[lpetrich]

Creative writing like some future history about dwindling hydrocarbon resources or some story about people coping with it. We've had a thread on Science fiction tackles peak oil and climate change : Book/Media Reviews - Peak Oil News and Message Boards. But have any of us tried writing some such story?

I'm sorry if it seems hopelessly off-topic or spammy to mention it, but I myself have written a story with some peak-oil elements.

[KaiserJeep]

Mad Max and The Road Warrior were two wildly successful films, then the film franchise declined, but not before spawning a lot of imitators.

The basic problem with the whole premise is that people want to be entertained. Apocalyptic fiction is entertaining as long as it is few and far between. But you can't have a whole bunch of stuff without viewer fatigue on the whole concept, which leads to people avoiding books and movies and TV shows.

[onlooker]

I am not sure PO or climate change lend themselves to fictional story telling given their all too real nature

[lpetrich]

Here's my story: Contact across the Solar System at wattpad.com

It's basically a rationalization of George Adamski's UFO-contactee notions, but I touch on oil-related themes along the way.

The two [Kalna and Ilmuth around 1967] also discovered in the LA area a lot of weird machines. They looked like seesaws continually rocking back and forth, with one end connected with bars to an engine or a motor and with the other end connected to some cables going into the ground. Not long after the two arrived, Ilmuth asked what they were, and she found out that those were oil pumps for pumping crude oil out of the ground. So LA was built on top of a big oil field.

Her fellow Earth resident Kalna then sits in on a petroleum geologist who discussed future oil supplies. She then quizzes him on what to do as oil runs out. The 1970's oil shocks were something that this professor didn't think of -- economic warfare -- and she wondered if a shooting war was next. Indeed it was, in 1992 and 2003.

Later in the story, Kalna and Ilmuth and their fellow Solar-System-Community members decide to reveal themselves to us Earthlings, and as that happens, Saudi Arabia splits up in a very nasty civil war.

The SSC people give a lot of manufacturing recipes to the Russian Academy of Sciences in exchange for a big pile of data on the Tunguska explosion, though some of the academicians find those recipes rather difficult to work with.

Then in a visit to Switzerland, the SSC people go beyond recipes to gifts:

"Solar cells ... batteries and supercapacitors ... electrodes for electrolytic cells and fuel cells ... catalyst packs for synthetic-fuel production ..."

Then they went back to the podium and President Winkler went up to it announced that "this is the dawn of a new era, an era of energy freedom, an era of energy sustainability, an era of energy self-sufficiency. We have been building for it for some time, but we thank our SSC guests for helping us get there faster. No longer will we have to get energy from distant parts of the world. No longer will our energy be dependent on the whims of distant politicians. No longer will our energy be vulnerable to its owners fighting over it. No longer will our energy support corruption and autocracy and terrorism and extremism. No longer will we worry about our energy running out."

[lpetrich]

I am not sure PO or climate change lend themselves to fictional story telling given their all too real nature

Look at fictional worlds in general. Mundane-fiction worlds are entirely based on real stuff, and speculative-fiction ones are based on real stuff to a greater or lesser degree.

[lpetrich]

I am not sure PO or climate change lend themselves to fictional story telling given their all too real nature

Not just real, but slow motion. Unlike alien-invasion/EMP/nuke war/zombies/etc. More like Long Emergency.

One can write a Mad Max sort of story about some people who try to cope with it. Or follow a family over some generations in the fashion of Alex Haley's "Roots". Or write a story about some big war that it provokes, like Saudi Arabia's huge royal family splitting up and then fighting a big war with each other.

[lpetrich]

From CatSS, a result of that civil war:

The House of Saud was now completely fallen, and it joined such fallen royal families as the Bourbons and the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs. All over some goo that Kalna liked to explain as "It's like what you get if you do a hydrocarbon-synthesis run for too long." Goo that Kalna saw being pumped out of the ground in Los Angeles. Goo that many Earthers were dependent on to power their vehicles and other such things. Goo that the SSC was offering assistance in becoming independent of.

[Pops]

Ready Player One is a good si-fi story set in a po future. Not primarily a po story but I really liked it.

I'd think it would be hard for a peaker to write po fiction and not come off heavy handed like Kunstler or like Kurt Cobb did with Prelude. Easy to fall into sermonizing and pontificating.

Much apocalyptic fiction is pretty rote anyway. Basically a long suffering Gary Cooper protagonist is forced by [insert civilizational calamity] to go reluctantly Rambo with surprising zeal and aptitude on all the filthy mouthed, drug craving, liberal evil-doers so long coddled by a panty waisted deep state meritocracy. Then, having vanquished what had been the problem with the world all along he proceeds stoically into the future making babies happily ever after with the 72 surviving females.

[Pops]

also Windup Girl has a post peak backdrop - kind of a steampunk flavor that didn't really turn my crank...as it were
and Last Light which isn't really po but more what happens when terrorists cut off half the supply overnight