Post Industrial Fiction Lecture in St Louis, September 30th 2017

David Trammel's picture

We will be having a one hour lecture/discussion at the St. Louis sci-fi convention Archon, at 3pm local, on Saturday, September 30th, on "Post Industrial" fiction. Sophie Gale, forum regular has agreed to come down from Peoria, to help me give the talk. The convention will be held in Collinsville, just east of downtown St Louis, at the convention center there.

(The Archon website is here: http://archonstl.org/index.html )

The lecture title and programming blurb I sent in earlier this year when I first proposed the lecture was:

"Surviving (and Even Thriving) in a New "Cli-Fi" World".

Description: "We are facing a hot and harsh Future. Come learn about this hot new genre of fiction in a round table discussion with several MidWest authors who have recently published in this field, share some of their experiences and helpful hints on how you too can become a first time published author. Also learn how their Tales of the Coming Decades may well come true for us all and what you can do to survive it."

Yes, I original used the term "Climate Fiction" but it sems like the more generally accepted term for the stories we are writing here is now "Post Industrial". I'm seeing if we can change it, but we may have to go with this and give an explantion at the lecture of the change.

As for the lecture itself, we plan on focusing primarily on the writing side of Post Industrial fiction, with an eye to how new writers can get into the genre and get their stories published. We want to cover first just what "Post Industrial" fiction means, how it relates to other genres in science fiction, and the various "drivers" that can cause a world that is post industrial to happen, like climate change, resource depletion, economic collapse, etc.

We discuss resources that a writer can use to fill out their "World and Story", as well as a few of the places they can submit their stories to, like "Into the Ruins", Founder's House Publishing and "Mystic".

We will finish the hour with a discussion of how likely our present society and civilization will collapse, and a few places, like the Green Wizard forum that they can go to learn how to adapt themselves for such a Future.

If you are in the St Louis area and might want to attend, I will say that showing up at the convention to just sit in our lecture is free. They are only going to check badges if you want to get into the main areas like the Art Show, Huckster's Room, or participate in the Gaming area.

Wandering around to see the hallways filled with people in costumes is free. The one day pass is $45, which I consider reasonable with all the things you can do. Archon is one of the premeire MidWest conventions with 2-3000 people in attendance, an amzing artshow, great dealers' room and a Saturday night Masquarade Contest that is in the top 5 in the whole country.

Now if you are a writer who has published a story in one of the "After Oil" anthologies, or had a story published in "Into the Ruins", and would like to sit in on the panel and give your take on this subject, please let me know at dtrammel at green wizards dot info.

Its my hope we can get a local writer's circle going here in the St Louis area, meeting each month. As well as some fresh blood to the forum and the Story Circle.

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Now here's how everyone can help us with this...

I have a general idea of the outline of the things I want to discuss, but that's just what I view the subject of Post Industrial fiction through. I would like to throw out some of my thoughts and have everyone offer their own thoughts, ideas and opinions on them.

Sophie and I had a lunch together in Peoria a few weeks back and had a great few hours talking about Green Wizards, Collapse, science fiction and some of our own ideas on this genre. I expect she will join this discussion as well.

Let's start with the first big question...

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"What is "Post Industrial" fiction?"

Sophie in a message to me said:

"Climate Fiction and Post-Industrial Fiction are subsets of Apocalyptic Fiction, but they aren't the same. Do you want to combine them?"

To me mind "Apocalyptic" fiction and "Post Industrial", can share a similar "story world" which is one where the present Civilization's scientific and industrial level of advancement has collapsed. The core difference is in how that happens.

"Apocalyptic" fiction by its nature envisons a "fast" collapse. Meteor strike, nuclear war, global pandemic, these are all things which collapse the major society in a relatively quick way, weeks if not months. Then the survivors and our stories characters must adapt to a world that is radically different from the one they are used to.

"Post Industrial" fiction on the other hand has as a premise a much slower collapse. While some events, like a war or a economic depression can cause a short term rapid step downward, by in large, the Collapse is one of things just getting worse and worse over time. Parents remember a better time, while the Children just think this is how things have always been.

