Did you hear that?
Did the world just end?
I think it's starting.
Little Apocalypse is now online. Just in time, sugars.
The first incarnation includes stuff from Cassie Smyth, Paul Carrington, Tim Wiley, and Brandon French. ARAJAY is fleeing his own little apocalypse in the form of hurricane Gustav, so his contributions are understandably delayed. But we hope to have some of his material available with the September 7th or 14th updates.
We hope you enjoy the apocalypse.
We launch today. In about 2 hours.
And we have bad, bad, eerie timing. Gustav is apparently picking up speed now, and we're all watching nervously to see how bad it will get.
Several of our collaborators are in New Orleans or other areas that are expected to flood. Some of their contributions will be understandably postponed. Please keep them in your thoughts, and lend a hand to your neighbors to the South in whatever way you can.
This is not a beautiful painting. It's nothing but red static. A 5-year-old could have painted this.
Though I'd worry a great deal about that 5-year-old.
Belknap Springs. You park at the hotel and start wandering the trails in the woods behind it. Suddenly you come upon two stone pillars, and peering between them you see what must be the Garden of Eden. The sun finds a break in the clouds to shine down and spotlight a beautiful garden.
As I was taking off my shoes and socks to wiggle my toes in that beautiful green grass, a girl of 4 or 5 stared at me with wide eyes. "What's your name?" she asked.
"Cassie," I told her. she started to walk away, but I said, "What's your name?"
She ummed and ahhed and took a very long time to answer. Maybe she was making something up. Or maybe she'd just remembered she wasn't supposed to be talking to strangers.
Finally she said, "Emma."
"That's a pretty name," I told her, but my head was already thinking of poor Emma that went crazy and fell through her ceiling while playing with dolls in the attic. I wonder if the little girl took so long to answer because she was looking for a name to pick out of my brain.
Funny how things start to come together, following the ley lines.
Cross-posted from the Little Apocalypse MySpace.
We've been asked a few times now:
WTF is a hypertext novel?
A hypertext novel, for our purposes, is a novel broken up into little bits and scattered across multiple webpages. Readers then use hyperlinks to move through the pages like a maze. Hypertext novels have been around as long as the Internet. Check out this wikipedia entry for a little bit of history and links to some of the classics.
So, while hypertext novels aren't anything new, we think ours does stand out from the others out there. Why? For one, the fiction pieces included could (and have) stand on their own. While some hypertext fiction emphasizes form over content, we think the form should reflect the content. Molly & Zim are zig zagging across the country; links zig zag across the site. One event sets several others in motion; one page in the novel links to multiple other stories. Worlds overlap; paths overlap. In life, some things grow out of control, some things fall apart, some things start to show a little wear - all of this is underlined by the structure of the site.
Little Apocalypse is also unique in the way it jumps across mediums. What began as a series of short stories now includes original artwork and music, is being considered as the basis for a couple of art shows and at least one musical act, and is being promoted in some fairly unique ways (like one-of-a-kind, handmade postcards and fake cell phones scattered throughout Eugene).
The biggest difference, though, is our use of Creative Commons licensing. This is an alternative to rigid, traditional copyright protection that allows others to participate, copy, redistribute and base derivative works on any material included in Little Apocalypse. You can send stuff to us to be considered for the site itself, participate in our MySpace or blog, write for the wiki, or create your own sites and projects and link back to us. It's all perfectly legal under Creative Commons, and it promotes collaboration in a way that certain industries wish was impossible. (I'm looking at you, RIAA.)
Does that answer the question? ;)
Agriculture and industrialization let the Earth support far more of us in any given space than she would have previously tolerated. With our amazing tools, we've lowered the death rate to as little as 7 per 100,000 in some areas. The population grows exponentially. To a large extent, we've beaten death.
We've also beaten natural selection and evolution. Or, at least until we reach the next limit. Until we get to that plateau where the Earth simply won't support us without that next great leap in technology. If it turns out to be a technological leap at all.
