Left Behind: Chapter Eight

Romanian dirtnaps. Buck's cup runneth over with Jews.

Forward Motion: Planck discusses assignments with Buck

Buck, desperate to go to England and follow up on Dirk Burton's leads. Planck, desperate to have Buck cover the events fomenting in New York. "International monetarists setting the stage for one world currency .... Orthodox Jews from all over the world looking at rebuilding the temple ... Jewish Nationalist leaders interested in one world government ...." Buck notes "I'm being overrun by Jews." "Diamond John" sobriquet introduced for power behind the throne financier Jonathan Stonegal. We learn that Carpathia "was ruthless with his business competition .... [p]eople took dirt naps." Marge, unable to reach Dirk Burton, leaves him messages.

Spinning wheels

White knuckle drunk Rayford Steele reminisces on his alcohol fueled attempts at adultery 10 years prior to the events of the novel. Ruminates on his Hattie fixation. Totally disses Hattie when she calls, seeking comfort and support. (Ray to Hattie: "I really have to get off!") Dissed Hattie calls Buck, who provides distracted reassurances whilst, "rolling his eyes ... [pondering] how did he get into this lonely hearts club?"

Where were we?

Ray, still awaiting daughter Chloe's return. Buck, desperate to get some sleep before attending story assignment meeting. Marge, unable to reach Dirk in London. Buck, unable to reach Dirk in London. Hattie, unable to reach out to anyone who cares.

The takeaway:

Please, please take me away from these people. O sweet sweet Romanian dirtnap, envelop me in your musty embrace!

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7
Next post: Chapter 9

Left Behind: Chapter Seven

Dramatis Personae, novae

Ken Ritz: charter pilot who picks up Buck to fly him to New York City. Has first and last name, characterized as a no-nonsense type who gets things done. Doubtless will appear again, as he has a first and last name.

The action

Ken & Buck while away the flight speculating on a UFO theory behind the abductions. "[O]ur ideas of what space people would look like is [sic] way too simple .... if ... they're sophisticated and advanced enough ... they can do things to us we've never dreamed of .... They disappeared in an instant, so they had to be dematerialized. The question is ... could [they] be reassembled?"

Ray Steele, still at home, starts leafing through the Bible, hoping to figure out how he and Chloe can be saved. Sad ruminations by Ray on all the opportunities for salvation at the hands of Raymie & Irene that had been passed by. Determination to save self and Chloe if possible. Discovers Chloe has managed to fly out of Palo Alto, and should be in Springfield, Ill. soon. Buck makes it to the office, where he has a tearful reunion with Marge Potter (secretary) & Steve Plank (editor).

More descriptions of carnage emphasizing how horrible it all is

New York City: "Six trains were involved in head-ons with lots of deaths. Several trains ran up the back of other ones."
Flight center operator to Ray, regarding Chloe's eastward journey: "be grateful your daughter didn't get on [a flight] directly out of Palo Alto. The last one out of there went down last night. No survivors." "And this was after the disappearances?" "Just last night. Totally unrelated."

What next?

Tauran cosmonauts will appear at Rockefeller Plaza in anthropomorphized form, their haloed countenances exuding a radiant calm as they assure those left behind that they will soon be joining the missing in an extra-terran paradise where pain is but a rumor and death forgotten.

A thought on the preceding

I understand it's important to keep the readers guessing, but no one is buying the alien abduction angle.

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6
Next post: Chapter 8

Left Behind: Chapter Six

The Settings

Rayford Steele, evidencing a latent alcohol problem, wanders through his empty home reflecting on his children Ray Jr. (aka Raymie), Chloe, and his wife Irene
Buck Williams, in a flea bag motel outside Waukegan, awaiting a charter flight to New York, contacting his father

Internal monologues occur. Didactic points are made

"It had been ages since Rayford Steele had been drunk .... Irene ... had become a teetotaler during the last few years ....[and] insisted he hide any hard stuff if he had to have it in the house at all ... 'I'm just saying you don't have to make it obvious to your preteen son [Raymie] that you drink hard liquor.' .... He reached behind the empty cake cover in the highest cabinet over the sink and pulled down a half-finished fifth of whiskey .... He was already getting a buzz when he replaced the bottle, then thought better of it. He slipped it into the garbage under the sink. Would this be a nice memorial to Irene, giving up even the occasional hard drink?"

