Wastelands: The People of Sand and Slag

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I grew up on sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. As a kid, I immersed myself into Lovecraft and 70s-80s slasher films. What I was really after were the concepts. I craved ideas with hideous worldbuilding undertones. Growing up, I never found media to be terrifying because I could rationalize that it’s all performance art.

I’ve only ever found two stories that filled me with a squeamish dread. The first is my favorite horror movie, Idiocracy. The second is The People of Sand and Slag. It is a truly gruesome and disgusting tale that digs at my skin with its razor blade fingers. The blood curdling anxiety is felt long after the book is closed. Continue reading →

Joe Junkman #3: Junk in the Trunk

Jan15

In those early years, before we established dog-tags as currency, the BLVD was crazy, seriously bananas! Even with The Judge in charge, even with the great wall of trash going up, it was a nasty, nasty place. When you showed up at someone’s doorstep with a pack full of junk, you had no idea if you were going to barter for merch or barter for your life. I got stuck up a few times; with a mug like mine how could I not. Still, I can proudly say I’m probably the only person in the Mo-Javi who hasn’t popped their murder cherry. That’s not to say I haven’t come close though.

It was after the Blacksmith’s guild was formed, but before the Guilds of Academia. I was carrying some wilted vegetables straight from Kass’ greenhouse, a guitar with a missing string, a bag of sand marked “Pure Cane Sugar,” a pair of fuzzy handcuffs, and some other household goods. Now see these were the old days. There weren’t armed guards on every street corner. If someone took your stuff, you went and took it back. If someone shot at you, you shot back and took their stuff. At that time, The Judge’s counselors were like old-time mafia enforcers, making sure the big scrap-metal wall was completed on schedule, or else. Capiche? Continue reading →

Wastelands: “The End of the Whole Mess”

Jun15

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As stated on Twitter, I recently picked up Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse an anthology of post-apocalyptic shorts. The series includes many notable authors, some of whom were recommended to me. With this series, I want to look at each story to get a better grasp on the plot, characters, and the apocalypse itself. This promises to be one of the few times The Rad-lands will be breaking away from specifically post-nuclear fiction.

stephen_king the end of the whole mess Our first story is “The End of the Whole Mess” by Stephen King. Truthfully, this was the first time I read King. He didn’t disappoint; the prose has a nice flow and is both easy and pleasant to read aloud (so easy, they chose Matthew Broderick to narrate the audiobook).

So what kind of apocalypse is this anyway? Well, we only get hints about the outside world. The story is a cross between stream of consciousness writing and character establishing flashbacks. The apocalyptic setting is really just a framing device to carry the irony. That said, the cause of this apocalypse is Calmative, a water additive dispersed across the entire planet that first made humans docile and later resulted in dementia, cognitive failure, and death. That’s a unique apocalyptic scenario, almost like a reverse Planet of the Apes.

Continue reading →