty – matter not one whit when it comes to dealing with our own similar struggles. They can us at the most inopportune moments or prove more a hindrance than a help. Love is what really matters when it comes to families, alongside kindness, compassion, patience, affection, perseverance, understanding and acceptance. These are the things that all families need, the real superpowers that can help us on our own way. Who can’t relate to that?

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

If you were to draw from a line from Nietzsche’s philosophy of “eternal return” to Rust Cohle’s utterance in True Detective that “time is a flat circle – everything we’ve ever done or will do, we’re gonna do over and over and over again,” you would find Slaughterhouse-Five smack-bang in the middle. Vonnegut’s most influential and acclaimed work, it sets out the themes and concerns that would dominate the entirety of his oeuvre: the futility of war, the relationship between love and hate, the uncaring unfairness of life, free will versus fate, that old maxim “no regrets,” and apathy/passivity in the face of events beyond our control.

Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck in time.” A veteran of World War 2, rescued prisoner-of-war and survivor of the firebombing of Dresden, who will go on to be adducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore and put on display in their zoo, he periodically and involuntarily becomes detached from the present and drifts through the chronology of his life. He witnesses his past, present and future – from the horror of interment in Dresden shortly before the bombing (events that Vonnegut also experienced), to the banality and absurdity of his post-war life, to his eventual abduction – and comes to understand that instead of existing as multiple points on a line, these events, along with every other event that has been or will be, are actually points on a circle spinning endlessly. They are occurring simultaneously, their sense of historicity existing purely because of perspective. For Billy, with understanding comes acceptance, of his inability to change his past, of the fact that all he can really do is the best he can, of the cruelty of an uncaring universe, in the insignificance of his place in the universal machine.

To go on would do it injustice. It is a beautiful work – virtuosic, unique, inventive, heart wrenching, and equal parts frightening and funny – and it exists beyond comparison. Vonnegut was a singular writer, and Slaughterhouse-Five is a singular work.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A work of grim horror and dazzling beauty, McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic father-and-son story was both a commercial and critical success. An unashamed genre work embraced by a broad general audience to a degree almost unheard of in recent memory, it is quite possibly the one piece of science fiction that people who hate science fiction have read. Referred to simply as “the man” and “the boy,” the father and son of The Road traverse a dead America rendered as such by an unidentified apocalypse. Theirs is a desperate and violent world, their lives solely consisting of searching for food, water and shelter, and evading other survivors who have banded together and reverted to cannibalism. Dark indeed…

And yet within this darkness, McCarthy creates a light so bright as to blind us. This is no surprise – from the beginning, McCarthy makes plain that The Road is really about nothing more than the bond between father and son, and the lengths a father will go to in order to ensure his son’s safety. It is this bond and these lengths that gives it emotional heft, and that ultimately brings us to tears. The unthinkable things that the man does in order to protect the boy; his unswerving dedication to the boy’s wellbeing, even at the expense of his own; the burning love that he feels and the way that this love keeps them from descending into savagery; they will break even the hardest heart. And this is where the post-apocalyptic nature of The Road becomes so successful – thanks to this setting, the aforementioned concerns and dedication of a parent towards a child, which are simple and everyday emotions, are elevated to an extreme seldom seen in literature.

Happiness TM by Will Ferguson

Satirical, philosophical and wickedly funny in equal measure, Happiness TM employs the science fiction trope of a dystopia disguised as a utopia. This trope usually works in one of two ways: people only believe their utopia to be so because they don’t know any better; or their utopia depends on the subjugation of a minority. However, Ferguson subverts these methods in a delightfully unexpected way – in his utopia, people know how and why it works, and there is no subjugation of a minority. And herein lies its problem.

To explain: Edwin, a frustrated book editor looking to plug a hole in his publishing schedule, finds in his slush pile a self-help book entitled What I Learned on the Mountain. Left with no choice but to release it, he does so, expecting it to sink without trace. But this isn’t the case, as it becomes a raging success and, furthermore, it actually works – 99% of its readers find themselves utterly transformed by it, and find that their lives have suddenly become completely fulfilled. As a consequences, society as we know it crumbles: with true happiness attained, those affected by What I Learned on the Mountain become akin to zombies and have nothing left to strive for, their “happiness” resembling a kind-of Zen emptiness. Guilty pleasures that help get us through the night end up, or help ease the pain of life, end up falling by the wayside – the tobacco and alcohol industries become bankrupted, fast food empires follow suit, and before too long the market for every other consumerist pleasure collapses. Edwin, however, is one of the few unaffected, and so sets about righting the wrongs that he has unleashed.

If this theme sounds more than a little familiar, that’s because it is effectively an explication of the concept of yin and yang. Without balance, without an opposite state to define our current state, we are left with nothing but a meaningless concept made so because it exists in isolation. In other words, without sadness to act as a comparison, happiness is just a word rather a state of being. Heavy stuff, yes, but Ferguson’s sharp wit and eye for the absurd mean that Happiness TM becomes truly moving and easily digestible, and will make us look at our lives and belief systems anew.

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

While sneered at by many fans of science fiction because of its emphasis on love and romantic relationships, The Time Traveller’s Wife is a profoundly moving work with an ingenious science fiction conceit: Henry DeTamble randomly and involuntarily travels back and forth in time, as he suffers from a (fictional) genetic disorder known as Chrono-Impairment. However, rather than focussing on the search for a cure for this disorder, or the historical/cultural/social implications of his travels through time, or any number of other typical science fiction plot devices driven by the theme of time travel, Niffenegger instead focuses on the implications Henry’s disorder has on his relationship with his wife, Clare Anne Abshire.

A plot device that is perhaps unique in the annals of science fiction, it allows Niffenegger to examine a well-worn theme typically found in romantic fiction, without referring to cliché or sentimentality: how love can persevere and even flourish in the face of challenges, adversity and calamity. And she does so beautifully and intelligently, even when Henry’s travels through time take him and Clare to some exceedingly dark places. In the end, if you’ll forgive me for quoting Huey Lewis and the News, it’s all about the power of love, something that we should all believe in.

The Humans by Matt Haig

The Humans, my favourite book of all time, reverses the typical alien encounter trope common to science fiction: despite being set right here on Earth, we are the “aliens” thanks to Haig’s plot contrivances.

To summarise: Andrew Martin, a maths professor, has devised an equation that will advance humanity’s technological progress dramatically, and the Vonnadorians, alien beings that act as intergalactic observers, decide that humanity isn’t ready for this acceleration. And so they send one of their own to remove this new knowledge by killing Martin, destroying the physical and digital evidence of his breakthrough, assuming his physical identity through the use of alien technology and thus assuming his role as a husband, father and teacher, and then determining who Martin shared this knowledge with it so they can also be killed.

This set up allows Haig to craft a narrative that begins with cynical humour before moving into something approaching wonder and awe. Initially, the Vonnadorian impostor is bewildered and disgusted by humanity: he cannot understand why we do some of the ridiculous and contradictory things we do, why our lives sometimes seem devoted to trivia, why we seem so obsessed with the negative sides of our being, and why we seem so devoted to such unlikely-seeming things as dogs, sport and junk food. However, as he slowly grows into his role as a human, he learns to love and to loathe, to feel joy and sorrow, to experience pleasure and pain, excitement and boredom. In other words, he learns what it is to be human.

To the reader, the effect of this is incredible – the things that he learns remind us how incredible and how dull being alive really is. We come to see that life is both good and bad, rational and irrational, serious and nonsensical – that it just is what it is. And in the end, we come to see that The Humans is a panacea for our own troubled times, reminding us that even at a point in history in which there often seems to be nothing but darkness and crisis all around, our very nature will always allow us to carry on with a smile.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

The Dog Stars tells the story of Hig and Bangley, survivors of a global pandemic that has wiped out almost everyone else on Earth. As people, they couldn’t be any more different – Hig still mourns the loss of humanity, and is frequently plagued by survivor’s guilt; Bangley is a misanthropic “hard case” relishing his role as a survivor, who often taunts Hig for his soft-heartedness. However, despite these differences they form a relationship that evolves from necessity born of their ability to help each other, to something much deeper: best friends who deeply care for one another, and rely on each other for emotional support rather than just survival. They become metaphorical brothers, whose differences in attitude and outlook have little bearing on the bond they share.

In other words, The Dog Stars is a book that both encapsulates the cliché of “a burden shared is a burden halved” and explores the notion of friendship found in the unlikeliest of places. It denies the common science fiction theme that in a post-apocalyptic world all that will remain is savagery and brutality – the post-apocalyptic world that Heller creates still contains hope, and those who dwell in it come to realise that there is more to their lives than an unfeeling heart made so by the constant fight to stay alive. There is no better example of this than in Bangley’s growing awareness that he needs Hig more for emotional support than physical, especially after Hig reciprocates these feelings – the end result it beautifully optimistic and absolutely staggering.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

A tender and kind work, Flowers for Algernon tells the story of Charlie Gordon, a simple-minded man with a dramatically low IQ who works as a cleaner/sweeper at his local bakery. Invited to take part in an experimental surgical procedure that will dramatically increase his intelligence, he duly accepts and finds himself slowly elevated to the level of “genius,” experiencing a hitherto unknown intellectual ability.

