Category: Opinion

The Old Man and the Spider

1/30/2017

I had a dream back as a teenager that has stayed with me through the decades. In this dream, I stood among an assembly of people in a clearing in the woods. It was dark out, and barrels filled with burning wood served as our only light. An elderly man in a white robe stood on a platform before us, and everyone was silent as he addressed the group.

He described a darkness falling across the land, and then a war to end all wars. I remember being terrified when he told us all about the masses of death… the masses of people, fueled and blinded by their hate, killing one another off by the millions.

But he offered us a ray of hope: I saw the whole world hold hands, people finding ways to span across the oceans, across all continents, in a show of unity, and we all sang together—everyone across the globe, people of all colors, religions, and cultures standing together as one.

I’ve been thinking about that dream a lot lately, about the old man’s words and their implications. While I don’t believe this dream was in any way prophetic, I do think it holds credence in our current political climate. I do fear the possibility of war. I fear that the darkness has descended upon us.

I grew up under the naïve notion that all people were inherently good. I wasn’t able to grasp the idea that not everybody in the world was deeply empathetic about… well, everyone. I didn’t know that diversity went much further than differences in culture and basic beliefs, and I didn’t understand that the world was made up wholly of flies and spiders, that without exception, all people were either born as (or grew to become) one or the other.

I understand now that not only do these two different groups exist, creating a clear delineation between us, but also that a fly will always see the world through the eyes of a fly, just as a spider will always view the world through the eyes of a spider. Both believe they are inherently right in the way they live their life, and that the other is inherently wrong. Is the fly right to fear the spider? Is the spider wrong to consume the fly?

The hardest part to grasp is that both will always see the other as the spider. A rare few actually embrace the spider’s role, but among the vast majority, the villains will always see themselves as the protagonists. And protagonists will always fight for what they believe to be right.

A friend once said we have only two choices in life: love and fear. I think she might have been onto something. Fear and hate have more in common with one another than you’d think at first glance. But even fear in the absence of hate can be enough to destroy people, regardless of motivations or intentions. What do you fear? Have your fears ever destroyed anything? How often have they led to self-fulfilled prophecies, fear itself causing temporary patches of darkness?

I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’d like to replace those fears with love, but sometimes we can’t help what we’re afraid of. I’m afraid of conflict, hateful people, suffering… and those fears have left me frozen at times.

Right now, I’m frozen by the state of the world, especially in the US. I’m afraid I’m powerless, voiceless… purposeless. It’s put me in a dark place, and that makes me want to find some sandy cave to bury my head in and hide. But I don’t want to be afraid. I want to love the enemy. I want to embrace our differences.

I don’t want to be afraid…

But can the fly truly love the spider, I wonder? I don’t know the answer to that, but perhaps someone older and wiser than I am might. If that person is out there, I’d love to have a chat.

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A Surreal Year

12/30/2016

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Everyone I know agrees: 2016 was an exceptionally eventful year, even for those living outside the US and UK. The year was also exceptionally dark, especially toward the end. Like many others, I took a Facebook vacation to avoid the worst of the memes and bickering, but I found the days preceding my leave nothing short of traumatizing.

I think many of us are still trying to process all that has occurred over the past few months. The world has become divided in ways I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, and that has had a huge impact on online social dynamics. How we choose to proceed from here is going to determine the direction this new era will take us.

I choose to be hopeful about our future. While I am also admittedly fearful, I have faith that there is enough good out there to balance out the bad, and no matter what differences we have in opinion or belief, we’ll need to work together if we want the good to have a fighting chance. The bad has succeeded in its divide-and-conquer tactics long enough, don’t you think?

I believe both positivity and negativity are infectious. I also think too many have been programmed to spring to both the defensive and the offensive for too quickly, which fosters negative thoughts and actions. I think back to when I worked in collections, and how everyone I called hated me because they immediately viewed me as the antagonist. It didn’t matter that the call wasn’t personal—I was just doing my job—and it didn’t matter how polite and professional I was; most people turned into dicks when I disclosed the purpose behind my calls.

I think about that experience whenever the line is slow at the supermarket, I get pulled over by a police officer, or I end up spending half the day at the DMV. The people on the other end are only doing their jobs, and most of them are trying their best. And an interesting thing happens when you take what could be a negative situation and approach it respectfully and sympathetically: You’ve just spread positivity. Note the person’s posture, the way they talk to you; they might even go out of their way to be nice back.

