Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
Menu
Posted on February 16, 2026 | 28 Comments
It’s about time I wrote some posts about my recently published book Finding Lights in a Dark Age. There are twelve chapters in the book plus a preface, introduction and afterward, so my intention is to write fifteen posts about the book in all, one for each of these segments. And, as a bonus, one about the bibliography too. I also have a few other posts up my sleeve, including one about my ongoing debate with Tom Murphy, so there will doubtless be some interspersing. Apologies however that the blog posts are only trickling out these days – a slow turnover that’s set to continue given various other calls upon my time.
Let’s begin with the preface, then – in fact, with the beginning of the preface, where I cite some lines from Völuspá, otherwise known as the Seeress’s Prophecy, in the Norse Poetic Edda. The poem concerns the mythic, or possibly not so mythic, end times of Ragnarök. I used Nick Richardson’s lovely translation, which appeared in the now defunct literary journal The Junket. I had quite a job tracking Nick down to get his permission to reproduce it – one of the hidden burdens of authorly life. Anyway, happily I eventually did and I’m grateful to him not only for the permission but for breathing such life into an English version of the poem.
The basic story I tell in the preface – which actually has some resonances with my ongoing debate with Tom Murphy – is that in early ‘Dark Age’ Scandinavia, a region poised on the outer periphery of the disintegrating Roman Empire, most ordinary people were small-scale farmers living deeply local lives within numerous petty chiefdoms or monarchies. There was no particular endogenous tendency within this world for economic growth or predatory domination, but that’s ultimately what happened when the region became the centre of the Viking expansion.
That expansion was precipitated by various factors, including changes in the machinations of militarised elites in the aftermath of the empire who built on the back of local agrarian society, and the impact of climate change caused by volcanic eruptions leading to a dust-veil winter and ensuing famine (events that Völuspá possibly references). The result was the expansion of a self-reinforcing Viking raiding-slaving-trading (and settling-farming) nexus into not only Europe but also western Asia and eastern North America.
It was self-reinforcing because the enslaving and the plunder enabled more enslaving and plunder. But, y’know, the Vikings weren’t all bad. Provided you didn’t fall into the category of the enslaveable or the actually enslaved, they had remarkably democratic and egalitarian legal codes for their times, and they helped to spread useful trade and economic linkage across their diaspora.
I started my book with this example because it resembles modern day globalisation and its justifications, even if the plundering and coercion involved nowadays isn’t always quite so overt. And because we currently also face the end of empire, or at least the beginning of the end, and the impact of climate change.
We don’t really see the violence that historically underlay and still underlies the globalised ‘free’ trade that defines the modern world because a lot of effort has gone into forgetting it. Whole academic disciplines are devoted to expressing the benefits mathematically while effacing the violent undertow. So I thought the parallel with Viking free trade from a less occult era might be informative.
That’s not to say more localised societies are free of violence. Raiding and slaving can operate at all geopolitical levels, in numerous forms, and I don’t presume to be able to weigh the historical evidence and determine which level generates the least misery. Possibly, there’s some sweet spot where regional polities can prevent the grimness of internecine local conflict without merely replicating it at a higher level with its own predatory expansion. I’m not sure.
On the plus side of local internecine conflict, this usually involves ultimate stalemates that prompt people to routinise hostilities and limit the toll they take. For all the talk of our present fossil fuel ‘energy slaves’ being replaced by actual slaves in the future, the historical fact is that people rarely enslave their neighbours and co-locals. Enslavement and other forms of predatory violence usually involve frontiers – especially oceanic ones – beyond which people become fair game. How might such frontiers manifest in the future? It’s reasonably clear how they manifest right now.
The Vikings enjoy a lot of contemporary mythologising in certain corners of the internet as super-macho badasses, and therefore as role models for a performative masculinity. But one of the problems with ‘heroic’ societies of this type is that they create a lot of losers and only a few winners. It’s easy for people, perhaps alienated young men in particular, to fancy themselves among the winners, but the stats aren’t in their favour.
The likelier outcome is to become at best the lackey of some superior leader. Lackeys can keep such societies ticking along, but I struggle to see the honour in it. Better, I’d argue, to embrace the role of the settled local farmer-householder (which in fact many of the Vikings were too) who knows how to produce their own livelihood from the land. It’s a sad fact of contemporary society that this role (even without the ‘farmer’ bit) is increasingly unattainable for a lot of young people, especially young men – something I talk about a bit more in Chapter 5 of my book. Wise societies attach young men to households, find ways of keeping them busy and flatter their egos with the possibility of local honour. I fear one of many sources of future trouble in the world is the failure of our contemporary societies to do this.
