Relevant to your aside on Covid and folk horror, early in the pandemic I was remarking to people how the situation felt like being thrown into the biblical story of the plagues passing over Egypt. Like I was an Israelite sitting at home praying for the angel of death to pass over my house. The rapid advancements in testing and potential vaccines on the horizon have somewhat ameliorated that feeling but it creeps in on the fringes still.
I know exactly what you're talking about. It was a strange period.
These days, it feels like Uriel's still making house calls, but we've gotten used to it and bored by it.
I think - and this isn't original to me - the story genre that's going to be affected the most will be the apocalyptic fiction. There's an expectation where everyone will realize what trouble we're in all at once and COVID has shown that people will refuse to acknowledge that no matter what's thrown at them.
If you haven't read it already, one story that captured this phenomenon quite well is Nick Mamatas' "Move Under Ground", which is a Jack Kerouac pastiche where Kerouac and pals take a road trip through America as Cthulhu wakes up and is dismantling the planet.
Relevant to your aside on Covid and folk horror, early in the pandemic I was remarking to people how the situation felt like being thrown into the biblical story of the plagues passing over Egypt. Like I was an Israelite sitting at home praying for the angel of death to pass over my house. The rapid advancements in testing and potential vaccines on the horizon have somewhat ameliorated that feeling but it creeps in on the fringes still.
I know exactly what you're talking about. It was a strange period.
These days, it feels like Uriel's still making house calls, but we've gotten used to it and bored by it.
I think - and this isn't original to me - the story genre that's going to be affected the most will be the apocalyptic fiction. There's an expectation where everyone will realize what trouble we're in all at once and COVID has shown that people will refuse to acknowledge that no matter what's thrown at them.
If you haven't read it already, one story that captured this phenomenon quite well is Nick Mamatas' "Move Under Ground", which is a Jack Kerouac pastiche where Kerouac and pals take a road trip through America as Cthulhu wakes up and is dismantling the planet.
You can get a copy (in various formats) here:
https://archive.org/details/MoveUnderGround