Odd thoughts
Jun. 24th, 2009 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdI had inspiration while driving.
It occurs to me that while flower-fairies will be sweet and sell, I really really want to write the Rapture Horror Novel.
Has anyone done a horror novel where God is the biggest monster of all?
(or is that, itself, cliche?)
There are 2.1 Billion Christians in the world. Assume 1.4 billion vanish in the rapture (that's about 2/3rd). That's everyone from Fred Phelps and Rick Santorum to Pope Ratzinger and Bishop Robinson to the lovely lady down the block who gives half of her fixed income to the local soup kitchen. (in fairness, she probably has a better chance than the first three)
Think about the chaos caused by 1.4 BILLION people vanishing into thin air, 150 million of them here in the US.
People who are not just sleeping and eating and praying, but people who are flying planes and driving cars and operating heavy machinery and fighting fires and doing life-saving surgery.
How many people are going to die in car accidents when driverless cars--or worse, semis!--plow into them? How many planes are going to crash?
And those people have jobs. Vital jobs. The supply chain to stores will be disrupted. There will be food shortages, even before the droughts and the locusts and the famines and crop failures. First responders will be short of help. Utilities may have trouble. All services will be disrupted.
What's life going to be like for the folks picking up the pieces after Mr. Christian Trucker has an "O Hai Jesus!" moment and vanishes, letting his cruise-controlled rig plow blithely on its way, into the minivans full of mom and kids? Or for the non-Christian ministers, dealing with every pregnant woman in their flock suddenly having the baby vanish, and every mother of preschoolers wailing for her loss?
And then the supernatural stuff starts:
meteors that poison the water
droughts
Earthquakes
the sun going black
1/4 of the population dying from food shortages and animal attacks (we're down to 3.5 billion!)
locust plagues
food shortages
Wars to kill another 1/3rd of the people (we're down to 2.3 billion!)
Witnesses who bring a three year drought
The Antichrist shows up AFTER all this.
70-lb hailstones
a plague of darkness and boils
a huge battle where everyone dies and the birds glut themselves.
Tell me this shouldn't be written as a horror novel...
It occurs to me that while flower-fairies will be sweet and sell, I really really want to write the Rapture Horror Novel.
Has anyone done a horror novel where God is the biggest monster of all?
(or is that, itself, cliche?)
There are 2.1 Billion Christians in the world. Assume 1.4 billion vanish in the rapture (that's about 2/3rd). That's everyone from Fred Phelps and Rick Santorum to Pope Ratzinger and Bishop Robinson to the lovely lady down the block who gives half of her fixed income to the local soup kitchen. (in fairness, she probably has a better chance than the first three)
Think about the chaos caused by 1.4 BILLION people vanishing into thin air, 150 million of them here in the US.
People who are not just sleeping and eating and praying, but people who are flying planes and driving cars and operating heavy machinery and fighting fires and doing life-saving surgery.
How many people are going to die in car accidents when driverless cars--or worse, semis!--plow into them? How many planes are going to crash?
And those people have jobs. Vital jobs. The supply chain to stores will be disrupted. There will be food shortages, even before the droughts and the locusts and the famines and crop failures. First responders will be short of help. Utilities may have trouble. All services will be disrupted.
What's life going to be like for the folks picking up the pieces after Mr. Christian Trucker has an "O Hai Jesus!" moment and vanishes, letting his cruise-controlled rig plow blithely on its way, into the minivans full of mom and kids? Or for the non-Christian ministers, dealing with every pregnant woman in their flock suddenly having the baby vanish, and every mother of preschoolers wailing for her loss?
And then the supernatural stuff starts:
meteors that poison the water
droughts
Earthquakes
the sun going black
1/4 of the population dying from food shortages and animal attacks (we're down to 3.5 billion!)
locust plagues
food shortages
Wars to kill another 1/3rd of the people (we're down to 2.3 billion!)
Witnesses who bring a three year drought
The Antichrist shows up AFTER all this.
70-lb hailstones
a plague of darkness and boils
a huge battle where everyone dies and the birds glut themselves.
Tell me this shouldn't be written as a horror novel...
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 05:30 pm (UTC)My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?
The year is 2006. The Day of Judgement has dawned and the Lord God did separate the wheat from the chaff, the sinners from the virtous, the damned from the saved. One hundred forty thousand souls felt the Rapture and were assumed into Heaven.
Then came the Day of Reckoning. Those who had marked their heads, hands, and hearts with the mark of the Beast were cast into the lake of fire. Mankind's lordship over the beasts was ripped from him. The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were loosed upon the unrighteous. The great Beast was given free reign to roam the wastelands and a third of the stars were ripped from the Heavens by the wings of Michael the Archangel. In the end, Death claimed almost every human that lived.
Then things went horribly wrong. God's hand fell upon the dust that was neither wheat nor chaff... those in this brave age who had chosen neither God nor his Adversary. The Risen Christ could not damn them for their sins, but nor could he allow them to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
God's greatest creation, Mankind, was finally left to his own devices. They have many names, the Meek, the Lost Souls, the Forsaken, but they have all learned the same thing: "The Meek shall inherit the Earth" was not a promise... it was a warning.
They did a very good job explaining the insidious horror intrinsic to the scenario, and not quite so much on the blatant effects of God.
And I'd read it.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 07:28 pm (UTC)But the game has an interesting premise. Basically, the remnant of humanity has become Jack-o-Lantern: cursed to wander as neither side wants them.