Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey
In collaboration with editors John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, A Dribble of Ink is proud to introduce a series of interviews with the authors of The End Has Come, the final volume in the The Apocalypse Triptych. Following on The End is Nigh, and The End Is Here, The End Has Come contains 23 stories about life after the apocalypse.
Interview with Jonathan Maberry about “Jingo and the Hammerman”
(Interview by Hannah Huber)
What do you think it is about zombies that make them work as the source of an apocalypse?
Zombies are the perfect storytelling metaphor if you want to spin a tale about an extreme crisis, which makes them perfect for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic storytelling. They represent a massive shared threat: something so big that it impacts every person, every relationship, every aspect of infrastructure, and every element of culture. Nothing escapes that impact. The zombie’s nature, threat, and potential are all easy to grasp, so once they’ve been introduced, they often fade into the background so the story can concentrate on what is most important: human people in the midst of life-changing events. People facing crises is the basis of all drama, and therefore the writer is able to tell any kind of story he or she wants. No other monster is so generous in enabling this, or in sharing the stage.
In a zombie apocalypse the crisis is so overwhelming that there is no time for us to maintain our affectations of who we pretend to be in day-to-day life. None of us are ever really ourselves – we edit ourselves depending on the situation. We are different people in public, at home alone, at work, in love, when heartbroken, and so on. Often we play roles that are vastly different from our natural selves, such as feeling ‘powerful’ because we have money, good looks, or position. In a zombie apocalypse, none of that matters. A captain of industry or a supermodel expect deference as a matter of course, but they might be the first to fall in an apocalyptic scenario. Whereas the bag-boy at the local supermarket might have tremendous but untapped leadership and survival skills. Steel is forged in the heat of a furnace, not while it is ore in the ground. Read More »