Think of how much we could all build one another up if we took that kind of attitude to social media, what we could accomplish through discourse that remained respectful regardless of our disagreements? If our thought processes are so different, maybe we could find a way to use that to everyone’s advantage. As it stands, we’ve allowed it to remain a means of keeping us at war with each other. We’ve allowed it… but we don’t have to.

We already have enough weighing us all down: The majority of American adults have accrued ridiculous amounts of debt; Generation X and older are finding favorite musicians and actors dropping like flies of aging-related illnesses (David Bowie was my absolute favorite musician); we are fostering a culture of escapism and anti-intellectualism; gangs and drugs are everywhere; and the relations between several influential nations are growing shakier by the day.

Why create even more stress by arguing with strangers and mere acquaintances—or, even worse, close friends and family—over issues you are both very likely not going change your stances on? How much tension have you experienced because you feel you’ve crafted the perfect argument, only to be at nasty ad hominem attacks two posts later? You and the person you’re arguing with walk away with nothing but anger, frustration, and wasted energy. And then, of course, that gets compounded by the numerous additional contacts throwing in their two cents. I learned the hard way a couple of years ago: It doesn’t work.

I’ve made my political opinions clear, but I have engaged very little on the matter on social media. I have done what I can to avoid the crossfire between all those horrible words people have been slinging incessantly at one another. There’s a better way to communicate in these social arenas. We need to relearn how to use them for good. Remember the days when Facebook—hell, even MySpace—had an air of community to it? We need to ask ourselves two important questions: How did we get to this point, and Is it possible to reclaim the fellowship social media once offered?

I can’t claim to be a saint. I’ve made my share of online faux pas, but I’ve learned from them. It’s easy to make a social blunder when you barely have a face to a name, and that screen dividing us can make even spats between family members ridiculously heated. Why don’t we spend that energy figuring out what we each can do to make this world a better place. Forget what Joe Schmo thinks, or what he thinks about your strongest beliefs. To quote the ever-Zen Dude: “That’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

So, for 2017, how about we focus on making the year great—together?

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New and Improved!

4/22/2015

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Every advancing generation will say it: Things just aren’t what they used to be. We all allow that which we knew and loved growing up to color our views on changing times. When we’ve lived is as important as where or how we’ve lived: I’ve no doubt my parents thought about as highly about my teenage clothing choices as I feel about the saggy ass look. I’m sure a similar case can be argued regarding my generation’s Queensrÿche, Metallica, Marilyn Manson, and Tori Amos versus whatever noise the kids these days are calling music. Times change. Tastes change.

One constant I’ve noticed through the years, however, is the slow but steady decline in overall quality in nearly all popular products. I’ve grown to understand that if a product or company alleges something is “new and improved,” there’s no “improved” about it. “Improved” is code for “made with cheaper materials or ingredients, and we hope you won’t notice the change in quality.” Dress up a seedy move with pretty words, and maybe most of the population won’t take notice. Even more, the latest generation won’t notice. They’re already accustomed to a level of quality those of us who know better can only reminisce about.

In the world I’ve built for The Private Sector and World-Mart, “quality” is just a word printed on a label. When corporations control everything, monopolies slowly take hold right under the noses of the masses, and with those covert monopolies come zero quality control. The whole world is new and improved. Complacency allows such changes to take hold.

The same complacency has anesthetized society as we currently know it, and the problem is nothing new. Things just aren’t what they used to be, and we’ve let that happen. Complacency has placed blinders on all of us. It has allowed words like “new and improved” to go overlooked—or, even worse, taken at face value. It has allowed the American Dream to go dormant, overall quality of life to take a nosedive, and far too many people too caught up in either surviving or one-upping the Jonses to notice.

What does “new and improved” mean to you? What kind of world do you see when you step outside your home, go to work, pick up your kids from school, or go to the supermarket?

What kind of world do you think the children of tomorrow will see?

Is it a world you’d want to grow up in?

The Private Sector is currently available in paperback through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Check back for more vendors and formats.

Click the cover image for more information.

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Happy Women in Horror Month!

1/31/2015

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It’s that time again, the time when we take a look at female writers who specialize in dark fiction. For those who aren’t familiar with this yearly spotlight, the horror community observes Women in Horror Month every February. Why? Because, despite iconic female horror writers like Mary Shelley, women are sorely underrepresented in the genre. There are various theories as to why this is, the main one being that female stereotypes portray women as meek and incapable of writing the same caliber of horror as men.

