After the Fire
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | After the Fire |
| Author(s): | Cat Shannon |
| Date(s): | 1991 |
| Length: | |
| Genre(s): | slash |
| Fandom(s): | The Professionals |
| Relationship(s): | Bodie/Doyle |
| External Links: | |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
After the Fire is a Bodie/Doyle story written by Cat Shannon.
It was published in Other Times and Places #2.
Reactions and Reviews
1992
I thought that "After the Fire" was a good first story but what happens next??? [1]
My favorite stories [in the zine] were... After the Fire by Cat Shannon was a good read, with an interesting and believable look
into a bleak future. [2]
Cat Shannon's AFTER THE FIRE was very good. I think it would make a wonderful new Universe. It cries for a sequel. I loved Bodie locking for and finding Ray. [3]
I'll save the best till last, but of the shorter stories I especially enjoyed Cat Shannon's After The Fire. I found I became quite involved with the l)ackground of the story and I would have liked it to continue, especially as I thought Doyle's problems were solved just a little too easily. [4]
AFTER THE FIRE was immediately evocative, catching the imagination, and making surprisingly good use of page-space, in so brief a story. Reminded me of THE UNBROKEN THREAD. Actually, this theme deserves looking at in much, much greater depth! There's a lot of power to be examined, and the stories that have touched on it so far have done so in great brevity. [5]
"After the Fire" by (Cat Shannon was excellent and far too short. Surely this was only Chapter One of the novel version? You can't just leave us like that! (Also, I must admit I keep have this major impulse to matchmake for Cowley.) The hurt/comfort... the extremely sensual (though rather brief) love scene...sigh. Want more! [6]
2008
I've started working my way through the Hatstand's AU Science Fiction list, and After the Fire by Cat Shannon is next on my list! It's a post-apocalyptic story...
...where in true eighties style (at least the way I remember it, though the zine was actually published in 1991!) the world has been devastated by nuclear war. CI5, however, has endured - amongst the priviliged few to be able to ride out the storm in deep and safe underground bunkers.
This is very much an angsty hurt/comfort fic, I'd say - Doyle has been unable to cope with what happened to the world, and Bodie in turn is trying to cope with his relative withdrawal. I love this set up actually, and I can absolutely see both lads reacting to things the way they do here. There's no long, heavy-handed explanation of what led up to it all, or of why Doyle has withdrawn - the author presumes we know the characters well enough to understand that much, and I like that. There's a definite atmosphere of doom and shall-we-despair about it all too, tempered with that strange post-apocalyptic hope, and I like that too...
I do find myself a bit torn about the writing - there are a few too many "jade eyes", and I did wonder if the author had Doyle maybe a wee bit too affected by it all, but then she made him quite tough as well, and neither limp nor swoon-ish, nor too-fey-to-live so I was able to wince inwardly at some of the language but still move on.
On the whole... yeah, not a fic I'm sorry I read at all. I bought Other Times and Places II for Ellis Ward's fabulous Legacy of Temptation but After the Fire is a good enough little extra!
It's zine only at the moment, I'm afraid (not even on ProsLib, although there are a couple of other Cat Shannon stories there) - but has anyone else read it? [7]
Yes. I've read it -- and liked it. And I'd agree with your comments. Doyle is a bit sensitive but it balances out pretty well. And the jade green thing is as fingernails on blackboard to me, but...I was able to overlook. I like this the best of any of her stuff I've seen so far.[8]
The jade/sapphire thing is a bit fingernails-screeching isn't it, but now and then the rest of a story overcomes it, and it does in After the Fire!
I've only read her two fics on the ProsLib CD otherwise, but I'd agree that this one is streets ahead - but I'm more open to reading any other of her stories that may be around, knowing she's written After the Fire - and I can be put off fingernail-screechy authors pretty thoroughly... *g*[9]
References
- ^ from an LoC in Other Times and Places #3
- ^ from an LoC in Other Times and Places #3
- ^ from an LoC in Other Times and Places #3
- ^ from an LoC in Other Times and Places #3
- ^ from an LoC by Jane of Australia in Other Times and Places #3
- ^ from an LoC in Other Times and Places #3
- ^ 2008 comments at CI5hq
- ^ 2008 comments at CI5hq
- ^ 2008 comments at CI5hq