This is all rather dark stuff with which to begin a book – I didn’t call it ‘Lights for a Dark Age’ (my original title) lightly, so to speak. But I wanted to avoid the faux ‘optimism’ that blights so much writing about eco-political futures. Nevertheless, I do think there’s potentially some light to be found in the darkness, and indeed one aspect of the book was to play with the idea that dark ages aren’t necessarily so terrible for ordinary people. Some readers have told me they found the overall vibe of the book quite bleak, while others have said they found it strangely uplifting. I’m happy about that, because I want to channel both sentiments. But if there’s to be any lightness, I think it’s going to have to be hard won out of the dark.
Despite uncertainties over its date(s) of composition, the Poetic Edda was written down some centuries after the possibly real-life events described in Völuspá, at a time when a confident Christian medieval culture was entrenching itself across Europe, including the once-pagan Norse kingdoms. Easy then for the Seeress to say with the benefit of hindsight that “Another green Earth will rise from the sea”. Our challenge today, without such future hindsight, is to seek ways in which that might happen again in the future. Still, the Seeress also speaks of a future in which black dragons bear corpses to Hel, where she too is destined. That’s something I come back to at the end of the book. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
If you like my writing, please help me keep the blog going by donating!
Subscribe via RSS
Why Vikings rather than Romans?
I feel like quite a bit more of the structure of present-day extraction comes from ancient Rome than from the Vikings, but I’m (admittedly) basing that on vibes… perhaps it’s just that my study of Christian scripture reminds me of the Roman empire as an occupying military force that does political executions, in a way I’m not so familiar with for Vikings.
Comparisons to Viking empires seem appropriate.
According to this book, the Romano-Christian culture had some disdain for trade. The beginning of the Viking empires was related to Scandinavia’s “magnate class” at the time being “free of the disdain for trade that was such a part of Romano-Christian culture”, and thus “trading and raiding became an opportunity for creating further wealth for them”.
“The logical conclusion must be that the magnate class in southern Scandinavia succeeded in creating a relatively peaceful and well-defended country. However, this success could have turned into disaster if the former fighting aristocracy had resumed the wars of the previous centuries. But, fortunately, being free of the disdain for trade that was such a part of Romano-Christian culture provided an outlet for the magnates who were in danger of losing their raison d’être. Trading and raiding became an opportunity for creating further wealth for them, and with the development of the ocean-going Viking ship, with its sail, dropped keel and hydrodynamic shape, the stage was set for the Scandinavians’ dramatic entry into the annals of European history.”
Viking Empires
Angelo Forte, Richard D. Oram, Frederik Pedersen
Cambridge University Press, 2005
p. 53
https://books.google.com/books?id=_vEd859jvk0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false
[comment made without assistance from AI]
: )
…..history rhymes, etc……..
I just figured you chose Vikings as an example since much of English soil would have been anointed with blood let by the Vikings.
In my opinion, raiding, slaving, all manner of conflict, at all levels of size and hierarchy schemes, are inherent to our genetics, and those fortunate intervals where local refugia can flourish for a spell are not easy to create and maintain.
Yeah, one could say that our acquisitive, aggressive globalized economy has some heritage derived from its Viking and European roots, but I see that pattern everywhere and across time.
China was a violent cycle of empires and genocides for millennia, and talk about raiding and pillaging as a refined art; one could look at the Mongol Empire period that seems to have risen independent of any Viking forebears.
One could list on and on, with no doubt hundreds of small examples that left little or no historical record.
I agree we are likely in for some middle ground “gritty” future, so best keep acquiring self reliance skills and building local connections as best we can.
so best keep acquiring self reliance skills and building local connections as best we can
And guns. An armed community will be less inviting than an unarmed one.
Besides, every household in a small farm community needs guns just as farm tools. When I visited my grandparent’s farm for a few weeks in the summer (every year from 1st grade to 11th grade), the entry hall had a 22, as 410, a 12 ga and a 30-06 leaning against the wall. Oh, plus a BB gun. All the cousins started out with the BB gun, then the 22, and slowly worked up to the heavier gauges.
I got bounties for muskrats (destroyed irrigation ditches) and magpies (devastating the commercial peach orchard), and we hunted rabbits and deer for the pot. It happened rarely, but sometimes a pesky coyote had to be eliminated (chickens).
