Zone of Terror

This is an interesting one, as it's not a story I've come across outside of this flash game.

Précis:  Guy goes nuts and bumps into his double doing what he did a few minutes ago.

The story is set in some kind of corporate retreat in the desert for employees working on a giant computer network to simulate brain functions to rest and relax, and also deal with the mental health problems that go along with stressful work. Full plot summary courtesy of the University of Wikipedia.

The resort itself, although much smaller in scale, is quite similar to Eden-Olympia, particularly with the high-tech corporate background and the overbearing, morally questionable psychiatrist living next door. I can definitely see in Zone of Terror the seeds of future novels. I noticed quite a bit of recycling when I was reading the novels, and now that I'm reading the back catalogue of short stories I can see where lots of his ideas are coming from.  At least they're coming from himself and not some other bugger (as far as I know).

One more thing that it did put me in mind of, and that's an article I read in a mostly pointless bulletin that does the rounds in my office, which usually contains the standard gripes of people working in the FE sector about money, politicians, OFSTED and money. I came across a name I knew from a place I used to work, and armed with a nice cup of tea, I read his article, which raised interesting questions about the current approaches to educational management that result in anything from stress to full mental breakdown. A prolonged Google effort has failed to come up with anything remotely resembling the article, so I'll summarise here:

Mental health and well-being in the workplace is really not given anywhere near enough consideration as physical health and well-being, although it can account for similar amounts of time off if it's not attended to properly. We bend over backwards drawing up and complying with risk assessments to protect ourselves and our students, and there are complicated procedures for reporting accidents and flagging up potential hazards. The same is not done for the mental, emotional and stress-related hazards that the author links primarily to management cultures. We offer counseling and support and stress- and anger-management courses, but the author argues that that's equivalent to offering a plaster cast to people who happen to break their leg on a slippery floor. We just couldn't get away with such negligence of physical health and safety, while current working practices in the UK seem to be based on sacrificing mental health and safety without regard for the consequences.

Like I say, it was an interesting article, and I was reminded of it while reading Zone of Terror, set as it is in the corporate mental health retreat. So there you are. A pretty good story that got me thinking deep thoughts again.  Good.