Ashes of the Earth (50 page)

The
effects of global destruction on the external trappings of a
community of survivors strike me as far easier to anticipate than the
effects on the human psyche. Certainly baser human cravings and
prejudices would not become extinct, yet nor would dignity, honor,
and spirituality. With survivors comprising a random cross-section of
modern society, there would be ample opportunity for the glory, and
the shame, of humankind to be exhibited. It was this unique mix of
worlds and peoples that drove my curiosity in writing this book. A
stage on which a twenty-first-century cast relying on
nineteenth-century technology struggles with murder, starvation,
tyranny, and even the meaning of civilization itself provides fertile
ground for imagination.

As
my characters became more like companions on this journey, I began to
sense an inevitable tension between the survivors, who must shoulder
the nearly unbearable weight of memories of the past world and
collective guilt over its fate, and the new generation, who would
have to cope with inexplicable physical and emotional remnants of the
old world. After being severed from their world would survivors lose
all confidence in their past, would they shy away from history? Would
the lost world seem more a myth than a nightmare to the new
generation? How would it feel to glimpse the possible dying of
humankind's light? What would define the people who were the most
successful survivors—and how far must humanity be sacrificed
for the survival of humans? Of all the mysteries explored on these
pages, perhaps the greatest is the nature of the spark that must be
kept alive.

—
Eliot
Pattison