After the Zap

Product DescriptionThe Zap gives... and the Zap takes away.Because of the very nature of the Zap -- the big thermonuclear bomb that had scrambled and rearranged the neurons of everyone's brains -- there was no way of telling what it had taken from them all. The past was a jumbled mass of tantalizing glimpses and agonizing blanks. But the Zap's gifts were many and varied.The "Readers" got the rare and often dangerous ability to make sense of the writings of the past...The "Memors" got perfect recall -- of everything they'd heard since the Zap...The "Bush Punks" got a chance to live free and easy -- and die the same way...The "God Weirders" got religion -- if you could call it that...The "Blimpers" got a purpose -- a purpose that could save them, or destroy them all. Now Holmes, a "Reader, " was in the perfect position to tip the scales for or against survival -- if only he could figure out which side was which. About the AuthorMichael A. Armstrong was born in Charlottesville, Va., in 1956, raised in Tampa, Fla., and graduated in 1977 with a BA from New College of Florida, Sarasota. He moved to Anchorage, Alaska, in 1979 and has lived in Homer, Alaska, since 1994. He spent his first two Alaska summers working on archaeological digs in the Arctic, experiences which inspired him to write Agviq: The Whale and other stories set in the north. His first novel, After the Zap, was written as his thesis for a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from the University of Alaska Anchorage. He also attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. He also wrote The Hidden War (TSR Books, 1994). All his novels are available as electronic books.His short fiction and articles have been published in Asimov's, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fiction Quarterly, The Anchorage Daily News, the Homer News, and various original anthologies. He published his first story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1981. His first novel was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award, and he has won numerous awards from the Alaska Press Club and two Morris Excellence in Journalism awards. He received a $5,000 individual artist grant from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and attended the Seaside Institute's Escape to Create artist residency in Seaside, Fla.In his over 30 years in Alaska, Michael has run sled dogs, built his own cabin, chopped wood, carried water, used an outhouse at 20 below, faced down a grizzly bear, and fished for monster halibut, among other adventures. He has taught creative writing, English, and dog mushing at the University of Alaska Anchorage and at the Kachemak Bay Branch, Kenai Peninsula College. He works at the Homer News and is married to Jenny Stroyeck, a partner in the Homer Bookstore. They live in a cabin they built themselves in the hills 1,200 feet above Homer, which they share with a large and enormously cute labradoodle.