After much story wrangling, we are happy to announce the Table of Contents for Rebuilding Tomorrow! These are the stories that will be included in the anthology, many of which we are announcing today for the first time. So when you pick up your copy of Rebuilding Tomorrow, here is what you can expect to find inside:
“I Will Lead My People” by Janet Edwards
“All the World in Seafoam Green” by Lauren Ring
“Merry Shitmas” by K L Evangelista
“Textbooks in the Attic” by S. B. Divya
“If This Was the Talon” by TJ Berry
“Kids These Days” by Tansy Rayner Roberts
“Ōmarino” by Andi C. Buchanan
“Rhizome, by Starlight” by Fran Wilde
“The Science of Pacific Apocalypse” by Octavia Cade
“The Rest Is” by Stephanie Gunn
“A Floating World of Iron Spines” by Tyan Priss
“Return of the Butterflies” by Emilia Crowe
“Leaving Dreamland” by E. H. Mann
“Nothing But Flowers” by Katharine Duckett
“The 1st Interspecies Solidarity Fair and Parade” by Bogi Takács
And remember, all the stories in Rebuilding Tomorrow feature disabled or chronically ill protagonists!
Concept: an apocalyptic or post apocalyptic tv show centred on a group of disabled protagonists
Must include:
-enough details about how they survive that no one can call it “unrealistic”
-mental and physical disabilities
-a character who isn’t necessarily contributing to the survival of the group, but is not abandoned or looked down upon
-at least one character whose disability is actually less of a problem for them now that the world is ending/ended (example: autistic character who used to be constantly overstimulated but no longer is)
Optional features:
-abled person says “the only disability in life is a bad attitude” and gets told where to stuff it
-character who abled people think isn’t worth helping because of their disability, but actually has at least one skill essential to the survival of the group
-every time an abled person says something ignorant, all present disabled people look into the camera like they’re on the office
- character who only survived the initial apocalyptic event because they had an assistive device which just so happened in that one circumstance to give them an advantage over everyone else
-the abled camp wearing rags and eating meat on sticks cooked over a crude fire. pans over to our heroes and they have perfect clothes, a variety of food and also music.
“what? how did you do that?” “well, jane’s special interest is the medieval production of cloth and, like 8 of us can sew. Turns out those of us who can’t go out much develop a LOT of hobbies.”
A character who scares everyone when a zombie bites them but literally every one of their limbs are amputated.
“They…. they bit Gina.”
*Gina pulls of prosthetic arm* “It’s ok guys! They just got my decoy.”
(vibrates at the speed of sound)
I love this a normal amount
Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the “fittest” who survive – it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost.
In stories of fear, hope and survival, this anthology gives new perspectives on the end of the world, from authors Corinne Duyvis, Janet Edwards, Seanan McGuire, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Stephanie Gunn, Elinor Caiman Sands, Rivqa Rafael, Bogi Takács, John Chu, Maree Kimberley, Octavia Cade, Lauren E Mitchell, Thoraiya Dyer, Samantha Rich, and K L Evangelista.
*reblogs this version again in case you haven’t seen it*
SoRebuilding Tomorrow, the sequel to Defying Doomsday is on Kickstarter RIGHT NOW (running over August 2020). You can also pick up a copy (ebook or paperback) of Defying Doomsday if you haven’t already.
[Image description: Book cover. In the foreground is a woman with brown curly hair, sitting in a futuristic wheelchair and holding a flowerpot with a seedling in it on her lap. In the background is an overgrown city in ruins. The title text reads “Rebuilding Tomorrow” and in smaller font “edited by Tsana Dolichva”.
Since we announced Rebuilding Tomorrow last year, the world has seen a lot have of changes. It took us a little while to work through how we want to deliver Rebuilding Tomorrow and we’re excited to be sharing that news with you first.
In August, we will be running a Kickstarter campaign to fund a portion of the production costs for Rebuilding Tomorrow. You will be able to back for the ebook, paperback and/or exclusive hardcover editions plus all sorts of other goodies. So mark your calendars (or keep an eye out for our next reminder email)! The Kickstarter campaign will be running form 1-31 August. And we really appreciate your ongoing support for this project and in helping us to make it happen.
In the meantime, we hope you and your loved ones are staying safe in these turbulent times.
We at Twelfth Planet Press are currently crowdfunding a new anthology called Rebuilding Tomorrow. It’s a follow-up to Defying Doomsday, and maintains the theme of post-apocalyptic stories featuring disabled and/or chronically ill protagonists. However, the stories in Rebuilding Tomorrow will be set a significant time after an apocalyptic disaster with characters moving past (or that have moved past) subsistence-level existence into a new, sustainable world, even though it’s a world that has been irrevocably changed by an apocalypse.
