The Jealous Giant
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Nathaniel is a giant fuelled by jealousy, who tickles old people and blogs about it. Detective Conn, a vicar from Jeddah, knows she has to stop him. Eventually, Conn captures the villain and wins a bravery award. She tries to bring back Nathaniel’s wife but he doesn’t believe her until it’s too late.
He swears vengeance on Jeddah and vows never again to be caught out by an amateur. But then he finds that he really likes being an action hero and gets even eviler. Will there ever come a day when his wife can have another baby? Or will he do what every good villain does best – destroy all of mankind just for the fun of it?”
It was quite unlike anything I had written before, which is not surprising as very few crime writers are interested in science fiction or fantasy. But with my recent return to London after six years away – two of them spent writing screenplays, four of them living under siege with the Burmese army during its attack on Kokang Province, in northern Shan State; three teaching English at Cambridge and Oxford universities in England—I wanted my next novel to be set here because this city truly felt like home.
So I needed something entirely new to write about and writing speculative fiction seemed ideal: it didn’t feel real but also could connect me better than any other way back to the world I left behind.
At first glance, no one would guess where it actually happened: no dead bodies in dismembered pieces anywhere nearby; only dust and rubble covered in vines growing over charred corpses – may be insects – a desolate flat landscape stretching off into nowhere. Even eerier still, to many outsiders, are the reports and eyewitness accounts from those survivors who lived through it.
Of course, many found their lives miraculously spared; some suffered incredible trauma, such as an entire neighborhood consumed alive along with everything they owned; others barely escaped injury themselves, witnessing horrors from within their own homes while flames devoured buildings just yards away around them.
And yet nearly everyone suffered the loss of friends or family members, who were reduced to blackened husks in seconds, incinerated inside burning structures; it makes your heart clench to read about. It is all so far removed from anything most Londoners would consider imaginable. But these are things we experienced firsthand for six years ourselves.
Our former village founded only after our arrival in 2000 with many of us refugees fleeing war-torn Burma (and China), lay directly opposite what became known as the “Iron Triangle”, one of the largest industrial areas of Dagon Township in eastern Thailand, less than half a mile west of the Thai–Burmese border itself.
From there the fire traveled hundreds of miles north, affecting many other communities, razing whole villages and displacing thousands, ending up right here in what locals now refer to ominously as the “No Fire Zone”: across the River Kwai, beyond where the train tracks crossed over.
Here is what is sometimes referred to colloquially as the Greater Bangkok Area – greater in size than Austria and with a population comparable to New York City — the conflagration affected tens of thousands of families, leaving countless numbers homeless, without possessions, destitute, traumatized and abandoned to fend for themselves and rebuild their lives with the resources available to them. In some cases, their newly rebuilt shanty towns did little to protect them from the ongoing monsoon season that brought down endless tropical storms and flooding each year.
The rains pounded the refugee camps unceasingly for six years, carrying a fresh wave of mudslides whenever the earth took revenge on everything built since the beginning of time; all the houses and tents collapsed in watery ruins in moments, turning into smoldering ash that rose endlessly to fill the air in choking clouds.
There, every year, the survivors faced another season of utter despair. It wasn’t going to get easier anytime soon; indeed it might well only become worse if the future wasn’t brighter somehow.
For most refugees, this meant life was unliveable indefinitely. Something drastic was required; the impossible was necessary. To live once again to dream again – yes, if only just for a moment, just one instant — would be miraculous in itself.
To explain this kind of madness, I decided to give the people of the No Fire Zone a reason and then build my narrative around how we made it happen. To construct the story I went back to history, using mythologies I’m familiar with – including ancient Greek mythology, the myths surrounding King Arthur in medieval Wales and the English Civil War, Shakespeare, and even Star Wars.
My stories are fictional, obviously, but grounded firmly in fact.
However, having said that, I know you’re always concerned that I am exaggerating or lying outright, so allow me to clarify the nature of my claims by answering your initial question. On the last page, ‘The Beginning’, I state simply that The Aeneid takes place in “the future”.
Does this mean the actual setting in the real world? If so, I haven’t told you yet but have chosen to keep secret until then; a simple explanation can be found further on, on the dedication page, but do remember it’s based solely upon what happened afterward for me, and I can never verify any part of it either way for definite.
But for clarity, let me begin by addressing something which was surely obvious to anyone who reads the book to its very end and finds themselves wondering why certain elements unfolded in an exact manner suggested throughout – such as that mysterious message sent out to a long-lost human race.
Don’t you see the clues provided all along the journey through these pages, from beginning to end, culminating in that final twist at the conclusion when you discover that… well, to say too much beforehand could spoil the fun for you?
Suffice to say, to arrive at our destination we had to cross worlds, and battle an intergalactic invader – not to mention myself being trapped inside another character’s mind as they made crucial discoveries I knew nothing about until my journey to reach her began.
These weren’t just novels but visions of the future inspired by tales of times long ago that all had one thing in common – it wasn’t what we expected, and despite appearances to the contrary the truth about reality turned out to be entirely different to our expectations.
