Global Warming Fun 1:
Saved By Right-Handed Grass
By
Gary J. Davies
Global Warming Fun 1: Saved By Right-Handed Grass
Copyright 2014 Gary J. Davies
Thank you for downloading this free e-book. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the only exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own free copy.
This short story is a work of fiction created by the author and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are a production of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Thank you for downloading this e-book.
Contents
Series Forward and Other Works by This Author
Global Warming Fun 1: Saved By Right-Handed Grass
About Other Publications by This Author
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Series Forward and Other Works by This Author
This work begins a series of short stories and/or novellas that when complete will also (hopefully) at some future date be combined to comprise one epic novel. As a short story each release in the series must stand alone and provide a sense of completeness, yet also address a broader series 'plot' such that together the parts also form a broader story. That should be an interesting writing challenge, comparable perhaps to Beethoven combining orchestral and choral elements in his monumental Ninth Symphony, or at least to the combining of chocolate and peanut butter into a single confectionary delight. Each series story will provide a glimpse of both typical and critical events amid an increasingly unstable world in which natural, technological and mythical forces are being unleashed due to climate change and other human induced problems.
What's 'fun' about global warming/climate change? If you’re a glass-is-half-full kind of person maybe global warming and other human-induced disasters aren’t really all bad, maybe they’re also opportunities: chances for mankind to even further make a mess of things surely, but also opportunities for adventure and surprise. Oh! And opportunities for fiction writing too!
Global warming is in reality a very terrible thing, and will certainly result in even more greed, suffering, war, death and destruction than would a nice non-global warming alternative. This world was already messed up enough without global warming. Climate change will create a setting for problems and disasters unexpected and unimagined. However, it will also offer opportunities for triumph over adversity by unexpected heroes. Hopefully it will provide an opportunity for some of the best traits of humanity to show through.
But much of the story is still bound to be grim, so why use the word 'fun' in the series title? Partly because it's fun to write these stories and it will also hopefully be fun to read these stories, but mostly because the word 'fun' is usefully short for tiny e-book-cover images and it hints of intended humor. Although climate change is a nasty and serious business indeed, through the miracle of fiction one aim of these stories is to some extent turn that climate-change frown upside down! After all, global warming is nasty but not 'the end of the world' unless we let it be.
Old timers out there may recall the early TV series Wagon Train. The wagon train took people west to a new life in a new land, but on the way had to overcome sickness, draught, Indian war parties and much more. Each weekly episode focused on specific individuals and their problems. Most of the time (but not always) people managed to overcome adversity. Each episode was a complete story in itself but was also part of the epic history of settling the West. It is intended that the Global Warming Fun series be like the Wagon Train series: a collection of short stories that are like snapshots in a collage or like patches in a quilt, but there is an over-all plot with several characters that keep popping up in many of the stories. Where the hells will the Global Warming Fun 'wagon train' end up? Will humans survive? Will it end up in sunny balmy California with big shiny gold nuggets and yummy oranges, or is it doomed like the starving cannibalistic Donner Party?
I'm not quite sure yet myself. The exciting thing about writing is the exciting thing about reading: you just don't know exactly what is going to happen in a story until it happens! Read the series stories and find out! Meanwhile I'll be slowly writing them. That should likely take many months (or years?) while I am preoccupied by preparing my home for sale. Please be patient; there will be no publishing before its time, and I simply MUST finish clearing out the attic, and the garage, and the basement, and the bedrooms, and the bathrooms, and the kitchen, and the yard. Got to finish finishing the basement! There's painting and plumbing and flooring to consider. Holy cannoli I'm behind even my re-revised revised schedule! The good news is I'm retired from engineering for the DOD and should have all sorts of time on my hands. The bad news is that it certainly doesn't seem that way! OK, enough whining.
Entirely new short stories (including this first one) will form most of the series. However it is likely that some of the material of this series already exists in some form, and may have even already appeared in my first published e-book, the FREE short story collection There Goes The Neighborhood; Earthly Fantasy/Science-Fiction Short Stories. However these will be modified to better fit in this series. (Everything old is new again!)
In addition to cheerfully and patiently waiting for unknown ages to see how this series finally ends, you may wish in the meantime to read an already completed full-length novel. (What a novel idea!) If you like ancient secrets, magic and science, romance and adventure, fantasy and science fiction, read my (currently) FREE full-length novels Secrets of Goth Mountain and its loosely coupled epic sequel Government Men. Bird lovers that like strong human female heroines and stronger blue jay heroes may (if you don't mind T-rex sized raptors and other nuisances) enjoy an adventure trip to Aves, the bird planet, by reading the traditional science fiction thriller Blue Dawn Jay of Aves. Fantasy noir detective fans that can abide what used to be known by feminists as a 'male chauvinist pig' private detective as a hero, and can also tolerate trolls, elves, and other unexpected visitors to our world, as well as a talking mob cat, may enjoy The Shrinking Nuts Case.
All are 'G' or 'PG' rated; and most via romance and adventure also include some sex and violence, though none of it is explicit. (I'm pretty sure that has already been done before!) Thus all of my books can be read without even having to breathe hard, though occasional mild thought is hopefully stimulated.
As always I thank my wife and daughters for putting up with all this writing nonsense, Bill Gates for his useful spell-checker that makes even physics-trained engineers passable spellers, and my favorite author James P. Blaylock for his inspiring silly fabulist writing. Finally, I wish to thank the makers of Paint, the freeware which supports my awkward creation of nifty little e-book covers.
Wagons ho!