This week I’m (still) reading MaddAddam, the final installment in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian/post-apocalyptic series that began with Oryx & Crake. Dystopian fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction are not the same thing, of course, but all three books in the MaddAddam trilogy qualify as both because their present-day scenes take place after the destruction of (most of) humanity, while their flashback scenes take place in the dystopian burbclaves that preceded the apocalypse. Hence you get to eat your dystopia and have it too. Or something like that.
They pass a burnt-out jeep, then an incinerated solarcar. Then a crashed pink mini-van with the AnooYoo logo on it: kissy lips, winky eye.
“Don’t look inside,” says Zeb, who has already looked. “Not pretty.”
At least Zeb didn’t do like the raccoons in that commercial.
Whew, there’s an awful, disgusting mess in this van. Take a look!
Meanwhile, speaking of awful, disgusting messes (well, hopefully not …), editing continues on Father’s Books! I have about 70 pages to go on this pass, after which I’ll print it out and go through it again with a pen, marking things up. There’ll be maybe one more go-round after that. As is often the case, I’ve found I’m making much more extensive changes this time than I did on the first round of editing, where I mostly cleaned up sentences and changed words and that sort of thing. This time, I’m reworking entire scenes and major plot points to make it more coherent. After all, everyone wants a good book.
“Oh, hi,” the man said. Then: “What church are you from?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re selling Bibles, right?” The man shifted his grip on the basket. “Don’t tell me I’m wrong. I know a Bible salesman when I see one.”
Well, why not?
“Yes,” he said. “I am a Bible salesman.”
“Knew it,” the man said. “I have one already. 22G. But there’s some hellions in 22A who could use a lesson or two from the Good Book.”
22A. That was the apartment he had just broken into.
“You needn’t worry,” he said. “I left one for them.”
Well, fine, the man in 22G already has one. But the rest of us want one, right?
Viscosity 