Structured as a series of diary entries in his own hand detailing his life before and after the experiment, Charlie comes to understand, thanks to his expanded awareness, that intelligence doesn’t necessarily equal happiness. Given a new home after the experiment, he adopts Algernon, an extraordinarily smart mouse who was the experiment’s first subject. A bond forms between them, Charlie’s rapidly growing intelligence and understanding meaning that he views Algernon as both a friend and a precedent. Charlie learns a new life – very much emotionally a child, he learns that not all is what it seems, that the jokes and nicknames that he once thought of as affectionate are in fact meant in mockery, that people lie and cheat and can be ridiculously contradictory, that what he once thought of as patient kindness was actually patronising cruelty. But he also finds hope, and love, and art, and friendship, and humanity at its best. He learns that life is both good and bad, and that neither can exist without the other. And then he learns that Algernon has started ailing and is beginning to revert to his natural, ordinary-mouse state…

Here are just a few of the emotions felt while accompanying Charlie on his journey: happiness, shame, perseverance, acceptance, hope, anger, heartbreak, regret, perseverance, sadness, joy, love, frustration, guilt and pride. Once read, it will never be forgotten, and you will be changed for the better.

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

 The second Kurt Vonnegut book on this list (Vonnegut being an author who specialised in using science fiction to explore highly emotional and humanist territory), Timequake was his last book, and a return to a genre that he mostly abandoned for many years in favour of realist, meta and speculative fiction. Centred on the kind-of genius science fiction concept that evokes jealousy in other writers working in the genre, it uses this concept as a springboard to explore the age-old maxims “seize the day” and “no regrets.”

In the depths of space, a mysterious cosmic event occurs that sends shockwaves across the universe, and here on Earth these shockwaves cause every single person to travel 10 years into the past. So far, so science fiction. However, this particular science fiction set-up doesn’t allow for anyone to change the future-to-come or change their own lives based on what they know will happen. Instead, they experience this repeated decade exactly as it unfolded the first time, forced to carry out every decision and action in the same way they did before they time travelled, fully aware of the consequences of these decisions and actions and yet unable to affect any change whatsoever. And then the repeated decade comes to an end and “real” life resumes, and all hell breaks loose – suddenly imbued with free will after years of paralysis, most people just don’t know what to do with themselves and succumb to depression and ennui. One of the few people unaffected is Kilgore Trout – the book’s central character, a recurring character in Vonnegut’s work, and a satirical stand-in for the author himself – who upon regaining free will tries to help those affected by stating, “you were sick, but now you’re well, and there’s work to do.”

As is probably obvious by now, Timequake is all about free will versus determinism, acceptance of the things we got right and the things we got wrong, seizing the day, not being defined by our history or our mistakes, and helping others when we can. While reading it, we just know that it was written by someone accepting their mortality, who knows that their end is drawing closer, who knows that sometimes what really matters isn’t what we did but what we do with the time we have left. It will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you rethink what you do with your own remaining days.

Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam

The second Steven Amsterdam book on this list – much like Kurt Vonnegut, Amsterdam is an author who specialises in using science fiction and speculative fiction to explore highly emotional and humanist territory – Things We Didn’t See Coming will return hope to your heart, and acts as an antidote to the bleak darkness that pervades so much post-apocalyptic fiction. A small-scale story-cycle covering almost the entirety of its unnamed narrator’s life, it gives us a glimpse of a world wracked by cascading natural disasters caused by climate change. I use the word “glimpse” because said narrator is usually too busy surviving this world to bother detailing it, and herein lies the book’s genius – while surviving this world, he also devotes his time and energy to helping others less fortunate than himself. However, unlike much post-apocalyptic fiction in which the protagonist helps others because he is more an archetypal hero than a grounded character, or because doing so is a means to an end, the narrator of Things We Didn’t See Coming helps others simply because he finds himself in positions to do so and offering help is just what must be done. He refuses to give up hope, refuses to let a wracked and ravaged world drag him down to the level of a beast, and refuses to let it strip him of his humanity.

Amsterdam’s moving debut reassures us that a spark of light can still exist even after all else is dark, echoing numerous instances throughout history in which ordinary people have held their heads high and lent a hand when their world seems base, cruel and savage. It is a testament to human endurance and human kindness, and is absolutely devastating.

(Originally published on duffythewriterblog, 3/2/2018)

Advertisement

Don’t Believe the Hype

When it comes to long-delayed sequels, we sometimes have to be careful what we wish for. And we have to be especially careful when what is being reintroduced (book, film, TV show, comic, video game—let’s just call it the ‘product’) has moved from the realm of fiction into the world of mass culture, or has a specific social/cultural/generational appeal, or one that transcends boundaries. The deeper the original product’s claws dig into us—as either individuals, members of a particular social/cultural/generational group, or as people in general—the more fraught its reintroduction.

This is because deeply embedded products resonate with us for reasons beyond just the strength of their stories. Instead, these reasons may be personal (you encountered the product at a time in your life when it seemed to ‘speak’ to you); historical (the product may have pioneered a new narrative format or new technologies, or established a brand new business model); societal (the terminology, themes, situations or conundrums originally belonging to the product now have real- world applications); or cultural (the product connects to the wider world in general and to certain cultural types in particular, through things like catchphrases, identification, external references, and obsessive fan worship).

Personal examples are a good way to illustrate this. I grew up watching Doctor Who (1963–2016); my mum parked me in front of it so that she could get the dinner on, and consequently its reintroduction in 2005 was to me both highly exciting and potentially disastrous. As a genre-fan who likes to peek behind the curtain, I’m always somewhat aware when watching a contemporary genre film of the business models pioneered by classic genre films like Jaws (1975) and Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) and the future-defining technologies pioneered by those like The Thing (1982) and Jurassic Park (1993), and can’t help but see their still-continuing ripples. As someone who grew up with these classic genre films, I live in a world where the suffix ‘zilla’ is used to label anything monstrous or destructive; where the term ‘Star Wars’ is used for actual space-based weaponry, and where the word ‘TARDIS’ is used to describe anything overly full, from the bottom drawer in the kitchen to the stereotypical handbag. And lastly, as someone who walks the line between Generations X and Y, I live in a world that is also absolutely and unarguably intertextual, intertwined and post-modern, where words and metaphors like those shown above are a part of some people’s everyday conversation, where it seems like everything references everything else and genre classics are just part of the mix.

However, despite the different reasons underlining a particular product’s resonance, the dangers involved in its reintroduction are almost always the same: an expectation builds, fed by the hype that is an inevitable part of the mass-media machine and by our own individual viewpoints, connections and anticipatory excitement regarding the product in question. This is why we have to make sure that we don’t believe the hype, and this is why we have to be careful what we wish for: do we want something that is new or old? Do we want something that is unashamedly contemporary or something that embraces nostalgia? Do we want something that looks backwards and is chained by the original? Or do we want something that looks forward, and is inspired by the original?

All of this brings us, in a roundabout way, to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Both the original Star Wars series (1977–1983) and the original Mad Max series (1979–1985) have become deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness—they both

perfectly exemplify the times in which they were made and incorporate the aesthetics, costuming, story-types, filmmaking styles and thematic undercurrents that were fashionable back then. Even a brief example shows this: the Star Wars series’ ‘lived in’ universe is the perfect summation of the ‘grungy’ science fiction look of the 1970s, and Star Wars’ success at pushing it to the fore meant that it became de rigueur for much of the next decade. Likewise, the look and feel of the original Mad Max series is unarguably and trash-tastically ‘80s: the films are filled with punk attitudes, punk costume designs, DIY filmmaking techniques, gleeful destruction, lots of explosions, epic rock songs, singers-turned-actors and moral ambiguities.

Their overall aesthetic was copied by thousands of B-grade directors in their shameless attempts at cashing in on its success: a punk-inspired post-apocalyptic world where everything but black leather is in short supply. And so, even though Star Wars is much more deeply embedded, Mad Max still exists in our cultural consciousness and still resonates with us.

Because of these resonances, and because Fury Road and The Force Awakens were set to be released within roughly six-months of each other, the aforementioned mass-media hype machine began to overload shortly after production commenced on both, flooding the market with images, teasers, trailers, spoilers, casting announcements and concept art, all vague enough to hint at the potential for both greatness and disaster. And so the hype began to overtake us: it was exciting that these films were coming, and easy to get lost speculating on what the final products might be like and so forget to ask what we really wanted from them. This excitement for something new, modified by our own individual preferences and predilections, meant that our shared expectations were both great in size and amorphous and vague, with everyone wanting something different from the final products. Both films rose to these challenges, but they did so in very different ways.

With Fury Road, director George Miller chose to dramatically expand the boundaries of the post-apocalyptic world that he created with the original trilogy. This seems like a counterintuitive move, as the original settings were isolated and small-scale, befitting the series’ post-apocalyptic trappings. But it worked: the world of Fury Road is one where mini-cities trade with other mini-cities, where a type of religion has arisen, where the settlements are so established that class structures and social hierarchies have emerged. Gone are the isolated outposts of yore; Fury Road is rich with life and people, crazed and desperate though they may be. This wasn’t Miller’s first counterintuitive move, though—he also chose not to feature any actors from the original trilogy, apart from actor Hugh Keays-Byrne (who played Toecutter in Mad Max and Immortan Joe in Fury Road, two completely different characters). By doing away with any cameos, Miller effectively severed one of the links between old and new, a risky proposition in an age when surprising and not-so-surprising cameos are the norm, and obvious shout-outs and blatant references are the new black.

Instead, by casting a completely different actor as the eponymous Max and creating brand new antagonists and supporting characters, Miller leaves it up to us to accept the film on its standalone terms. As well, we’re forced to situate it in the timeline established by the original trilogy ourselves: enough visual information is given to argue that it takes place sometime between The Road Warrior (1981) and Beyond Thunderdome (1985), but it’s exact placement is vague. The delivery of this information, and the delivery of other visual information throughout the film that pays tribute to the original trilogy, is Miller’s third counterintuitive move: he handles most references with great care. He does this either by constructing scenes that subtly echo similar scenes from the original trilogy, or by delivering the information in a manner- of-fact way, weaving it into the narrative rather than drawing attention to it.

