Category Archives: aliens

August 2, 2022 · 7:34 pm

AeroQuest 5… Canto 143

Canto 143 – Morning Aboard the Starship Aboard the Starship

 I couldn’t help but fixate on the things Admiral Tang had bragged about knowing from the future during his villain speech in a previous episode.  Apparently, he had outwitted and killed a Time Knight at some point, and he had specifically told us that I was going to survive this adventure while poor Ham Aero was doomed to die in the upcoming battle for the planet Outpost.

I was sipping on my cup of designer coffee, my own special concoction called Isaac Newton’s Favorite Cup of Joe.  And I was staring out of the front viewport of the Leaping Shadowcat at the guards in the cavernous docking bay of Admiral Tang’s flagship, Bregohelma.  The Lupin child who served as cabin boy came out of the crews’ quarters completely naked and rubbing at his doglike eyes.  Of course, the boy’s shameless nudity didn’t bother me since Lupins are covered in wolf-fur and don’t really need clothing to cover up relentlessly white, pock-marked skin and rolls of fat the way I do.

“Professor Marou, do you think the Imperials will just execute me or toss me out into space?” Sahleck asked.

“Well, if they are frugal, they will toss you out into space.  It costs less.”

“Oh.”

The destroyed look on his puppylike face reminded me that maybe a strictly logical answer to the question wasn’t the kind of answer he needed to hear.

“But don’t go planning on dying yet.  Time is a relative dimension in space and, as such is totally malleable.”

He looked at me as if he wanted to ask another question, but didn’t really understand what I had just told him.

“You know that there are Time Knights constantly meddling with what they think happened in the past to correct the outcome to some sort of plan created in the distant future…”

“Oh, yes…” Sahleck stammered.

“And since Tang says he killed one of those Time Knights, we know for certain that somebody is out there working on solutions to the problems we are now facing.”

“So, maybe they won’t kill everybody but you?”

“Oh, you all are probably going to die.  Tang seems to know what will happen with information gleaned from the Time Knights themselves.  But nothing is ever certain.  Maybe I get killed too.”

That didn’t seem to help much.

Ham Aero wandered in drinking his own morning beverage, probably potent liquor of some sort.

“Sahleck?  You are out of uniform, boy.  You know that the job of steward aboard a starship is critical to staying alive in space.”

“Yes, Ham.  I know I am supposed to scrub floors, maintain the air quality, and do whatever the cook asks me to do, but we are almost all going to die.  So, what’s the point?”

“We are not giving up, my boy.  What we are blessed with is lots of time, and the freedom to plan without worrying about being overheard.  Tang doesn’t know it, but this ship is shielded from telepaths.  Ged had me do that back when he was first dealing with becoming a Psion.  So, we don’t have to just sit back and wait for death.  We can plan and carry out our own rescue and escape.  And I am not ready to die myself, knowing now that I am going to be a father for the first time.”

That made Sahleck smile.

“So, you have an idea about how to do it?” I asked.

“Not yet.  But we have more collective smarts than they do.  How many of their crew are rot warriors?  Skeletons with robotic life? Nearly mindless undead things?”

“Mechanoids and reanimated dead folks make up at least 75 percent of all Imperial Navy personnel.  You know this well, Ham.”

“Sure, but my point is… We have you.  You are one of the smartest living humans in the entire Orion Spur of the Milky Way.”

Now, I know, of course, when I am being flattered in order to manipulate me.  But he was not wrong.  Duke Ferrari was on board, and he carried considerable political significance, and potentially leadership ability.    And Ham’s young Nebulon wife knew a lot of secrets only formerly enslaved aliens really knew about.  Ham himself was a canny strategist and ship-board leader.  He knew how to solve the problems of living mostly in space aboard a starship.  And he was not wrong about me being smarter than practically everyone else in the universe.  (Not bragging, just an irrefutable fact.)

“Yes, you are right, Ham.  We are not helpless.  We do have an intelligence advantage over our enemies.  And we will think of some way out of this situation.”

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July 31, 2022 · 3:58 am

Star Wars Aliens, Mickified

I spent a good deal of my time as a game master for the Star Wars role-playing game in creating alien characters that fit the movies, the books I read in the Star Wars series, and the game materials.  In this post, I will give you a mini-gallery of the aliens I drew for the game.

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Chee Mobok was a space trader who had a problem with his own ego.  He believed that he was a genius at language and could speak any language he had heard a handful of words from.