More thoughts on the raptured Raymie

"It was Raymie's age and innocence ... his spirit .... [h]e wasn't effeminate, but [he] had worried he might be a mama's boy -- too compassionate, too sensitive, too caring."

Chloe the Un-raptured, on the other hand "was competitive, a driver .... She took care of herself."

Ray comes to believe

Rayford decides "if there was still a way to find the truth and believe or accept what ... Irene said one was supposed to do, Rayford was going to find it."

Buck calls his Dad. Family issues made plain. "He had been resented by the family ever since he'd gone on to college, following his academic prowess to the Ivy League." On religious matters: "It was the lack of any connection between his family's church attendance and their daily lives that made him quite going to church."

Dirk calls on Buck

The American and English Puppet Masters have plans, "apparently something on a huge scale" for "a third party ... from Europe, probably Eastern Europe"

Moving along

Ray finds a copy of the preceding day's pre-Rapture newspaper. The "surprise move in Romania" item captures his attention

"Democratic elections became passe when ... a popular young businessman/politician assumed the role of president of the country. Nicolae Carpathia ... had ... taken the nation by storm with his popular, persuasive speaking ... sweep[ing] [him] to prominence and power."

Buck secures a charter flight that will get him "near" JFK

The action in brief

Ray, no longer drunk, determined to be born again. Buck, predictably complicated backstory, en route to en route to New York

A random thought on the preceding

You're throwing the bottle out with out having emptied it first Ray? Good luck with that.

Brief note on Raymie

Ray's son is described as his and Irene's "tagalong child" in Chapter 1. If Ray is 42, and Ray is 13, by my reckoning Irene was no older than 28 at the time of this pregnancy. Using the "surprise" pregnancy of a woman in her late 20s as part of a character's back story has got to be one of the strongest indictments of faith based sex ed this reader has ever seen. Also good to know Raymie/Ray Jr. is "compassionate," not "effeminate." Because we all know where those people go ...

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5
Next post: Chapter 7

Left Behind: Chapter Five

Buck: At the Pan-Continental Lounge. Hattie and Ray: at their respective homes

Introduced via the ruminations of Buck, as the authors explain his presence in Chicago and his flight to London

Dramatis Personae, novae:

Lucinda Washington: "a fifty-ish black woman," Global Weekly's Chicago Bureau chief. Angry at Cameron (who she refuses to call Buck) for scooping the Chicago office on a local football story. Lucinda: "Sports isn't even your gig, Cameron .... You Ivy League types aren't supposed to like anything but lacrosse and rugby, are you?" Proselytizes to Buck, telling him "[you] know you got your mind right when you saw what God did for Israel" and to "come to my church, and God'll getcha."
Buck admits to being a Deist, but rejoinds with the incontrovertibly reasonable observation that "[God has] already got me ... but Jesus is another thing. The Israelis hate Jesus, but look what God did for them." [Emphasis mine]
Calls Lucinda's home number when stranded at the airport and is told by her teenage son "Mama, Daddy, everybody else is gone .... you know where she is, too. She's in heaven."
Dirk Burton: the man Buck is going to see in England, "a former Princeton classmate, a Welshman who had been working in the London financial district since graduate school." "[A] reliable source in the past, tipping off Buck about secret high-level meetings among international financiers." Informs Buck of the machinations of a secret cabal of financiers who set the world's agenda behind the scenes. None of whom wear long coats to conceal their tails or have last names that end in -stein (yet).