Miller also dramatically changed what a Mad Max story could be about. Rather than following a pseudo-Western storyline, Fury Road is a hopeful story with a female- centric focus. Max is once again entangled in someone else’s schemes rather than acting as the driver of his own, but this entanglement is refreshing and contemporary. It is an acknowledgement of our times, and how much our world has changed in the interim between old and new. And this wasn’t the only change. Miller also took advantage of the untold number of technological and filmmaking changes that occurred in this interim, and so the look of Fury Road is that of the original series turned up to 11. The cinematography, the editing, the stunt-work, the car chases, the ‘mutant’ vehicles, the punk sensibilities and costuming; these factors are all bigger- bigger-bigger than they were in the original series, and yet they still feel as raw as they did back then.

In combination, these factors mean that Fury Road is a film that defied our expectations—no amount of hype could have prepared us for its scope, even if it did prepare us for its size. It shows us why long-delayed sequels can be successful: it is both completely new and yet unarguably informed by the original, and manages to pull this balancing act off effortlessly without wallowing in nostalgia. If we had bought it into the hype and decided against seeing it because it looked like just another Mad Max film, like just another shameless cash-in, we would have missed seeing something unique.

The Force Awakens is very different. Being the newest cinematic reintroduction of the Star Wars series, expectations were high from the very beginning, especially when it was announced that J J Abrams—a competent director with a proven record of successfully reintroducing a classic series—was at the helm. These expectations were only heightened as the hype built and images, teasers, trailers, spoilers, casting announcements and concept art slowly dribbled out, all promising something unarguably Star Wars-ian. And this is where Abrams seemed to run into trouble: the expectation of something as vague as a ‘good’ new Star Wars film seemed to bring him unstuck. Does ‘good’ in this context mean forward looking and only tangentially connected to the original a la Fury Road? Or does it mean something nostalgic, something that deeply embraces the original? The decisions must have been hard, as the original Star Wars trilogy is perhaps the most widely loved and influential science fiction series in the history of film. Ultimately, Abrams seemed to want to have it both ways—to look forward and backward at the same time—and was unfortunately more successful at the latter than the former.

And so, while beginning well with an undeniable sense of newness, The Force Awakens becomes steadily more nostalgic as the narrative unfolds and characters from the original trilogy enter the story. While this undeniably excites and satisfies us —everyone wants to know what happened to these characters in the interim between films—it also becomes the dominant trend of the film: direct references and obvious shout-outs become commonplace.

These range from the use of settings and characters based directly on those from the original trilogy—a multi-xenomorphic bar, a planet-sized WMD, a cute robot that

speaks in whistles and bleeps and carries secret information, a desert planet where life is hard and cheap—to yet more cameos to shot-for-shot recreations of scenes from the original trilogy to the wholesale adoption of the narrative beats of the first film in the series. In the face of this onslaught of nostalgia and self-referential back patting, Abrams’ forward-looking elements tend to lose their impact; they have the potential to change the definition of a Star Wars story and to make the series’ already sizable scope even larger, but this potential remains unfulfilled (at least until the next film, hopefully).

These elements mostly remain unexplored, cursorily drawn, hastily fleshed out—it’s as if Abrams is setting up a story that will be allowed fruition in the sequels, but right now he has to get people in the door, and there’s no better way to do that than by playing on their feelings for the original trilogy and pandering to their misguided desire for something that isn’t really new but instead just looks that way. This isn’t to say that The Force Awakens is a bad film—it’s fun, fast paced, well-made and thoroughly Star Wars-ian, and the nostalgia is a great trip. But it doesn’t challenge our expectations, doesn’t make us reassess the series as a whole, not in the way that Fury Road does. Instead, it affirms our memories of the original trilogy. The hype surrounding its release helped make us want it to do this, and once again showed that we shouldn’t ever really believe it—having seen both Fury Road and The Force Awakens on the big screen, I now know that I’d rather be happily surprised than merely affirmed.

(Originally published in Aurealis #92, July 2016)

Postcolonial Science Fiction and Peter Docker’s The Waterboys

Equality in science fiction is red hot right now. We can see it all around us: in the failed attempts by the Sad Puppy movement to hijack the Hugo Awards; in the backlash against the numerous decisions by toy companies to only release figurines of male characters from the various science fiction franchises that fill cinema screens; in the fact that The Force Awakens’ two leads are a woman and a black man; in the increasing popularity and reach of science fiction from non-Western countries. However, while there is a substantial body of critical work arguing that science fiction has always been weighted in favour of the Western norm while simultaneously professing to be a “colour-blind” genre, many people believe that science fiction has always had an undercurrent of equality, an affinity for the marginalised, and sympathy for those who exist outside of this norm. While this second school of thought is becoming more pervasive in contemporary science fiction, the genre’s early period was often dominated by works that embraced the notion of Western imperialism. It is worth briefly noting that it is predominantly writers of the second school – such as HG Wells and Ray Bradbury – who are revered as giants of the field: They knew the cultural impact that Western colonisation had had upon the rest of the world, and they used this knowledge to craft different versions of their societies, featuring the same (or similar) cultural anxieties and problems as those experienced by their own. In other words, they blazed a trail for postcolonial science fiction.

First, a brief primer: postcolonialism is a method of intellectual thought that analyses, explains and responds to the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism, specifically in relation to the consequences of nations colonising foreign countries and exploiting their native people and land; while postcolonial science fiction uses the trappings and tropes of the genre as a framework for this analysis, explanation and response, albeit in a fictionalised setting. In many ways, science fiction and postcolonial thought are quite a fitting match – science fiction is a genre that is often concerned with ideas of expansion and colonisation and with the idea of “otherness” and different ways of being.

However, it isn’t only in tales of interplanetary colonisation and the clash between us (humans) and them (aliens) that this kind of postcolonial exploration can be found, as Peter Docker’s remarkable The Waterboys shows – its themes and concerns, its shuffling of chronological and linear time, its examination of the gulf between traditional Indigenous Australian and Western conceptualisations of reality, and its incorporation of the former’s particular conceptualisation of reality into both its structure and the “operating logic” of its narrative (the natural laws which underpin the world its characters inhabit), all mark it as an explicit work of postcolonial science fiction. It does what writer and academic Nalo Hopkinson claims all postcolonial science-fiction should, which is to “take the meme of colonising the natives and, from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it, with irony, with anger, with humour, and also, with love and respect for the genre of science-fiction that makes it possible to think about new ways of doing things.”

The Waterboys is set in an apocalyptic drought-stricken future Australia in which a paramilitary corporation controls the dwindling water supply. Conway, our narrator, is a “whitefulla” who lives a nomadic existence with his Indigenous Australian mate Mularabone; they carry out a guerrilla campaign against said corporation in the hope of restoring the guarded and dammed water to the country, working hand-in-hand with Mularabone’s tribe. This forms what I term story A; it occurs in both present time and in flashback. Story B centres on Conway’s role as a “dreamer and water diviner.” Embraced by Mularabone’s tribe for his spiritual connections to the land, Conway uses his dreams to help guide them to water. But his dreams also throw him backwards in time, forcing him to inhabit the bodies of a number of different “whitefullas” at the exact moments that they are committing various historical atrocities inflicted upon Indigenous Australians. These dreams eventually settle into a linear narrative, as Conway repeatedly inhabits the body of Mister Conway, an aide to Captain Charles Fremantle (a historical figure who led the first British settlement of Western Australia). As he “inhabits” Mister Conway, he carries both his own memories and those of the real Mister Conway, whose “spirit” was presumably displaced by his dream-travels. Taking advantage of this situation, Conway tries to persuade Fremantle to rebel against the British Empire and embrace traditional Indigenous Australian ways of being in the world, and hence potentially change the tragic outcome of first contact and settlement. Stories A and B are told in alternating chapters, with Conway’s manipulation of the past in Story B having an ever-increasing effect upon the events of Story A. Eventually, both stories A and B end up commentating on each other, and in many ways the interplay between them allegorises a psychic collision in Conway, who is both a representative of the violent settlers and an honorary “countryman.”

The Waterboys’ structure is itself an attempt to address an underlying conflict between Western and indigenous representations of the past: Aspects of The Dreaming that are within the grasp of non-Indigenous Australians can help to illuminate this aspect. From my limited understanding, The Dreaming is both the spiritual belief system underpinning traditional Indigenous Australian culture and “a kind of narrative of things that once happened; a kind of charter of things that still happen; and a kind of logos or principle of order transcending everything significant for Aboriginal man,” according to the Australian anthropologist William Stanner. In essence, The Dreaming structured traditional Indigenous Australian culture, laid down its laws and customs and traditions, and shaped its people’s conceptualisation of the world and time/history. This occurred because of the creation story at the heart of The Dreaming: There was nothing, and then the world suddenly came into being, populated with all manner of creator ancestors. They shaped the world before coming to rest as features of the natural environment, at which point all of creation now existed. The word “all” is significant: When looked at from a Western perspective of time/history, the creator ancestors of The Dreaming shaped the world as it was, is, and will be. This suggests a concept of time that is cyclical rather than linear: The “spirits” that inhabit all people and every aspect of the natural world travel along great cycles that encompass eternity; individual people, flora and fauna are merely “chariots” for these spirits, chariots which live out their lives as smaller cycles within larger ones.