The Galactic Common speakers were always laughing at the things he said.

Huttese speakers like Jabba the Hutt were always trying to kill him for say precisely the wrong thing.

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Hethiss was the Jedi Master when my son’s Jedi character was still a padawan learner.

He was wise, but unable to keep his student from doing things in violent ways when a diplomatic solution was called for.

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Merv was a potential terrorist and a suspect in a series of murders on a water planet.  He was, however, the good badguy character.  You know, the villain who has a heart of gold and whose actions redeem him in the end…  As opposed to a bad goodguy who seems to be a hero and ends up betraying everyone.

 

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Fisonna was a street kid from the same planet and same race as Hethiss the Jedi master.  He had the potential to become a padawan learner.  But he also used his Force skills to pull pranks on serious adults.

 

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Odo-Ki was a Gotal with the ultra-sensitive cones on his head.  He had a limited ability to see behind walls and predict the near future.

 

 

 

 

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Nadin Paal was an actual pirate and terrorist with no redeeming qualities at all.  The best thing about him was, that when the time came, he blew up really nicely.  A colorful fireball.

 

 

 

 

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Kehlor was a Herglic, one of the whale people who required specially built extra-large space ships and accommodations.   He was also a gifted pilot.  You can see that he wears the uniform of the Trade Authority.

 

 

 

 

 

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And finally, Klis Joo was a Duro and a Jedi, a gray alien with considerable Force powers.

 

There were many more drawings like this as well.  But these are some of the best ones.

 

 

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July 26, 2022 · 5:36 pm

AeroQuest 5… Canto 142

Canto 142 – Night Thoughts

It was during that eight-hour period set aside for sleep that Ged awoke in a sweat.  Dreams again!  He couldn’t quite recall what he’d been dreaming, but it gave him the uneasy feeling that it was about his brother Ham, and that it was one of those dreams a Psion sometimes has that comes true.  He was sandwiched in between two small, warm bodies.  Junior was snuggled next to him on one side, snoring softly.  Sarah was on the other side, her small body sheathed in her white body suit, looking like an angel and radiating angelic energies.

The spaceship, in the form of an Ancient Red Dragon, continued to purr with power as it flew through jump space.

Ged knew sleep was highly unlikely for him now.  Still, he didn’t turn on the lights or re-absorb the short brown fur that his Psion power generated every evening now to keep him warm.  He looked at the two sleeping children.  They had grown a lot while in his care.

Junior reminded him of Ham as much as any blood relative would have.  The blue face was totally different from the handsomer half of the Aero Brothers’ Space Safari Service, but the unruly blond hair was similar.  And Ged couldn’t help but call to mind the boy’s wistful smile, so like the smile that made his brother Ham so engaging and heroic.  With one furry hand, Ged reached over and stroked the boy’s yellow hair.  This child was precious to him.  So alien, yet now become an indispensable part of Ged’s life as a spacer.

Sarah, on the other side, was probably the most beautiful child he had ever encountered.  As he looked at her intently, he couldn’t help but think it was far more than a physical beauty.  Her father was one of a handful of so-called Forever Men in the galaxy.  He was an immortal, capable of traveling in a straight line through a thousand years.  He had gifted his daughter with more than a thousand years worth of human wisdom, culture, and literature.  What was more, she was able to draw entire libraries full of learning directly from her father’s head via telepathy.  At less than twelve years old, she was more learned than Ged would ever be.

What was he doing on this alien space craft in a bed between these two amazing children?  How could he ever hope to be worthy of caring for them and protecting them?  Worse, he was now taking them from the relative safety of the planet Gaijin, back into an Imperial Space full of war and violence, cruel pirates, and shambling hordes of rot warriors who were no more than animated skeletons with a computerized control system.  Not just these two, either.  He had a whole shipload of special children that he was now somehow responsible for.  What was he doing here?  How could a talented hunter and space traveler from Questor suddenly be a teacher and the only adult guiding these children toward a highly questionable future?  The thought made him quiver in spite of the warm fur.

Maybe being a teacher wasn’t so bad, though.  He was a natural with loving discipline.  Except for Alec Songh, all of these children adored and looked up to him.  It felt good to be addressed with respectful honorifics and awe.  It seemed he did have something to teach them. 

Shu Kwai had become a powerful telekinetic because of Ged’s success in describing for him the workings of the inner eye. 

