What is Postwar?

Postwar is the creative company of writer/director S G Collins.

For most of his working life, Collins has written, directed and designed short movies to help people and organizations tell their stories. More recently he's busy writing fiction. Collins started life in Massachusetts USA, and since 2003 has been living in Amsterdam NL.

Books

Writing fiction.

Many of Collins's writings are available for purchase from the evil Amazon. These links are to Amazon.com, but you can also find them at Amazon.de or Amazon.co.uk et cetera, depending on where you live.

A window seat in a smoking city— (fiction)... Adventures of an eighteen-year-old New Hampshire boy on an unexpected trip to Amsterdam. The sundry oddballs who twirl in and out of Nick's life include: a sage but philanderous Dutch engineer, a free-spirited dental assistant from Switzerland, two spoiled sisters from Bristol UK whose ancestors got rich in the Atlantic slave trade, an old poet who watched his brother die at the hands of the Nazis, a stripper / biochemist from Czechoslovakia … and the love of his life, a beautiful, otherworldy songwriter who must remain forever out of his reach. They all bend Nick’s mind this way and that, while he tries to figure out who he really is.

Sam Hitler's Moon house — (fiction)... For his thirtieth birthday, he gave himself a house on the Moon. Sam Hitler, boy genius inventor from Miskita, made his first billions at age seventeen. A shy fellow, a trickster, but never unkind, he has made powerful enemies by his lack of ruthlessness. Today Sam is twisted with guilt over the death of a lover. He’s punishing himself, abstaining from pleasure, yet living together with two beautiful engineers (and two cats) in a pressurized habitat in the middle of Tycho crater. Sam knows he cannot stay forever on the Moon. Sooner or later he must work past his amorphous guilt, come down to Earth and face the music.

Mauerfallers — (fiction)... Love, truth, metal ... and cookies. Mauerfall is a metal festival held every year in a different part of the world. This year it’s happening in Dachau, Germany. There in the multitude of fans, eleven random humans collide and twirl each other’s heads around.

Matilda's man — an alternate history romance — (fiction)... How might things have been different, if Abraham Lincoln had married Matilda Edwards instead of Mary Todd? This is that story. It begins with real life, and goes somewhere else altogether. Maybe you too will fall in love with Matilda.

A fragment of Paul — (fiction)... By a twist of fate, a young Dutch scholar comes into possession of a dubious papyrus fragment. It’s a letter, claiming to be from the apostle Paul, in which he divulges his true motives for forging the early Christian church. Scientific testing shows that the papyrus could be from the late first century. But is it authentic, or a forgery?  And if it is real, what does it imply for the western world? ...  The PhD candidate, Susi Catta, is obsessed with trying to discover where the artifact came from. Her search takes her from Amsterdam to Mainz, Leuven, Rome, Paris, the island of Samos — and to the edge of death.

Citizen Karen — (fiction)... Heart warming! Bone chilling! Citizen Karen is the story of an unassuming 34-year-old divorced restaurant worker who decides to assassinate a congressman. And of the wiseass teenage daughter who is her guiding light. It’s a tale of seafood, shoplifting, art, love, political murder, and pickles.

It's too late to complain about your friend — (fiction)... One terrible day years ago, assistant cameraman Tom Rice made such mistakes on the job that he had to leave New York. Now it’s 1998, in the last years of film. Tom lives in Boston Chinatown, and still works as an AC, hoping his past won’t come to haunt him. His friend Jacky Gwynn is a barber / petty criminal who takes care of Tom, but also gets him mixed up in some unsavory adventures. What are friends for? Many can ask. Few know.

Blinkdown — (fiction)... Seconds after his fatal car crash, Hollis wakes up 2000 years in his future. His gentle hosts have the power to look deep into the past — but not touch. They didn’t transport him; they scanned him and rewrote him here, molecule by molecule. It’s an afterlife he never asked for. Everyone he loves and hates lies deep in antiquity. Just like his ancestors who were kidnapped and taken to a strange land, he has no way home. He’ll have to find new love, new ways to live. That is, if they let him live.

3 novellas — Three new tales from S G Collins.
Tiger Thursdays: Bittersweet story of two 10-year-olds in love, growing up in a remote Berkshires town where every Thursday a gang of Siberian tigers come to visit — and nobody knows why.
Billy Fishcool: The crew of a B-17 on a bomb run over Schweinfurt suddenly get plucked out of the sky, and right out of 1943, land in an unknown wilderness, and meet a band of Numa people living in the old ways of their ancestors.
Newk Morbec knocks: The lovers believe Newk died in the tragic nightclub fire in Peenemünde — until he shows up at their door in Milano, desperate for a place to hide from the criminals who’d kill him for the secret he carries. There’s a quirky aunty who plays the harp, a famous journalist looking for terrorists, and a foul mouthed parrot named Midge.