I believe there is merit to the power of stereotypes. Just as people judge books by their covers, many also judge authors by outward appearance. I think far too many women’s works are going overlooked, never even given a chance, because of judgments made without so much as a glance at the actual text. As far as we’ve come in civilized society, women are still plagued by expectations that are both unfair and harmful. We are sex symbols, nurturers, homemakers, mothers—existing in a man’s world, our purpose in many cases being to exist for men.

Granted, feminism has helped to fracture these stereotypes, but it has not destroyed them. Are potential horror readers going to choose a book written by a knock-out blonde, a sweet grandmother, or a quiet but pretty young woman over one written by a gruff-looking guy oozing testosterone? I know a good number of women write under male pseudonyms just to gain equal footing with their male counterparts. And guess what? Their books sell notably better than the books they publish under their actual names.

Women in Horror Month is our attempt at shattering those stereotypes for good, urging readers to give female authors a shot despite any reservations they might have about doing so. It’s about proving we can compete with the best of men, that we have what it takes to write stories capable of making you shudder and giving you nightmares.

So, what do you say? Do you have it in you to help us to make Women in Horror Month obsolete? Think you might take a chance on my traditional Gothic horror, Finding Poe, or my mixed-genre dark fiction collection, Jane, Volume 1: Revival?

I’d sure appreciate it.

As always, thank you for your readership and support!

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On American Horror Story: Freak Show

10/17/2014

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When FX first announced Season 4 of American Horror Story was going to revolve around a freak show, I wasn’t sure what to think. Would the writers make sure the horror story remained the spectacle rather than the “freaks” in this season’s cast, or would they rely on the characters’ unusual attributes to keep the audience watching? I’d thought I had found my answer when I saw this promotional video:

It seemed AHS was on its way toward another exceptional season. It had a story to tell, a point to make, and the right people with which to do both. Or did it? Let me begin by pointing out what I have enjoyed so far this season….

Once again, Jessica Lange is brilliant in her role, claiming it thoroughly and offering a level of dimension few might attain. Her character, Elsa Mars, quickly proves to be a mistress of disguise, first when she uses the candy striper’s uniform to gain access to the twins and later when we learn she walks on artificial limbs. (Was she born this way—thus making her born a “freak” as well—or were her legs amputated at the knees?) Her name, aptly paralleled both with her choice of song in the first episode’s show (David Bowie’s “Life on Mars”) and the setting (Jupiter, Florida) suggest the cast lives in a world separate from ours, that they might as well reside on a different planet.

The writers only delve deeper into the theme of duality—different but the same—with conjoined twins, Bette and Dot. The use of split screens and shots covering only part of one head (the view of Bette showing part of her face coming from the left and the view of Dot coming from the right) furthers the theme’s strength, as does the comparisons the performers make between them and the rest of the world.

Consider Jimmy “the Lobster Boy’s” assertion, “If they would just get to know us, they’d see we’re just like them. No better, no worse.” And compare that to the very weird and demented “normal” rich boy, Dandy’s, statement when he’s denied a spot in the show: “What you’re looking at; that’s not what I am inside.” Of course, we learn that Dandy has a thing for torturing helpless creatures when “[h]e’s just bored,” and his teaming up with Twisty the Clown comes as no surprise. This, obviously, begs the question: What makes a real monster—what’s on the inside or what’s on the outside?

There are two abnormalities that I’m sure have been placed on purpose, those being the anachronistic music selections during both performances and the first two episode’s air lengths (the pilot being 1 ½ hours long and the second episode being 1 ¼). These, I can only speculate, force the audience to feel immersed in the show’s step outside “normalcy.” Even further, the music seems to represent the freak show itself: it is out of place in this time period given the changed attitudes and various laws having been passed among different states that limit or forbid live freak shows for ethical reasons.

With this in mind, I must again reassess my feelings about this season. Is AHS Freak Show merely a modern version of an outdated spectacle, using “freaks” under the guise of offering gainful employment and promoting understanding? Can making a point about the “sameness” of “us versus them” negate the spotlight the writers have put on the “differentness” of its cast? I’m really not sure. I’m an avid fan of the series, but this season might just be the one that blows it for me.

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BREAKING BAD: Why I'm Rooting for Skyler

8/3/2013

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Now that we’re gearing up for Breaking Bad’s big finale, I’ve been giving some thought to the characters and the changes each has undergone throughout the series. None has gone unaffected by the course of events Walt set into motion in his decision to become a methamphetamine manufacturer. His transformation has been the subject of much speculation, and most of us will agree he’s as much a victim of circumstance as he is a victim of his own hubris. Amidst this speculation, I’ve found the varying opinions about Skyler interesting to say the least.

