Tony Burgess has been experimenting with apocalypse fiction in numerous earlier works: the language/speech virus in Pontypool, the enigmatic small world in the big world of Caesarea, and other less elaborate speculations.
News coverage of the fall of Baghdad and its aftermath were the inspiration for Ravenna, especially the smaller stories of people being killed suddenly in their homes in the middle of otherwise normal days. Each story in Ravenna Gets begins as any novel might, but abruptly loses the luxury of becoming a novel through a seemingly random and violent intrusion from beyond the world established by the story. The effect is intended to be that of the experience of war as the sudden end of stories, rather than being a war story itself. This destabilizing 'pinch' seeps into the consciousness of some of the stories, not as a consciousness of events, but rather as nightmarish bends in experience and perception.
Ravenna Gets could probably be classified as speculative fiction, influenced by J.G. Ballard, and, though experimental in spirit, it employs strong conventional storytelling techniques.
Genre: Literary Fiction
News coverage of the fall of Baghdad and its aftermath were the inspiration for Ravenna, especially the smaller stories of people being killed suddenly in their homes in the middle of otherwise normal days. Each story in Ravenna Gets begins as any novel might, but abruptly loses the luxury of becoming a novel through a seemingly random and violent intrusion from beyond the world established by the story. The effect is intended to be that of the experience of war as the sudden end of stories, rather than being a war story itself. This destabilizing 'pinch' seeps into the consciousness of some of the stories, not as a consciousness of events, but rather as nightmarish bends in experience and perception.
Ravenna Gets could probably be classified as speculative fiction, influenced by J.G. Ballard, and, though experimental in spirit, it employs strong conventional storytelling techniques.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Used availability for Tony Burgess's Ravenna Gets