This novel came out of the collision of two ideas. The first challenge was to see if I could write a novel with just one character and make it compelling. The second challenge was to start at the end and then work forwards towards that end. Could I retain tension and interest if the reader already knew the outcome?
I set my character on a space station witnessing the end of the earth as it was bombarded by a huge asteroid. I then set about describing the intrigue and incompetence that led to the disaster and found a reason to give my protagonist a reason to live.
This then was God’s Bolt.
My readers seem to enjoy it!
Extract – God’s Bolt
I was seated in the viewing gantry with Mission Control plugged in. The many tridee displays showed the scenes from a variety of sources both on Earth and out in space. I found myself flicking from one to the other. People in Mission Control were talking out loud, oblivious, commentators for various channels were babbling, it was all a background cacophony to me. The heavens were lit up with trails of meteors and the explosions of surface to air missiles – I knew that all our larger missiles had been expended.
By 10.35 p.m. my hopes were on an upward trend – it was beginning to look as if we were weathering the storm. My spirits were rising. I was beginning to think High Command had pulled it off. Then it happened. A huge ball of fire arced through the sky as various explosions blossomed around it but failed to make any dent on its progress. I watched in horror as it descended and scorched its way to the ground. I swear the whole planet shuddered when it hit. The strike was just inland of Washington. Even from this distance I could see the enormity of it. A great welt of livid molten rock, expanding swiftly to become what looked to be the size of a third of the entire country, was flung into the air as a broiling front of superheated air and dust radiated out at supersonic speed. The seething gasses rushed across the ground as crimson clouds were flung up into the upper atmosphere threatening to reach out into space itself and even engulf the space station.
I watched horror-struck and numb. Though I was so very far away the speed of the expansion of that livid cloud was staggering. It was consuming the rest of the continent at an alarming rate in a glowing storm while yellow fires blossomed into a huge swirling cloud above the impact site and huge lightning bolts raged. The Earth seethed with livid orange flame.
Around me the various channels roared and went silent as they too were consumed. Mission Control was amongst the last to go; based as it was two thousand miles away in London. My mind grappled with the horror of what I was witnessing. I could not conceive that Brad Noone, Happiness Ntobe, Neil Cox and Janice Cervantes along with that whole centre at Mission Control with all those dedicated staff, were gone. It was too much to take in. I could not allow myself to even think about Jomo and the others. I could not. That just could not be. I could not allow that. No!! No!! NO!! I shook my head in disbelief. This could not be happening. I squeezed my eyes tight shut.
Over the next three hours I watched silently in some strange unreality, dissociated and analytical, as the rest of the planet was consumed by the boiling sea of fire. Through the thick fiery skies I counted four further enormous impacts further north in what must have been the States, Canada and Siberia. It confirmed everything of my worst fears for me. The last of the stations from the other side of the planet went down. The whole world was silent now and gripped in that raging torrent of fire. From where I sat it looked as if the whole world had become a ball of molten rock, a superheated furnace.
The worst had happened.
All night I sat there watching the scene below waiting for it to sink in. Things had settled somewhat. The whole planet was now a glowing writhing ball of crimson and orange cotton wool. It now looked almost serene from up here but I could well imagine what it was like down there – the force of that blast and the heat of those winds. No matter how deep underground anyone had gone I knew there was no safety to be had. Nobody was surviving this event. This was every bit the extinction event the media had predicted. I kept telling myself that it had not really happened. This was one of those media simulations.
Somewhere down there my family and friends, the colleagues I had said goodbye to just days before, my lovers, they were all gone. Nobody could have survived. They were gone. I had watched the solid rock of the Earth’s crust ripple, fold and rupture releasing torrents of fermenting magma. That can’t have been real can it? It was a tridee. It was special effects. It could not possibly be real – could it? I could not imagine it so it couldn’t have happened. It was too enormous.
Strangely I felt like laughing. It was absurd. All that huge effort that had gone into conservation was wasted. All those precious plants and animals were gone. The ironic thought came into my mind that we had been killed by a surfeit of peace. If only we had not disarmed and done away with all those nuclear weapons. If only we had kept the missiles. We’d fallen victim to our own desire to become civilised. If this had happened a hundred years earlier we would have blown that huge chunk of metal into dust.
That was the ultimate irony.
I still could not really accept it. I did not believe what my eyes were telling me. It was not happening. I was not really watching it for real. This was nothing more than a sensational tridee programme.
It occurred to me that I was on my own. That was when it hit home. I was on my own. I would never see them again. I would never see anyone again. I was completely on my own.