The chief causes of this "slow" Collapse seem to be:

Resource Depletion
Over Population
Climate Change
Poltical Instability or Collapse
Civil War or Government Take-over
Full or Partial Economic Collapse

A second characteristic that differentiates "Apocalyptic" fiction from "Post Industrial" fiction, is the "time frame" of the story world.

"Apocalyptic" stories always take place in a relatively short period fron the "Event". Whether in the short time before the thing that collapses society, or the time of the thing itself, or the immediate aftermath of that thing, these stories have as a major character, that which has brought on the collapse.

"Post Industrial" fiction on the other hand, often that which brought on the collapse of society is an after thought to the story. It has become something of a historical fact, like the "Black Plague" during the Middle Ages, but with a story a hundred years after. Its something accepted.

Yes, there are stories set in the "Collapse". Most of my own are set a decade or two from now, as several of those six chief causes are beginning their work of reshaping society. Yet most "Post Industrial" fiction, now that I've read the first year's issues of "Into The Ruins" take place decades or centuries past the Collapse. We may view them as somehow lacking, since they don't get to share in the over rated spoils of our technological society, but they don't.

This brings up to me a third, and important difference. In "Apocalyptic" fiction, the characters are often trying to bring back their pre-Event lifestyle. Return the World to the way it was before. "Post Industrial" worlds have accepted that there is a "Before" and there is a "Now", that is never going back to the "Before".

What are your thoughts and opinions on this?

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Now a shorter question...

I've talked to Founder's House and "Into The Ruins", and both have sent me flyers about themselves and their submissions requirements for new writers, which we will be giving out at the lecture.

Sophie asked if I thought a reading list of "Post Industrial" stories and books would be useful?

I'm on the fence. I can see its usefulness.

Opinions?

More to come...

I've been thinking about the program. One hour is either an eternity or not nearly long enough to talk. You know you've got a hit program when people don't want to clear the room for the next panel. So how do we get the audience fired up and ready to follow us to the bar for more discusion?

Well, we can ask them questions and moderate their discussion. To that end I started an outline. Please comment if you feel inclined

Interacting With the Audience

I What are you reading?

A Change in Pop Fiction

1 Outlander - Diana Gabaldone

2 The Emberverse - S.M. Stirling

3 The World Made by Hand - James Kunstler

4 Who Fears Death - Nnedi Okorafor

5 The Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler

That's just a start, of course. There's a list of favorite post-apocalyptic books here. And yes, from the heroine's point of view, she's collapsed two nhundred years into the 18th Century. I haven't seen the TV series yet, but part of the charm of the books is watching Claire struggle with the lack of 20th Century techology (and men in kilts and hot sex, but)

B Non-fiction (show of hands, who reads ...)

1 History

2 Science

3 Politics

4 Economics

5 Travel

6 All of the above

Because there's very little new under the sun. Throughout history empires have collapsed and civillizations have risen and fell, and there clues, if not whole volumes, about why they collapsed and how people got by. And great material to steal!

II Re-enactors in the audiece? People who go to Ren Fairs and other re-enactment events?

A Why?

B What skills do audience members already have?

C Which skills would people like to learn?

III Figure out what to save

A JMG said follow your paasion and figure out how to preserve it.

B Find other people who share your passion and work together.

B What skills would they

Natch, we're about story-telling and publishing, but story-telling could also include art, theater or music--or a combination thereof.

David Trammel's picture

You didn't have much to contribute, lol.

These are pirates' code--suggested guidelines in case we run short of material. Much better to have more stuff than we need than to sit there and stare at the audience.

I spent two houtrs at BN panel prepping. No, the store was doing a local authors booksigning and a friend was peddling her fantasy novel, so I went over and spent two hours panel prepping. It's been years since I've thought of myself as a writer but if I am going to be a "Pro Guest or Honor" (oh, my giddy stars! that's what it says on the Archon site) I damn well need to bring my best possible game.