Here, we can see that by having stories A and B unfold in alternating chapters that are nonetheless linked and influential upon each other, and in which equal importance and weight is given to both the “real” and the “dream,” Docker is embracing the traditional Indigenous Australian conceptualisation of the world and time/history that underpins The Dreaming. However, by emphasising that this conflation of past, present and future is not a perceptual act but a literal fact (within the bounds of both the narrative’s reality and that of traditional Indigenous Australians), Docker is also allowing an alternative to the Western conceptualisation of the world and time/history to play out on a narrative level as well as a structural. The characters in The Waterboys are divided between those that understand this alternative conceptualisation and/or simply choose to accept it, and those that either don’t see it or choose not to. This divide roughly falls along racial lines, with the “countrymen” (Indigenous Australians) belonging to the former category and most of the “whitefullas” (self-explanatory) to the latter. By the end of the text, those characters who see the world and time/history as being different from that of the West have had their views vindicated: Conway exists as both Mister Conway and as Conway; his actions in one time and/or plane of being are as significant and as influential as any other, and all are equally real, exactly in accordance with The Dreaming. Mularabone and the members of his tribe and the few other “whitefullas” they have embraced all accept and understand this as well, and through their acceptance and understanding are rewarded by the temporary peace of mind – necessarily temporary within the narrative’s overall setting, as is the case in much science-fiction that focuses on a small part of a large whole – that comes with having vanquished foes, overcome obstacles, and achieved resolution.

Docker’s use of the “operating logic” of the Dreaming (the conceptualisation of the world and time/history it laid down) as the structural framework for The Waterboys also allows him to offer up a genre-blending text with an important message that is ultimately uplifting. Firstly, by blending genres and structuring the result around a traditional Indigenous Australian conceptualisation of the world and time/history, Docker is emphasising a theme central to The Waterboys’ narrative and integral to its message: co-operation and an acceptance of difference. Here, we must acknowledge that the world of The Waterboys cannot exist without reference to our (presumably Western, 21^st-century Australian) world and its attendant problems and anxieties. This is where the function of Docker’s blending of genres comes into play; the successful blending of such disparate genres is a reflection of our modern world, a world in which multiculturalism, mass media, globalisation, the internet and social media are a part of everyday life, as are the psychic and cultural after-effects of our society’s path to this point. This point is crucial, because while The Waterboys is alternately set in a version of the real past and a (necessarily) fictional post-apocalyptic future, its themes and its message are intended to apply to our contemporary (present-day) world.

This happens because of our (assumed) status as citizens of a country shaped by the Imperial West, with all the attendant Western ways of perceiving the passage of time, our connection to the environment, and the structure of reality itself. Having these fundamental aspects of Western society challenged is but one step; when the narrative voice is focussed through Conway, our initial assumptions on how to read the book are also challenged. Because Conway is a white Australian who has nonetheless melded his conceptualisation of the world and time/history with that of traditional Indigenous Australian culture, we are unable to distance ourselves from the text by noting any differences (racial, social and/or cultural) between our position and his. Instead, because the integration of a traditional Indigenous Australian conceptualisation of the world and time/history with that of the Imperial West happens gradually at first, our ability to identify with Conway is made easier. The result is that, at the point in the text when the integration of conceptualisations is complete, we have had enough time to play a metaphorical game of “catch up” and hence have started to see the world of The Waterboys as Conway sees it. As he simply accepts the (Western-lensed) strangeness of his world, so we do too. And while the further through The Waterboys we read the more different its world becomes, our initial adoption of the traditional Indigenous Australian “live and let live” attitude towards these differences only gets stronger. We can see here how echoes of the meeting and clashing of cultures contained in The Waterboys’ narrative are starting to emerge between the (presumably non-Indigenous Australian) reader and the text itself. But this clash is productive: The differences between a traditional Indigenous Australian and a Western conceptualisation of the world and time/history are accepted and embraced by the narrative’s protagonist(s), rather than used as a source of conflict or a justification for exploitation. This then allows us to make room alongside our conceptualisation of the world and time/history for a conceptualisation more in line with that of traditional Indigenous Australians, in the hope that by existing together new ways to overcome the societal problems and cultural anxieties of our world can more easily be imagined. This is co-operation, in essence; and this is the The Waterboys’ ultimate message.

(Originally published in Aurealis #89, April 2016)

Intimacy at the End of the World

When we think of post-apocalyptic fiction, it’s fair to say that the first things that spring to mind aren’t sunshine and rainbows and lollipops, or smiling people sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya, or peace and contentment and understanding. By their very definition, stories about the end of the world tend to explore very dark themes and very heavy emotional spaces. Their interest lies in (fictionally) mapping out what happens to people after the end, and in examining how they react to their newfound situation.

Think of the grim survivalism of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore’s The Walking Dead graphic-novel series, John Christopher’s No Blade of Grass and the recent film The Divide (2011); or the savage ‘us versus them’ mentality that informs George Miller’s Mad Max film series (1979-2015), David Brin’s The Postman, the original version of The Crazies (1973) and J.G. Ballard’s Hello America; or the fear, loneliness, pessimism and insanity that pervade Thomas Glavinic’s Nightwork, The Quiet Earth (1985), Nevil Shute’s On the Beach and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. None of these stories are designed to take us to our happy place.

However, this is a stereotype and not a truth—post-apocalyptic fiction holds the potential for so much more than just horrific thrills and exploitative chills and a muckraking journey through a shell-shocked character’s mind, and some authors use an end of the world setting to explore themes and ideas that we wouldn’t necessarily expect.

If we look hard enough, we can sometimes find love.

Now, I’m not just talking about love of the sexual or romantic variety. In fact, different types of ‘physical’ love (sex) are reasonably common in post-apocalyptic worlds, as are relationships that encompass this love. However, because the genre unfortunately often tends to be masculine in focus, both these relationships and the expressions of ‘physical’ love that they encompass tend to echo this focus. Variations of the stay-at-home wife or the bimbo girlfriend or the damsel in distress frequently crop up in post-apocalyptic fiction, belittling modern gender politics and undermining female-male equality and tarring the genre with an ugly brush. And this is before even mentioning the place of physical love in the genre, which can veer from the sexist (the swooning and helpless woman who ‘gives’ herself to the heroic man) to the horrific (women who are effectively ‘breeding machines’ controlled by men in their efforts to repopulate the world).

What I’m talking about when I talk about love is companionship, intimacy, affection, honesty, care, solidarity and thoughtfulness. These are the emotional aspects of love that exist alongside its physical aspects, and are all too often missing from most post-apocalyptic narratives. In the often-brutal worlds that make up the vast majority of the genre’s settings, there seems to be little room for such ‘soft’ emotions. It’s almost as if the creators and authors of post-apocalyptic fiction are trying to convince us that only by becoming ‘hard’ can the characters that populate end of the world narratives hope to survive.

Sue Isle’s Nightsiders is one of the best examples of how these emotional aspects of love can both exist in post-apocalyptic fiction and serve as a foundation for looking at the genre’s themes and attitudes in a different way.

This contemporary piece of Australian post-apocalyptic fiction is structured as a story-cycle, and is set in the abandoned city of Perth, in which a small number of people have resisted being evacuated to the eastern coast of the country and have instead built a community amongst the city’s ruined buildings and crumbling streets. What exactly caused the evacuation of the city (as well as the whole of Western Australia) is never specified. Allusions to climate-change and a prolonged drought pepper the text, as do vague references to the city long ago being bombed by a foreign army, but a definitive answer never comes. The focus instead is on the community that has sprung up in this post-apocalyptic land, and on the ‘day to day’ activities and lives of the citizens therein, which include (but aren’t limited to) finding food, caring for the young, going to school, getting married, making a home, putting on a piece of theatre, and scavenging for supplies.

While Nightsiders’ Perth may bear some similarities to the ‘outpost’ cities that feature in much post-apocalyptic fiction, there is a crucial difference: there is no ‘other’ in Nightsiders, and there are no bandits or savages or barbarians who would lay waste to the city that the novel’s characters call home. Because of this, the heroic action in Nightsiders isn’t centred around confrontations and violence or brutality and savagery—all of which are typically born from an ‘us versus them’ mentality, which is almost entirely missing in Isle’s work—but on the acts of community and positive activity that define the lives of its characters. These acts of community and positive activity can be read as expressions of the emotional aspects of love—its characters work together for the good of everyone, secure in the knowledge that what they are working towards is both hopeful and positive; help is offered when it is needed, with no strings attached; everyone knows everyone else on a first-name basis, and there are no antagonistic relationships or friendships; and people look out for each other, rather than just for themselves. These are unarguably expressions of companionship, affection, honesty, care, solidarity and thoughtfulness.

The end result of Isle’s embedding of these aspects of emotional love in her narrative is fascinating, for we find that she has changed our expectations of what post-apocalyptic fiction has to offer: life after the end of the world might just be a hopeful place, if the horrors of the Western genre that are always shadowing it (violent action, masculine quest-adventures, savagery and brutality born of isolation, the conceptualisation of the wasteland as threatening and menacing) are relatively non-existent, either made safe through familiarity or relegated to the status of cautionary myths with their roots in the past. By dispensing with a masculine focus and ‘boys’-own-adventure’ themes and instead widening the genre’s scope to accommodate much more subtle and optimistic themes, the world that Isle has created seems a much better place than the grim and violent worlds that make up the vast majority of post-apocalyptic fiction. If we had to choose between being citizens of Nightsiders’ Perth or citizens of The Road’s America (another expectation-expanding work of the genre), which would we choose? While such a question grossly oversimplifies the difference between the two texts, there is still some truth to it. We choose to be civilised or we choose to be savage; these are behaviours that we take on, our environments don’t necessarily thrust them upon us.

Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars is another excellent example, especially when we consider that its narrative is framed around a more traditional post-apocalyptic theme: an ‘us versus them’ mentality. It tells the story of Hig and Bangley, two survivors of a global flu pandemic that has wiped out almost the entire human population. These two men couldn’t really be any more different from each other—Hig is an ex-pilot who can’t stop mourning the loss of humanity and is frequently plagued by survivor’s guilt, while Bangley is a misanthropic ‘hard case’ who seems to relish his role as a survivor and taunts Hig for his soft-heartedness, and comes across as a much more traditional post-apocalyptic character. But despite their differences, Hig and Bangley have formed a bond that moves, over the course of the novel, from a wary almost-friendship based on their ability to help each other to something much deeper: they become best friends who deeply care for one another and rely on each other for emotional support. This friendship is expressed as an almost fraternal attachment. At the novel’s end, when Hig returns from exploring the world beyond the air-strip/compound that he and Bangley call home, he finds that Bangley has stayed at this home and was badly wounded while defending it from raiders and scavengers. The scenes that follow—in which Hig realises that one of the reasons Bangley stayed to defend their home is so that Hig would have somewhere safe to return to—are truly heartbreaking, as Bangley’s hard exterior softens and he admits that he needs the company and companionship that Hig offers, rather than just Hig’s abilities as a look-out and dogsbody. They have become metaphorical brothers, whose differences in attitude and outlook have little bearing on their relationship.

In a manner very similar to Nightsiders, The Dog Stars leaves us with a sense of hope, and Heller’s portrayal of a post-apocalyptic world that contains more than just savagery and brutality is beautifully optimistic. This optimism is perhaps more emotionally truthful than that of Nightsiders, because Hig and Bangley’s world is one where brutality and savagery are an unavoidable and almost necessary part of their lives; so commonplace is this brutality and savagery that Bangley almost seems to revel in it, at least until the novel’s end. His realisation that there is more to life than just grim survival and an unfeeling heart seems honest and deserved, rather than a facile and out-of-the-blue change of heart, especially when we consider that Hig reciprocates these fraternal feelings and admits to himself that he (emotionally) needs Bangley as much as Bangley needs him.

Unlike much post-apocalyptic fiction, the new television series The Last Man on Earth is a comedy-drama (with the emphasis on the comedy), that tells the story of Phil, the last male survivor of yet another global pandemic, meeting Carol, the last female survivor. As happens in such stories, other characters inevitably show up. However, the emphasis is on exploring the developing relationship between Phil and Carol and the consequences of the fact that, at first, neither really likes the other. Before these two characters met, Phil had descended into slobbish hedonism driven by loneliness, while Carol had held onto various societal rules pertinent to the ‘old world’ in an attempt to keep her sanity. The inevitable clashes between Phil’s newfound ‘let it all hang out’ attitude and Carol’s somewhat uptight lifestyle provide plenty of comic potential, but behind the laughs is a heartfelt story of acceptance and understanding, of embracing difference and adjusting worldviews, of putting aside one’s own selfish interests and desires for the sake of companionship and common humanity. As should be obvious, the potential for an exploration of the different facets of love (both emotional and physical) seems self-evident.

At face value, The Last Man on Earth may sound like The Odd Couple at the End of the World, but in looking at how two people can find friendship and love in the face of adversity and desperation and personality clashes, it holds the promise of exploring themes that apply to everyone. After all, just about each and every one of us has had to deal and interact with people we don’t necessarily get along with or agree with—the crux is, we have to try, and when we try, sometimes we find that these people can become good friends and can open our eyes to a way of life and way of living that we might never have seen before.

(Originally published in Aurealis #85, October 2015)

How Mad Max: Fury Road has set a New Benchmark for Genre Films

Like presumably most diehard fans of Australian genre-fiction, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). The hype had been built long before it hit the screens: George Miller had dropped tantalising titbits of information during its production, and the multiple trailers held out hope of something that was not only fast and rugged and thoroughly ‘Mad Max’, but also somehow more real than other contemporary blockbusters. Expectations were high, and no-one wanted another pale imitation of a cinema classic masquerading as a remake/reboot/pseudo-sequel a la Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013), Conan the Barbarian (2011), Predators (2010), Prometheus (2012) or Matthijs van Heijningen’s version of The Thing (2011).

To cause us further worry, fans of Australian genre-fiction cherish Miller’s original Mad Max series. Its lived-in world, deeply-set sense of place, larrikin sense of humour and almost-punkish DIY ethos are ‘Australian-isms’ that we were all proud to see enshrined on screen in such fresh and original ways, and none of us wanted to see Miller tarnish this legacy.

I’m happy to say that, in what might just be a first, my expectations were exceeded. In fact, I believe that Fury Road might just be the best genre film in a long, long time.

But not entirely in ways that I had foreseen.

The first thing that differentiates Fury Road from most other contemporary genre films is the way in which it weaves its ‘action’ into the narrative (and vice-versa). Too often, action scenes seem to exist solely for their own sake: we seldom see character revealed or story told through action, and the big set-pieces that pad out so many genre films usually serve little narrative purpose. Think of the ‘Metropolis Battle’ in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013), the ‘Sieges of Zion’ in the sequels to The Matrix (2003), any of the action scenes from Michael Bay’s Transformers series (2007-20014) or any of the space battles in the Star Wars prequels (1999-2005). These types of scenes and set-pieces present themselves as little more than spectacle; the narrative usually stops dead along with any sense of momentum, and we the viewer are suddenly disengaged from the film – we might look upon the images with something approximating awe, impressed by the CGI magic unfolding before us, but this awe comes at the expense of our connection to the characters and the story. Thus disengaged, we become far more aware of everything that exists outside of the film, and it consequently becomes far less immersive.

Fury Road avoids almost all of these pitfalls: most of its action exists either as part of the story or to push the story forward. Its narrative never grinds to a halt to let a pointless visual suddenly dominate and shout: ‘I am spectacle, behold!’ Instead, Fury Road is pure spectacle from beginning to end, spectacle that drives and frames the story. This is mostly because of Miller’s genius at fusing narrative and action. By structuring Fury Road around a chase without end, he ensures that there is always a sense of forward momentum (the chase itself) as well as a confined location (the War Rig), which is almost constantly under attack and home to a number of different characters. The chase begins in the first scene, and Miller initially withholds the reasons as to why it is happening. Instead, we are forced to share Max’s perspective and position, and are bundled up and swept along by the momentum of the chase. This engages us straightway as it provokes questions in us: What’s happening? Why are those particular characters chasing those particular characters? What exactly has been stolen, and how does it impact on the established world? Over the next half-hour, answers are slowly revealed, until Max arrives at the War Rig and certain things fall into place and the next phase of the story and the chase begins.

Here, the War Rig ‘concentrates’ the characters’ interactions within it; with nowhere else to go, their conversations and interactions feel natural, and reveal narrative detail and backstory and so on. Exposition like this tends not to feel forced, as we can all relate to similar situations that provoke unexpected and character revealing conversations (road trips, family holidays, long distance house-moves). However, the fact that the characters confined in the War Rig are always either under attack or under impending attack means that some of these conversations and interactions necessarily occur during the attacks. And so the two become one as the rest of the film plays out, action and story occurring simultaneously, often with each informing the other (for example: a freshly talked-about memory triggering an unexpected behaviour, or the need to shoot straight revealing a newly learned understanding).

The second thing that really makes Fury Road stand out from the crowd is the depth of its world-building, which is manifested in the sense of a wider Mad Max universe that exists beyond what we see in the film.

This is something that is all too often neglected in genre fiction, as much of it instead concentrates only on the world inhabited by the protagonists and antagonists, with the story’s wider universe only shown if it directly affects the characters and their arcs. This is to the stories’ detriment, as it can ‘remove’ us from the story because we begin to wonder how the world we’re shown fits into its wider universe. In the absence of any evidence of a wider universe, we then find ourselves less immersed in the story because its existence as a ‘limited’ piece of fiction becomes apparent. This is doubly true of post-apocalyptic fiction, as the universes therein pose very specific problems: Where do food and water come from? How are these neo-societies structured?

Once again, Fury Road avoids most of these pitfalls, and it does so in the best possible way. Rather than making Fury Road’s wider universe obvious and obtrusive, Miller subtly hints at its existence, providing just evidence to keep us within the story. Just a few examples include the existence of The Bullet Farm and Gasoline Town, which are mentioned but never shown, and hint at an established trade network with The Citadel; and the eerie ‘Crane People’ that inhabit the swamplands, which provide a glimpse of a society seemingly completely disconnected from the previous settlements.

However, Miller also ensures that these hints of a wider universe are complimented by a thorough approach to building the world that we do see. This ensures that the ‘logic’ of Fury Road’s narrative is almost watertight, which once again keeps us ‘within’ its world. And even when world-building story features aren’t properly explained or are only alluded to, their sheer existence allows us to more fully suspend our sense of disbelief. We see this time and time again: the ritualistic behaviour and appearance of the War Boys; Immortan Joe’s status as a pseudo-emperor; the brief glimpses of hydroponic and outdoor gardens in and around The Citadel; the offhand remarks regarding the aquifer beneath it; the classist structure of its society; the existence of Gasoline Town explaining where their fuel comes from. These things tell us that the world of Fury Road and the societies within it have structures and hierarchies; they have ways of feeding themselves and access to water; they have ways of travelling and a trade system. In other words, they are societies that are a warped reflection of our own, and because we understand the logic by which they operate, we can once again embrace the story rather than question it.

