Ihave created a series of adventure thrillers set in a possible, neo-medieval world, that arises from the ashes of a catastrophic global pandemic. Politically motivated murder and mayhem are the order of the day as the series starts in an England split on religious lines roughly eighty years after the last major plague has passed and thirty-five after a protracted civil war has ended.
The back story is post-apocalyptic but also non-dystopian, a vision of hope and recovery; a society that is rebuilding, small scale, intimate, where life can be hard but also intense. Religion is a key part of the background but not a dominant theme in the stories. It is a motivation and provides a context, especially in the political sense, for the characters, both Christian and Muslim to operate in. The absurdity of enmity based on religion is, I hope, obvious.
A great deal of inspiration is drawn from late medieval and Tudor England, also the early Renaissance city-states of Italy, especially Florence and Venice. The politics of the world I have created are definitely medieval, personal, at times violent. This I hope has given the opportunity to focus on characters that the reader can properly learn to love or hate.
Technologically speaking I have reverted to a period roughly comparable to the late Edwardian. Cars exist in small numbers with very limited capabilities. Steam engines are common, horse-drawn vehicles share the roads and plough the fields. Telephones are few and far between, telegrams suffice. These are just some of the changes brought about by a collapse of the modern world. All modern technology requires a huge number of highly specialised disciplines to work in concert before a product can exist. In the case of global near extinction this knowledge would have been lost in a lot of areas. So the technology is at a level that the few skilled professionals remaining and keen amateurs can recreate. Metallurgy is poor, electronics non-existent. Electricity in short supply and so on. This has many advantages for the writer, beyond allowing for a slower pace of life, to contrast with the action and violence, and a slightly rose-tinted view of a more sustainable world with many fewer people. There are no ‘mysterious text message’ plot devices. Also no DNA or otherwise infallible forensic methods to identify the bad guys.
Anyway, enough of this intro, the selection of blog posts below try and explain some of my thinking in the world-building, I hope you enjoy them.
Jeremiah Hope 