SO! We will have publisher sheets from Founder House and Into the Ruins. Do you think we need a resource list for noobie writers? That could either be resources for writing/publishing or resources for research--although there is plenty of stuff here for research/story ideas. In fact I was thinking the other night there's enough here in the archives for several chapbooks of "Really Cool Sh*t from GW"

David Trammel's picture

I don't want to get too heavy on the handouts. I figured that the last 15 minutes or so we would talk about the Green Wizard's forum, and all the resources and story ideas that are here, as you mention. The article on the Canadian forest fires is a good example, I can think of several story ideas out of just that one.

I'm hoping that by not providing too much in the way of stuff people can take home and then jump right in, that they will visit the forum here and check out the resources and links. That way we'll see some increased traffic and discussions in Story Circle as well.

I'm reading this new article on Grist:

https://grist.org/article/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-deal-with-c...

"Climate change is an existential threat. If CO2 levels hit a certain concentration and temperatures increase by a particular number of degrees, the human race is certainly doomed. This summer, in particular, has seen a nonstop slew of ever-worse disasters that permanently changed lives and formerly familiar landscapes: from Hurricane Harvey to western wildfires that fill the sky with ash.

"It’s also a unique threat, because you know what you should do to foil it: Don’t drive, don’t fly, don’t eat meat, don’t buy lots of things, don’t vote for (most) Republicans. But in practice, it’s hard to do many of those things. At best, they are mildly inconvenient; at worst, they obstruct your daily life and long-term goals.

"And climate change — while slow-moving — has already begun to alter the places in which we live in ways that cannot be reversed. That, to the average person, is a viscerally depressing sentiment."

Whether we are talking about Climate Chaos or Peak Oil, the prescriptions are much the same: collapse now; embrace LESS. And let's face it. It doesn't matter how good a gardener or how much canned food you have packed away if your land is under three feet of water or charred by a forest fire. Harlan Ellison once said something like science fiction doesn't necessarily promise the future of our dreams, but it DOES promise a future. Post-Industrial Fiction shows ways forward. The choices make be hard, but we now know what we have to look forward to if we don't change. So climate fiction, on the one hand, shows us a set of futures we might expect if we continue to burn through our fossil fuel reserves; post-industrial shows us a different set of futures if we collapse now or somehow survive Mother Nature fury.

David Trammel's picture

I don't believe that humans are doomed by climate change, even its worst case scenarios. Like cockroaches, there will be some humans around. What kind of society they make for themselves is a good question though.

While we are talking about Mother Nature's Fury, here's a great article by Naomi Klein to file for research:

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/09/in-a-summer-of-wildfires-and-hurrica...

"In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?”"

David Trammel's picture

A great article and one that boggles my mind to think of. Here description of a world now with a sky, but one with a ceiling, hits home for me. As someone who works a third shift (11pm to 7am), there are days during the middle of Winter, where it is still dark (or at least just dawning) when I go home. That can lead to periods where I never see the Sun.

Must be similar for those who live far North, with their days of a few hours during Winter and their nights of a few hours during Summer.

I did have one clear thought at the end of the article. What happens to anyone using solar panels for power during something like this?

The yield must drop drastically on cloudy days, and the ash would make a film on any solar array, that you would be constantly cleaning. This would certainly monkey wrench a society that has a high amount of solar generation for their main grid source of electricity.

David Trammel's picture

"Harlan Ellison once said something like science fiction doesn't necessarily promise the future of our dreams, but it DOES promise a future. Post-Industrial Fiction shows ways forward. The choices make be hard, but we now know what we have to look forward to if we don't change. So climate fiction, on the one hand, shows us a set of futures we might expect if we continue to burn through our fossil fuel reserves; post-industrial shows us a different set of futures if we collapse now or somehow survive Mother Nature fury."

--

I find that the writers that I go back to time and time again, are those writers who know their stuff.

I'm a big consumer of "military sci-fi", and the days when a writer can just have their heroic spaceship Captain order "Half quarter impulse, and close withe them Helmsman", are long gone. A recent book I read actual included the effects of time dialation at near lightspeed travel when their fighters attacked their enemy.

Who knew you needed to learn math to write good fiction anymore?

My point is that people who want to write in the genre of Climate Fiction or Post Industrial, are going to want to learn the techniques we discuss here regularly. The good writers that is.