The third thing that really makes Fury Road stand out lies in the fact that women drive its narrative and are, along with Max, central characters that possess their own agency. Some people have also made this a controversial aspect, with certain hairy-knuckled critics decrying the fact that ‘Max gets ordered around by a woman’ and that he functions more as a co-main character than an out-and-out hero. These criticisms occur despite the fact that in both The Road Warrior (1981) and Beyond Thunderdome (1985) Max was hardly the one who drove the narrative forward. Instead, to prolong his own survival, he allowed himself to be ensnared in the schemes of others, just like in Fury Road. However, Miller takes this process further by ensuring that in Fury Road, the schemes that Max is ensnared in are thought-up and carried out by women and for women.

But this doesn’t make the film a feminist critique or mean that men’s enjoyment of the film is somehow diminished. Firstly, Miller’s weaving of feminist thought-lines into the narrative is subtle and never allowed to overshadow the central story or the thrill and momentum of the chase. Secondly, because the film is so defiant in its own approach, and because its world has been so thoroughly built and its story and action are so well intertwined, the story of these women feels like a completely ‘accurate’ story within the confines of the film’s universe, and it occurs with enough momentum and rawness to make it seem authentic. It doesn’t feel forced or faked, but ‘right.’ And this is something that not enough genre films do. Too often, men’s stories seem to dominate the narratives of genre fiction, and it seems that this is sometimes because many writers and creators aren’t prepared to think far enough outside the box to posit women-centric stories being the focus of their imagined future worlds. As Miller shows, a good story told well is something magnificent, no matter whether it’s a story about men or one about women.

These aren’t the only reasons why I think that Fury Road might just be the best genre film in a long, long time (a lack of space prevents me from continuing, and such is my excitement that I could just go on and on). But if your appetite needs further whetting, I’ll just quickly say that you should also look to the maniacal glee that Miller pours into the film (yes, that really is a truck carrying drummers and a guitarist and a wall full of amps, whose job is to whip the War Boys into a frenzy); and the sheer rawness that comes from what’s happening on screen being almost completely real (the little CGI that was used was mostly reserved for backgrounds and scenery); and the deft homages to the original trilogy (The music box! The hidden weapons! The fizzing shotgun! The handcuffs and the saw!).

Or just go and see it. You won’t regret it.

(Originally published on Aurealis Blog, 3/7/2015)

The Australian Renaissance

When it comes to popular Australian apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction, two titanic works stand above the rest: On The Beach and Mad Max. Add to that list Victor Kelleher’s Taronga and John Marsden’s Tomorrow When the War Began series – works that were central to many an Australian teenager’s reading life – and you still have a pretty short list. The SF-inclined reader whose interest lies in our own national fictions might recognise names such as George Turner, Terry Dowling, Lee Harding and Steve Amsterdam (authors who have all delved into the end of the world), but their collective body of work has barely dented the public consciousness. Why is this?

Like the rest of the world, our own culture has been somewhat dominated by that of both the UnitedStates and Great Britain. Historically, these two countries were integral to the birth and solidification of SF as a whole and complete genre; while written SF has slowly become a global phenomenon, throwing up inspiring and visionary authors from the four corners and the seven seas, in the oh-so-popular mediums of television and film, Hollywood and London still reign supreme. Barely a month seems to go by without another cinematic symphony of destruction, war, and the end of the world. Is it any wonder, then, that our visions of the apocalypse have been shaped so thoroughly by those who live on distant shores?d

This is a terrible shame, and not just because most end of the world movies nowadays seem more crash-bang action flicks than cerebral or philosophical think pieces. It’s a shame because there has been a rich body of SF work produced right here in Australia, with a rich vein of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic work running through it. While the aforementioned SF-inclined reader with an interest in our national tomorrow-when-the-war-beganfictions will no doubt be aware of this (the numerous studies of Australian SF that began emerging in the late-1970s helped give our own particular approach to the genre a kind of ‘critical’ legitimacy), what has seemed to fly well under the radar is the recent surge of new Australian apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction.

This surge isn’t just an Australian phenomenon. The end of the world is back in fashion, the apocalypse is cool again, and its signs and signifiers have become indelible parts of the global consciousness. There are as many reasons for this as there are mosquitoes in summer: global warming, the GFC, the millions of displaced people living as refugees, climate change, 9/11, increasingly repressive governments in both democracies and dictatorships, food shortages and food riots, international terrorism, and so on and so on. This depressing list of recent history that carries an end-of-days vibe could continue ad nauseam.

Fiction has always been used to help us understand and cope with the horrors and wonders that are an inevitable part of life. Now, more than ever, it has become an increasingly important tool in making sense of our frenetic and seemingly calamitous 21st-century world. Here in Australia, our authors are doing just that – confronting the unique challenges that face us in our island-continent. And they’re doing it with both style and increasing frequency.

In the last twenty-odd years, we’ve seen end of the world novels depicting a future Australia dramatically altered by climate change (Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming, Andrew Sullivan’s A Sunburnt Country, Andrez Bergen’s Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat), or focussed around the troubled relationship between Indigenous Australians and white Australians (Archie Weller’s Land of the Golden Clouds, Sam Watson’s The Kadaitcha Sung, Peter Docker’s The Waterboys), or centred around gender and sexuality (Sue Isle’s Nightsiders, Kim Westwood’s The Courier’s New Bicycle), or inspired by the particular Australian obsessions with ‘the refugee problem’ and the economy (Andrew McGahan’s Underground, Guy Salvidge’s Yellowcake Springs). In the world of short fiction, small-press publishers such as Twelfth Planet Press and Fablecroft Publishing have blazed a trail, with anthologies such as 2012, Sprawl, After the Rain and Epilogue providing plenty of room for more condensed apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic visions. Hell, we’ve even seen the world get stomped flat by a parade of monsters in Agog!Press’ Daikaiju series.

While not every work mentioned above is great (as such), they are all, nonetheless, interesting. What’s more important is that they are all out there, filled with fascinating perspectives on this great southern land, just waiting to be read. While some have had enough of an impact to garner reviews in the mainstream media, many have remained relatively obscure. This is the biggest shame of all. The more perspectives we have on the potential end of the world, the better we can understand and cope with our fears of it actually happening. What kind of character would we rather see guide us through these scenarios? Another bland American soldier? Another bland English every-man? Or an Australian, whose background we might more easily relate to? And which world would we rather see end? The urban jungle that is New York? The sprawling metropolis of London? Or a city like Melbourne or Sydney, Brisbane or Perth, Adelaide or Darwin – cities that we might call home?

(Originally published on AurealisXpress, 6/5/2014)

Rising Water

I adjust the radio again.

“Hello, are you there?”

…

“Hello, are you there?”

…

“Hello?”

…

I haven’t heard from base since the storm. The water is still rising. We’ve relocated to the top of the tower. The whole tower is swaying. I’m not sure how much longer we can hold out.

I try one more time.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

I check the emergency beacon again. It seems to be working, but what do I know? I’m really just a glorified maintenance man.

***

Anne is still asleep, but it’s her shift and fair’s fair. I shake her awake, gently — we’ve been down here long enough to know each other well.

She pushes me away.

“Just another hour,” she says, her voice thick.

“Okay, but that’s it.”

She’s asleep only moments later. I reset the shift-alarm.

***

I’m worried about her, so to distract myself I try the radio again. There’s still no answer. I give up, look around the room. There’s no point in going outside — the lights died during the storm, and suns-up is hours away.

I collapse into a chair by the window, looking out at the endless water below.

***

The beep of an alarm wakes me. I’m on my feet almost instantly, panicked, wondering what’s gone wrong this time.

But it’s just the shift-alarm.

Anne switches it off and smiles at me. I collapse back into my chair.

“Good morning, sleepy head.”

I groan, but still return her smile. She’s been sick since the storm: un-focussed, lethargic, disconnected. This is the first time in more than 48-hours that she’s shown any spark.

I’m happy to see her back on her feet, although she still looks a bit run-down.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

She smiles again. “Much better. But you should get some more rest — you’ve been pushing it pretty hard.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep. I’ve got it from here.”

She helps me to my to bunk.

***

Anne is shaking me. The shift-alarm isn’t sounding. Something must be up if she’s waking me early.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, stifling a yawn.

“I made contact!” She laughs brightly, girlishly, just for a second, her most endearing habit. I’m really happy to see her back on her feet.

“Come on, have a listen,” she says.

I crawl out of my bunk and follow her, barely surprised that she succeeded where I failed. She’s the real brains, her head crammed with technical knowledge. But she’s not as adaptable as me. I guess that’s why we’re a good team.

The contact she made is disappointing.

“Outpost 11, this is Base.”

The voice is distorted, thin, almost lost in static. I don’t recognise it.

“Outpost 11, this is Base,” it asks again.

“It’s a loop,” Anne explains. “But at least it’s something.”

We listen for hours, sitting together in silence, waiting. At some point, the loop starts to fade out. And then it’s gone.

Anne yawns. She’s looking a bit green again.

“Get some sleep,” I say. “I’ll be okay.”

***

Another storm just hit us. Like last time, it’s the middle of the night. This one doesn’t feel as bad, though — thank Christ.

I stagger across the room, trying to keep my feet, the tower swaying madly. Anne is deeply asleep. I pull the webbing across her, clipping it down. My movements don’t wake her. Neither does the deafening rain, the howling wind, the mad sway.

I crawl into my bunk and clip down my own webbing.

***

Much later, a distorted voice reaches me over the noise of the storm.

“Outpost 11, this is Base,” it says. “Are you there?”