When I wrote an article about her for Fans Pages, the number of reader responses viciously scrutinizing her behavior was surprising. Here are excerpts of a few of them:

“She is deceitful, reckless, and suddenly in denial of her previous actions. I have lost respect for this character at this point. […] She is not capable to see how much Walt loves his family and would do everything within his power to protect them and provide for them. How she could look directly into his eyes and state that she is just waiting for him to be stricken down with cancer and to die is simply repulsive.” – Christine

“You are really reaching if you are trying to make Skyler the victim. Skyler is not abused! In fact, she has been the manipulator throughout these seasons.” – Perry

“[Skyler] is a [sic] egoistic bitch that does not care about anybody but herself.” – Marion

“In my opinion the role of [Skyler] is a self absorbed egotistical woman who cant [sic] bare [sic] the fact that she can longer direct and control the lives around her so she is making herself into a victim, since she surely isnt [sic] strong enough to be an accomplice, or thankful enough to be a loving wife. […] Its [sic] unfortunate that Walter had to realize his potential by being a criminal, but his intentions were to be a good husband, he remained true to [Skyler] and the family at all costs. All he did was find his inner strength.” – Shulgidude

To me, it’s fascinating to see how many people view her character as the deceitful one, the manipulative one, the egotistical one. Don’t those attributes better describe Walt? Why is it that the most evil of characters is also the most beloved—and why has much of Breaking Bad’s audience grown so hateful toward a character that has, at her very worst, laundered money to keep her and Walt out of prison and their children as safe as they possibly can be?

The answer lies in the writers’ tactful manipulation of circumstance and character. By creating a character we cannot help but feel bad for, feel empathy for, before transforming him into the monster he’s become, we can’t help but root for him no matter how evil his acts. They draw us in with his life-threatening illness, his menial job, and the loss of his research. When he turns to crime in a desperate endeavor to leave his family the means to survive without him, we don’t react as we would if a typical, real-life person did the same. Meth is a terrible, devastating drug that shatters every life with which it comes into contact. Only a real monster would even consider being a meth cook, and yet we forgive Walt because he’s deathly ill and motivated (at least initially) by the desire to provide for his family.

Now, take Skyler and her progression of actions. When she first learns what Walt is doing, she sends him away and gets a lawyer with the intention of divorcing him. She wants to keep Walt as far from their children as possible, and with good reason. Would you want a meth cook anywhere near your children? What lengths would you be willing to go to ensure your children’s safety? Some fans want to know why someone so intent on protecting her children wouldn’t simply leave, and to that I say nothing is that simple. Where would she go? Move in with Ted and expect Walt Jr. to go along with it? Knowing Ted’s own criminal acts, would he really be any safer to live with than Walt? Would she be able to afford to move out on her own?

Fans are tricked into hating Skyler just as they’re tricked into rooting for Walt—she opposes nearly his every move, and therefore she is the enemy. Despite this, I say we should be rooting for her just as much, if not more, than we’re rooting for Walt. Both want what’s best for their children, but their approaches are vastly different. Skyler acts out of fear; Walt acts out of ego. As she says at the end of Season 4, Episode 6, "Somebody needs to protect this family from the man who protects this family." Do you disagree? If so, on what grounds?

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If I Only Had a Name

7/27/2013

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It’s fascinating to watch social trends as they unfold, shift, and pave the way for the ones to follow. People are pack animals, most following the leader wherever he or she might take them, allowing popularity alone to dictate their own choices in taste and opinion. I think about the whole Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, how just the right people decided the series was worth shouting about and somehow turned a mediocre-at-best collection of fan fiction into a bestseller. More recently, J. K. Rowling flipped the fate of her recent mystery novel, taking it from nowhere to the top of the charts by outing herself as Robert Galbraith.

It gets a person like me, a relative nobody, thinking about what it actually takes to stake any real claim on the author’s frontier. Moreover, how many exceptional books are going unread by the masses simply because they were never discovered by one of the ever-influential pack leaders? Popular brands sell. Stephen King could write a story about a haunted fig tree and it would sell millions.

I’ve never been popular on any front. I was the loner in school, the kid picked last in dodge ball, the girl who couldn’t start a trend if her life depended on it. How many others are there who are just like me, with much to contribute but no pack leaders touting their merits? How many potential Stephen Kings are out there who will never realize their potential simply because they lack either the right connections or the right luck to be read by someone influential enough to put them on the map?

