FarewellAbodes/Main

*Farewell Abodes*

Author
Todd Dawson-Cooper

Universe
D-981

Country
Canada

Genre(s)
Drama, Survival

Publisher
TBA

Publication date
TBA

ISBN
TBA

Preceded by
The Lost World (release order)
Fragmented Ambrosia (chronological order)

Followed by
Uneven Odds

***Farewell Abodes*** an upcoming novel by Todd Dawson-Cooper. Although part of *The Placebo Effect* series, *Farewell Abodes* takes place in a separate continuity that branches off from the rest of the franchise, though various characters and themes are revisited and Farewell Abodes.

Farewell Abodes tells the story of a trio of siblings: Wesley, Amber and Benjamin Knight, who wind up in the middle of a socioeconomic collapse triggered by the outbreak of a virus that not only encompasses their hometown of Olympia, Washington, but their country as a whole. The novel is split into five separate parts, each dealing with different aspects of survival.

## Book Description

Wesley Knight, his younger sister Amber and little brother Ben are three children in a seemingly average middle-class family, they go out for dinner on Thursday, attend church on Sunday, and have a rainy-day jar that never seems to fill. Wesley is an irresponsible teenage rebel, Amber is an insecure tomboy pressured into conforming to adolescent life, and Ben seems to be following in their footsteps as a troublemaker. However, when the chance arrives for their parents to take a long-awaited honeymoon vacation from work, they leave the children a chance to prove their maturity and responsibility once and for all.

Things quickly change when reports begin about riots all across the United States, and in no time, the issue reaches their front door, and it is then that the children realize that the chaos outside their home isn't rioting at all. The trio attempts to not only escape their hometown but contact their parents and rescue their friends. When all fails miserably, the siblings end up scavenging for supplies, jumping from group to group of survivors with the dream of reaching New Orleans where they hope they will find safe refuge and their parents, but on the long trail of survival they face starvation, exposure, illness and the emotional burden that comes with surviving the downfall of civilization.

## Development

Initial development on *Farewell Abodes* (then titled *The Last Number*) began in January of 2010, after watching the premiere of a docudrama, *After Armageddon*, which followed a fictitious family trying to escape Los Angeles and survive a socioeconomic collapse following a global pandemic. Cooper conceptualized a novel entitled *The Last Number* as following a similar plot, but would take place in 1987 and center around two streetwise teen siblings (initially intended as orphans), the project was shelved in order to focus on other projects such as *Apocalypse*, however, certain elements were recycled and created for *Epidemic* (such as the character of Kim Ayer), which was intended as a loose sequel to *Apocalypse* but was eventually abandoned.

In 2015, after the conception of *Blank Earth*, Cooper hesitantly revived the long-shelved idea as *Farewell Abodes* with the desire to return to the "zombie apocalypse" subgenre and tell the story he had longed to tell. The first task for Cooper was that *Farewell Abodes* would have to distinguish itself in many different ways from the story and tone of the zombie-filled *Apocalypse* -- as *Apocalypse* functioned as a combination of 80's B-movie horror flicks with darker religious/supernatural and Lovecraftian undertones, *Farewell Abodes* was intended from the get-go to be grounded in a kitchen-sink realism. Cooper also recognized the negative shift in readers' and audiences' reception towards the 'zombie apocalypse' trope in popular media over the early-2010s and so, opted to avoid many of the conventional tropes and clichés of the genre where possible and instead focus on other elements of the story, most notably in its portrayal of the changing landscape, and the adolescent siblings internal and external conflict and personal growth/maturity.

The goal of achieving said "realism", meant doing away with many of the traditional notions of a "post-apocalyptic" landscape and it's associated *Road Warrior*-esque iconography -- as well as associated zombie-horror tropes. The world of *Farewell Abodes* was instead to be very focused on the socio-political, with many small towns forming their own self-sustaining communities with differing laws, values, and goals to a degree unseen in other media. To better envision and understand a realistic response and aftermath to such a crisis and what daily survival in such a harsh environment would entail, Cooper spent several years researching into collapsology, wilderness survival, urban survival as well as first-hand accounts and media/federal responses to real-world disasters including civil wars, genocides, mass killings, natural disasters, wilderness accidents and plagues, much of which challenged many prominent preconceived notions and tropes regarding human behavior and societal degradation often seen in disaster fiction. The bulk of this research took place in 2019 and would soon coincidentally overlap with real world disasters such as the Australian bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw an unprecedented wave of political fear-mongering and disinformation protests that would further paint Cooper's view of the world of *Farewell Abodes*. Cooper also studied the history of fundamentalism, denialism and cults, later citing Carl Sagan's 1995 book *"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark"* as a major influence on the novel's first and second acts.

As for the "zombies" themselves, Cooper had always envisioned them to be similar in behavior to the rabid, feral-yet-living "infected" humans featured in the *28 Days Later* film series and perhaps more closely *Quarantine* (an American remake of the Spanish horror film *REC*), but wanted to emphasize this difference in the story to distance them from "just being fast zombies" and thus, much research was done into the effects of the Rabies lyssavirus and encephilneurological diseases (such as vCJD). Cooper, who at this point was in the early stages of development for *Uneven Odds*, *Holmes*, and *Crestfallen* had already intended to introduce a hallucinogenic bioweapon as a subplot at this point in the series, a concept inspired by a short film made by an peer a few years prior.

## Influences & Themes

* *Farewell Abodes* was influenced (to various extents) by numerous existing works and pop culture including *28 Days Later, Children of Men, The Road, Sátántangó, Chernobyl, Come And See, Nomadland, The Revenant, Schindler's List, Incendies, Prisoners, Life After People,The Stand, A Quiet Place, The Last of Us, 127 Hours, Into The Wild, War of the Worlds, First Reformed, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, District 9, World War Z (novel), Half-Life 2, Train To Busan, Left 4 Dead, The Crazies, and Pontypool*.

## Appearances

### Characters

* Wesley Knight
* Amber Knight
* Ben Knight
* Kim Ayer
* Aiden Ayer
* Rain O'Neil
* Jonah Prescott
* Eliza Harrower
* Daniel Knight
* Amanda Knight
* *View Complete List*

### Locations

* Olympia, Washington
	+ Evergreen Park High School
	+ Twin Pines Middle School
	+ Knight Residence
	+ Olympia Quarantine Zone
* New Orleans, Louisiana
* Seattle, Washington (mentioned)
* Tacoma, Washington (mentioned)
* San Francisco, California (mentioned)
* Aberdeen, Washington (mentioned)
* New York City, New York (mentioned)
* Vancouver, Washington (mentioned)