I look around, unclipping my webbing instinctively. Anne is stirring.

“I’ll get it,” I say.

Her eyes are wide open, sharp, bright.

“I’ll help,” she says.

“Outpost 11, are you there?”

We hurry to the radio, staggering, moving with the sway of the tower. I pick up the mic and headset; she starts trying to clean the signal.

“Base, this is Outpost 11.”

“Cockatoo, is that you?”

It’s Salim. Salim! I smile. “Bet your arse it is,” I say.

“Cockie!” he says. “Now look, the storm will be getting worse soon, but evac’s on the way — ETA three hours, forty-five…”

The signal suddenly drops out. Anne collapses at almost the same exact time. I drag her to her bunk, strap her in, return to the radio.

***

The storm’s building. The tower is swaying so hard that it feels like it might crack. I haven’t re-established contact with Base. All we can do is wait.

At some point, the evac-raft arrives, attaching itself to the gangway encircling the tower with the shriek of metal on metal.

But the storm’s still building.

***

The water’s now lapping at the door, but the storm has finally stopped. We have to go. Anne looks at me, her eyes glazed. I pick her up bodily.

“I can do this,” she says, struggling free.

I reluctantly let her go.

We make our way outside. Both suns are only just rising; it’s beautiful. The evac-raft is close. I hurry ahead, open it up.

The tower buckles.

The far-end of the gangway collapses into the water. The force throws me into the raft, onto my belly. I look back. It must have knocked Anne off her feet: she’s clutching her head, sprawled on her stomach. The water steadily draws closer as our section of the gangway starts collapsing as well.

I scuttle out, ending up in the water.

I grab Anne’s hand and pull her towards me. She’s twitching. I hold her with one hand, grab the raft with the other.

And that’s when I see her properly.

There’s a deep gash in her forehead. But instead of blood or bone, there’s circuitry, wiring, metal plating, blinking diodes. Something in there sparks as water rushes in. Some smoke wafts out.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her words slurred. “They told me I’d never break, that you’d never have to know.”

Her eyes close.

(Originally published in AntipodeanSF #228, July 2017)

 

Unexpected Mail

The unopened letter sat on the kitchen table. Josh picked it up. No return address, no postmark, no stamp. He decided to open it later — he’d had a long day. All he wanted was a drink.

“Jules?” he called.

No answer. No wife.

He thought that odd, but then remembered that he’d left his phone at home. Josh found it beside their bed, an unread text message from Jules waiting for him.

“Mum’s sick again,” it said. “Had to take her to the hospital. Hopefully be back tonight. Sorry.”

He sighed. Her family was eating up her time. Again. Josh didn’t bother replying, and grabbed a beer from the fridge.

***

Much later, Josh heard Jules’ car pull into the driveway. He went to meet her.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

They hugged. His stubble scratched her cheek; her long, wild hair ended up in his mouth.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just mum being mum. You know how it is.”

Josh didn’t bother commenting on her mum’s legendary hypochondria. They headed inside. Josh busied himself in the kitchen making her a cup of tea.

“What’s been happening?” Jules asked.

“You know, the usual.”

“How was work?”

“Don’t ask. You?”

“The same.”

Josh sat her tea on the table.

“I missed you,” he said.

“Me too, baby, me too.”

The unopened letter sat near them, forgotten.

***

The next morning, Josh slept in. Jules eventually brought him a cup of coffee. And then she poked and prodded him — her version of the carrot and the stick.

“Thanks, sweetie,” he said, his voice croaky.

“No sweat. But you’d better move it, otherwise you’ll be late.”

He groaned. Jules left him to get dressed. When he joined her at the kitchen table, she passed him the letter she’d been reading — it was from a company called Out of this World Adventures.

“What do you reckon?” Jules asked.

Josh scanned it.

“Dear Mr Hazlem,” it said, “we are pleased to announce that you and your wife have won a seat in our inaugural mystery cruise, guaranteed to deliver sights unseen by human eyes. Please follow the link provided to claim your tickets.”

Josh squinted at Jules through half-asleep eyes.

“It’s probably a scam,” he said, tossing it aside. “Besides, there’s no way I can take time off at the moment.”

***

The next day, another unmarked letter arrived. Josh found it — opened — sitting on the kitchen table beside Jules’ open laptop. He checked out the website she’d been visiting. It belonged to Out of this World Adventures, and described in vague detail the adventure and excitement their trip would provide.

He found Jules outside, arguing with someone on the phone. From the tone of her voice and the way she ran her hand through her long hair in frustration, he guessed she was arguing with her sister.

Jules waved, and returned her attention to her call. Josh went back inside. When she joined him, he told her in no uncertain terms that there was no way he could take time off.

“But I need this, especially with everything that’s been going on.”

“I’m sorry, Jules. I just can’t.”

Josh slept on the couch that night.

***

Another unmarked letter arrived the next day. Once again, Josh found it sitting on the kitchen table near Jules’ open laptop. She typed away, oblivious to him. He slammed the laptop shut, almost squashing her fingers.

“I thought we talked about this,” he said.

“But…”

“Sorry, Jules. Right now there’s no way I can take time off. Believe me, I want this as much as you do, but it’s just impossible.”

The argument stretched on and on, and Josh eventually talked her around. After that, they settled on the couch to watch some television. Josh offered to make her a cup of tea, but Jules insisted on doing it herself.

“You want a beer?” she called from the kitchen.

“I’d love one.”

She took a long time fetching their drinks.

***

Josh woke up foggy-headed and groggy, feeling like he’d taken a sleeping pill. He remembered arguing with Jules, but didn’t remember going to bed. He shuffled into the kitchen and made a coffee.

No Jules. Nowhere. Gone.

He flopped onto the couch and flicked on the television. Breaking news interrupted the usual Saturday morning cartoons. Josh almost dropped his cup.

“We are not alone,” the reporter said. “Last night, all over the world, aliens appeared, only to disappear just as quickly.”

The reporter’s words were accompanied by footage of some immense thing dropping out of the sky. The image was grainy, obviously captured by a low-resolution camera.

Josh changed the channel numerous times. They were all the same, more or less. On some channels the thing appeared above a city, on some above a rural wilderness. On one channel, he saw pyramids in the distance, on another a frozen lake, on another a fecund jungle.

“Not only have we been visited,” one reporter said, “but it seems that some people were expecting this.”

This reporter’s words played over footage of a crowd gathered beneath one of the things. In the background, Josh saw an immense bridge, a bridge he recognised — a bridge he drove across every weekday.

As he watched, the thing touched down. A hatch opened. The crowd surged aboard. Only a few people turned and looked back.

Josh thought he recognised one of them — a woman with wild, long hair. It was hard to be sure. And then the thing disappeared back into the sky.

Josh kept watching.

(Originally published in AntipodeanSF #219, October 2016)

No Birdsong

I wake suddenly, sweat pouring off me and soaking the mattress. My eyes shoot open and see nothing but the dark of the middle of the night. I reach across the bed. The other half lies empty.

The alarm clock ticks away on the bedside table and I count the seconds as they pass. Outside the window, the wind blows hard.

The door opens slowly, hinges creaking loud in the quiet. Something stands there: a silhouette, the hallway light framing it from behind. It’s somehow familiar… It runs one hand through its long curly hair. Although I can’t see its face, I know that it’s watching me. Wide eyed I watch back as it walks towards me.

The door slams shut behind it.

I wait, and hear no footsteps on the thick carpet. The mattress shifts under me as something settles on the bed. A hand reaches out, stroking my head.

“It’s okay,” a voice says. “It’s just me.”

“B’Detta?” I ask.

She laughs and shrugs off her dressing gown. She drops it to the floor and lies down beside me. My hands find hers.

“Hey, give me some room here,” she says, somehow shoving me along and hugging herself around me at the same time.

I smile in the dark.

“Love you,” I whisper.

She hugs me tighter. Outside the window, the wind blows harder.

***

I wake again, at the sound of metal grinding on metal, and reach across the bed. The other half lies empty. I sit up and pull B’detta’s gown from the floor, wrap it around myself, walk to the window. I twitch the curtain aside, knuckling sleep from my eyes.

On the street below, a delivery van has backed into a parked car, crushing its bonnet. An alarm starts, echoing off the apartment buildings lining the block. I let the curtain fall back and leave the room.

I find a note on the kitchen bench.

“Hey, hope you have a good day. Sorry I had to run so early, late for work again. Love you…” it says.

I start the coffee machine and read the note a second and third time, and I drop it clumsily as the machine starts bubbling and shaking. Coffee spills over, water runs everywhere, drenching the note. I reach for it and it falls apart at my touch.

“Shit…”

I get the machine under control and draw a cup, walk out to the balcony and sit on the concrete rail. I start to sweat straightaway. On the street below, the delivery van still sits backed into the parked car. The alarm stops, and the silence is so sudden that for a moment it deafens me. I shake my head, trying to clear it. I sip my coffee, swear when it burns my tongue, drop it over the edge as I try and set it down. I swear again. The cup lands on the roof of a truck and shatters. Coffee sprays everywhere. I watch as some of it slowly pools and runs into the gutter.

***

Turning back inside, I start the coffee machine again, sit at the kitchen table, stand back up, pour a glass of water, sit back down, drink the glass of water, stand back up again, fiddle with the radio. Bursts of static drown out the fleeting snatches of song, and I turn the dial a last time and give up. The coffee machine belches and steam billows. I stop it just in time, draw a fresh cup, sit at the kitchen table and drink it slowly.

