What remains of Commander Ellen Dennett’s Special Forces Mission Vehicle, The Grizzly. Spaciously carries a tac team of four, with room for four more passengers, such as hostages, targets for kidnapping, et cetera. Earth has changed: the economy has collapsed following worldwide environmental disasters that humanity was too late to prevent. The world plunged into a realm of darkness ruled by the military, and much that was not so ruled was violent, lawless, fearsome, and organzied around warrior tribes of fierce indepedence.
Everything decays. Civilization rots, and there is a critical mass of loss of skill and knowledge to maintain technology. A dark age of violent conflict follows on patchwork machines even the military forces cannot maintain any longer and can scarcely fuel.
You see photos of The Grizzly, a monstrous vehicle even in its current patchwork state. Thickly armoured, driven by a powerful twin diesel engine with twin acceleration pods on the hood of the vehicle. This vehicles twin four-cannon autoguns shred or detonate other vehicles and convert to anti-personnel munitions for attacks on rebels or outcasts. What was designed to carry out covert missions in warzones is now the police and security vehicle of choice by local military detachments. This vehicle and its female-led crew have become symbols of the old world order before it collapsed, of failure, of hope for its return, or something better, more lasting.
The inspiration is the Road Warrior. I determined to make a car. What’s the coolest car I know? Not the fucking General Lee, and not fucking KITT. It’s the V-8 interceptor from The Road Warrior, a law enforcement vehicle adapting well to scavenger vehicle. But I made something quite different. It’s fun to surprise yourself as an artist or a writer. To realize what you’re really after, your true quarry. To be less mystical, you find your real subject, the matter you’re writing about, the point you’re observing. Even if seemingly in silence through some literary trickery you may be up to mastering. This “car” surprised me. At one point I feared it would become an armoured pickup truck, but I think it has Rolls Royce Silver Ghost quality to it. It’s classy and patchwork at the same time.
My way into fiction with this build is writing about the stories of different levels of civilization pockets and locales are reduced to and the work the military does to protect innocent people from warlords trying to conscript new members into their war tribes. They are like modern UN forces, frequently inadequate or hamstrung by political impasse.
2020. A woman’s world. Men’s capitalism put in its place: an initial game system for sorting wealth, but its “edicts” are now only recommendations taken by female governors or not. They view the greater good, and do not identify it with market good solely or necessarily. Women have the planet Earth at last. But too late to avoid a New Dark Ages lasting eighty years, a thousand fewer than expected. by 2137, women have taken us to the stars, to six new home worlds to grow on distant stars. A world, finally, lit by the fire of civilization, love, and optimism. A world without war, hunger, homelessness, or neglect of the mentally ill. But it is a world of Arena, with the gladiator Sisters.
Purchase this model at : https://www.gallea.ca/en/artists/mark-stanski
