This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox (Fool)

In the publishing business today. The rules are simple enough. Whatever it is, we don’t want it! WHO are you and not what did you write about, are the cardinal rules. A Hollywood celebrity or an out of office politico can write or have written for them any old mish mash and get a six-figure advance.  John Steinbeck once said, a fella who writes books for a living makes a man who bets on horses at the race track look like a stable occupation.

You write your first novel because you’re stupid and naive. You think the world can’t wait to hear what you have to say. Well, maybe the world can’t wait but the publishing industry sure can. The publishing industry is inundated with huge stacks of manuscripts all written by stupid naive fools like myself. Literary agents come and go faster than comets which burn out and fade away. You must write for the market, I was told. You cannot have violence or cruelty or racism. Which leaves out  Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse Five, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and many others.

Violence is okay, provided it’s cartoon violence. Maybe something with Thor or a robot man! Violence without the full ramifications of violence is acceptable. But a story about a cute dog is still preferable. Nothing serious! Trivial is better! Messages are out! Nobody wants to read “Bound for Glory” or “The Grapes of Wrath.” Too depressing! Stephen King’s wife fished the manuscript for “Carrie” out of the trash can. After the industry had told Steve in every way they could tell him, it was no damn good!

You write your second novel because you are stubborn and really kind of dumb. You went into that biker bar and got beat up and now you want to go back? A frustrated writer once submitted the first chapter of a Tale of Two Cities to literary agents. Not only did they not pick up on the plagiarism. They told him it was no damn good! But you write your third novel because there just ain’t no excuse for you!

So, like the old song goes. Here I go breaking all of the rules. Dayfall isn’t science fiction. It’s future fiction. About what happens in an environmentally degraded superheated world. There is no science to it. Science is dead! Literacy is dead. Learning is dead and religion is nearly dead. All about a mythical land where people struggle to survive. Where their greatest need is water. Clean safe water. And so, water becomes a commodity like money or gold.

A river separates two societies. On one side of the river are the survivors of the old ways. Pretending the old ways will return someday, if they just keep the faith. On the other side of that river is a primitive society living in the new old ways. Living simply in a primitive existence, eking out a living by selling water, illegally. Like people sell drugs today. The corporation owns the rights to all the water. And its sale is strictly regulated and limited and ensconced under Corporate law. Anyone approaching that river for a drink will be punished to the fullest extent of the corporate law! Lethal force is authorized!

The corporation lies to the people (See, fiction!) and tells them there are predators in the river. That that water isn’t safe. That the corporation is their friend and only the corporation can save them. You can see right there that all by itself is enough for this novel to find every literary trash can in New York City! “Wait! Do you mean to tell me the corporation are the bad guys in this story?”

On the primitive side of the river slavery is allowed because it is like Earth was for a hundred thousand years. (Verboten subject matter!) On the civilized side of the river slavery is outlawed. See the noble corporation isn’t all bad! The 1% live in idle comfort and luxury. The other 99% work for the corporation or sell water, weed, home brewed whiskey or dog jerky. But at least there’s no slavery here! Just corporate employment. The lowly and unwashed are referred to disparagingly as roaches. But the “R” word is not to be used carelessly. Only a roach can call another roach a roach.

Every story needs a hero or an anti-hero. In this story that role is filled by Dagmar Johanson. He’s big and burly, unwashed, uneducated and violent. Sometimes unnecessarily so. But Dag is a man of this world who plays by its rules and not the rules of a crumbling ancient societies of higher learning. Dag is a terrible person. Rude and uncouth. But Dag might be the greatest man they ever was maybe. Maybe even greater than Chris Kringle! Dag is their champion. Dag makes his living by protecting those who cannot protect themselves as a thug and a warlord. He’s no good! But he’s no good with a purpose.

Owing to the intense heat. The people have become nocturnal. Who move and get active at night and in the early mornings. Before the heat of the sun melts them down like candles. They hide out and sleep during the day. Like any good police state the “CS” or Corporate Security men are everywhere. But fortunately, are generally lazy and incompetent. Arrested criminals are convicted due to their arrest alone. Their trials are just sentencing formalities, unless you can bribe a guard to let you go. Three arrests for corporate contact (CC’s) means death. Your criminal record is tattooed on your arm.

Those convicted are sentenced to wattage sentences. Because the electricity inside of the corporate zone of Sin City where the elite live. That comes from gangs of men manually pushing an armature on twelve levels. And the armature never stops! Even if sometimes the men pushing it do. Then those men are hauled away and dispensed with in a corporate society which does not tolerate the waste of perfectly good “Product.”

Dag was they greatest man they ever was! Maybe even greater than Chris Kringle maybe! And never let it be said that Chris Kringle wasn’t generous!

Dayfall, a Novel available July 4th written by a fella just too damn stupid and stubborn to give up and write about happy little puppy dogs.  

“It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times!” Only it was worse than the worst of times. Where even their greatest champion wasn’t very good. But he was free!