EXCLUSIVE Interview: Isaac Young On 'Dead Men Running' And The Biggest Problem In Modern Culture
Isaac Young is an up and coming indie author and innovative storyteller who has already published The Domes of Calrathia and The Matrioshka Divide. He’s also experimenting with an audio drama in The Last Human.
Young is also an outspoken critic of our modern culture and famously pushed back against leftist interpretations of Starship Troopers and recently took to task Trench Crusade.
Young spoke with Fandom Pulse about his latest novel Dead Men Running, which he is currently running a Kickstarer for, his views on the current state of Hollywood, and what he views as the biggest problem in modern culture.
Fandom Pulse (FP): You’re launching a new book Dead Men Running, what can you tell me about it?
Isaac Young: Post-Apocalyptic Superheroes! It’s a story that meshes two genres I felt would interact very interestingly with each other. Typically, the Superhero upholds the status quo in most fiction. They are meant to preserve civilization and the power structures (which are nonetheless often depicted as incompetent or failing). I wanted to look at the superhuman beyond that scope, in a world where the powerful ought to change the status quo and not preserve it.
Kickstarter synopsis:
Dead Men Running is set in a post-apocalyptic America now reformed into the dystopian Democratic Union. After a nuclear war brought on by the chaos of super powered individuals, society has reorganized to contain these derided “abnormals”. The powerful are used as state-backed superheroes, or more accurately, weapons. The weak are sent to live in open-air containment zones or otherwise used for research in secretive black-sites. To live as a low-powered abnormal is the worst of all worlds, hated by every rung of society. These individuals live at war with anyone and everyone with warbands forming at the edges of civilization.
The Democratic Union is a disease festering in the ruins of a better world. Its only purpose being to keep the excesses of Old America alive a little while longer. Ridden with bureaucratic corruption, corporate wage-slavery, and the continual disintegration of living standards, everyone is looking to plant a knife in someone else’s back. But as the saying goes, nothing can last forever. It’s only a matter of time before what the world fears most will happen: someone strong enough is going to blow this house of cards down.
FP: You previously published the entire book on Royal Road under the name Gigaheroes, why did you decide to rename it to Dead Men Running?
Isaac: Gigaheroes was originally a tongue in cheek name for an experimental book I wrote on my Substack which then got moved over to Royal Road. I often like to try radically different things in my writing with each new project. Gigaheroes reflected a humor I was tinkering with as most of my other projects are more somber. Then it underwent a huge revision changing up a lot of the story. I felt Dead Men Running was a more appropriate title that captured the essence of the narrative a lot better.
FP: You’ve previously shared that the book was inspired by The Boys and was originally a rightwing alternative to it. Can you tell me more about that and how you turned it into its own thing?
Isaac: I began with the idea of celebrity Superheroes (which I was really interested in) and admittedly a marketing gimmick I was toying with years ago. The idea was to create Rightwing alternatives to popular entertainment and use that as a pitch to Conservative influencers. I haven’t ditched that entirely as I like to mess around on Twitter, but I’ve found it’s bad to inhabit that mindset as it’s too restrictive. Art should exist on its own, and there’s little of that original DNA left except for that Dead Men Running touches on that core idea of corrupted Superheroes. This manuscript is a lot more about existing in a decadent society and trying to be a good person despite that.
FP: What was your favorite scene to write?
Isaac: I enjoyed everything with the Seattle Vance POV. He’s easily the most chaotic character I’ve ever written. He’s the type to bring a knife to a gun fight just to prove a point.
FP: The crowdfund campaign indicates this is the first in a series, how many books do you have planned?
Isaac: To be determined. It always depends on how much people enjoy it and how much I have left to say.
FP: Are there any good books you’ve read lately that you would recommend? What about video games or TV shows or movies?
Isaac: I’ve been really enjoying S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat recently. It’s a bit of Eastern European jank that scratches all the itches for me. It’s about a second disaster in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone which causes strange anomalies and events to occur. Search up reviews on YouTube. They do a much better job of describing the premise than I can do here.
FP: There’s a lot of people discussing the death of Hollywood, do you think it is dead or dying?