Ged’s own perceptive powers had grown exponentially as he continued to practice changing his own shape.  He could transform now not just by taste and touch, but by scent and even by imagination.  He could almost become the creatures of his dreams by placing them at the focus of his powerful inner eye. 

Friashqazatla was gaining a lot in shape-change power from the instruction Ged gave him.  So far, he could only take a humanoid shape with canine features or a small, black wolf with a human brain and voice, but the rest would surely come with time and practice. 

Gyro, the other Nebulon boy besides Junior was learning practically everything Ged knew about starship repair and maintenance.  He could find and pull the skills directly out of Ged’s memory.  He seemed to have a really vast aptitude for anything mechanical or electronic.  He was also a god of mathematics and space-travel equations.  The need to find an astrogator was quickly becoming irrelevant. 

Even the Phoenix and Rocket Rogers were learning from him.  They had a power over fire that he did not comprehend at all.  It was a Psion power completely un-like his own.  Still, they learned to work together from Ged, in the way he had always done so naturally with his brother Ham.  He taught the two boys the hunting language of hand signs and gestures that allowed non-telepaths to speak in silence.  He taught them tracking skills and the interpreting of signs left by those who pass through a place.

But the question that bothered Ged most was, “What have I become?”  He had taken pride in being a moral man, a servant of the true God.  Now, he was the lover of two different women, one little more than a child herself.  His love had caused them both pain and trouble.  And the more he became a Psion and used his power, the more he felt degraded and sick.  He had become a monster.  And what about his brother Ham?

Still, as he lay there awake and troubled he couldn’t help but turn back to thoughts of Ham.  They had escaped from Imperial Space.  They had found paradise.  Don’t Go Here was a source of potential wealth.  He and Ham had liberated the population, revived the starport, and wove them into the great web of space.  They owned the starport and had control over who came in. 

Gaijin was even better. There he had found acceptance.  They didn’t seem to care that he was different and tainted with Psion blood.  They seemed to think it was a good thing.  He and Ham could have a good life between those two planets.  And now, it seemed, both of them were being drawn back into the dangerous realm that was the Imperium.  Looming doom seemed to be beckoning to them both.  Ged hunkered down again between the two sleeping children.  He needed to get some sleep.  Thoughts of the other children in his care, Billy Iowa, Jadalaqstbr, Mai Ling, Hassan Parker, Taffy King, and difficult Alec Songh, could be put off for the moment.  Still, thinking about the future made his stomach churn and sleep remained a stranger.

In the hold, three decks below in the belly of the Ancient dragon starship, the malevolent Tesserah continued to percolate with sickly green and purple lights.  Whatever evil thing the device was supposed to do, it was busy doing it.

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July 19, 2022 · 6:33 pm

AeroQuest 5 – It Ain’t Over Yet

Overture for Part Five of AeroQuest

Well, here we are again at the start of the part of the space opera that begins a new volume, and it is the part after the last intermission where I summarize all the crazy stuff that happened in this somewhat-true-but-also-somewhat-exaggerated history of what, to you, is a history of the far future.  And I usually go over only a few main points before launching into a complicated story that you will never be able to follow because you’re not a genius like me, Googol Marou, scientist, historian, and really cool witness to a lot of these events. 

And I usually assure you that you can pick this up and read it even without having read the previous four volumes.  But, come on!  Can you really skip that much wonderfully insightful narrative and historical analysis and still truly understand the masterfully written material of this volume?  Don’t you need to at least buy the most expensive copies of all four books you can find and put them under your pillow so that story particles can irradiate your head in the night while you are asleep and make your brain mutate into super-genius levels of intelligence because the books are written so well?

Or you could just go back and read them.

Part One is called Stars and Stones.

In that first wonderfully written part, the two brothers, Ged and Ham Aero are fleeing from civilized space because, although they’ve already had a good career as space hunters, Ged’s Psion ability to change his shape has gotten him persecution from the Orion Spur Empire known as the Imperium.  As they flee, they are joined by a criminal boyhood friend, Trav Dalgoda, who is escaping from space pirates that he stole a valuable Ancient artifact from along with a kidnapped Nebulon Princess and her young son.

They escape from known space to a periphery planet called Don’t Go Here.  Here they legally lay claim to an entire planetary star system because they are the only people there with a spaceship.  But it is not an uninhabited planet.  There are millions of marooned spacers on that planet left there by the pirates that stole their spaceships.  They have developed a unique civilization there based on ancient holo-cartoons called The Flintstones. 

