By and copyright of Owen Quinn author
If ever there was a story written in the history of this planet which started as a disjointed series of images before becoming an unwitting commentary on assisted suicide then the Lighthouse At The End of the World is it.
Like Wolves of Chernobyl, it began as something that caught my eye on Google. I read that there was a lighthouse off the coast of France which had been abandoned years ago and was powered by solar panels. The seas around it have been a hazard to ships for years and the only way in was to be lowered in by helicopter.
Immediately my juices were flowing. Why would they abandon with the lighthouse leaving it to the mercy of solar power? Wouldn’t that be somewhere that someone that didn’t want any contact with the world use to hide? Why would they want to live in such isolation? Had they committed some crime so horrible, they were ashamed and could not live with it? And what if Varran has kept his secret and hasn’t even told the others about it?
I toyed about with an immortal that had committed some terrible crime in which billions died but I really wanted to create non-human characters. So who better to live in an abandoned lighthouse than a lizardman?
But again, why? Who is he? How does Varran know him?
That’s when it fell into place. Isolated and alone from his own people, Barick, would never see home again and that’s where the story came into its own right there.
If your friend asked you to help them die, could you do it? This story coincided with the passing of a law in the UK allowing assisted suicide.
It was never my intention to do a story on it but it was something I always wondered what I would do in that situation. Thankfully, I haven’t been in it and hopefully never will be but it’s something that scares me. I lost my dad to brain cancer while my mother and brother passed away in their sleep. death doesn’t frighten me but I’m in rush to meet it either.
But this was the chance to face a dilemma for someone whose disease is never going home again. They might as well the last of their kind just in the same way Varran is so can Varran sympathise and do what his friend wishes?
The ultimate solution has caused discussion among readers but as I say, what would you do in their shows? The answer is; you don’t know until that happens.
I also like to add different locations into the stories so the Mars like terrain of the Haleakala National Park. Its Martian like surface was a double bluff as a hook into the story and it also gave me the chance to explain the lizardman attack in Louisiana on a young man in 1988 Scape Ore Swamp.
For me, small details like this enhance and built the world the viewer lives in. To me, it was much better than a secret government genetic escaped experiment.
Given Varran’s actions here, how long before it comes back to haunt him or did he exactly what any of us would have done in his place?
To find out how it all turns out, get your copy of Wolves of Chernobyl & Other Wtories now in paperback and kindle on Amazon.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 