Fans of post-apocalyptic fiction have made the "Black Tide Rising" series by New York Times bestselling author, and Chattanooga resident, John Ringo a very popular series.
Over the past decade, the series has expanded to eight novels and now four anthologies of short stories with today's release of United We Stand (hardcover, & Kindle), all co-edited by Ringo and Chattanooga Pulse managing editor Gary Poole.
Be they zombie-related, medically-induced, or a religious prophecy fulfilled, stories set during apocalyptic events, or after, are often dark or depressing or dour.
But while the one chronicled in the Black Tide Rising series is grim, in the following interview excerpt conducted by Paul Semel about the new anthology, which features contributions by John Birmingham, Brian Trent, Lydia Sherrer, Mike Massa, Jody Lynn Nye, and others, series creator John Ringo says, “…the thing that shines through in all the books is hope.”
Paul Semel: For people who haven’t read any of the Black Tide Rising books, what is this series about, and what kind of a world are they set in?
John Ringo: A plague causes most people to go violently insane. Civilization falls. Survivors start to rebuild.
Paul: And what kind of zombies are we talking about?
John: Zombie is really the wrong description. Years later I ran across the 28 Days movies and realized I’d sort of written a fan-fic without ever seeing the movies. Rage zombies is the colloquial term.
The difference in the original books and most of the anthologies is that the rage zombies are more or less background. it’s why things are messed up but the main characters have generally found smart ways to deal with the issue of not-particularly-smart-weak apes.
Paul: It’s been said that, unlike a lot of apocalypse stories, the Black Tide Rising series is hopeful. Why did you decide to take this approach as opposed to looking at things from a more pessimistic perspective?
John: It’s grim, don’t get me wrong. But one of the things that annoys me about most post-apoc that you see mostly in television and film is that the survivors are…not the sort of people who would survive. And they make a lot of very basic mistakes that I think stem from the writers being…not the sort of people who would survive.
They also are very selfish. “I’m going to survive and I don’t care much about others.”
The primary Black Tide Rising books, and most of the anthology stories, are about people who are the sort to buckle down and do the smart, and sometimes cold-blooded, things that you do if you’re a pragmatic humanist in the situation. You do what it takes not only to survive but to help others and to grow as a community.
There’s nothing about the “lone wolf” because the lone wolf won’t tend to survive.
So, the thing that shines through in all the books is hope. Not hope to rebuild civilization as it was. The dead aren’t coming back. But to rebuild something that lasts and will continue to build.
Paul: So with the four short story anthologies that you’ve assembled — Black Tide Rising, Voices Of The Fall, We Shall Rise, and the new one, United We Stand — are they set at the same time as the novels, and deal with the same characters, or are they about some different aspect of the story?
Gary Poole: Each anthology has a specific theme, and we allow the authors to play around in the sandbox, so to speak, creating their own characters and settings. Each anthology takes place in a specific time period. The first, Black Tide Rising, was set concurrent with the first novel, Under A Graveyard Sky, and each subsequent one was about six months or so later on, which the current one about two years after the collapse of civilization.
Paul: And what then is the connection between the stories in United We Stand?
John: Most of the stories in United We Stand are about groups coming together against common issues. These might be human issues, two groups uniting to defend against a common enemy, or environmental problems. But it’s primarily about how societies start to unify and grow.
This against the background of the restored United States, though all the stories are not U.S. based.
Paul: How do people come to write stories for these anthologies? Like, for United We Stand, did you approach writers you like, did you have people submit ideas and then picked the ones you liked the most, did you guys come up with story ideas and then send them to specific writers or let the writers pick which they wanted to do…what?
John: All of the above. Gary did most of the solicitation on that one. And we gave them a general outline of the theme and go at it.
I prefer that something come from an author’s heart than to nit-pick specific things. There was one query about something that I’d left out intentionally that sort of gets resolved in this anthology and I got queried on that and went, “Okay.”
I like to let people run. I don’t write to a formula and I don’t expect others to.
Gary: One of the great things about the Black Tide world is that so many very talented authors have wanted to write, using the setting to explore a wide variety of themes and situations.
Paul: So, did anyone submit a story, or an idea for a story, that really surprised you? Like they had a take on things that was totally unique?
Gary: One of the most interesting stories, to me, was Mel Todd’s “Do Not Steal,” which deals with one of the most difficult situations to address: rape. This was her first story in the anthologies, and I was very impressed with how she handled a very touchy subject in a unique way that fit perfectly into the universe. She’s a rising talent in the industry and I look forward to seeing her future work.
To read the complete review, and learn more about John's upcoming novels and the future plans for the Black Tide Rising universe, visit www.paulsemel.com