We’re crowdfund this book so that we can pay our authors professional rates and make this book happen. We’re using Pozible instead of Kickstarter because we support worker’s rights and have been deeply disappointed in Kickstarter’s attitude towards its employees attempting to unionise. We support Kickstarter United, and hope that they are successful in their endeavours. We know that many of our supporters and readers have been likewise unhappy with Kickstarter’s unsatisfactory response to this issue, and we have chosen to respond the only way we can — by taking our business elsewhere, for now.
OnPozible, you can pre-order Rebuilding Tomorrow as a paperback, hardcover, or DRM-free ebook. You can also bundle it with a copy of Defying Doomsday (and our other recent anthologies) or an enamel pin (we have two designs to choose from!). If we meet our initial funding goal, our first stretch goal is to make an audiobook version of Rebuilding Tomorrow, because we want to make our book as accessible as possible.
I actually just read a short story in Defying Doomsday where the protagonists travel by bike. It struck me as different but I couldn’t place why until now.
[Image Description: a photo of a black bicycle in a field of grass in front of a pond. The text on the photo says “In every post-apocalyptic scenario ever these have inexplicably vanished” End ID]
For anyone curious, the story is “Tea Party” by Lauren E Mitchell.
I didn’t know you had a tumblr! I love your collection! I still haven’t gotten thru all the stories yet, I savour it slowly and read it when I’m at my low and need a pick-me-up. But I’m at the last few stories :/
I’m not very good at keeping Tumblr updated (and kind of took a long break from it too, which didn’t help). But! Now that we’re working hard on a new follow-up anthology, Rebuilding Tomorrow(crowdfunding to start in a few weeks!), there will hopefully be a bit more Tumblr interaction.
My friend got annoyed at me yesterday that I included a disabled person in my D&D campaign because “magic could easily cure them!”
Seriously??? No. Not everything can be cured. Not everything SHOULD be cured. If I make a world with magic, you bet your ass there are going to be disabled people in it.
Am I going to have clerics that can cure all diseases and conditions, where everyone is able-bodied and neurotypical “because magic”? Hello no.
Am I going to have therapists who know the “calm emotions” spell to help people having panic attacks? Am I going to have people with mobility issues that have magical braces around their limbs to help alleviate chronic pain? Am I going to have an Autistic dragon that stims and collects objects related to its special interest? Am I going to give disabled people kick-ass accommodations “because magic”?
Hell yes.
Same goes for sci-fi. It’s really jarring when there are no people with any kind of disability in your setting “because they used technology to fix everything”. I don’t feel that’s realistic, nor is it good representation or interesting. It’s far better story telling to show us how they use the magic/technology to make their lives easier than just saying they eliminated all physical and mental limitations/differences.
Also, your setting having magic or advanced technology is no good reason for there to be no fat people. I see that one a lot too.
Might I commend the anthology DEFYING DOOMSDAY (from Aussie publisher Twelfth Planet Press) to you all…
(a) I definitely second the Defying Doomsday recommendation - it’s an anthology of short stories centering around disabled people in all kinds of apocalyptses. Specifically, disabled people survivingall kinds of apocalypses.
(I do have a story in there, full disclosure.)
(b) I’d also like to shamelessly suggest my own novel On the Edge of Gone,featuring an autistic girl in 2035 Amsterdam trying to survive a devastating comet impact.
“Disabled” isn’t a derogatory term, you can use it!
Disability is not inherently bad so there’s absolutely no reason for filling your fics with “challenged”, “despite their limits”, “special needs”, etc. Use the “D” word.
Be the writer the disabled community wants you to be!
If the show is misrepresenting the disabled character, be the hero and do right in fiction. Try to educate yourself, use the right vocabulary, remember how inclusive it felt to be into fandom? Well now make it moreinclusive.
Break the rules!
If the show is erasing your character’s disability, do better! Not only you should not erase it, you should go big and represent it twice as double.
Cyborg discourse is cool but also dangerous!
As much as we love cyborgs, prosthetics and mobility aids are parts of our daily life. Sometimes they can be uncomfortable but mostly they are BORING. Please, bore us with this stuff, normalize it.
Drop the pity!
We won’t read your pity party. We’re not “broken” and we don’t want to feel “whole” or “strong” again.
Accessibility is The Real Issue!
If your disabled character can always find an accessible bathroom, shower, sidewalk, path, building… Well, now that’s science fiction!
Now go and write wonderful disabled characters for us to enjoy! Make them live their best lives and destroy the ableist world!
