In 2021, I started a scf-fi novel entitled By Intelligent Design about a pandemic that kills much of the world’s population and leaves a most curious group of survivors. More about them in a bit.
In the summer of 2022, I was trying to finish BID as I call it. While I liked the story, it just wasn’t ready for publication. However, more discouraging was the reaction of people I talked to about my pandemic story with Covid-18 still taking its toll on our society. The last thing people wanted to read about would be a pandemic.
So, I finally decided to give it a rest for a while and work on two other stories—The Search for the Sevenths, a sequel to my first two space novels, and Gardy about an android with a most human like appearance who wants to learn how to be accepted as an equal by humans.
A few months ago, I decided the P word had lost enough of its sting that I could resume working on BID. I have had some very helpful feedback on my draft version from beta readers so I’m hoping to have a ready for publication version of the story by the fall or next spring. I also have to find a new editor to get the book ready for publication as the previous one has retired. I also need to think of a cover for it.
The story revolves around a handful of residents of a fictional Ontario city who suddenly collapse on a Sunday afternoon in late August, and then wake up several hours later to find most of their family and friends dead.
Brian and his daughter Sarah start looking through their neighborhood and finally find a few other survivors who settle into their and two nearby empty houses.
As more survivors appear, the group discovers some very strange changes have occurred in most of them. The bulk of the survivors are pre-teens who now all have the same olive-colored skin. The teenagers, known as the In-Betweens, aren’t quite as a brown and the under 30 survivors have a bit fainter version of the same color.
There are handful of men and women between 30 and 50 in the group, who are unchanged from before, and one senior, Wilfrid, who becomes the chronicler of the survivors.
In the first few days of trying to organize the survivors into a functioning group, the adults realize the young folks have all gained much better hearing, vision, strength and other abilities. That the changes are found in all the under 30s points suggests they are due to whatever hit their community, and they soon learn it was a global event. Why the changes would have occurred is just one of the puzzles along with who or what could have caused it.
As survivors trickle into Bridgeview, it’s clear they too want to help everyone in the community survive. But there are also signs that a few people outside the community have different objectives.
Alex Binkley 