At first it was just oil leaking from that ruptured well into the ocean, and we didn’t work that hard to stop it. We tried to plug it with debris scooped out of one of the great floating garbage patches in the ocean. We thought maybe we could recycle the problem away. But the leak just forced the garbage back out, an underwater geyser of everything we’d thrown away and forgotten. So we settled for skimming the oil off the ocean surface. We shipped it to the same refineries we would have anyway, and pumped it into the gas tanks of our cars just the same, only now with a few more dead turtles and pelicans in the mix.

But then other things started coming out of the well. The ghosts of all those who had died at sea. They got caught up in the containment booms and nets and their cries drove the whales and dolphins up onto the beaches. That’s when we knew something had to be done. Our beaches were ruined. And our tourism industries were in trouble. No one wanted to walk in the sand if the sand was liquid with rotting blubber. So we dropped gravestones into the oil shaft and then poured concrete in after the gravestones. We threw some bibles in from all the religions for good measure and then poured in more concrete. We sealed the hole. We said goodbye to our fortunes and stopped the oil, the oil that would have saved our economy, the oil that would have saved the world as we know it.

But it was too late. Other things seeped through the layers of concrete and gravestones and bibles and petroleum-eating bacteria. Like ghosts but worse. Our forgotten memories. The time we stripped naked for each other at summer camp. The time we looked away when the boy across the street was getting mugged because we didn’t want to get involved. The time we drove across that dog on the country lane and saw the puppies moving in its stomach and kept going because there was no one else around to witness it. Until now. Now they poured out of that ruptured well and bobbed there at the ocean surface for everyone to see. And we thought it couldn’t get worse than that.

And then it got worse than that. Then the fantasies came bubbling out. The secret things we thought about each other. The secret things we imagined doing to each other. The secret things we imagined being done to us. And we looked at each other with shock and awe, wondering how we could have thought the things we thought. So we lit the ocean on fire to burn it all away. But that just turned all our fantasies into ash that rained down on us for weeks afterward, reminding us every day of everything that was wrong with us.

So we took the Russians’ advice and detonated a nuke at the site of the leak. We should have listened to them when they suggested that in the early days. After all, the Russians are experts at wiping out memories. And it worked. For a time.

But only for a time. Because then the same thing happened at other wells. Pipes ruptured and our nightmares spilled out. A spectral Lenin wandering the frozen steppes, hawking Pepsi to every living person he encountered. Our future ghosts having sex with the corpses of our mothers, dug up from their graves. Our houses and office towers on fire, the smoke casting a shadow over the land that never lifted.

And so we were faced with a choice. We could live with it. We could live with ourselves — our true selves — flooding the planet. Or we could end it. We could nuke every oil facility on the planet. We could end us.

And we thought this. This. This is what happened to the dinosaurs.

Nice review of The Warhol Gang by Ryan Bigge. As a bonus, he also republishes his Toronto Star review of my first book, Please, which came out way back in the oughts. Or, as one of my university profs referred to it, the halcyon days of my life.

I’ve got a piece up over at the Globe revealing the editorial process behind The Warhol Gang and where I got my ideas. (Hint: my life.)

I’d written a novel where I’d kept the main character at a distance.

Why? It didn’t matter. All that did matter was I had to figure out who he was. If I didn’t know, how would readers? But I was running out of time as my deadline approached. And my editors had to be growing impatient, although they didn’t show it, bless them.

So I did the only thing I could think of. After numerous edits, and when it was nearly time to deliver a finished manuscript, I rewrote the book. Up until that point, it had always been in third person, with all the emotional distance that third person brings. Now I changed everything to first person. Instead of asking, “Who is he?” and “What does he want?” I asked “Who am I?” and “What do I want?”

I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. Not my editors, not my agent.

Not even my wife.

Well, look at me. I got a facelift. And a tummy tuck. And some botox.

I’ve made some changes to the website to bring it into the Web 2.0 world. We’re still in 2.0, right? Or have we moved on? Anyway, thanks to the good people at Bluenotion, peterdarbyshire.com is now much more pleasing to the eye, and easier to navigate. Books and comics stuff in the left sidebar, other bio stuff and your comments in the right sidebar, and feeds up in the top corner. And anarchy in the middle column!

Regular posting will resume shortly, once I figure out how to log in.

The Saturday Post has an interview with me about The Warhol Gang –page WP13. The black bloc comment is most appropriate.