Failing that, we may be reminded that evolution only occurs when vast numbers of creatures are born and quickly die in an environment that can't sustain them. It takes death and destruction to birth or build anything better. It's going to take an apocalypse. This one won't be so little.
This is what the workshop looked like last weekend:
Let's play a game. Click the image above to see the notes I've added. Then add your own notes to anything that amuses you. There is so much fun stuff on the floor.
There's something else we need you to do, too. Share this blog and our home page, littleapocalypse.com, with your friends. We'll do a link exchange on this blog for any sites that seem relevant. (Yes: paranormal and fiction sites. No: sites selling diet pills.)
Little Apocalypse is creative commons and open to contributions, so get in touch with us if you want a sneak peek at the dev site. And if you're not ready by August 31st, no problem, the project continues afterwards. We'll be looking for writers who can help us build a wiki, and artists and musicians interested in bringing some of Little Apocalypse into the more tangible world.
We'll go back to our regularly scheduled programming of creepy, oblique notes and hidden messages tomorrow. See you then!
You may think it was helpful trying to return the phone.
Found us instead
Welcome to the thing that has kept us awake for years.
More burning drink and desensitizing candy than we can remember.
Never knowing for sure if we are just crazy.better believe it.
It would be a lie to say we're not fucking with you
You're welcome.
8/31/08 is the beginning of the end
Tomorrow morning the stars fall. We should head for the edge of town. It's going to be beautiful watching it all come down.
The Perseids peak tonight. I have a wish for each one. There are so many beautiful things I will miss. I want to experience them all right now. Like there's no tomorrow.
To recognize something has begun is admitting it will end.
Everything we put together will ultimately fall apart.
Hope is a misguided feeling brought about to reach a goal that is unattainable.
Sometimes these ideas are romanticized into little stories that are nothing more than tripe and relatively
not worth the readers time.
Can't see pass tomorrow
Some things just don't go together. Hammers and glass. Acid and mirrors. Well, perhaps they do. Depends on your tastes. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Smashing things to pieces is surprisingly easy.
The old writer watches the world as it fades like the black in her eyes.
Do you want to play this game?
You already know the ending.
There are no surprises here.
I sense a great cabal.
The roaches have left the walls and are laying eggs in my head.
Don't fear the black cat!
She'll lead you to the Western Lands without fellaheen involvement.
The old writer doesn't have the words left to say good bye.
His last were
"Love. Greatest painkiller what is. Love is."
He would know. He killed his.
I can't imagine anyone else celebrating.
We drank champagne as Katrina hit land. It was, after all, just a few days after my birthday, I'd gotten a bottle of bubbly, and then, thanks to the evacuation, found myself with friends in town from New Orleans. For the most part we weren't that concerned yet. Mother Nature regularly displays her awesome power in the South, and sometimes we just yawn at her.
(Dear Edouard - I am unimpressed.)
So at first, this was just another mandatory evacuation. People were instructed to flee the city regularly, and nothing but gas expense usually came of it. This time, surely, was the same. We had no doubt that it would all still be there in the morning. We opened champagne.
Levees began to break. Some leaked and some popped open like corks. I think it was kind of like that. That's how it looked on TV. That's how it looked on my friends' faces.
I don't know exactly why, but lately I wish I had kept that bottle. It seems important somehow, something solid and heavy to wrap your hands around while so much else disappears. While so much else is set in motion and we're all swept away. And if nothing else, I could have used it to send you a message across all that water.
Connections are being made
"If you don't come with me right now you'll look back for the rest of your life and regret it."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
"A woman who died 40 years ago was discovered in her apartment that had not been changed in all that time."
How could no one notice?
"The list of substances he was used to having in his body was longer than he could remember by now."
You know your nipple's pokin' out there, doll
"Rabbit?"
The reader should not be subjected to such tripe.
"I don't even need to describe that to you. You want a Stephen King fifteen page description, but I ain't got it! You don't fuckin’ deserve it."
This world is dissolving
Little by little it's going to end.
Interloper
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