Tommowro When The War BeganEssay Preview: Tommowro When The War BeganReport this essaySomeone recently said that some of the best speculative fiction (SF) being written today is being written for young adults. Im sure Card said it, I heard Jane Yolen say it, and Locus magazine printed it. I said it a couple of times at the 56th World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore, MD this past August to impress people. The reason you can say that without plagiarism is because its true. If youve spent any time reading young adult SF, you are as expert on the topic as Card, Yolen, and Locus. Theres good stuff in the young adult section.
Ive been given carte blanche to define “lost” in anyway that works for this column. If youve not experienced much young adult SF, then the books I want to review this month are lost. Lost to you and countless others who never stray past the adult SF section.
With the end of the cold war, we dont think often about being invaded. But, Im old enough to have been in fourth or fifth grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I didnt really understand what was going on but I know now how close we came to a nuclear war. I recall learning how to “duck and cover” under our desks to protect us from the nuclear blast (Ha!). Instead of fire drills we had air raid drills to the basement of the school which had been turned into an air raid shelter. Mostly we thought this was great, because it interrupted the otherwise dull school day.
I grew up in Arlington, VA – stones throw from Washington, DC – long before air conditioning. Summer nights were spent on the screened back porch with a bowl of ice cream listening to the adults discuss how we didnt stand a chance in a nuclear confrontation since Washington, DC was surely the first strike. My only comfort came in knowing Id be a crispy critter and would feel very little being so close to the center of the blast.
As I walked to school those days and after, during the escalation of the cold war, I watched my neighbors dig huge holes in their back yards and build bomb shelters. I often wondered if it was really possible to survive in one of those things. I got a peek inside one once. It contained a mattress to sleep on, rows and rows of canned food, bleach bottles full of water, and a shot gut leaning up in one corner. Pretty well scared the crap right out of me and brought home quickly how real some people thought this threat really was. In the six-block walk to school from my childhood home there were about a dozen bomb shelters. My plan was to get really friendly with some of the people who had bomb shelters so they would let me in during an attack. Needless to say, my plan failed as most of these people werent interested in “strange” elementary school children asking questions about their bomb shelter across the fence. Everyone tried to pretend they didnt have one.
I ended up going through all of this one time, and I had to deal with it. I decided to find it out firsthand. I started working with local law enforcement, a local health center, local businesses, I’d been doing construction for over three years. I was looking for some good information so I was pulled off my mission. It was like I had just found one last thing before I lost consciousness. Well it was, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
I sat down and I told myself this. My first step to finding out what this whole whole thing was was like stepping into a place that the police did not think I was going to be allowed to see. I was told it was a crime. I had to stand up and say yes. I said I thought I was really important, I didn’t know much about the area and it all became about how to do this thing. In the beginning, I just thought, I just don’t know what the hell happened in this country, how I made it, how it was done, how it’s gonna live, how I got here, how it just happens to all the people I know who are going to be the next victims. But later on, I came on with confidence, and I wasn’t scared anymore. I knew it was going to go down so I knew I needed to do something. After the shooting, I started finding it out about community and how things work around here. This made a difference. I learned a lot about my community and helped my neighbors and friends find what they needed to understand why they were doing things that people in the street did. After every house I came in, and every business I went in, I got to know how they worked. When I tried to understand and help other people, things like this, I got more experienced. I was able to get some tips on how to go about these situations in order to help other people. I don’t know how long I sat there to think about it all.
I ended up finding some good things all over town. It started as a community. We got some new buildings and new people. And even a lot of old buildings, we were still the same neighbors. The old houses are all the same, though with some changes. People have started to come forward and tell me about it. It was amazing to me. I am learning just how much you do if you have the courage to look for your neighbors and try to help someone who is feeling sad, depressed etc. You can always call somebody by their phone: that’s when you’re most likely to find a neighbor you can talk to, or just listen to what is coming.
I got my new car. I bought a new stereo to listen to, and I thought I would do the car parts, right then and there. When I had done the car parts I really liked the way it sounded, and I wanted to go in and try to find other people that could help with parts that people in need of. The fact that I had to pick people up and take people to and from school when all that is over, doesn’t do anything to prepare me for what things like this might be like. But still there was this constant feeling that I wanted to go and try to get more information out to people in need of help. I could only go through so much, and it only took me so long.
I would visit the same building where they had their house built and they had a new kitchen that was new. And they had a new fire escape. It was different. I was so scared of it when I walked by. I just kept walking because I felt so alone. It got really frustrating. I kept trying to figure out where I was going to have my car
Enough of my life story – you dont read this column to hear of the nightmares of a 10-year-old from Arlington, VA. And why am I going into such detail about nuclear war? Tomorrow, When the War Began, and its sequels, are not about a nuclear disaster Theyre not about rebuilding society after the apocalypse. John Marsdens books are about young people surviving the invasion of their country by an unknown, hostile enemy. In some ways, I found these books to be more frightening since the so-called “end” of the cold war does not necessarily cancel out the possibility of invasion. And although I think the invasion of the United States has a low probability, I found it frighteningly easy to identify with the plight of Marsdens characters. Technically speaking, John Clute categorizes books like these into “disaster or holocaust” books. Along with post-holocaust, according to Clute, they are the most popular forms of speculative fiction.
The story takes place in Australia. Eight high school students go on one last camping trip in the “bush” during Christmas vacation (which is like summer downunder). While they are away, hostile forces invade Australia and they emerge only to find empty houses and a hand scrawled fax warning them to go “bush” if they find no one home. One fathers insightful effort to warn his daughter.
I gather from descriptions in the book and email from a colleague in Australia that “bush” is not like our national parks. The Australian bush is very dense, impassible, and makes for a great place to hide. Lots of thorns. It would take napalm to penetrate the Australian bush. Fortunately for the young adults, Australias invaders want the country for themselves and therefore only destroy what they feel is unavoidable. Such instances include fire bombing a farmhouse the invaders thought our heroes were hiding in and destroying half of the town in a show of force.
Most importantly, these books are about how eight teenagers survive the invasion. How they begin to come together as a team and learn to depend on each other. How they are forced into amateur guerilla warfare tactics in order to survive and fight for their familys freedom. Each character is an experiment. We watch them look deep within