Science Fiction and Horror are frestastic because they offer us stories disguised as metaphors. Ready made visuals for when our imagination has gone blind. It’s one of the primary reasons why I continue to swim in those pop culture pools.In real life it’s not easy to identify the consequences of rejecting prophets with the swift ease we use to decline a lousy Tinder profile.

The following are two viewpoints of popular stories. 

And attached is a My Summer Lair conversation with writer Claire Holroyde about her debut novel The Effort. Our conversation echoes these themes as she and I grapple with science fiction metaphors and the genuine threat of environment extinction. It sounds dour but there is mirth to be had, I promise!Push Play or Read On…

I: The Thermodynamics of Magic

I assume the first Law of Thermodynamics equally applies to magic. I don’t have proof.

1st Law of Thermodynamics - Energy/magic cannot be created or destroyed.

You got a figure in a world where the human civilization has perished but the technology and the infrastructure remains magic would continue to exist. In some form. It must, right?

I’m talking (fictional) world’s like Stephen King’s The Stand, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (an outstanding novel…the Will Smith movie was a terrible adaptation but a decent movie), The Walking Dead of course…those types of discordant worlds.

The humans are almost gone and yet the magic and all our stories and weird symbols persist.

I was thinking about that during my recent trip to Egypt this past February. The ancient Egyptians are gone…the Pharaohs and the Queens and the Warriors have all disintegrated. All that is leftover is their technology and their infrastructure and their stories; some of which we don’t fully grasp.

The reason why Egyptologists worked so hard to decipher discovered hieroglyphs was because anybody who knew what they meant was dead. Basically we no longer had human Rosetta Stones.

It’s like when you go into a fast food joint and you get that employee that doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. It’s a frustrating experience; the smooth emotional transaction is crippled by ignorance.

In a world like The Walking Dead populated with zombies…our churches would remain intact…as would our offices and libraries and even the graffiti on the streets and walls. Though those symbols and their layered meanings would eventually fade with each generation.(Because the primary focus is survival. Cavemen are not known for writing books…sure they were literally primitives but survival was the only item on their daily To Do List. Consider how large our digital footprint is today; we crank out posts and tweets and status updates etc. about so many mundane things. We have the luxury of life.)

So with each generation (of humans; not zombies) there’s naturally going to be a gradual forgetting of symbols and baffling semiotics. Within a hundred maybe two hundred years (ah…factoring in the ratio of zombies to humans which cuts into survival) most people won’t know what the symbols and rituals of the Catholic Church were.

Sure there will be books that have these things written down but they can be clinical definitions. They won’t always be able to convey the meaning and the proper reverence of these symbols.

In that world why would you still celebrate Christmas? Or Easter? Or Lent?

The way a relative lights a candle and desperately prays for an ill family member…that urgency is past tense.

How do you explain what holy is in a world where reverence has dissipated?

Maybe these are superstitions; maybe faith makes them work…miracles don’t operate consistently like an amusement park ride.

Eventually it’s the end of rationalization in that zombie infested world. There won’t be enough humans who remember what the Catholic Church meant…what Holy is…what Faith is like. What we used to do and who we used to be.Within one hundred two hundred years as humans strive to survive a zombie apocalypse the Catholic Church will be viewed the way we view the temples of ancient Egyptians. As relics.

Just another classic Magic. There but not there.

Like I said I don’t have proof. I’m not smart enough to confirm energy/magic cannot be created or destroyed. I just know it’s true.

Just as I know…when it comes to humans…

We all leave behind stories.

~~~

II: Is It A for Effort or E for Effort?

What would you truly do if faced with an extinction level event?

Not zombies this time; let’s try something else.

Here’s a striking image that lends itself to easy metaphor: The Effort, a sci-fi novel by Claire Holroyde begins with an 8 kilometer dark comet UD3 emerging from a blind spot hurtling towards Earth.

We never saw it coming...so as the novel unfolds humans have one year left before it hits. As the citizens of Earth grapple with the devastating news a group of scientists and nerds gather together in a Defense Effort (get it?) to avoid doom, disaster and death.

Super compelling; The NY Times listed The Effort in New & Noteworthy and I agree. It offers a number of perspectives as each member in the cast has their own hopes, setbacks and classic existential despair from a polar icebreaker to South America and lots more remarkable locations.

And sure this is a science-fiction novel and yeah it is a near-future novel but doesn’t that image also reflect our tepid responses to the environment? It’s our blind spot...often we fail to operate with a sense of urgency; with maximum effort recognizing it’s a crisis.

At least in this novel they have a clear timeframe: 1 year or else...extinction. Just like the dinosaurs.

Perhaps it’s human nature...we know we shouldn’t smoke or eat at McDonalds; we should sleep more and let friends know we appreciate them and love them and yet for all the common knowledge of all the things we should be doing and the things we’re not doing...we keep rolling on; not aware of our blind spots.

What are we overlooking?

What obvious signs have we ignored?

Like we’ve all watched Deep Impact, Armageddon and similar blockbusters offering up the same flimsy hopeful message: when the pressing issue is at hand we are galvanized.

Our boundless faith in our science, an undaunted reliance on the triumph of the human spirit and a casual reading of history (overlooking our gravest mistakes) is empowering; it is the Gatorade which fuels our noble ascension.

However…firefighters do not battle fires every single day.

And just because firefighters do not fight Fire everyday doesn’t mean that Fire has gone away. Or been resolved. Or never coming back. It just means that there is no Fire today.

Yet Fire remains a destructive force that can burn and harm so much. We have to be simultaneously vigilant for the Fire that is coming but also for the conditions that can feed that destructive Fire.

What are we overlooking?

What obvious signs have we ignored?

Who have we dismissed because we didn’t like the story they were telling?

Our inability to create and nurture an urgent momentum without an immediate, obvious problem will ultimately doom us.

It’s one thing to coast at work…we all have lazy days. It’s another when an actual coast is rapidly disappearing.

In The Effort when UD3 the dark comet was spotted near Jupiter’s orbit, its existence was largely ignored. Aww man. Must we go through this cycle?

Why are we addicted to ignoring prophets?

History is defined by the outspoken individuals we have ignored. Is there somebody’s voice who is being ignored or overlooked?Or like who is the new David Suzuki?

While we wander and sadly mine the wilderness waiting for Moses I suggest reading Claire’s novel The Effort.

And That’s The End Of My StorySammy Younan-28-

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