BABEL
BABEL by Arthur Chappell 2007 Print: £8.12 Download: £3.75
http://www.lulu.com/content/764029 This is a dark, scary, and sometimes humorous, but relentless
novella length science fiction story, in the spirit of John Wyndham. It is about ordinary people trying desperately to maintain their ordinary routine day-to-day existence under apocalyptic conditions. When a computer like virus begins to affect human minds when a series of experiments go horribly wrong, causing severe and sudden amnesia attacks, terrifying hallucinations, and a very swift acting form of Alzheimer’s disease, people forget basic information, newspapers run stories out of sequence, a maths instructor loses the ability to add up, a child turns up at completely the wrong school, and people find that everyone looks like themselves. Passengers on board trains that never seem to stop forget where they boarded or where they hope to disembark. George Forester, a mild mannered schoolteacher, tries to get the distressed lost boy to where he should be and then tries to just go home from work, across a city gone mad, but will he even make it to the right house, and find his wife again, ever? Forester works out all kinds of methods for keeping his mind and memory working, but he is fighting a losing battle. Writing things down to give yourself reminders only works when you remember where you left the notes. In the background, news of the wider implications of the disaster makes their presence felt. Will the scientists responsible for the problem solve it before it is too late for the whole planet? One of my earliest short stories, which has been well received and now revised to be
presented in the current beautifully presented edition of 48 pages, 6.14" x 9.21", saddle-stitch binding, white interior paper (55#
weight), black and white interior
ink, white
exterior paper (90# weight), full-colour exterior ink Arthur Chappell.
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