Improvidence

Lewis & Clark visit the apocalypse...

Mar 04, 2024

It’s out! The full collective will of Tooky’s Mag has been gathered, milked, and fermented into a fine piece of fiction, our very first publication! Well not counting all the ones you’ve already read… regardless, please support the mag by checking it out: https://a.co/d/3AGjHU2
Thank you!

Buy Improvidence!

Improvidence

So I wrote a science fiction novella. It's a Lewis & Clark style adventure across the post-collapse ruins of America. Conceptually sort of a Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" meets "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow".

Chapter 1 is available as a free sample on Amazon, I appreciate you giving me a shot!

The plot synopsis with no spoilers past chapter 1 is that several hundred years after technological & ecological collapse, the environment and civilization are well on their way to recovery. Two men from a remnant of civilization in Ohio are assigned to scout out the wild frontier of West Virginia (where people have reverted to a tribal lifestyle) in advance of a colonization effort and must live to report on what they find. In the writing style there is a lot of riffing on colonial America in terms of language, customs, and sentence structure.

Buy Improvidence!

Real Tooky-heads may recognize echoes of my essays “I Have No Life and I Must LARP” and “Petroleum Culture” (both available here at Tooky’s Mag, the former also being republished in MAN’S WORLD Magazine, Issue 12) when reading between the lines, but ultimately it’s a story written to entertain and not at all to proselytize.

Still not convinced? As a final pitch, I’d encourage you to check out these two fantastic reviews from a pair of very talented gentlemen who were generous enough to read advanced copies of Improvidence: Arthur Powell, Editor in Chief of Atop The Cliffs (

Rifts in Stone

) and Passage Prize Recipient

Alan Schmidt

. Also a wonderful review from PBR!

Postliberal Book Reviews

Improvidence by David Herod

In the taxonomic hierarchy of fiction, most of the action is happening at the species level; think: “cozy mystery,” “romantic suspense,” “LitRPG,” and so on, and we should expect subgenres to continue to merge and mutate: “African American Urban fiction,” “Latinx SciFi,” “Queer Historical Fiction,” and so on. This process of specificity is the process o…

9 months ago · 19 likes · 10 comments · Postliberal Book Reviews

Rifts in Stone

The future is the past

There is a genre of science fiction I stumbled upon by way of John Michael Greer known as deindustrial science fiction. If you're not familiar with him, JMG is what I would call a collapsitarian - he was a key writer in the Peak Oil blogging movement and has called out many of the excesses of the current system in its approach to the natural world. Infi…

a year ago · 2 likes · Arthur Powell

Alan’s Writing Lab

Book Review: Improvidence by David Herod

When thinking of a post-apocalyptic landscape, most people’s minds would turn to visions of radioactive demons, dead-zones, and bands of raiders sporting technology that littered the now dead planes. A world littered with of packets of civilization hanging by a thread, forced to create new cultures with a mix of high technology and vicious barbarism…

a year ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Alan Schmidt

And two Youtube reviews!

I can speak behalf of the entire Tooky’s crew by thanking you for your time and consideration, regardless of whether you decide to pick up “Improvidence”. Stay tuned as we’ll be returning to more standard essays next week with a fantastic guest post on McDonald’s & kitsch.

Improvidence, a Lewis & Clark style adventure across the post-collapse ruins of America, is available now: https://a.co/d/3AGjHU2

Tooky's Mag

Discussion about this post