I still use a gun several times a year for slaughtering livestock. I used to shoot several feral pigs a year for meat, but our farm is now fenced well enough to keep them out. I’m lucky that I haven’t had to shoot any loose dogs going after our sheep. A neighbor across the road just lost one to dogs this week. I think the police came and confiscated the dogs.
Anyway, guns are useful tools.
Yeah, one more skill and element of self reliance. I’m set in that department. This part of Wisconsin has too many white tale deer, fewer hunters as younger generations aren’t in to it, and we are the only predator in the area. Very good mix (from the deer’s perspective) of wooded cover and row crops to eat. So yeah, venison is actually kind of part of stewarding the land.
Folks around here know that if they let a dog run loose, and it bothers livestock, its life is forfeit.
Still have the .410 I got as a young lad.
My eyesight isn’t good enough that I should ever use a gun for anything. Thankfully I don’t have to learn every single skill, I can make friends with people who can do the things I cannot.
Nate Hagens’s interview with Jason Bradford is quite good. It’s about how Jason is attempting to smooth the path to small farms with a farming club. It also includes a couple of mentions of Chris’s work.
https://natehagens.substack.com/p/the-future-is-rural-reclaiming-food
You are dead right on keeping young men busy , I remember the Mods and Rockers , Arsenal football supporters versus all comers , now its street gangs , bored unemployed testosterone filled boys looking for a way to burn it off . Harnessing that vigour has always been a problem , the Vikings taught the shield sword and axe , Middle ages Britain taught the shield ,pike and long bow , both taught personal discipline and I suppose masculinity , ( there were no soy boys in these battles ) and I dare say the soy boys will become tomorrow’s slaves .
Keeping them busy in a post techno world will have the same problems as the pre techno world steering them to where they are not killing each other will be interesting at the least .
Genetics has a say in this too , most southern ” Red necks ” can trace their ancestry to the Scotts Irish which in turn have Scotts Viking blood in the mix , they are still really a tribe of bloody minded free thinkers , self sufficient and ornery hunting , fishing and farming in a small way , in a post techno world being a member of their group will be a bonus .
I would be interested to learn about examples for the ‘tying young men to the household’ topic.
‘Better, I’d argue, to embrace the role of the settled local farmer-householder’
Made me me think about Jack Spirko’s podcast, combining permaculture an prepper culture.
Thanks all. So – yes, Kathryn’s argument that the Romans set the modern agenda more than the Vikings is strong. But there’s a pervasive contemporary view that patrician, landholder-style, trade-disdaining empires like the Romans have been replaced by a nicer, more egalitarian, ‘free’ trade society. One reason I chose the Viking example was to show the violence lurking behind that latter vision. The book Steve L cites is relevant.
Other reasons I started with the Vikings were that their predecessors were small-scale farmers living locally circumscribed lives but then climate change and geopolitical collapse propelled them into a different way of life, which seems somehow relevant to contemporary times. Also the power, beauty and subtlety of the Ragnarök story. And finally re Steve C’s point, yes its relevance to the history of my locality. But also its possible wider relevance in the way that a Viking-offshoot society, the Normans, conquered England and established a centralized state as a kind of colonial power standing over society, which I think has echoed forward historically in England, but not only in England.
Continuing with Steve C’s points, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that the Vikings were the only entrepreneurs of violence in world history and I agree that violence and hierarchy are part of being human. But so too is peace and cooperation, and I don’t see one as being more dominant. There’s a modern myth that preceding societies were all irredeemably violent until modern civilisation instilled a veneer of gentility over the world, which I don’t accept at all. Also, if we look at our great ape cousins, humans come out pretty well on the peace side of things by comparison.
Each side of the war/peace duality gets cued in different historic circumstances, but there’s always violence within peace, and peace within violence. It’s hard to quantify. I don’t necessarily agree with Steve C that peace is merely a ‘fortunate interval’ between the normal state of war. Maybe war is an ‘unfortunate interval’ between states of peace? But states of peace are complex things too. This is all quite relevant to my debate with Tom Murphy. More on that soon.
The Mongol example is interesting. Yes probably not that related to the Vikings, although some of the riches of the West Asian cities they targeted had Viking roots. Pirates of the grass sea meet pirates of the waterways, or at least their settled descendants. Any lessons from the fact that it was the latter who ultimately won?