Introduced via Buck's flashback conversation with Dirk
Jonathan Stonagal: "one of the richest men in the world and long known as an American power broker," integral to the U.N.'s integration of the global economy into the three currencies (dollar, mark & yen). "[N]ot only own[s] the biggest banks and financial institutions in the United States, but also owned or had huge interests in the same throughout the world .... the power behind the power .... The mightiest of the secret group of international money men."
Joshua Todd-Cothran: runs the London Exchange, was an eloquent exponent of the three currency reform. Apparently has a secretary who has a subordinate who is related to a friend of Burton's, and the source of Burton's secret knowledge about "the power behind the power."

The takeaway

Buck knows people who know things. And they know the world is converting to one global currency. Buck has also had a conversation with a black woman. Who speaks in awkwardly written dialect and mocks Buck's degree, despite being a major city bureau chief for a prestigious news weekly. And who may re-appear, because she has both a first and a last name, unlike "young woman" at the Pan-Continental Lounge counter, "middle aged" woman who gives Ray a ride home after the helicopter trip, and "older woman" who gives in to hysterics when her husband "Harold" disappears from the 747 en route to Heathrow. [note -- 2nd two women were omitted in the digests for those chapters, Harold was the owner of the glasses and hearing aid in Chapter 2. Disappeared husband, name. Grieving survivor wife, not so much].

What about Hattie & Ray?

Hattie calls Ray to make sure he's o.k., and to catch up on the head count of those left behind in each family. Ray has a spiritual awakening, realizing that "he certainly didn't much care what happened to her family any more than he cared when he heard about a remote tragedy on the news."

What to make of it all?

Buck, clearly not racist. "[S]ecret puppeteers," making decisions about the global economy, steering the world to "one [currency] inside a decade." Jonathan Stonagal and Joshua Todd-Cothran, powers behind the throne, but not necessarily Jewish.
Rayford Steele, clearly over Hattie.
Hattie Durham, pointlessly seeking solace in Steele (who must reject her on potential hussy Jezebel grounds), but has reassuring conversation with Buck who calls to tell her her mother and sisters are o.k.

Afterthought

Dirk Burton, Welshman?

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4
Next post: Chapter 6

Left Behind: Chapter Four

The state of things

Buck is on his laptop, in the Continental Lounge, bleeding from his head

Captain Steele and flight attendant Hattie have been dropped off in suburban Chicago and head to their respective homes

Awareness dawns

A doctor in the lounge who dresses Buck's head wound assures him "[he's] workin' free today. Call it a Rapture Special."

Ray Steele discovers that his wife Irene and son Ray Jr. (aka "Raymie) "had vanished from the face of the earth."

Dramatis Personae novae

Marge Potter, Steve Planck's "matronly" secretary
E-mails Buck with information regarding Hattie's family (Mom & sisters are o.k.!) Several staffers are gone, but "[e]verybody from the senior staff is accounted for .... Have you noticed it seems to have struck the innocents? Everyone we know who's gone is either a child or a very nice person."

Buck ponders theory

"Marge had referred to the innocents. The doctor had assumed it was the Rapture. Steve had pooh-poohed space aliens. But how could you rule out anything at this point? His mind was already whirring with ideas for the story behind the disappearances. Talk about the assignment of a lifetime!"

A thought gnaws at Buck whilst on line trying to line up a flight to New York

"[H]e tried to remember what it was Chaim Rosenzweig, the Newsmaker of the Year, had told him about the young Nicolae Carpathia of Romania .... Rosenzweig had been impressed with Carpathia, that was true. But why?"

From Buck's archived transcript of his interview with Rosenzweig, circa the "Russian Pearl Harbor" on the topic of Mr. Carpathia

"I found him most charming and humble .... a peacemaker and leading a movement toward disarmament .... Blonde and blue-eyed, like the original Romanians, who came from Rome, before the Mongols affected their race."

Foreshadowing?

"This man is about your age, by the way .... One day you must meet Carpathia. You would like each other ... he is a man of high ideals. If he should emerge, you will hear of him. And as you are emerging in your own orbit, he will likely hear of you."

