Gods of the New Wasteland

 

The problem with writing a book that starts off with a science fictional premise is that its hard to market as anything but science fiction. Once it’s been labelled that way, readers look at it through a science fictional lens and judge it by the standards they use to judge all science fiction. For many of those with a science fictional mindset, that entails a withdrawal of their willing suspension of disbelief if everything doesn’t play out in a convincingly logical way. Forgive me, but I honestly couldn’t come up with another way to market it.

Avenging Glory (the diptych) was never intended to be a science fiction book, even though this first book, The Human Template has a very science fictional premise. It presents as sci-fi, even though it was conceived more as a satirical, action adventure.

This was a concern to me when I wrote it and will probably become even more of a concern when I release the second book, which pretty much drops all pretense of being science fiction and becomes speculative mythopoeic fantasy. If that were considered a valid marketing category, I’d be laughing.

I have long been thinking of our Earth’s future from the perspective of the pantheon of new gods we will create to help us survive. My artwork has depicted these Gods of the Wasteland, even while most of the fiction I was writing dealt with a much more domestic and short sighted breed of horror. As I got into my sixties, I realized that I couldn’t continue to hold back. I had to write the stuff that has been in my soul for pretty much as long as I’ve been alive.

If we survive as a species and come out the other side of whatever lies ahead, new mythologies will emerge to help us deal with the challenges we ourselves have created. Imagining what form these new gods will take is what these books are really about.


Get the scoop on my new novel, The Human Template at https://dalelsproule.com.


I write literature of the fantastic. My short story collection, Psychedelia Gothique is mostly psychological horror. My just released novel, The Human Template is available through most online book retailers - and book two of the diptych, The Carnivorous Forest will appear in 2021. https://www.dalelsproule.com As a book reviewer I have written for Rue Morgue Magazine and AE Science Fiction. As a visual artist, I have illustrated books and magazines and have carved numerous sculptures out of stone.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of C.J. Lavigne's In Veritas

Image
I am not a particularly fast reader, but I did spend an unprecedented amount of time immersed in C.J. Lavigne’s debut novel, In Veritas . It is a story ostensibly about communication in which the major character, named Verity, is pretty much unable to communicate in the usual manner. The crossed-wires in her brain give her a severe case of synesthesia which lock her into her own somewhat non-sensical world and contributed strongly to making her an outcast from a very young age. – with the added complication that people have an impossible time lying in her presence. She escapes from incarceration in a mental health facility with Jacob, a wealthy young man who seems to be somewhere in the autistic spectrum. Having been cheated out of control of his family fortune, he does pretty well on the stipend he receives. Jacob and Verity live together in an affectionate - although emotionally distant and seemingly platonic -  relationship where he switches career paths every five minutes and
Read more

Becoming a Legend in my Own Mind - and why that might be good enough

Over 50 published short stories and no novel. What’s that about? I’ve been writing seriously since I was about 15. For a few years, in the late 80s and early 90s, I was fairly prolific, publishing upwards of eight stories in one year. I spent a long time pushing the envelope, trying to be edgy – and I even succeeded on occassion. One in three stories I’ve written over my lifetime was good enough to be selected to appear in my collection, Psychedelia Gothique , which contained 17 stories – several of which had been nominated for Aurora Awards, Pushcart Prizes and the like. A number of my stories appeared in small scale “Best of” anthologies – with pieces in Wild Things Live There ( The Best of Northern Frights ), The Best of Eotu Magazine , and the Sign of the Times 20 Year Anthology . A couple of my pieces appeared in newsstand magazines and in the same table of contents with some of my favourite authors. Writers I admire reviewed several of my stories very favourably. A magazine
Read more

The Book After Which Everything is Different

Image
I’ve never called myself a Chuck Palahniuk fan. I’ve been aware of him only since the  Fight Club  movie and have read only  Invisible Monsters  and  Fight Club . I’ve never been to one of his readings, though they seem to be pretty amazing and I’ll probably catch one if I get a chance. While looking him up online, I came upon a piece of his writing advice on Litreactor about avoiding the use of thought verbs. It was genius. It spoke directly to me and my worst tendencies as a writer like no teacher or article has before – and it came to me at exactly the right time. IE: while I’m on the fourth draft of the novel and that level of editing is at its easiest (which is a bit like saying it’s easiest jumping the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle when the sun isn’t directly in your eyes). When I discovered that Palahniuk had written an entire book on writing, it seemed like a good investment, even if all I was doing by buying it was paying him properly for the thought verb essay. I am del
Read more