I’m interested in Joe’s comment about an ‘armed community’, as compared to an armed individual or household. Cue debate over how to interpret the second amendment. I’d be interested in a discussion about what a modern community militia might look like. But I think ‘militia’ tends to mean something else in the US these days?
I’m interested too in Joe’s gun inventory. Gun culture is so different here in the UK and I wouldn’t have been able to make head nor tail of it a few years ago, but now I can … rural life has slowly seeped into me. Straight from 410 to 12 ga? Any thoughts on a 20 ga? Not sure I’d get a licence for a rifle and I’m not sure I’d want one, given how crowded the place is. But agree on their use around the farm, and on the problem with deer … and dogs. A few years back before we had a gun, somebody’s dogs crippled a deer on our land – not pleasant to deal with without one. Badly trained dogs are the bane of my life around here, but British pet culture being what it is I’m not sure how it would go if a smallholder with a few sheep shot one. Also, home slaughtering of livestock is another tricky area of regulatory overreach here…
Re Diogenes’s comments about US lineages, has anyone read David Hackett Fisher’s ‘Albion Seed’? I’d be interested in a report.
Any thoughts on a 20 ga?
They are around, but far less common than the 410 and the 12 gauge.
Here’s an interesting history of militias in the US. It is interesting that the militia “was a long-standing English institution” according to the author.
https://law.stanford.edu/2020/10/12/stanfords-greg-ablavsky-on-law-and-the-history-of-american-militias/
The main point is that militias were originally created by governments when there were no resources for standing armies or police forces.
My view is that private militias today are not much different than clubs or gangs, clubs if they obey the law and gangs if they break it. Post-collapse militias could go either way. If organized and controlled by the community they would be similar to early American militias. If not, they are just gangs.
I’m pretty sure we will have both in a small farm future, with militias as defence against gangs.
Any system that makes only a few winners and their lackeys is going to be unstable and therefore violent I would think. But I find it more interesting that so many are willing valorize the “winners”, willing to praise the lions who convince antelopes they’ll one day be lions to go back to the excellent previous post.
I had similar thoughts about why the Vikings in particular but their type of global trade empire is probably more relevant than the more insular (as I understand it) Chinese one. I get the appeal of economic violence as it can feel much more predictable, but am baffled why more people don’t see it as violent. Recently for instance coworkers found it odd I was more nervous around the CEO than the homeless in the parking lot (ever a good source of moral panic). But to me the CEO can fire me for any reason effectively making me homeless/starving etc, and I have no societally allowed recourse, by contrast the homeless person could at worst attack me (most of them are nice enough) and society would accept any violent response I could muster. So the real threat is the CEO even though I would take my odds in a fight with him over most of the homeless.
How to arm an community without becoming part of the problem is ugh- tricky. Militias here are pretty much a “right-wing” (I know we’re trying to move away from that terminology but the other word I would use is conservative and I don’t think that’s quite right either) project more likely to be coopted into government violence than to oppose it. (I think military recruiting and the Proud Boy to ICE pipeline would support me in that stance.) From personal experience the militia types are either older rich men who got bored of domestic violence and need a new outlet and as many teenage boys as they can rope in to threaten or are eager to be a “real man”, but it’s been awhile since I’ve had direct contact with that world, and that’s not what is has to be by any means. As long as you’re up against a government with a total panopticon and drones plus unlimited pockets I don’t know that it really matters what you put up if the eye of Sauron gets turned on you. (That’s a Palantir/Peter Theil reference as well as a metaphor) But plenty of “terrorists” have beaten the US empire in armed conflict so it’s certainly possible without just waiting for the oil wells to run dry.
I try not to complain too much here because I know I have more going for me than most, but if you’re under about 45 in the US or UK at this point you’re pretty much just fucked. I make an average amount for my area (which in practice puts me above median) and it’s still getting rough to make the math work. This is despite an aging population which you would think would make young people more valuable. You can sort of see a path though, there’s so much work on the land that needs to be done with skilled human hands, plenty to keep everyone busy (man or otherwise), declining fossil energy to do it, but I’ve never been able to make the dollars side of it work. I feel like we (blog commentators) go in circles sometimes trying to jump that gap and I don’t think there’s a good answer. I would also accept criticism that IF I succeed in my ambitions and start inviting my under-employed friends to live on the farm and arming them I will have only succeeded in re-creating “medieval manorialism”. At least if I don’t try and sell any animals butchered on farm I don’t think there’s anything to stop me not sure how stringent your laws are?
