Ceres

2015 was a pretty good year for the world's various robotic space probes. All kinds of great stuff from Mars, from the dwarf planet Pluto, and all of the scientific data those various worlds have coughed up for us.

But one that was really foremost on my mind was the journey of the Dawn probe to sniff out new data on the largest asteroid between Earth and the outer planets: Ceres. I couldn't get enough of that little world and checked the news feeds daily to see what new things were cropping up as the ship sent back data to JPL.

I was, of course, dependent upon our wonderful Internet to seek out the little pieces of news that were streaming earthward each day. So I'd look at the sites I'd bookmarked and read those, and then go to Google and plug in "Ceres" to find other sources.

And here's the thing. I'd type in those five letters and more than likely what would pop up would be links to news items about killings, robberies, murders, and police shootings--lots of police shootings. What the hell was this?!

Yes, I immediately figured that I wasn't reading about some violent act outside of the JPL labs. There was obviously some place in the USA called Ceres and I was being information-blocked by news from that place instead of the space exploration information for which I was searching.

Finally, though, as the items from the dwarf planet began to fade to familiar stories, I felt that I had to at least understand what the other Ceres was. That is, where was it and why the hell were so many stories about violent acts? So...I looked it up.

Briefly, what I found is that Ceres is a city in California with a population of about 45,000 people. It's considered part of the Modesto urban area. Also, it seems to be one violent goddamned place. So violent that I will avoid anywhere within fifty miles of it the next time I journey to California. I mean, every time I would do the search for news of the JPL mission, what I'd ALWAYS see was some notice of another violent crime or a murder or a bit about the cops gunning down some low-born person on the wrong side of their bullets.

I mean, damn. What better dichotomy of the USA's good points and bad points can there be for me than the Google search for "Ceres".

The USA; inquisitive, bold, insightful.

The USA: Where guns do the talking.

The Last Zombie

The first time I ever saw NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD I was bitten as surely by Romero's vision as the characters had been by the zombies stalking them. The concept of the recently dead rising from oblivion to a kind of un-life with an unquenchable desire to kill and eat the living...it was brilliant. Yes, there had been movie and fiction zombies before Romero's seminal film, but never like those! Romero's zombies were a stroke of horror genius. There is a great reason they have had this long life in popular film and fiction.

I had wanted to write zombie novels for years. I had plotted them out in my mind and never proceeded beyond jotting some notes because I figured...who the hell was going to buy a zombie novel? It just wasn't done!

Yes, there had been some zombie novels when I was thinking of the idea, but they were adaptations of the Romero films, or sequels to those films (such as John Russo's excellent RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD which preceded the film of the same name but which was a direct sequel to the events in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD). Finally, a few zombie novels popped up, but they were rare and the only one that did exceptionally well was Phil Nutman's WET WORK.

But I kept fiddling with the concept and eventually decided to write a short story dealing with zombies--"The New Ecology of Death", which I then adapted to comic script format and sold to Stephen R. Bissette's TABOO.

Then, with the appearance of print-on-demand and self-publishing, there was an explosion of zombie novels. Thousands of them. I am not exaggerating--THOUSANDS! So I decided to give it a shot, intentionally avoiding the pitfalls that I had noticed in longer zombie fiction: thinly veiled racism.

To me, zombie fiction was effective because it was classic paranoid fantasy. Along the lines of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS or THE PUPPET MASTERS or I AM LEGEND (from which the idea for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD bled out). But I'd never looked upon it as a cover for racist ideas and dogma. So, naively, I followed the zombie phenomena and pursued my own zombie novel (THE LIVING END), while trying to make contact with zombie writers and fans while I worked on that book.

And it was with some great shock that I realized that a huge number of zombie fans are right wing gun nuts and racists. And a large portion of the folk writing zombie fiction were right wing gun nuts and racists. It should have occurred to me before reading the comments on zombie fiction chat boards and following links from people posting--so many of which led back to gun-crazies and white supremacist websites. Then, out of curiosity, I decided to look up THE TURNER DIARIES an overtly racist novel. And it was obvious to me that there's not the thickness of a lizard's whisker's difference in that hate speech and most zombie novels.

Reading that racist piece of shit I recognized in it the plots of most of the zombie novels I'd ever seen or read. Instead of killing zombies, the "heroes" of that ignorant, hateful poison kill Jews and black folk and race-traitors. So it was easy to suddenly see why so many right wing extremists were attracted to zombie fiction.

Gun-crazed racists.

 
I did my best to create zombie stories that--while deeply rooted in the tradition of paranoid fantasy--were not infected with the kind of racism that makes so many zombie novels uncomfortably popular.

The zombie fad seems, at last, to be fading. I hope it has run its course like the zombie disease that features so prominently in most of the books about that particular monster. But I worry about the real monsters who wander among us...the gun-crazed racists who so adore the thousands of poorly-conceived, poorly written, poorly camouflaged racist books.

THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH.

The Furniture Formerly Known as Gun Cabinet

I'm not a fan of guns, to put it mildly. Having been caught in cross-fire on my job, I have negative opinions of the things.

When my father-in-law (great guy, Frank!) was alive, he was an avid hunter. He had quite a lot of guns for various types of hunting. Most of his guns (but not all) were on display in a gun cabinet. When Frank died the guns were eliminated. But the gun cabinet was still there.

One day his widow (Faye) got the idea of having a carpenter come in to modify the gun cabinet. He did so, and now it's a china cabinet. Recreating a thing meant for the repose of guns into something of peace. Appropriate work for a carpenter...

Formerly a gun cabinet. Now a china cabinet.

The Trickster

THE TRICKSTER SPEAKS

Coyote looked at them. And finally, after observing for a while, he spoke.

“You motherfuckers are right proud of your fucking guns.” He smiled, really big, showing lots of white teeth with some yellow plaque up near the gum lines. “Your fucking guns,” he continued.

“Cruelest goddamn thing I ever heard or seen.” He seemed to frown. “Someone’s standing there, or swimming, or flying, or walking, or running, or sleeping, or suckling, or humping:

“Then BAM!” His eyes got big and his tongue dropped out of the side of his mouth. “All of the sudden they’re either in pain or dead. Maybe screaming. Or roaring. Or trying to get away.

“But they can’t. Because there’s a little shiny piece of rock stuck in their guts and blood is coming out of a hole in their body. And likely gushing out the mouth. And their asshole,” he added.

“Lucky ones fall over dead. The unlucky ones run a bit and hide and suffer to death.” He was quiet for a while.

“Yeah, you and your fucking guns.”

"You and your fucking guns."