Ira Tabankin, American novelist.
Born in 1949 and well traveled, Tabankin is a conservative thinker and survival prepper with a strong interest in political and apocalyptic literature. His works are often very dark, about everymen and/or survival preppers swept up by events and forces beyond their control. Happy endings are sparse, as in Tabankin's own words "When the shit hits the fan, most people's stories aren't going to end well."
Tabankin is openly a bigot.
Works by Ira Tabankin include;
- America on Fire
- The Third World War
- The Last Crusade
- 2015: Second American Civil War
- In the Year 2050: America's Religious Civil War
- 37 Miles
- The Shelter
- By the Light of the Moon
- The End of the World as We Might Have Known It
- We Knew They Were Coming
- My Story: A Diary Of The End Of The World
- The Impeachment of Barack Obama
- CALEXIT
- A History Lesson
- Christmas Eve
- Silent Death
Tropes common in Ira Tabankin's works:
- Apocalypse How: often nuclear, but firestorms and plague each get a book, with a series each dedicated to alien invasion and a natural cataclysm. Always there are survivors who must struggle to rebuild.
- Author Avatar: Somehow, there's always a square-jawed, politically and socially conservative disaster prepper, even in stories about huge global events. This man will often assume a leadership position in rebuilding society, and at least 50/50 will live twenty miles south of Knoxville Tennessee.
- Crazy Survivalist: Is looking a lot less crazy when the End of the World actually comes.
- Divided States of America: If the world isn't ending in a Tabankin book, then there's probably a second US civil war going down.
- Fallen States of America: Virtually a given in any Tabankin book.
- Middle Eastern Terrorists: "In The Year 2050" begins with the premise that by this point the majority of Americans will be Muslims. Which here, means "terrorists." The Last Crusade likewise.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Surely no one could confuse those caricature liberal villains like Barack Hussein Obsma or Hillary Clayton for real people, right?
- Nuke 'em: The most common way of ending the world is a three-way nuclear exchange, usually US with Russia.
- Retcon: Tabankin freely admits, fairly often, that his spelling and grammar are not the best. Over half his digital books on amazon have at some point been taken down and replaced with fixed versions.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: Tabankin's works are generally self-published online, and rarely if ever see an editor before entering general circulation. He has updated and corrected his earlier works several times, but persistent errors in spelling and grammar remain.
- Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Usually the heroes or their allies, occasionally obstacles for the heroes to overcome. Always present.
- Spell My Name With An S: Spelling and grammatical errors punctuate his works. Many are corrected in later reprints, but virtually never the spelling of Obama as 'Obsma' or Muhammad as 'Mohmand.' Both of these names are spelled correctly at points in the same books, so it's not entirely clear if these are errors.
- Straw Liberal: These are all over the place, sometimes with named politicians. Even the more apocalyptic stories (The Shelter, By The Light Of The Moon) have self-righteous entitled liberals demanding the mass distribution of peoples' carefully hoarded supplies.
- Take That!: Particularly Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who often appear as villains.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Many books are written as if happening in the coming months to next year, quickly guaranteeing the books cannot happen precisely as written. Even "In the Year 2050" opens with a detailed future history totally invalidated by the 2016 presidential election.
- Wish-Fulfillment: Let's not split hairs - Tabankin's books are all about his ideal, doomsday prepper self-insert (or at least his ideal American) defeating or dealing with the mistakes of cartoonishly evil and incompetent caricatures of the same two politicians and their followers.