Next steps

The Global Weekly's unlimited resources are primed to send Buck to New York. Per Buck's conversation with the "young woman" at Pan-Con's Lounge counter "I have to get to New York ... I know it's the worst place to try to get to right now. But you know people ... pilots who fly on the side, charter stuff .... Let's say I had unlimited resources and could pay whatever I needed to. Who would you send me to?"

The wrap

Some chapters have to happen so other stuff can happen. Carpathia seems like a nice guy. Chaim seems like a nice guy. Could things not be as they seem?

Thought of the day

Why are minor male characters given names in this novel, but minor female characters consigned to a gender and age description?

Afterthought of the day

The Mongols invaded Rome?

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3
Next post: Chapter 5

Left Behind: Chapter Three

On the tarmac at O'Hare

Evacuation via emergency chute. Buck is the first off the plane, injures his head, then runs off to the Pan Continental lounge to hook up his computer's modem and receive instructions from Steve Plank. Buses are provided for elderly, infirm and flight crews. Captain Steele and Hattie decline on principle. Flight Officer Chris has no such compunctions, displaying a terminal lack of character.

The action

Buck gives Hattie his card, "just in case I get through to your people before you do." Televised mayhem in the terminal, including a christian youth league soccer match suicide and a disturbing delivery room video (involves point of birth rapturing, and that's probably more information than good taste should permit). Rayford phones home -- no news of son Ray Jr., Wife Irene -- but hears voice mail message from daughter Chloe. Who is an undergrad at Stanford. Helicopter ride to the Chicago suburbs for Hattie and Rayford which provides Ray with an opportunity for multipoint full contact Hattie touching as space restrictions compel her to sit on his lap. "He wrapped his arms around her waist and clasped his wrists together. He thought how ironic it was that he had been dreaming of this for weeks, and now there was no joy, no excitement in it, nothing sensual whatever. He was miserable. Glad to be able to help her out, but miserable."

The one flight crew suicide is gossiped about on the helicopter ride. "Chris Smith, you know him? .... the rumor is he found out his boys had disappeared and his wife was killed in a wreck!" (Important to note that had he walked to the terminal, he probably would have had the composure to handle this news with dignity and grace.)

Buck manages to retrieve emails from Global Weekly in the Pan Continental Lounge. Instructed by Steve Plank to "[g]et to New York as soon as you can at any expense."

Dramatis Personae, novae:

Chloe: Captain Rayford Steele's unraptured daughter, student at Stanford. Presumably steeped in secular humanism and teetering on the brink of rug munching adventurism when the Rapture intervenes.
Nicolae Carpathia: (as per Steve Plank, Executive Editor with the Global Weekly) "guy from Romania who so impressed your friend Rosenzweig ... his international popularity reminds me a lot of Walesa or even Gorbachev."

These things are probably not coincidental

Big things for Buck to report on in New York, as per Steve Plank's confidential email:

"Political editor wants to cover a Jewish Nationalist conference in Manhattan that has something to do with a new world order government."

"Religion editor has something ... about a conference of Orthodox Jews also coming for a meeting .... editor thinks they're looking for help in rebuilding the temple .... other religious conference in town ... among leaders of all the major religions, from the standard ones to the New Agers, also talking about a one-world religious order."

"[T]he United Nations has that international monetarist confab coming up, trying to gauge how we're all doing with the three-currency thing ... I'm a little skittish about going to one currency...."

"[T]his Carpathia guy from Romania .... [has] been invited to speak at the U.N. in a couple weeks."

This also is probably not coincidental

My copy of "Left Behind," purchased for the reasonable price of a $2 donation to Washington D.C.'s Martin Luther King Library has no bar code on it.

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2
Next post: Chapter 4

Left Behind: Chapter Two

On a 747, once en route to Heathrow, returning to Chicago's O'Hare.