While being able to do the math on space battles speed and attack vectors is fun but ultimately a dead skill, come on how many of us will ever get to pilot a interplantary fighter, the skills people will learn to write good post industrial fiction are going to be skills they can use in their personal life.

And spread to their friends and family.

From the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/26/climate/climate-books-fic...

"Climate change presents a peculiar challenge to novelists; it often seems to simmer without a singular moment of crisis. So fiction writers like Mr. Bacigalupi hurtle current science into drought-ravaged, flooded, starved, sunken and sandy futures. Climate-themed fiction, like most science fiction, is extension, not invention.

"But as scientists’ projections about the effects of climate change have increasingly become reality, some works of apocalyptic fiction have begun to seem all too plausible. We chose seven climate-themed stories and asked the experts: How likely are they to come true?"

We should make an interesting team then, because I go back to authors who write about interesting people facing dilemmas in unfamiliar times and places. Or writers who are especially good at taking our expectations and turning them inside out.

I do love a writer who write a good story about economics, but I go for people who know history and culture.

Archon is great fun. I've been there at least three times. One of those three was less than a month after 9/11, and we were all dealing with a radically changed world. I suspect that a fair number of attendees this year will also be trying to cope with a sense of displacement.. So we may find an audience looking for "stories that make sense"--a narrative that explains our 24/7 news feeds. Our audience could be a small group of niche writers and readers or a large group with a burning need to know WTF???? Hard to say.

To get this discussion started, here's the Wikipedia page on Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction#F...

There's a selection of works in each sub-category, and footnote references and some genre websites at the end. I usally think it's helpful to have some kind of reading list and be able to link what we are doing with stories that our audience has probably read. (OMG, the Wiki reading list has an entry for a locally-produced, 1972 radio play called "The Peoria Plague." I will have to track this down)

I'm very much trying to figure out what my contribution to this program will be, since my great pile of scribbling focuses on the mythic past: Atlantis. But I've been writing and reading for a very long time, so I just have to figure out what I already know.

David Trammel's picture

"I'm very much trying to figure out what my contribution to this program will be, since my great pile of scribbling focuses on the mythic past: Atlantis. But I've been writing and reading for a very long time, so I just have to figure out what I already know."

--

One of my biggest hopes for this lecture, is that I can attract 4-5 local writers into forming a groups who meets monthly.

While its stated purpose would be to share and discuss tips and such on writing, submitting and getting published our stories, I am hoping such a groups will have a deeper purpose, that is to spread Green Wizardry here locally in St Louis.

Having this forum, sharing what we each do in our own space is helpful, but I'm sure the people who gold their own local Green Wizard meetings can attest to, having people you can sit down with over a meal, and just chat with is immensely more helpful.

Just the brief few hours we had to do lunch and chat helped me focus on things.

While you don't have the depth of writing experience I do, you have instead a deep understanding of what we think of as Green Wizardry and of Greer's writings on the ADR. While the audience of this lecture will have many writers and people who want to write, I suspect it will have just as many people who are their friends and who don't write. They will though be people who might benefit from Green Wizardry in their own lives.

You are right, people out there are sensing there is something fundamentally wrong with Society and our present civilization. The wheels are coming off the bus.

No pressure though, lol.

LOL! I'm having a senior moment! The last time I talked about the business of writing self-publishing was called "vanity press," graphic novels were comic books, and there weren't apps for anything! "Do I need an agent?" was a hot topic. Now I am wondering if I really know the difference between "sad puppies" and rabid puppies." Should I read up? Am I likely to encounter either puppy during our hour? And what happens if I do? I feel a bit like an old gunslinger strapping on a gun for the first time in 20 years. Silly stuff.

This is gonna fun. I'm starting to think about what I want to say..

I'm envious, and hope you both had a really good time! I would have loved to attend, but no way I could travel that far. I hope you'll let us know how the presentation went, and what you got out of it.

Looks like I'll be a presenter at the Portland, OR SF convention Orycon, Nov 17-19th. No panels on post-industrial (tho I suggested it), but I'm on a panel about SF writing and social change. I'm also running a couple of the open reading/critique groups, which should be interesting. I haven't been to a con since the late 80's, so I hope I have the stamina. Luckily I have a friend (who's also a longtime Archon attendee) who's sharing a room, and will be a friendly face among strangers...