And so, the Aero Brothers liberated the planet by using Trav’s Ancient artifact to build an AI-self-aware starport whom Trav names Frieda and then commands her to design and build new starships.

Of course, the pirates who lost the artifact to Trav have to come to terms with the new power in with the Orion Spur, and so decide to start a rebellion against the Imperium and Grand Admiral Brona Tang.

But then we move into the part of the story that becomes Part Two, Planet of the White Spider.  In that part, Ged has to face the fact that a mysterious prophecy about a Psion called the White Spider seems to be directly describing him as the next chosen one to be the White Spider.

Being the White Spider of Prophecy requires Ged to move to the planet Gaijin with a previously marooned Psion Master from Don’t Go Here called Tkriashav.  Ged takes the Nebulon Princess’s son, renamed Ham Aero Junior, along with him to establish a new school for Psions. Junior has Psion skills.

Ham Aero decides to go along with Tron Blastarr, the leader of the pirates to fight for the Imperium and hopefully also stop Trav Dalgoda from destroying the entire universe for giggles.  The rebels try to conquer some new planets after taking and losing White Palm.  They gain allies and more Ancient-artifact troubles and one assassin on the trail of pirate leaders.  They settle on the idea that if they win, they will establish a new interplanetary government called the New Star League.

Ged finds allies in the leader of Gaijin, a goofy old Mandarin called Shen Ming, and an immortal from ancient Earth, Dr. Naylund Smith.  Dr. Smith’s charming young daughter Sara turns out to be a gifted Psion healer.

And then Ged must defeat the planet’s Black Spider leader in order to establish himself as the new White Spider.  This he does in a ninja-battle contest by using his shape-changing ability to turn into a dinosaur and eat the Black Spider, ironically absorbing the ninja skills as he eats his enemy.

Then Ged seriously begins putting together his Psion ninja class from the gifted but outcast children that Tkriashav finds and brings to him.

Part Three, Juggling Planets tells about the rebel pirate bands going from planet to planet, recruiting and invading worlds to add to their new planetary alliance.  Tron and Ham Aero add allies and friends to their cause, retrieve some of their captured minions, and learn certain secrets that advance their cause.

Ged and his students hone their skills and learn to work together.  The students get to know each other and form relationships.

And then Part Four happens, The Amazing Aero Brothers.  More characters come into the story.  Some characters die.  Some new villains arise and are defeated.  I give you even more historical and scientific insight into what happens.  And everything gets even more complicated.

What you most need to know is that Grand Admiral Brona Tang is defeated in the Battle of Planet Coventry by a super-powerful Ancient artifact called the Tesserah.  And then Trav Dalgoda immediately uses it to commit the worst war crime in the history of the universe.  After this battle ends, Ham Aero and everyone aboard his spaceship, including yours truly, are captured and held prisoner by Grand Admiral Brona Tang.

Ged Aero defeats his worst enemy who turns out to be a sort of clone of himself from the future.  And then he is handed the evil artifact known as the Tesserah and tasked with destroying it to save the entire universe.

Now, do you have enough information to read Volume  Five, It Ain’t Over Yet?  Or do you need to do some more reading first?   

Yes, I am the utter genius who brought this story to you.

   

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June 1, 2022 · 3:53 pm

Something Creative Goes Here

Not Alone

Sometimes the creative brain gets a little too hot and needs time to cool.  That means I need a meaningless filler post to maintain my every-day posting.  So, I give you a picture of Mike Murphy carrying his girlfriend, Blueberry Bates’ books home from the bus stop on a country road in Iowa.  And, of course, they happen to meet an alien named George Jetson, whose father named him after a character on his favorite Earther TV show from the 60’s.  It is a strange thing to have your brain over-heat from too many creative neurons firing at the same time.  But it can lead to notions of intergalactic peace and cultural exchange… or racist comments like, “Tellerons have heads that look like giant boogers!”  But I should be able think more rationally tomorrow.  I hope that turns out to be a good thing.

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May 11, 2022 · 9:18 pm

Science-Fiction Rules for Real Life

God finally finished the last episode of the radio comedy “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” on an old cassette recording from the BBC brought to him especially from Heaven’s out[-of-date AV department at his command. He hadn’t listened to it when it was new even though Saint Peter kept telling him how funny it was and he really ought to make himself aware of the works of Douglas Adams. And he needed a new comedy writer for the Sacred Stand-up Comedy Review next Saturday.

