Flash Gordon is My Hero!

I have to say, there are few things that stimulate my imagination more than Science Fiction.  I was raised on it.  I read Brick Bradford daily in the funny pages for most of the sixties.  I loved anything and everything I could bet my hands on about Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers.  I loved the Sci-Fi behind Spiderman and the Avengers.  And Star Trek!  My Dad didn’t let me watch either Star Trek or Lost in Space because it had monsters in it and would give me nightmares.  In spite of his loving restrictions that strangled me weekly, I saw those shows quite a lot.  Every episode of Star Trek in syndication during the 70’s!  And I got hold of a book in full color of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon from the Sunday funnies of the 40’s.  Play in the sixties was always about exploring alien worlds, fighting alien monsters and menaces, and battling Ming the Merciless and the forces of Darkness. 
My friend Marco the Methodist Minister’s Son would always take the role of Prince Barin.   We both secretly loved the beautiful Alicia Stewart, so she became Dale Arden or Princess Azura, even though she was never actually there.  Dickie Tyler, the local bad boy, was always drafted to play Vultan, leader of the Hawkmen, and when we could get fat, old Tiger Bates to play along, he was always Prince Thun of the Lionmen.  The funny thing that you may have already noticed is that we never had any badguys.  We didn’t fight each other as we Flashatized constantly through our little rural Iowa town.  We would explore and conquer the alien realms in the weedy ditches along the Rock Island railroad tracks.  Or we would establish a beachhead on the jungle planet of Sumpter Park woods, leading to an inevitable war of conquest against the dried ragweed Dragonmen of Mongo.  Once we collected alien spawn from the planet of the Rockmen, though they looked suspiciously like tadpoles from the snail pond down by the railroad underpass.  We tended to work together when we played Flash Gordon games.  It was different when we were World War Two soldiers or comic book heroes and villains.  Dickie made a great Green Goblin and Sheriff of Nottingham.  He had a chilling evil laugh.  But we were all on the same side in space.
I guess that’s why I always preferred the Sci-Fi games.  I got to be Flash Gordon because I could get the guys all working together.  Play was about story-telling for me, and I could enthrall them with what my mind’s eye saw.  Besides, they wouldn’t let me be Robin Hood or Spiderman.  I wasn’t the biggest and toughest kid in the group.  Now, as I work on my Science Fiction novel, I remember my Sci-Fi childhood fondly and try to capture some of the flavor of it in my prose.  I need to write as much as I need to breathe, and I figure, maybe I can bring our fractious, violent world together just a little bit more by making readers look outward for a bit of fun rather than looking menacingly at each other.  Besides, the resemblance between Ming the Merciless and Osama Bin Laden is all in my head, not yours.  Right?

http://bennypdrinnon.blogspot.com