Switzerworld — (fiction)... It’s been 42 years since the Swiss took over the world. Almost everywhere, people are living in peace and plenty. But ugly conflicts keep sprouting on different continents, with petty demagogues fomenting breakaway states. Kuli Ché reports on these scattered rebellions for the prestigious Savit’s journal. During her travels she meets a mysterious doctor, Perchten Blau, who she suspects is a professional assassin. A quiet lust rises between them. Then Perchten leads Kuli into the darkest secret at the heart of the world: the one story that must never be told.

The presentation of Mary — (fiction)... Mary Blake, 17, is a deeply religious smartass growing up in the strange little town of Methuen. Her life is already confusing enough, when a murder thrusts her into an underground odyssey in the bowels of the estate where her high school sits. She’s learning the various meanings of sisterhood. Her heart is on fire with love. And she holds the keys to all the doors.

Regency Sapient — (fiction)... Darla Schmigalla is a curious young psychology student who takes a summer job at the Regency Sapient, known as ‘New England’s most haunted hotel’. Darla doesn’t believe in ghosts, but the real people she falls in with are spooky enough. She learns something about every one — until one day she finds she knows too much.

Iron sunshine — (fiction)... 1943. The US struggles to develop a nuclear weapon before Hitler gets one. But the Germans can never make an atom bomb, and one young physicist knows that for sure. He embarks on a personal mission: to reach the Allies and convince them, before they create a horrific weapon nobody needs. But someone is out to stop him.

The diary of Gabo S. — (fiction)... The implants in his brain are meant to stabilize his behavior. Instead they unleash his latent clairvoyance, and kick him off on a globetrotting mission to save the world from the Devil. The seven troubled women he meets along the way will be his accidental guides. But his doctor, and a curious journalist, are both kinda worried about him.

Johnny Rothschild goes to Roswell — (fiction)... Last night he was in Munich in 1978. Today he’s in Roswell NM, forty years later, with two kilos of cocaine and no idea how he got here. He gets mixed up with a cop, a brilliant donut girl, a shrink, a sculptor, two refugees and a pair of real nasty criminals. Without meaning to, he changes all their lives. But everyone and everything from his old life is lost. He can never go back, only forward. What, on Earth, is the universe trying to show him?

The girl with two goats and the guy who stole her — (fiction)... This old bus driver from Alkmaar has a secret. Almost thirty years ago Floriaan stole a great painting from a museum, and has been hiding it ever since. If he can keep it hidden just a bit longer, a loophole in the law just might make him its owner. Then he can be rich. But others are trying to find the masterpiece before that happens — including, just possibly, the woman he has fallen in love with.

Malibu Jesus — (fiction)... He wakes up lucky, and has no idea why. And he seems to have sprouted a gift for helping people. His newfound role as the reluctant ‘Awakener’ lands him in some extremely Malibu situations — always with one foot on each side of the fault line between rich and poor, reality and illusion, love and pain, comfort and disaster.

Anne who lives — (fiction) As a young girl, she spent three years in hiding from the Nazis. As an old woman, she helps a young one escape from an abusive boyfriend, and must choose between safety and truth. In between, she leads a blazing, accidental, creative and controverisal life. A life that should have happened.

Angel guts — (fiction) 'Two girls in love, a Honda Civic, and America. What could go wrong?'
This book features in the 'Heidi Helressel' film.

Susan at the center of the universe — (fiction) Set in Amsterdam. 'Time and space begin ... in the palm of your hand.' A new age wanderer moves in with an astrophysicist. Science and spirituality collide. Sexual tension swirls. And they accidentally learn from each other.

The guy in 13, and other fictions — A collection of short stories that take place in Amsterdam, Atlantic City, Boston, Buffalo, Los Angeles, Montreux, Niagara Falls, Paris, Peenemünde, Providence, Toscana, and various surburbias of the heart.

Insignificance doesn't matter — A memoir.

Films made for hire

'Zest'. Food spot for a restaurant.

'Continuum'. Corporate image film.

'VMC Revolution'. Technology marketing film.

'Taboo Talks open'. Seminar opener.

'Mr Tong's'. Food spot for restaurant.

'The unexpected woman'. Opener for business women's leadership conference.

'Dream flight'. Product film for stairway manufacturer.

'Musicians Without Borders'. Funding appeal for nonprofit.

Independent work

'Burgerzaken' (2015) (14:30). Surreal Amsterdam story of a man stuck between dreams. In Dutch with English subtitles.

'Heidi Helressel's weirdest Tuesday' (2017) (30:00). Amsterdam story about a young author having a strange day.

Niets zeggend' (Saying nothing) (2009) (17:40). Documentary about the Flemish choreographer Micheline Dumonceau, who died in 2012.

'Volk vs visgraat' (People vs fishbone) (2018) (27:30). Documentary about how sweeping changes to Amsterdam's public transit system affected the lives of its inhabitants. In Dutch with English subtitles.

Contact & info

Postwar Media
S G Collins
Witte de Withstraat 113-hs
1057 XP Amsterdam NL
+31 6 28 55 12 98
sgcollins@postwar.nl
KvK nr: 34187569
BTW-ID nr: NL002440132B73
All content on this site Copyright © 1982-2024   S G Collins / Postwar Media — except works-made-for-hire copyrighted by their respective owners.