“Make it so, Peter,” God decreed.

“Um, Lord, I fear our lend-lease agreement with the Bad Place has expired.”

“You mean, the writer of that radio play is not in Heaven…?”

And then God, being all-knowing, remembered that humorists, comedy writers, and satirists had lost favor since the Middle Ages. If only Dante hadn’t made that snippy comment about Deus ex Machina moments in real life. Writers should not assume God has a sense of humor.

“Well, if I cannot get the comedy writer I need to write my monologue, I will use some cosmic humor of my own and just change all of reality to satirize how things work in science fiction.”

“Oh, my!” said Saint Peter. “What are the rules going to be?”

“First of all, if you ignore small scientific rules for too long, they build up problems and cosmic tensions to a point where they create world-ending catastrophes. Like having too many cows farting on farms leading to global warming and the atmosphere eventually catching fire. Methane burns, after all.”

“Well, that could never happen. People on Earth would never value hamburgers over being able to breathe without inhaling fire.” Saint Peter had a smug smile of satisfaction on his face for that faulty realization.

“Don’t bet your afterlife on it, Peter.”

“What’s rule two?”

“Anything mysterious or inexplicable found by archaeologists was done by alien beings in flying saucers.”

“But that could be true, couldn’t it? There are planets capable of life and civilization that are millennia older than Earth, possibly even millions of years older. If interstellar travel is possible, then some explorer-type civilizations have probably already visited Earth. Maybe even announcing themselves as gods. After all, we haven’t really figured out how the pyramids were built.”

“Peter, be careful how you blaspheme! And don’t let Zeus hear that I have created this second rule.”

“Sorry, Lord. Forgive my misspoken ignorance, and tell me the third rule.

“Well, time travel is possible. And because it is, it has already been invented somewhere in the universe, and therefore it exists in all times and all planets. There are nearly infinite time travelers watching everything happen.”

“Won’t they mess up the time lines of events that happen in their past?”

“They cannot. A time traveler is part of the history they visit. Therefore they might cause the event to happen. But they can never change it. Anything they do is part of the history that already exists.”

“So, is David Tennant from that show a real time traveler?”

“That is for me to know and not for you to question… Though I can reveal that David Tennant is not the real-life Scrooge McDuck, only his cartoon voice.”

“That is good to know.”

“And the final new rule I will create for my humorous monologue is that all alien civilizations will speak and understand English, but we will all know they are alien because of strange little alterations to their neck, nose, or forehead.”

“Will you nickname that one the Star Trek rule?”

“Is Gene Roddenberry in Heaven or Hell?”

“Good point, Lord. At least he won’t be embarrassed when you spring this new reality on the angels at the Comedy Review on Saturday.”

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April 28, 2022 · 3:11 pm

Vonnegut

My experience of the works of Kurt Vonnegut is limited to the reading of three books; Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and Slaughterhouse Five. But it was enough to make me love him and use him as a shaper of my soul.

I deeply apologize for the fact that even though he only wrote 14 books and a bunch of short stories, I have not read everything I could get my hands on by Kurt. Three novels and one short story (Harrison Bergeron) is not really enough to compare to the many, many things that I have read by Mark Twain, Terry Pratchett, Louis L’Amour, and Michael Crichton. I can’t begin to count how many books of each of those four I have read and reread. But it is enough that I read those three novels and have a lifelong regret of never buying and reading Slapstick when I had the chance. Vonnegut writes black humor. The ideas are painful, and burn away flesh from your personal body of being. And at the same time, you cannot help but laugh at the pure, clean, horrifying truths his ridiculous stories reveal.

If, in the course of telling a story, you can put the sublime, the ridiculous, and the horrendous side by side, and make the reader see how they actually fit together, then you can write like Vonnegut.

Let me give you three quick and dirty book reports of the Vonnegut I have read in the order I have read them;

I read Cat’s Cradle in college. I was young and idealistic at the time, foolishly convinced I could be a great writer and cartoonist who could use my work to change mankind for the better.

