(05-25-2023, 08:29 AM)727Sky Wrote:
That's a pretty good overview of Franklin and his work.
He bases most of his stuff in a reality, and takes it from there. For example, the "Mad Mick" is based on one of his acquaintances, and the Mad Mick's compound is an actual place, about 8 miles or so from here, that was once a coal mine maintenance depot before the mining industry got collapsed by the Wokies.
"The Borrowed World" is set in "The Valley", which is an actual place called Elk Garden and Green Valley. He takes some liberties with actual geography, but in the main I can recognize landmarks and the area from personal knowledge of that area. The character of Hugh lives alone in a trailer hidden in the woods way up above The Valley on the side of Clinch Mountain.
He takes that grounding in reality, that foundation, and extrapolates via human nature into rip-roaring tales. Franklin uses his experience of people in this area, and it's history of preparedness and refusal to rely on an unreliable government for simple survival basics, and shows how it's done here in the hills.
His "crossover" between The Borrowed World and the Mad Mick series was well received, but he told me that it was such a headache that he would likely never do it again. Meshing the differing agendas and lifestyles between the two series was a lot of work, perhaps more than was necessary, to merge the two into a single narrative.
Still, his books taken as a whole give one a good insight into the prepper mindset, and what's more, the mindset of those who neglected to prepare and find themselves in extremis after a collapse. It's good insight into human nature, psychology, and social interactions after a fall, and the dynamics between the two very different sets of people - preppers and not-preppers.
Just as in the real world, people die. Sometimes good people who die from the stupidity of others. It's not a predictable thing. I used to joke with him about when he was going to kill off Hugh, but that character became surprisingly popular among his fan base, and so may live on to fight another day. He's said that in an upcoming book, he's going to expand on the background of Hugh, which is something I look forward to, being as how that character was inspired by me. It'll be interesting to see the direction he takes it in.
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