I started the Highway Virus series, short stories of a future apocalyptic world, following the global fears of the bird flu virus several years ago, where I imagined a future world where a virus has emerged to kill a portion of the world’s population (about 10%, maybe?), causing panic, major cultural changes, and a collapse of infrastructure and  governance.

These origins might make them remnants of the bird flu hysteria from that time period, but I have tried to expand the scope of world problems beyond that one point of concern. This fictional world is a pastiche of worst-possible outcomes from multiple sources. If you think of all the worst things that could happen in the environment, public health, and national infrastructure, then you would start to get an idea of what this world is like.

I don’t view this world as being inevitable or terribly possible. Plausible? Well, I guess it depends on how pessimistic you are. Back in early days of the subprime crisis, most people thought it was “contained” – meaning a few people of poor to moderate means would lose their homes and that would be the end of it. Back to business as usual. Then it got worse. It moved up the food chain and across the entire population. My own inherent sense of pessimism kept me from being too surprised.

The other problems facing the world – the environment, health care, extinction and speciation – they have to come to a head sooner or later.

“Every generation wants to be the last.” That is one of the many mantras repeated throughout Lullaby (like I said before, Palahniuk’s literary strategies would fall flat from the pen of a lesser writer). I hear that aphorism, and I can’t help but think of snowmobiles in Yellowstone, four wheelers through national parks. Maybe we do want to destroy the world, to trundle through the trees and undergrowth belching smoke and sound, to make such a deep and indelible mark on a place that others have to notice. We want to intrude on their experiences, now and for the forseeable future.

Do you ever have one of those days when every step you take seems to take you further into a state of increasing unreality? You are one step out of reality – in constant danger of walking into the wrong bathroom. I feel like that all the time.

Some days life is like a Charles Burns story. Or maybe David Cronenberg? Where there’s something not right about the body and its physical manifestation in space and time…

Chuck Palahniuk can do things that elude us lesser writers. There is a quality to his writing that is prima facie absurd. It shouldn’t work. Kurt Vonnegut was the same way. It is absurd to think you can end multiple paragraphs and sections with the refrain “So it goes.” But Vonnegut does it, and it works. If anyone else tries the same thing (or at least a similar convention), the work falls apart. They read like a poor copy of Kurt Vonnegut.

Regarding Palahniuk, who else could offer up the refrain, “I am Jack’s Raging Bile Duct” without sounding like a boob? That struck me as I was reading Lullaby the other day (and yes, I know that previous quote is from Fight Club). He has that same Vonnegut-like quality – he does things on the printed page that should not work. And I know. I’ve written lots of things that haven’t worked. And I’ve read a few short stories from the bizarro genre, which has tried to associate itself with Palahniuk, but (to me, at least) most of the “bizarro” stories come across as self-indulgent, with a Mad Libs approach to the profane. In contrast, Palahniuk’s work is complete, organic, where lesser writers sound trite and derivative.

And speaking of derivative, Lullaby has that same theme of “deadly art” that I was using in Martin Garvin, except he has a killer poem (or culling song) and mine was a movie. Damn you, Noosphere! Not that I ever thought that plot point was original.

Monty Python has a classic skit with “the deadliest joke in the world,” which the allies used as a weapon of mass destruction (and that was the motivation for the government agents in Martin Garvin Part 2).

Lovecraft imagined a world of ancient tomes where reading the words of certain ancient texts would drive one mad.

Del Close and John Ostrander told the story of a root that gives the ultimate high before killing you, in the unfortunately named “Foo Goo,” from the comic-book anthology series Wasteland #1. (How’s that for an obscure reference?)

The Ring had a killer videotape. In keeping with the limitations of that analog world, one has to wait a few days after watching the videotape to meet one’s demise.

Original ideas are hard to come by, so says Ecclesiastes. I don’t think that should be a deterrant to creating. But still, I also noticed some similarities between Palahniuk’s character Oyster (in Lullaby) and a character in one of my short stories. No wonder that damn story keeps getting rejected…