The clock on the wall ticks away. I tap my feet and drum my fingers and draw another cup of coffee. I stand at the window as I drink it. The clear blue sky stretches on, the wind howls. I drain my cup and walk back to the bedroom.

I leave the curtains closed and dress quickly, simply: blue jeans and a T-shirt. Finding my mobile under the bed, I dial B’detta’s number. It rings and rings. I chew my fingernails and hang up without leaving a message.

Putting my mobile in my pocket, I walk to the window and open the curtains. I look down at the street. The delivery van still sits backed into the parked car.

I try to say something and nothing comes out.

I close the curtains and take out my mobile and dial B’detta’s number again. Once more, it just rings and rings, and I can see it clearly – sitting snug in her handbag in an empty room somewhere.

I write a quick message.

“Pretty twitchy, having a shark day, going for a walk, gotta keep moving, I wanna see if I can wear it out. I’ve got my phone with me, catch you tonight?”

I look around the room. I pick up my bag and walk away.

***

As I step out the front door of my building, the wind stops like it’s been turned off at the switch. The sun is a blinding orb, burning high in the sky. The delivery van is still backed into the parked car; some coffee from my shattered cup stains the footpath.

The hiss of dead air grows louder as I walk toward the van. Fragments of song fight through the white noise, and then disappear just as fast. I reach in through the open window and shut the radio off.

“Hello?” I yell, looking around.

My voice rolls down the street and slowly fades away. No answer comes. I yell again.

I take an MP3 player and a pair of headphones from my bag. I put the headphones on and choose some music at random. I walk, and take the first left I come to and look at the empty street ahead. A building next to me forms a long grey wall. A dank laneway cuts across the footpath where the wall ends. Weatherboards fill both sides of the road, stretching as far as I can see, all the way to the horizon.

I squint and take my sunglasses from my pocket and slip them on. The sun still burns hot at me.

My shadow cuts lines hard and sharp into the concrete beneath me. My step catches up to the beat in my ears and I start walking faster. The overhanging branches don’t move, lifeless and parched in the dry air. I pull a leaf from one; it crumbles to dust in my hand.

I drop the dust to the ground and brush my palm on the seat of my pants. A breeze blows past me, cool and quick. And then the heat returns.

***

I come to a halt and remove my headphones. A low hum, faint and muffled, carries through the still air. I look left and then right. I scratch my head, look left again and see something shining in the distance.

A half dozen CDs hang from a lemon tree in someone’s front yard. A sickly sweet smell wafts from the rotten fruit that litters the ground around it. I drop my bag, take out a water bottle, turn away from the tree. I drink slowly.

The smell eventually makes me gag, and I spit the last of the water into the gutter.

I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and put the empty bottle away. Putting my headphones back on, I take off in a different direction. New music sets a new speed; my pace picks up.

The sun beats down. Sweat stings my eyes and blurs the road ahead. I walk until the heat becomes too much, stop at a corner, lean against a fence.

I take my headphones off and put them in my bag. I take my phone out and try B’detta’s number. It rings and rings, over and over. I hang up, put my phone away, take the empty bottle from my bag and try to drain the last few drops.

***

I look at the house I’ve stopped in front of. A “Beware of the Dog” sign hangs from the fence, a garden tap pokes above the long grass, weeds cover the path to the door, dusty furniture fills the veranda. I look at the tap again and my mouth starts to water.

“Here, boy, good dog,” I say softly.

A dead car sits in the driveway, tyres sagging on their rims. Rust flakes from it, covering the cracked, dirty concrete. Reluctantly at first, the gate opens with a harsh, scraping sound. Every muscle tense, I walk through.

“Come on, boy. Come out and play.”

Nothing happens. I crouch by the tap, turn it to full bore and cup my hands under it. Water the colour of red desert earth splutters out, thick and dirty, before it runs dry. I stare at it a moment before turning it off. I turn it back on; it shudders in my hand. Nothing else comes out and nothing else happens.

“What the…”

No birds answer my call, no dogs bark. I look around at the shut-up houses lining the road, and try to say something. Nothing comes out.

I walk to the front door. The wood is dry and hot; paint slowly peels away and falls to the ground. I knock, hard. No one answers and I knock again. Still no one answers.

The doorknob burns my palm, too hot to hold. I back away, and notice a gate by the side of the house. It hangs half open. I walk through, entering a shadowy alleyway. I peer in the windows I pass; heavy black curtains block any view inside. The alleyway stretches on and on.

***

In the backyard, rubble and rubbish fill the concrete garden. Dust covers everything, and another dead car sits under a tree in the far corner, burnt metal shining bright in the sun. I look away, eyes watering.

“Anyone home?” I yell, knocking hard on the back door, knuckles red and raw.

The sound of fist on wood is all I hear, fading away around me. The doorknob comes off in my hand. I push the door, it holds fast. I knock a last time, harder again, and leave a streak of blood behind.

I swear and look around. The burnished brass of another garden tap pokes from a pile of broken bicycles. A steady drip falls from it. I start to heave the pieces of bicycle aside, digging deeper. I work on, scraping through to the wet earth. Slime and muck cover my hands.

I turn the tap greedily.

Water pours out, cold and clean. I crouch, holding my head under the stream. I shiver as it runs down the back of my neck, turn and let it flow over my face.

I stand, saturated, hair plastered flat, T-shirt sticking to my body. I shake like a wet dog and crouch again. I cup my hands and drink and drink. I take the empty bottle from my bag and fill it to overflowing.

Couches crowd the back of the house, cushions torn and faded, springs jutting. A cracked engine block sits on an overstuffed armchair; I start to rock it back and forth, slowly at first and then faster and faster. It falls to the ground and lands hard on the concrete, splitting in two. I lower myself into the seat, put my feet up on an empty milk crate, take my mobile from my pocket, dial B’detta’s number again.

It rings and rings. I hang up. The seat sags under me.

***

The familiar smell of coffee burning in its pot wakes me from my sleep. I open my eyes; the sun is falling to the horizon. Nothing moves, no wind stirs. I force myself to my feet, hoist my bag to my back, and follow my nose.

The street stretches on, the footpath empty once again. Shadows gnarled and bent reach out, the skeleton fingers of trees baking in the heat. The burnt coffee smell grows stronger, leading me down a side street. Grim, abandoned factories tower over everything. I crunch through broken glass, wiping fresh sweat from my eyes.

The smell leads me to a faded terrace house sandwiched between two empty warehouses. The gate collapses as I push on it; I wade through the overgrown grass filling the front yard, the steps to the front door sink under my weight.

I knock. No one comes. I knock again and rattle the doorknob. The door sticks in the warped jamb. I ram it with my shoulder and it opens a little. I squeeze through the tiny gap, peer into the dark hallway, see an orange flicker in the kitchen beyond. The smell of smoke replaces the smell of burnt coffee. I hear something crackling, the sound of people walking on dry wood. A fire alarm starts and I hurry outside. I sit on the step and smoke lazily drifts past me.

I wait for the sirens. Nothing happens. I stand and walk away.

***

I walk on, and then turn a corner and stop dead. Nothing moves. Every window is closed, curtains drawn, sealed tight. I drop my bag and pull out my water bottle. I drink it dry. The wind suddenly picks up, and I shut my eyes against it.

Dust blows into me, at first only a little, and then more and more again. Coarse and fine, it gets past my collar and into my shirt. I open my eyes and in the air I see more dust and dry sand and the dirty mist of broken brick, swept up by the wind, taken from the half-built house all the grit once called home. I squint and reach out a groping hand and find an open gate. I walk through and tread a careful path into a ruined building.

The front door and the corridor behind it have survived whatever turned the rest of the building into slag and junk. I shelter there and peer outside through a cracked glass pane. Running my hands through my hair, I fill the air with dust. I catch my reflection in the glass, all smudged and fuzzy and wrong.

Dust still clings to my hair, turning it salt and pepper grey. Turning it old man grey.

I peer out again, as the wind blows a gale down the empty street. It picks up more dust and more sand and more mist of broken brick, and as it starts to change direction it whips it into strange figures and shapes. I look harder, and see faces I know, gestures I recognize: a wave, a smile, a shrugged shoulder and a raised eyebrow. I look again, and see B’Detta in the dirty air.

I hurry outside. The wind dies away and there’s nothing but dust and sand and mist, littering the street and choking the gutter.

***

I keep walking. At some point I stumble on a crack in the footpath, steady myself, look around, struggling to make things out. I take off my sunglasses and realise that twilight has happened. No street lights shine down, there’s no peak hour traffic. I walk faster, start to run, take lefts and rights at random, looking for a familiar landmark. I move to the middle of road.

I keep running.

The street comes to an end and I find myself back on my block. The delivery van still sits backed into the parked car, bathed in moonlight. I take my mobile from my pocket – its screen shows me nothing, its battery dead. Fumbling to put it away, I drop it to the ground instead. I keep walking.

The front door of my building is wide open; I slam it behind me and the glass shatters in its frame. As usual, the lobby is dark – I hold tight to the stair rail, feeling my way to my floor. The front door of my apartment is wide open, no light spills out, I can’t hear anything.

I hurry inside and lock the door behind me.

I flick the light switch and the globe flares and burns out. Feeling my way into the kitchen, I open the refrigerator. The smell of mould and off milk rises from within; I shut it quickly, feel my way into the lounge room, try the light switch. The globe there flares and burns out as well, and I curse my luck.

I sit on the couch, pick up the home phone, and dial B’Detta’s number. It rings and rings, over and over. I stand up and feel my way to the bedroom. I undress and get into bed and close my eyes. Outside the window, the wind begins to blow.

(Originally published in Breath and Shadow, July 2011)