Anyway - please let us know how it went!!

David Trammel's picture

This is my after lecture report:

The run-up to the convention was a nightmare. Early that week, I had to go on 12 hour shifts. We only have 3 people who run the machines I run, 1 for each shift (we are training someone though), and the day person had a family emergency, so the evening man and I had to fill in.

Friday I go out early (or at my regular time of 8am). I picked up a new printer to print out the flyers, and could not get the blasted thing to work. Managed to get a copy of each of the flyers after a few hours of banging my head on the table. Took the copies by the Paper/Copying store and ordered 100 copies of each, with the understanding I'd be back in about 2 hours to pick them up. When I go back later, the new clerk couldn't find my copies. The manager (who took 15 minutes to come out) and the clerk looked and looked, to finally find my originals thrown in the trash can! They printed up my copies and gave them to me for free, lol.

Saturday, Sophie called and let me know they would be in St Louis around 10am. When I meet them at the convention I realized I had left the backpack with everything for the lecture sitting next to the door, so I had to drive back to St Louis. I got back to the convention about 20 minutes before the lecture was to start.

But the lecture went well.

We had about a dozen people, perhaps 4-5 of them writers. Sophie can attest that I'm a completely out going presenter. I was perched on the front of the table talking most of the time. A bit too much nervous energy I'm afraid. Its been about a decade since I last did one.

I talked a bit about the genre and about just what "Post Industrial" fiction is but we quickly progressed from the fiction of Collapse and into the actual possiblity. Everyone seemed to accept that the World is having problems and that some sort of reset is probably in our Future.

The discussion went from gardening, to solar power to life style changes and back, with alot of good comments and stuff from the audience. We talked about the Green Wizard site and hopefully we will see a few new members.

I think nex year I may just skip the fiction and go right into a lecture entitled "Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush".

Hopefully Sophie will chime in with her perspective on things.

David, I'm sorry about the Murphy's Law stuff that happened to you before the presentation, and glad it came out well anyway. (I can relate to crises before presentations - once, when I was head of a week-long conference, I lost our main speaker George Gallup Jr at 2am by dropping him at the wrong hotel -this was before cell phones). I'm glad to hear some folks were interested in the reality, since it's gonna hit us anyway. Thanks for the report!

We had a great time! I went down to the convention with a young woman I volunteer with. It was her first con, and she had a lot of fun in the dealer room buying geeky Christmas presents for her family.

At 1 pm we went to:

Is This Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?: Are we at the Beginning of Real Life Dystopian Future? Is our current state of affairs leading into a potential real dystopian future?

Anna Mulch (M),Lettie Prell , Mr. Adrian Matthews

LOL! I was going to see how many people I could persuade to come to OUR panel at 3. That was a mistake! There were about 25 people in the audience. Nice crowd. Then Ms Lettie started throwing around words like "transcendence" and I was thinking "nooooooooooooo!" If they find us, they find us, but I wasn't going to invite her! But all went well. As David said, we had a nice-sized group, and I didn't see anyone I recognized from the other room.

My friend Lindy seemed interested in what we were about. In August or thereabouts I had sent her home with the first volume of After Oil, and The Ecotechnic Future. We have not discussed the books. I'll give her a little time to digest it all. She has her own handywoman business. Her brother helps her out. She does everything from home repair to building a water garden. We talked a lot on the way down to Collinsville, and she said she had dropped out of college and had floundered a bit before she found her calling. I found out from a mutual friend that the college was MIT and she had been validictorian of her high school class. So I intend to sound her out about writing SF.

And David has lived a very interesting life, and I am glad we got a chance to hang out. He is indeed an excellent presenter; I was impressed! I wish we could have stayed longer, but Lindy also does pet-sitting, and she had to get back to her obligations. It was twelve hours almost to the minute from my driveway to Collinsville and back again.

Well, from both your reports, it sounds like something worth repeating. Maybe next year at the same con, or maybe at another venue. I know it's hard to pull something like this together, and I appreciate both your efforts.