Introductions   Welcome to my world, and what a strange place it turns out to be. It starts off reasonably enough: a news report, an event that happen half a world away. Then we plunge into the thick of it. The chaos that envelopes a continent is a madness born of good intentions. I’ve called it Armageddon, for reasons that will become obvious. I’ve deliberately chosen to write about ordinary people. There’ll be no James Bond style escapades. No super-heroes to the rescue. Just people, like you and me, caught up in it all. They find death and love in equal measures. They lose their way as often as they find it. They act like cowards in one breath, and then summon up everything they are to transcend their earthly nature in the next. Just like you and me. As I’ve gone through this story cycle – not quite a novel, more than just a collection of short stories – I’ve often wondered: how would I fare? Would I be a saint or a sinner? It’s part of the power of speculative fiction, to take you out of your time and put you in another. A simulation for the mind, if you like. I’d be rubbish, I have little doubt. What about you? Too shocked to move or think or feel? Or would you rage and fight and struggle? There’s all sorts of things to be found inside: soldiers and policemen, little boys and dying men, even God Himself, in the stories. Introductions (much like this one) will let you in on how the creative juices sometimes work. Have a rummage, see what you can find. And above all, enjoy! Welcome to Plainview   I apologise profusely and unreservedly to the residents of Plainview, Nebraska, for ‘borrowing’ their fair city. None of what you read in this strand resembles anyone living or dead, although a lot of what goes on does or could happen. I’ve never been to the USA (and let’s face it, on the strength of this, I’ll be blacklisted by Immigration) but like most Brits, think I have a feel for what the country is like –hopefully not the same way that some USAns think that Britain (read England) is full of kind-hearted cockneys drinking tea and saying ‘Gor blimey’. So if some of this resembles the superlative ‘Simpsons’ or a cross between ‘The West Wing’ and ‘Malcolm in the Middle’, I’m entirely at fault. However, Plainview is a real place, and the basis for my version of Plainview. It’s a city (second-rank) in Nebraska – city not as Europeans might envisage one, but a legally incorporated city (population 1500, which is smaller than the village I grew up in) run by a mayor and committee. It’s part of Pierce County (county seat: Pierce), and the chief industry is corn (that’s maize or sweetcorn, not wheat). Many thanks to the denizens of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition, who helped me with the labyrinthine complexities of the local school system (really, really local), and especially to Jim Cornwall, currently resident in Nebraska, who talked me through the er, unique points of Nebraskan politics. Although I was reliably informed that no-one outside of Nebraska would be able to tell if I’d got my information correct (or even used it correctly, more to the point), I like to get these things right.