THE ICE PICK

The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht. San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 1999.

Fourteen dollars and ninety-five cents for a 176-page paperback is a lot of money in my opinion. But gems have never been cheap, and this is one of them. No matter what genre you write in, this book can give you some wonderful material for creating believable scenes in your stories.

Compiled of information from dozens of experts, and filled with "simple, step-by-step instructions for dealing with 40 life- and limb-threatening situations," this nicely illustrated book is intended to help people cope with and survive all kinds of nasty situations. For example, it tells how to escape from quicksand, survive the attack of a poisonous snake, win a swordfight, jump into a river from a height, perform an emergency tracheotomy, treat a knife or bullet wound, or land a plane. And it gives you enough detailed information that you could actually do it. Or, better yet, write about your characters doing it.

You can adapt a situation to your own world by, for example, changing the attacking mountain lion--or other wild animal--into the alien creature of your choice and using the information given here to make your character’s encounter more realistic.

Or your character might need to jump from the wall of a castle into a moat or a midden heap instead of from a bridge into a river or from a building into a dumpster.

The doors in your world may be constructed differently from the doors discussed in the book, or the vehicles may be wagons or spacecraft instead of automobiles and planes, but the facts provided here can aid you in creating authentic scenes.

If your characters are adrift at sea, lost in a desert or in the mountains, caught in an avalanche, an earthquake, or a crossfire, or just need to make a fire without matches, this book can really help you help them.
And "you just never know," someday the information in here might even save your life.

{Published in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Aug. 2000.}