To briefly revisit the river post, if people aren’t receptive to a SFF at dinner parties you just have the wrong audience. You’re talking to people who own homes and care which kind of fork you use, and still have the free time or hired help to host dinner parties or have food with courses. I thought about writing about this elsewhere but couldn’t quite pull a thesis together, but more than the much reported on political polarization what I can really feel the past few years is more of yawning gulf between those who can see the tidal wave coming or have been hit already and those who still think it will never affect them. That’s a gap I don’t know how you bridge or even if you can.
I’ve long appreciated Chris’s writing and perspective, and those of many commenters on this blog. It feels like the right kind of “dinner party” to be at or conversations to be having, often grounded in relevant experience about how hard the task is at hand, but also how beautiful it can be to be working outside and with our bodies, hands, and minds.
And to be working with others with some kind of thoughtful clarity of purpose, in this often hazy murk of pressures, expectations, obligations, and contradictions.
So thank you all, and thank you bluejay, for sharing your thoughts and ideas. And good luck continuing to put them into practice.
Having now been in the market garden and larger CSA realm for 10-15 years, with some smaller livestock experience interspersed, I can see the folly of perpetually chasing economic return for the time and money invested, and am starting to agree with Chris and other commenters that side-stepping the rules (like on-farm slaughter), and decommodifying the fruits of the farm whenever and to whatever extent possible, seems like a more viable (or at least not any less viable) way forward. It also feels like a more fun and communal way to approach things, as well.
Doesn’t solve the numbers dilemma by any means, but maybe opens up mental space for different kinds of problem solving than staring at spreadsheets exclusively, where there may just never be a good answer.
Thank you for the kind comment. I agree about not casing the financial returns where possible, I’m giving more food away now, and spending more time trying to find others who are interested in helping out, at least when I can make it fun. The winter wheat took a little frost damage (our temperature swings have been crazy) but it’s still looking good. Just a couple hundred sq ft so the math doesn’t really pencil out, but I’ve always wanted to make my own bread.
I would also accept criticism that IF I succeed in my ambitions and start inviting my under-employed friends to live on the farm and arming them I will have only succeeded in re-creating “medieval manorialism”.
You might consider putting some of your resources into communal management and ownership instead through something like a land stewardship trust or a formal co-operative. There are paperwork hurdles, but also less wheel reinvention.
More generally: yes, making the dollars work is hard. I am now in a weird position where I can either keep growing food or get a “proper” job — we can’t really afford for me to keep having so little income, except that our grocery budget is so low. When it’s tipping it down with rain and I am way behind on my garden chores I do sometimes consider whether paid work might be the better deal, but then I open a bottle of passata and take some plums out of the freezer, and I know I am definitely going to keep growing food in whatever way I can.
I’ve considered land trust, but having grown and still growing on rented land for so long I really don’t want to relinquish any control. Also if we’re serious about the collapse of the state, then I’m not sure I really trust any legal framework to do a decent job either or even persist, but maybe I’m making excuses.
As long as you can grow instead of work you’re definitely making the right choice! I’m not sure which will be better getting further boxed into the corner of having to both work and grow food, or food prices rising high enough to make the math work.
“Any thoughts on a 20 ga? …They are around, but far less common than the 410 and the 12 gauge.”
Less common could mean less available (and/or more costly) ammunition. There’s less shot capacity and less range with a 20 ga. I started shooting my father’s 12 gauge as a young teen, and got one for myself at age 16. A shotgun shooting single slugs could substitute for a rifle.
Just to follow up a little more on my gun use now:
My two main guns are a BB gun, used about 30 times a year for killing trapped mongooses and a SKS rifle sighted in for very short range shooting of sheep in the head (60 ft).
It’s far easier for me to dispatch them in the pasture and then haul them to the gambrel with the tractor bucket. If I didn’t have a tractor I would use a wheelbarrow. My wife and I eat only three or four sheep a year (about a pound of ground meat every three days). On-farm slaughter and butchering is easier than rounding them up and hauling them to the nearest slaughterhouse/packing plant 40 miles away.
I use a shotgun, but rarely, against feral chickens that want to eat out of my garden.
The local mantra regarding marauding dogs is “Triple S” (shoot, shovel, shut up). Here’s a more formal assessment of how our community is responding to loose dogs:
https://www.pmkca.org/dangerous-dogs-project
In haste —
I was thinking of the Normans as more Roman than Viking, so thanks for clarifying your reasoning. I clearly have more to learn.