Captain Steele is directed to return to Chicago. [Unsure we knew they were flying from Chicago.] Unknown event, not yet referred to as "Rapture" causing chaos and mayhem globally. "Where it's daylight there are car pileups, chaos everywhere. Planes down at every major airport." Unpiloted whatevers crashing into unraptured otherthings everyplaces. Much shrieking in the airplane, stoical attempts to preserve calm as passengers learn that seatmates are missing. Calm preserved through filling out of now completely beside the point foreign entry cards. First Officer Chris introduced as flight officer Smith, performing a head count and sealing his doom. All children and babies are missing.

Fearsome images of a 747 half strewn with clothes laid out as worn ("[his] clothes were in a neat pile on his seat, his glasses and hearing aid on top. The pant legs still hung over the edge and led to his shoes and socks.").

Buck contrives to use his in-flight phone to contact Global Weekly and receive his next assignment. Hattie tries to intervene, but is smooth talked with assurances that if he gets through to his editors, he'll have them look into her family for her. Could this be character development? Might Buck be a macher with a soft spot, a heart of gold beneath the slick exterior? Has a first petal of romance unfurled?

In Chicago:

"Every civil service agency [is] on full emergency status, trying to handle the unending tragedies." "[S]o many cabbies had disappeared from the cab corral at O'Hare that volunteers were being brought in to move the cars that had been left running with the former drivers' clothes still on the seats." "The expressways that led to the airport looked like they had during the great Chicago blizzards, only without the snow."

The recap:

Captain Steele safely navigates the perils of O'Hare and takes whats left of his manifest to ground in the Midwest. Buck has called Hattie "gorgeous" while hacking the in-flight phone system. Captain Steele ponders the meaning of it all.

The big question:

The cabbies get raptured?

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1
Next post: Chapter 3

Left Behind: Chapter One

On a "fully loaded 747" crossing the Atlantic en route to Heathrow:

Dramatis Personae:

Captain Rayford Steele: Pilot who has "pushed from his mind thoughts of his family."
Hattie Durham: Senior Flight Attendant, "drop dead gorgeous" and "a toucher."
Irene: Rayford Steele's wife, who "has hooked up with a smaller congregation" and is into "weekly Bible studies and church every Sunday," making Rayford "uncomfortable." "Lately [has] been reading everything she could get her hands on about the Rapture of the Church."
Cameron "Buck" Williams: at thirty, the "youngest ever senior writer for the prestigious Global Weekly." "[They] called him Buck ... because he was always bucking tradition and authority."
First Officer Christopher: at one point "squint[s] and lick[s] his lips." Is not given a last name until he commits suicide in Chapter Three. Apparently exists so Rayford Steele can leave the flight deck to perhaps have an encounter with Hattie Durham which may involve hand touching. (If the mood permits and things escalate.)

Introduced via flashback during the ruminations of "Buck," reflecting on the greatest scoop of his career -- his live reportage from the Russo-Libyan-Ethiopian total nuclear assault on Israel:

Steve Plank, Executive Editor of Global Weekly: Appears briefly in an editorial meeting that sends Buck to Israel to interview Chaim Rosenzweig. Apparently exists so Buck can go places and have money to do stuff with.
Chaim Rosenzweig: "Chemist," Global Weekly (and Time's!) Man of the Year, transforms Israel into the most awesome greenhouse ever, with "zero unemployment," said transformation inspiring the Russians to throw their entire arsenal of ICBMS and "nuclear-equipped MIG fighter-bombers" at it, an assault that "became known as the Russian Pearl Harbor."

The action:

People disappear from the flight while it's in the air, crossing the Atlantic. "Their shoes, their socks, their clothes, everything was left behind. These people are gone!"

But what about Israel, after the Russo-Libyan-Ethiopian total nuclear assault?

Pretty o.k. "Miraculously, not one casualty was reported in all of Israel." "[T]he entire Russian air offensive seemed to destroy itself." As a bonus, "[a]mong the ruins, the Israelis found combustible material that would serve as fuel and preserve their natural resources for more than six years."

