Jack Holloway is the pen name of a sarcastic historian and lawyer. He writes post apocalyptic and post-post apocalyptic fiction with an emphasis on hope and beauty in a desolate, changed world.
In the cold red darkness of the new world, humanity’s struggle to survive is reaching a crisis point.
Between May 21st and May 24th, 2035, the stars aligned and the Pacific Rim exploded into an unprecedented period of extreme volcanism. Over the following month the most economically and politically dynamic regions of the twenty-first century were ruined. California and much of the west coast slid into the sea, tsunamis reshaped Pacific coasts from Darwin to Kamchatka.
Dust and pumice blotted out the skies. Darkness fell, civilisation choked.
For the survivors worse followed. Organizations dedicated to protecting humanity against the dark of the unknown stepped forward to support the remnants of the old governments but so did other forces, old things which had stayed quiet and plotted while humanity had advanced. Some malign, some misunderstood.
In the face of catastrophe the Vampires activated long laid but hastily triggered plans to shepherd their flocks through the crisis, not realizing that in so doing they would cause the remaining human powers to trigger their own counter-plans and wars flared up across Eurasia.
Six months into the crisis and the wars are nearing their end, the sky writhes with power and magic and technology vie for supremacy. Russian soldiers approach the Vampires’ eastern and western strongholds, waging a broke-back war to avenge their dead homeland. Fae collect survivors to take underground to safety and servitude. Cities of jagged ice arise in Scandinavia where ancient rituals misfire and change, and India prepares a final strike at the grasping hands of the Crore of Lakhs which multiply endlessly above it.
Monsters fly and walk and crawl in the new arcane Ice Age, but humanity learns and adapts to this changed world.
What kind of world will arise from the ashes?
Lights over San Diego, May 2nd 2035.
Ice Age in Scarlet 