For armed communities that aren’t a militia you may want to look at anarchist or anarcho-socialist models of community defense. Off the top of head I might recommend Yellow Peril Tactical and the Socialist Rifle Association (…there are a few) as groups interested in doing this that are really not militia-coded.
Of course, community defense doesn’t necessarily have to mean firearms.
Minneapolis is doing remarkably well with whistles.
In the same vein, bells are powerful tools for assembling people. They can be heard for miles. I still remember the scene in the movie “Witness”, when the Amish boy summoned the entire community to stop the bad guys.
Our local community is right in the middle of creating an emergency response communications network that can operate without utility power or cell systems working. It involves inexpensive handheld radios, but boosted through repeaters located at solar powered homesteads. It should allow anyone with a walkietalkie to talk to everyone else with one far beyond their normal range.
Minneapolis is a third world shit hole , a friend lives there his corporation is moving to TX after one of the directors was knifed to death, he couldn’t be happier , he will have to buy a car as the last one was trashed overnight and he can no longer get car insurance , the police no longer bother to ask if you have insurance , just shrug . Houses are abandoned all around him they are un sailable the owners just walked away and abandoned them .
People who don’t know where I live occasionally try to tell me that London is under Sharia law and that the high level of knife crime makes it perilously dangerous to go anywhere, that large areas of it are “no-go zones” for the police, and similar… but I live in London and.I know that such statements are absolute nonsense. So it’s interesting to hear second-hand accounts from your friend in Minneapolis, and contrast them with what I have heard from people there.
I wonder, too, how many homes have been abandoned, how many have had their occupants forcibly removed by immigration enforcement, and how many people have decided that hiding with friends is safer.
Minneapolis has lost 1/3 of its population in the last 20 years , Boeing , caterpillar and blackrock have moved out , Ford GM and chrysler pulled out years ago .over half the cities budget goes to the retired .
It is the perfect example of de industrialtisation , a city slowly failing and dying on its feet
I like this from bluejay:
“there’s so much work on the land that needs to be done with skilled human hands, plenty to keep everyone busy (man or otherwise), declining fossil energy to do it, but I’ve never been able to make the dollars side of it work.”
Me neither, but in ‘Finding Lights’ I try to probe various ways in which land-based life might work as the dollars side falls apart.
There are many ways in which it might not work all that well. I also liked this, which is relevant to some of those ways: “From personal experience the militia types are either older rich men who got bored of domestic violence and need a new outlet and as many teenage boys as they can rope in to threaten or are eager to be a “real man””. Stephen Markley’s novel ‘The Deluge’ addresses this plausibly, perhaps. A lot to chew on all round in bluejay’s comment!
Regarding shotguns, single slugs are illegal here. A minimum of five pellets per cartridge, and a maximum of three cartridges per magazine. If that sounds restrictive, I won’t even get into the rules around dispatching livestock! I think 20 gauge is probably more common here than 410, though I could be wrong, but yes 12 gauge is the norm. Interested that you shoot sheep from a distance Joe – not up close with a shotgun? Also interested to see the dog issue in your locality. Here, you rarely see dogs without a ‘controlling human’, but their control is often minimal, and they’re usually a few hundred yards behind, but often enough quite irate when they arrive.
I mention in passing the problem of uncontrolled dogs in a post collapse future in ‘Finding Lights’, Chapter 12. Russell Hoban did this too in ‘Riddley Walker’.
I have the audio version, I’ve listened many times. I pick up more each time I listen. My favourite parts were in the shoulder sections – the flyover in the opening chapter, and the future story. I think it would make for a good film. The scene where the woman on the women’s island pulls out a gun and takes on his dare, great stuff.
Good point from Kathryn above about using whistles to defend community instead of guns. Guns have more physical power but whistles have social power and it’s always worth remembering how crucial social power is to historical outcomes.
On which note, going back to bluejay’s comment about medieval manorialism, there’s a difference worth highlighting perhaps between the ‘first among equals’ vibe of inviting friends to join a project in which you hold more cards and manorial economies where social rank assumes a rigid or caste-like differentiation.
Mike, I’m delighted that you like my book and that you think it’d make a good film – unlikely though that is to happen. I’ve rarely had any positive feedback on my writing that’s made me as happy as the last sentence of your comment!
Thanks also for your comment Cameron – good to be on the same journey as others here, however few of us there are.
The thing about guns is how long the ammunition lasts , old black powder flint lock will last longer as you can make powder and ball but there will come a point where axes spears and swords take over , A good blacksmith will be worth his weight in gold !