It may be a cliché, but it’s still sometimes true: great minds think alike.
Consider this: In Cary Groner’s post-apocalyptic speculative fiction novel The Way (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), a man has to transport the cure to a deadly illness through a post-apocalyptic America, and he’s joined by a teenage girl. Which sounds a lot like the plot of the post-apocalyptic action / adventure game The Last Of Us and the HBO show it inspired.
But as Groner explains in the following email interview, any connections between his novel and Us are purely superficial. Though it did prompt a name change.
To start, what is The Way about, and when and where is it set?
The Way is set in the year 2048, in a world decimated by disease and war.
Will Collins, the last surviving resident of a Buddhist retreat center in the Colorado Rockies, agrees to undertake a perilous journey across the American Southwest, carrying a compound with the potential to treat a lethal new illness. He travels in an old mule-hauled pickup, along with an abandoned housecat, an Einstein of a raven, and (eventually) an orphaned teenager named Sophie. Together they traverse country that’s been largely depopulated except for roving militias and the occasional small settlement, and are pursued by a notorious bandit who wants what Will is carrying.
Where did you get the idea for The Way?
I mainly wanted to write something that raised meaningful questions about certain aspects of our lives in the world and articulated issues that were important to me. Most of these questions and issues are very old ones, in fact, but there are good reasons people still ask them. For example: How do I balance altruism and reasonable self-interest? How do I manage to live in a dangerous world while doing as little harm as possible? What happens to us after we die? Can the strength of love transcend the boundaries of the physical world? And scariest of all: Does my cat understand me a lot better than I realize?
I was also inspired by a couple of novels I read in college, longer ago than I’d now care to admit: Robert Pirsig’s Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance and Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. Those books ignited a slow-burning subterranean root fire that ultimately inspired this one, and changed me as a writer.
And is there a significance to Will being over 50 when most people in the world don’t make it past 30?
Sure, there are a couple of reasons for this. One is that I’m over 50, and I wanted to write from the POV of a character who shares something of my experience and perspective.
It’s also a nod to the realities of the situation; in the world of this book, the U.S. is now essentially a Third World country, along with just about everywhere else. In such places illness and poverty have always killed a disproportionately large number of older people. For example, the median age in many current developing countries is between 15 and 20, compared to more developed nations, where it averages between 45 and 50. That’s a huge difference, and I wanted that reflected in the narrative, because that’s the world my characters inhabit.
In the same vein, is there a reason why Will is a Buddhist, and in Colorado, as opposed to a Buddhist in Brooklyn or a Catholic in Colorado or a non-religious Jew in Los Angeles?
Well, he’s a Buddhist mainly because I’m a Buddhist, and I wanted him to grapple with some of the issues that Buddhists I know, including myself, often have to grapple with, as in the questions noted above.
As for Colorado, I just wanted that journey to cross the Southwest, so that seemed a reasonable way to set it up.
It sounds like The Way is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story…
I would describe it as post-apocalyptic speculative fiction rather than sci-fi. This category might include books such as Margaret Atwood’s Oryx And Crake; Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven; Octavia Butler’s The Parable Of The Sower; Edan Lepucki’s California; and again, Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. Such books inhabit a curious territory between literary fiction and sci-fi, though I’d argue that they’re much closer to the first in their emphasis on character and relationships versus technology and spaceships.
You’ve mentioned a number of books already that influenced The Way. What about non-literary influences, such as movies, TV shows, or games? Because having Will transporting the cure to what caused the apocalypse made me think of The Last Of Us, and that was before I learned his traveling companion was a teenage girl.
Yeah, somewhere late in the drafting of The Way I read an article in the Times about how The Last Of Us would soon be out as a TV series; I think this was in January 2023 or so. I’m definitely not a video games person; I don’t pay any attention to that universe, and I’d never even heard of the game. So when I saw the article in the Times, there was admittedly a moment of wondering whether I should just throw the whole project out and start something new. But I’d already been working on it for three years, all the characters were in place (including the teenage girl), the narrative was basically finished, I’d started sending queries to agents, and so I wasn’t willing to just toss it. I made a decision at that point that I wouldn’t watch the series, though, because (a) I didn’t want to see them do something better than I’d done it and feel crushed by that, and (b) conversely, I didn’t want to see them do something worse than I’d done it, but then feel I couldn’t do it at all because they’d already done it.
So I’ve kept that vow — I haven’t seen any of it — but my sense, from what little I’ve read, is that the resemblance between the two is mercifully pretty superficial. One reason I don’t engage with video games is that it seems to me they’re so often just an excuse for senseless violence. There are some random characters, but they’re not real human beings, or they’re the enemy, or they’re infected with something, so it’s OK to shoot them or blow them up or whatever. I’m just not into that stuff, even in games. The dilemma faced by the characters in The Way is the opposite of that: How do you live as harmless a life as possible? My peeps, despite the peril they’re in, are constantly doing everything possible not to kill anyone else.
All that said, however, there was some info in that Times article that did necessitate a change in my book. I noticed that the girl in The Last of Us was 14 and named Ellie. Well, guess what? The girl in my book was 14 and named Ellie. In my case, she was named after my niece’s then-toddler, in what was supposed to be an inside family joke. I couldn’t change her age for a bunch of plot-related reasons, but obviously I had to change her name. It turned out to be a good change, in fact, because the new name I gave her, Sophie, has Latin roots related to wisdom, which makes for a perfect resonance regarding that character’s role in the narrative.
Now, The Way sounds like it’s a stand-alone story. But then, so did The Last Of Us until they made The Last Of Us: Part II.
I consider it a stand-alone story, at least for now. How’s that for a hedge?
I asked earlier if The Way was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think The Way could work as a movie, show, or game?
Well, I’m a film buff; my list of favorites has more than two hundred movies on it, and I’ve seen probably ten films for every one that made the list. So I often tend to approach story structure with that influence without even intending to.
That said, however, I’d obviously have nothing against a TV series; you could presumably include more of the full story of the book that way.
As for some sort of game, I think it’s pretty clear by now how I’d feel about that. This is a book that wrestles with a lot of spiritual and ethical dilemmas, and it’s hard for me to see how it could be made into a game without gutting it of everything that makes it different and genuinely interesting.
So, if someone wanted to make The Way into a movie or show, who would you want them to cast as Will, the girl, and the other main characters?
These are decisions for the producers and directors, not for me; I don’t have any illusions about that.
Having acknowledged that, though, it’s easy for me to imagine either Ethan Hawke [Moon Knight] or Mark Duplass [The Morning Show] in the role of Will, as both actors easily convey their thoughtful, intelligent side.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Way, what post-apocalyptic novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they read next?
Of the ones I’ve listed so far, I’d direct anyone to Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. It came out in the 1970s, and almost no one has heard of it anymore. But it’s a brilliant book — richly imagined, occasionally terrifying, often very funny. It plunges you into that postapocalyptic world using an invented dialect of English that takes some getting used to but is really marvelous. It’s the kind of book almost no one would have the guts to write (or publish) anymore, which is a shame, and another reason I think everyone should read it.