Recap:
Israel -- a verdant paradise, selling grain and flowers and heating its homes with leavings from spent nuclear munitions.
A fully loaded 747 -- hurtling toward the unknown, Capt. Steele realizing that "Irene had been right .... [h]e, and most of his passengers, had been left behind."

Previous posts: Introduction
Next post: Chapter 2

Post-Apocalyptic Book Club Reads it for You: "Left Behind"

As a public service to our readers the Post-Apocalyptic Book Club (PABC) is serializing "Left Behind" in a manageably sarcastic, digestable format.

Why digested? Because as written, the work is nigh impossible to consume.

If it's that bad for you, why read it at all? Because it's apocalyptic fiction written for and read by the Christian right conservatives who make policy & occasionally have their finger on the nuclear trigger.

Which makes it the most disturbing book of them all.

Next post: Chapter 1

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The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm not the only person who loved this book--it won a ton of awards last year, including both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Flash forward to 200 years from now, and assume that an Apocalypse occurred that rewrote the Rules and Reality of the world's Economy, Agriculture and Climate, but left a goodly number of human beings alive to scrabble around in it and try to paste together a post-modern society operating with a lot of pre-industrial technology. If you believe that Climate Change is Real (and if you don't, kindly leave this blog and GFY, or, better yet, just go DIAF), Monsanto is Sinister, and Trouble Writ Large is Brewing, then you will enjoy this book.

Joint Winners

Twenty novels have won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel since 1966 (when the Nebula Award was first bestowed). The excel sheet is available here, and embedded below. Two-time joint winners are Arthur C. Clarke, Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, and Ursula K Le Guin. I know that I've read four of these books (The Forever War, Neuromancer, Ender's Game and The Windup Girl), and I definitely started and possibly finished a few others in my early teens (Dune, Rendezvous With Rama, Ringworld), but Dune is the only one of those three that I remember much about. I'll be making my way through the sixteen that I never read or can't fully remember over the coming year. This is a Promise.

Nebula Award for Best Novel

Since 1965, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) have voted and given out this pretty trophy (and $0.00 in cash) for Best Novel published in the USA during the previous year. Note: the "previous year" bit makes their awards, annoyingly, not correspond By Year to the Hugo awards.

Notable winners: Ursula K Le Guin has won four times for Best Novel...Joe Haldeman has won thrice. I've read two of the three Haldeman winners (The Forever War and Camouflage), and thoroughly enjoyed both of them (you can see my thoughts on them here and here).

A quick justification/qualification/rationale for posting stuff about these awards here: while these books aren't all necessarily Post-Apocalyptic, in the purest Spam-In-Bunker/Mad-Max-Thunderdome (or Tank Girl, if you prefer) style, they do almost all take place in the Future--and usually the Future is a less than perfect place, wherein something Really Bad happened to the Past (i.e. Our Present) to make it End, and hence, allow the Future to become What It Is (which is, usually, Dystopian). You follow?

As for why to be listing these award winners at all: the SFWA's website is a mess, with links to pages that don't exist for basic things (such as, um, list of Best Novel Award Winners). And while Wikipedia has this info, it's in a jumbled format, mixed in with Other Nominees (i.e. LOSERS) and incorrect statements such as, "William Gibson has won SIX times."--He's only once for Best Novel (Neuromancer), although he's been nominated many other times--and may have won a few times for short stories, novellas, or screenplays...but that's hard to determine for the above reasons. I know I could correct Wikipedia, because that's what it's all about...but I'd rather just post The Truth here.

Embedded below is the table of Nebula winners by year, while the actual excel sheet (should you like to create some sort of pivot table) is available here.

Compiled List of Hugo Award Winners

On a more practical note, here is the compiled list of Hugo winners that I ripped off from YouShouldaMarriedMe.com. The list runs from 1953-2010. I believe Richardo is compiling another list of Nebula winners and then cross-referencing the two.

Escape from Spiderhead

This George Saunders short story in the December 20 & 27, 2010 issue of The New Yorker takes place in a near future dystopia where current trends in illiteracy and commercial penal reform converge in a uniquely American horrorshow.

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