Monday 3 December 2012

Kaye George - THE LAST WAVE



by Kaye George

I’m thrilled to have a story included in the anthology called NIGHTFALLS: Notes from the end of the world, edited by Dark Valentine’s Katherine Tomlinson! When I first started considering my story, which was to include the thoughts of a person who knew it would be the last night on earth, I had to start with how I should have the world end.

Apocalypse literature is not new to me, as a reader and a moviegoer, but it sure was as a writer. I once wrote a humorous zombie piece, but it only involved the death of one person, within the story. The threat of world annihilation was there, but only implied.

But now I had to get serious and think how the world might really end, if it ends soon. I’ll have to give a little background on myself for this to make sense. I’m a teensy bit neurotic. When a new strain of flu is announced on TV, I have it. (A mild case not worth going to the doctor for.) When anything contagious is going around, I have it. (Same parenthetical statement as above.) When a new form of mental deviation is discovered, I’m prone to it. Some people call it hypochondriasis, others call it hysteria. Whatever, it works for me.

Another thing about me is that I like to read popular physics, Isaac Asimov, Brian Greene and the like.

One thing I worry about is radio waves. Every day there are more and more devices in the US, and around the world, that get data from waves. The towers surround us. Waves are being beamed for our TVs, our phones, our Ipads, wireless Kindles, WiFis are everywhere. I even have a router filling my house with waves. We can print, remote, with no wires, from anywhere in our house and even from across the street.

All those waves are everywhere! And they’re going through our bodies. The only thing controlling all this chaos is keeping track of band widths. I’m scared.

Throw in a little physics, like the fact that colliding waves give off heat, and I had my plot.

My story is called 'The Last Wave'.

Kaye is the author of a number of titles including Choke, the Imogen Duckworthy Mysteries and the collection A Patchwork Of Stories.
 

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for letting me post here, Nigel! Can't wait to read all the stories in NIGHTFALLS.

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  2. Thanks for being here, Kaye. And me too.

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  3. Glad to be in there with you Kaye. A couple of great SF/Hard Science/Physics writers out there are Greg Bear and Gregory Binford and on the distaff side, the cleverest of them all, Anne McCaffrey -- whose Dragon Riders Of Pern had everyone convinced they were reading high fantasy . . . until in book three (I'm pretty sure it was book three)revealed she'd been writing hard science all along. I like your ending better than some stone calendar's predictions. We'll drink a virtual toast to Mayans and waves and even Mayan wave riders on stone surfboards on Dec. 22nd 2012, M'Dear.

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  4. Maya wave riders! Stone surfboards! Looks like you have another story to write. I can't wait until I get to read all the stories. I was happy to see your name there, AJ!

    My daughter is a huge Pern fan and I've read some of them, too. Great stories. My science is as real as I can make it, except I'm not a scientist.

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