We have entered a brave new world, and I hope those reading the sequel enjoy their glimpse into it with an open mind – perhaps even like it enough to join us there.
‘My Father Has Left Me’: More Scenes With Sonar, Who Is Losing His Sight As Well
In addition, since starting work on The Aeneid two years ago, the idea for this next novel has taken root. There will now no longer be any delay in making it available in print form and going down some more rabbit holes.
It is almost ready (in the beta stage) to submit, although it may take up to six months before publication if I can find someone to publish it with; it seems I’ve created a monster that people want to read! The book itself opens with a title reveal, explaining that it concerns something rather dark and horrifying happening to planet Earth while millions of creatures escape the disaster on spaceships destined to colonize new planets elsewhere. You’re definitely in for another ride!
***
The long wait ends and it’s finally here: the highly anticipated conclusion to John Michael Greer’s New Ice Age trilogy, his second quartet after 2014’s astounding Long Road to Freedom, following our hero Jonas Cole’s odyssey from America across the continent and then half a dozen other nations, only to arrive in Europe during the Great Unraveling.
And soon after arriving, he begins to suspect things might be worse than in the US – because where else could there possibly be anywhere left outside North America safe for humankind, even for primitive folk like the ones who survive the plagues unleashed against them?
Or even the aliens with whom humanity coexists in this modern dystopia, refugees scattered far and wide by a deadly cosmic event that wiped out most life within the Milky Way and beyond…
Because though things aren’t nearly as bad as they are in many parts of Africa and Asia, and the seas have mostly retreated and given space for human habitation and trade to continue – again on low levels – across large swathes of Eurasia, everything isn’t going exactly swimmingly across this entire vast landmass, let alone in the USA and Canada.
On top of the constant threat of catastrophe rearing its ugly head whenever an extreme weather pattern brews up in some previously forgotten corner of the world to remind us of the near-inevitability of climatic disruption and extinctions – not to mention the radioactive fallout from the unmaking of a major nuclear reactor somewhere – and the daily humiliations of trying to feed one’s family while knowing they face certain extinction if they remain in the contaminated zones – and of course, the utter ignorance of a global populace living under media-maddened false consciousness which refuses to acknowledge the world is coming apart beneath our feet – there remains the prospect of war breaking out over resources, not least water – a problem likely to grow all the greater as climate change takes hold.
Not all hope is lost, though – as is so often the case in works of SF (perhaps especially so when dealing with dire and imminent cataclysms) and clearly set out in the books’ titles: In All Their Fierce Glory and Blood and Soil.
Humanity has managed to endure, even thrive, in the toughest of circumstances over and above how much times would normally shape, corrupt, or exterminate previous generations; whereas each of its most prominent political entities is beset by serious internal division and external threats.
One superpower is scrambling frantically to plug gaps in its defenses against possible aggression – both covert and overt; another seeks to control events in other worlds by means of puppet rulers and agents to ensure peace reigns on the home front.
Even the oldest democracy in history has a seriously dysfunctional government; a rogue nation is on a path towards becoming the greatest military power known to man, if not the galaxy – with dark visions of the whole of earth thrown open to its gaze.
The United States – though now nominally part of what is commonly referred to as a European Union, albeit one lacking in all the trappings that term generally evokes – is attempting to construct some kind of stability amid these storms and catastrophes, in truth, it struggles badly to keep chaos at bay, let alone prevent any sort of civil war breaking out into bloody conflict.
Meanwhile, in far-off Japan, the feudal realm is rocked by yet more dastardly crimes perpetrated by one of its own most powerful clans and institutions, perhaps only now beginning to awaken to the wider realities surrounding them all.
Not just from the religious fanatics hiding in plain sight throughout Japanese society, intent upon eradicating anyone deemed ‘impure’; but also from the group known variously as the Scions of Terra and the IAC: a criminal gang that not only terrorizes everyone it deems unworthy of occupying this once-fertile archipelago but also dispossesses those citizens whose survival depends upon farming.
These latter lose their lands and livelihoods unless they accept voluntary resettlement on distant volcanic islands or oceanic islands such as Guam, several hundred miles west of the Philippines; even worse is the mass migration to coastal cities already submerged beneath rising waters; leaving many struggling to subsist without access to food or medicine in one of the largest refugee crises ever recorded.
They must watch helplessly as those in power take advantage of this chaos to consolidate their own influence; aided and abetted by the nation’s secret police organization known simply as Jap-Dog and the Aikido no Kyoto.
But they won’t give up hope for a better tomorrow, not even as the country crumbles further around them and people still refuse to believe the warnings issued years ago about an impending apocalypse brought on by their own lackadaisical approach to environmental stewardship.
Even though much like the American president who spends his days surrounded by security guards and protected by huge walls rather than getting stuck in to meet and listen to real human problems, or as he claims ‘have a seat at the table. No – that wasn’t a typo.
What results from all this are tales of survival and resistance. Stories of heroic battles both large and small, as ordinary folk fight back against the oppressive forces, ranged against them, risking all to try to preserve what little integrity of life they can.