I know nearly every author out there has faith in his or her writing, so I’m not unique in that regard. I’m not unique in feeling that I deserve my fair shot. I’m anything but unique in my desire to make my mark in the literary world.

What I am, however, is unique—period.

Is that alone worth your readership … or are you waiting for the pack leaders to tell you what the next big trend will be to follow?

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Too Bad, So Sad

6/9/2013

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I’ve touched upon this before, and with mixed response, but I must have another word on the subject. It never ceases to surprise me when a reader somehow feels cheated when finishing a dystopian novel that ends on a less-than-happy note. I understand that genres evolve to a certain extent, but to base one’s dystopian rubric on what one experiences in reading, say, The Hunger Games, is faulty to say the very least. Let’s take a look at a few of the most influential classics, the dystopias that truly define the genre:

Planet of the Apes: Ulysse escapes Soror with his primitive lover and child, offering the readers hope that all will be well, only to return home to find Earth has become the same hell he escaped. The couple in space who had the message in a bottle—again, hope for the human race—only end up throwing another disturbing monkey wrench into the works (yes, pun fully intended).

The point: Apes merely “ape,” and everything the readers see in the ape society represents humanity’s progress put eternally on hold; we only hold ourselves back, and when we fail to reach our potential, society as a whole pays for our failings.

1984: Lovers Winston and Julia are discovered together by the Thought Police and are taken to the Ministry of Love for torturous, brainwashing “re-education.” They both betray one another during interrogation, and then suffer their greatest fears in Room 101, Winston nearly having his face chewed to ribbons by rats before having the horror differed instead onto Julia. Their love dissolves—actually transforms into contempt—as a result of their experiences, and both re-enter society as selfless drones who live to serve and love “Big Brother.”

The point: If we submit to group thought, essentially allowing others to think for us, and do not exercise our rights as individual human beings, we will lose all that makes humanity so exceptional and diverse.

Cat’s Cradle: Ice-nine, a frozen chemical that turns all liquid it comes into contact with into more ice-nine (which stays frozen even in high temperatures), falls into the ocean via the crash of a plane containing the frozen body of a dictator who had committed suicide by ingesting the chemical, and all of the oceans in the world freeze over, ensuring the extinction of virtually all life on the planet.

The point: The most selfish and ignorant of humankind will be the downfall of us all.

My point: There is a reason many of my works end in tragedy, and sometimes it takes a little brainpower to figure out why. I know some people read to escape and some people read to think, but those in need of escapism have no place picking up the good majority of dystopian works. When I read reviews that show contempt for the dark ending in my dystopia, all I can think of is, You obviously have not read enough to know what you’re talking about. Go back to your YA dystopia, the sugar-coated kind, and leave the real literature to the big kids. And, should you decide to pick up a novel that follows the classic dystopian trope, don’t complain if you leave without that warm and fuzzy feeling. It’s meant to stimulate your brain, not fulfill your escapist needs.

It's blunt and it's not nice, but it's also true.

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Delusion and Denial: Season 1 of BATES MOTEL

5/20/2013

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For a story that has a conclusion any Hitchcock fan will already know, Bates Motel has proven to be as unpredictable as they come. This first season was surprisingly good, and it will be interesting to see what happens in the Season 2. So far, it reminds me of a teenage Breaking Bad: a well-mannered, good-natured man finds himself slowly pushed over the edge by circumstances beyond his control.

The main characters all possess extreme flaws, and yet those flaws are not forced. Still, they are what drives the story, a necessary and important component to every twist the writers have thrown our way.

Norma Bates is well-meaning but unable to cope with day-to-day problems, let alone the horrors she’s encountered. She’s frail but so desperately wants to appear strong. These flaws are vital to the story because her need to fight not only aspects to her life she’s powerless to change, but also her very nature, is what contributes most to her continued trauma.

Norman Bates is much like his mother, clueless about how disturbed he is. He wants to find his place in the world, but he’s too far in the periphery to do so. He’s the perfect example of the seemingly good person capable of horrific acts. He wants to be good; he’s just too lost to see himself in any kind of realistic light.

Dylan Bates is the sanest person in the family, yet he works as an illegal pot grower’s guard and has murdered at least one person we know of. The scene in which he teaches Norma how to shoot a gun shows how level-headed he is, but the level of corruption his character has amassed parallels that of his mother and brother. The only difference is he is aware of his actions, the consequences of those actions, and where that places him in terms of society and those he feels the need to protect.

