Writing at work (WW3 retro-future utopia snippet)

[hmpf]

The bomb on Manchester never falls.

New York, Moscow, London, Leningrad - 15 million dead shock the world into unprecedented, unlikely sanity. Leaders meet, treaties are signed in a place picturesque and idyllic, far from the fallout. Pictures of men shaking hands in the newspaper, straining to smile.

It takes weeks after the official end of the hostilities for the people to start trickling back into the city. Sam and Gene and the others are among the first, along with other, dedicated members of the police. Somebody has to uphold the order, make the place safe.

They aren't needed. In the weeks of the return, as the city fills up slowly, people walk the streets as if in a dream, talk to each other in hushed voices, touch each other gently, disbelievingly. Many, trying on their lives like old shoes found in the attic, find they no longer fit.

***

Writing this took me one hour. It's from "Back to the Future (the Long Way 'Round)"

Comments

[kernezelda]

Nonetheless, it is a good snippet, and interests me, despite the fact that I've not managed to watch any LOM yet.

Thanks.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

And you should, you know? Watch LoM, that is. *g* Sam!angst isn't all that dissimilar to John!angst. They're both a bit insane and very lost. Though of course with Sam there's a strong undercurrent of illness (physical and mental), and with John the undercurrent is all about violence (done and suffered). But in both cases, it's about being separated from the life you know by something extreme and scary.

(What does the 'nonetheless' refer to?)

Re: Thanks.

[kernezelda]

'Nonetheless' referring to the hour it took to write. By your standards, is that not excessive speed? ;)

I have gotten copies of LOM 1-5 downloaded, because the disk that was given to me failed to play. I'll try to make time to watch this upcoming weekend, the third attempt.

Not really excessive speed for this kind of thing.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I've been known to write a page or more in an hour, occasionally, when I know where I'm going and how I'm going to get there. I'd say three short paragraphs in an hour is pretty normal for me - as long as I'm not blocked. Thing is, most times I *am* blocked. I'm writing like I'm driving a car with the brakes permanently on. I get stuck after a paragraph or two and then I stay there for weeks or months or years, and the only thing I can do is rewrite and revise the bits I already have. (This is one reason why I always have so many stories I'm working on in parallel. I'm always blocked on most of them, so I need to have alternative projects I can work on when I get stuck.)

I'll have to check out your LJ in the next few weeks if you're going to watch LOM! I'm always curious about reactions...

BTW...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

if you discover you really like LOM, and if you happen to be among the minority who end up hating the last ep, this is the place to go:

http://community.livejournal.com/jumping_off - we've all jumped off of canon there. *g*

Warning: spoilery, obviously, as it's an anti 2.08-community.

[space-oddity-75.livejournal.com]

Many, trying on their lives like an old shoe found in the attic, find they don't fit anymore.

This is why I love you so, SO much!!! You're the only one who manages to send shivers down my spine with just a single sentence, 18 little words in a row that create a perfect depiction of how it must feel like to find oneself in a post-nuclear world and try to live again, adapting and coping, against all odds. I hate you for making me feel so vulnerable, but I love you nonetheless, because your words are pure magic. ;)


P.S. - Are you sure you and I were not twins separated at birth? Post-war, decadent scenarios are another of my secret kinks, besides being a recurrent dream/nightmare I've been having since childhood. You're amazing.

Heeeh. That's actually the one sentence I've already changed...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

i.e. in the version that's on my computer this sentence does not exist anymore. Well, not in that form, anyway - I suspect it was grammatically wrong/awkward. The image's still there, though, it's just phrased somewhat more elegantly, hopefully. Maybe I should change it here, too.

>I hate you for making me feel so vulnerable,

Would it help if I told you that things are going to get positively utopian after the war, for the most part? Complete with Hippie!Ray? *g*

More spoilers follow. Read at your own risk.

Sam's going to stay a bit angsty, of course - poor guy's kind of blaming himself for the war in his worse moments, and managed to catch a fairly large dose of radiation as well, so he'll get ironic!cancer later - though what's going to drive him truly insane, for a while, are minor differences - things like Michael Jackson becoming famous, but as a reggae singer etc. But he'll live to see and enjoy flying cars and stuff.

>P.S. - Are you sure you and I were not twins separated at birth? Post-war, decadent scenarios are another of my secret kinks,

Kink twins. Definitely. (Maybe our kinks generally tend to occur in combination? Maybe they're all closely related, psychologically?)

>besides being a recurrent dream/nightmare I've been having since childhood.

Dude!!! Me too! Usually nuclear - either war, or Tchernobyl mark II (what's called, in German, a GAU - "größter anzunehmender Unfall"). I think I'm writing this story mainly because of my deep fear of nuclear war and disaster. I happen to live near one of the most dangerous nuclear power plants in Germany, and I was old enough to be thoroughly scared by Tchernobyl when it happened, and not old enough yet to really understand. For a while I was afraid of breathing, of rain, of eating...

Though, with all the utopian elements of the story, it's really about *all* the ideas I had about the future when I was a kid. (I kind of assume that, being born in 1976, my ideas of the future were still fairly similar to those that people in the 70s would have held. The central idea of this story is, "what if science fiction had got it right?")

Anyway... thanks for the high praise. It's appreciated, and it's very motivating. :-)

[neuralclone.livejournal.com]

I love this. There's something almost dream-like about it, with people looking at their lives through a lens of near-annhilation.

(You're so right about Sam!Angst and John!Angst, btw. Maybe it's one of the reasons so many LOM fans also appear to be Farscape fans... )

Dream-like is what I was aiming for. :-)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

It's going to get even more so as the story progresses, I think.

I think we should try to scape all of LoM fandom. lozenger8 has already seen the light, and I'm working on space_oddity_75... *eg*

[jazzymegster.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, interesting! Wondered what was happening for a second, until my brain kicked in. Definitely hooked for the finished thing! :)