Bradley is a symbol of Norman’s desire for normalcy. She’s the all-American girl, the epitome of the seeming high-school perfection that nearly everyone, at one time or another, strove to be. Norman’s obsession with her is nothing less than an obsession to fit in, to live the stereotypical high school experience. Her denial of his affection represents a denial of his place in the normal, sane world.

Emma is the perfect reflection of Norman. Although she has no homicidal tendencies, she represents death through her chronic, deadly condition. Her attraction to Norman symbolizes his own imperfection and, despite himself, the slow dance with Death that he cannot escape. When they go to the dance together, both admitting it to be their first, the music is telling. The opening lyrics are, “Everybody’s got a secret to hide. . . .” While Emma’s flaws are physical and Normans psychological, he rejects a part of himself by rejecting her.

Abernathy, the slave trade dealer, is a symbol of the town’s corruption, while Sheriff Romero symbolizes a desire to create order amidst a sea of chaos. Deputy Shelby, with whom Norma has a brief fling, represents the evil that lies just beneath the surface of all that appears good but ends in tragedy—the darkness each character strives to overcome, only to see it return, time and time again, in a different form.

Norman’s meltdown over the black socks and Norma’s confession of childhood incest offer deeper glimpses of who they are; Norma’s visible scar parallels her emotional ones. Each character introduced throughout the season, as minor as he or she may seem, holds a tiny piece of the puzzle that will eventually solve the big question: how does Norman Bates become the insane, ever-tormented killer of Psycho? The writers have laid the perfect foundation of trauma, neurosis, and betrayal. What promises to come in the following season will be nothing short of horrifying.

For more about Bates Motel, go to A&E.

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Pandemics, Predictive Sci-Fi, and WORLD-MART

3/6/2013

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Many times over, science fiction has predicted future issues, innovations, and inventions. The microwave, the satellite dish, robots, hand-held computers, and weapons of mass destruction all existed in science fiction before they became pieces of modern reality. Many of these predictions have been lucky guesses, while others have emerged from precise meshes of inspiration, scientific backgrounds, and creativity.

Recently, healthcare officials have begun to give increasing attention to the growing issue of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Up until this last year, MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) was the big threat. MRSA causes painful boils and can causes sepsis and disease in vital organs, and it’s very difficult to treat. Now, a bacterium named Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) has created a threat that makes MRSA look rather innocuous. CRE is not only highly contagious and resistant to every antibiotic on the market—but it has the ability to trade DNA with other bacteria to make them equally antibiotic resistant. Hypothetically, they could be responsible for future drug resistance in every known species of bacteria, and the implications are terrifying.

Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor and professor working at the University of Iowa's Carver College of Medicine told USA Today, "We're entering the post-antibiotic era; that's a very big problem."

In my dystopia, World-Mart, antibiotic resistant disease has ravaged the population to the point where antibiotics have become outlawed and those found to carry previously treatable diseases such as Staph and Strep are euthanized to prevent further pandemics. While this is only a part of the story’s B-plot, I found myself dumbstruck at the possibility of currently treatable diseases becoming the scourge they had become in World-Mart. I must also question whether researchers will turn to germ-line therapy in an attempt to create future generations that are more disease resistant. Could the genetically engineered “deviants” of World-Mart also become a reality of the near future?

I’ll admit without any reservations that I wrote World-Mart as a warning of the possible future in store should we allow corporations to expand and render small, privately owned businesses obsolete. It is a future I hope will not come to pass, as fearful as I am that the potential is there. I also saw and wrote about the growing threat of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the possible worldwide threats various diseases, if rendered untreatable, might pose. I pray neither occurs to the extent I envisioned in my fiction, although the chances are looking increasingly likely.

What do you think about these latest bacterial outbreaks? What do you think we can do to reduce their threat? In light of current events, do you personally view World-Mart an even more terrifying look into the future, or do you think most of the novel will remain strictly science fiction?

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<<Previous

The Old Man and the Spider

A Surreal Year

New and Improved!

Happy Women in Horror Month!

On American Horror Story: Freak Show

BREAKING BAD: Why I'm Rooting for Skyler

If I Only Had a Name

Too Bad, So Sad

Delusion and Denial: Season 1 of BATES MOTEL

Pandemics, Predictive Sci-Fi, and WORLD-MART

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