In the book, Dr. Felix Hoenikker (a fictionalized co-creator of the atomic bomb) is obsessively re-stacking cannonballs in the town square in pursuit of a new way to align water molecules that will yield ice that does not melt at room temperature. Much as he did with the A-bomb, Hoenikker invents a world-ending science-thing without any thought for the possible consequences. The narrator of the novel is trying to write a humanizing biography of the scientist, and comes to observe the inevitable destruction of the whole world when the oceans freeze into Ice-9, the un-meltable ice crystal. Before the world ends, the narrator spends time on the fictional Carribean island of San Lorenzo where he learns the fictional religion known as Bokononism, and learns to make love to a beautiful woman by pressing bare feet together sole to sole. It is a nihilistic picture of what humans are really like more savagely bleak than any portrayal Monte Python’s Flying Circus ever did on TV.

Needless to say, my ideals were eventually shattered and my faith in the world shaken.

I read Breakfast of Champions after I had been teaching long enough to buy my own house, be newly married, and a father to one son. It was probably the worst time of life to be reading a book so cynical, yet true.

In this story, the author Kilgore Trout, much published but mostly unknown, is headed to Midland City to deliver a keynote address at an arts festival. Dwayne Hoover is a wealthy business man who owns a lot of Midland City real-estate. Trout gives Hoover a book (supposedly a message from the creator of the universe) to read that suggests that all people (except for the reader of the book… meaning Hoover) are machines with no free will. Hoover takes the message to heart and tries to set the machines free by breaking them, beating up his son, his lover, and nine other people before being taken into custody.

The book contains devastating themes of suicide, free will, and social and economic cruelty. It makes you sincerely reflect on your own cog-in-the-machine reality.

Slaughterhouse Five is a book I bought and read when I missed my chance to buy Slapstick and needed something to take home from HalfPrice Books to make me feel better about what I missed. (Of the five books I had intended to buy that day, none were still on the shelves in spite of the fact that they had been there the week before.) It was fortuitous. This proved to be the best novel I had ever read by Vonnegut.

Like most of his work, the story of Billy Pilgrim is a fractured mosaic of small story pieces not presented in chronological order. It details Billy’s safe, ordinary marriage to a wife who gives him two children, but it is ironically cluttered with death, accidents, being stalked by an assassin, and being kidnapped by aliens. It also details his experiences in World War II where he is captured by the Germans, held prisoner in Dresden, kept in an underground slaughterhouse, and ironically survives the fire-bombing of Dresden by the Allies. Further, it details his time as a zoo exhibit on the alien planet of Tralfamadore.

It explores the themes of depression, post-traumatic-stress disorder, and anti-war sentiment. Vonnegut himself was a prisoner of war in Dresden during the fire-bombing, so real-life experiences fill the book with gravitas that it might not otherwise possess. Whether the author was ever kidnapped by aliens or not, I cannot say.

But Kurt Vonnegut’s desire to be a writer and portray himself as a writer in the character of Kilgore Trout, and even as himself in his work, has an awful lot to do with my desire to be a writer myself. Dark, pithy wisdom is his thing. But that wisdom, having been wrung from the darkness is all the more brightly lit because of that wringing. It is hard to read, but not hard to love.

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April 2, 2022 · 3:11 pm

Why I Wear a Tinfoil Hat

Davalon ad

You know by now if you have read what I’ve written, or been around me when people make the mistake of letting me talk about what I want to talk about, that I am a kook.  Yes, I believe things that you have been told that only crazy people believe.  Why would you want to read any more of that nonsense now?  Because it is true and it will impact our future.

I came into a wealth of secret knowledge when I wrote and published my first good novel, Catch a Falling Star.  Of course, like most of the things you research on the internet, ninety-nine per cent of everything is big, black rubber hoo-haw lies.  I researched a lot of things that I have always been fascinated by, but specifically I investigated UFO phenomenon.  I already followed author Stanton Friedman and knew who Bob Lazar was before starting my research, but I wanted to dig deeper and find the truth.  My novel, after all, is about close encounters of the third, fourth, and fifth kinds… including an invisible invasion of Earth from outer space.  I wanted to portray such events as alien contact and alien abduction as realistically as possible.  But then I found stuff like the Disclosure Project headed by Doctor Steven Greer.  Did you know he has been collecting eye-witness and whistle-blower information in written and video form since the 1990’s and presenting it to members of congress?  There is an immense database of information about contact with UFO’s and the government’s response to it that can be cross-referenced and even corroborates itself.  There comes a point at which eye-witness testimony, even loony-sounding testimony, has to be accepted when there is a preponderance of evidence.

The thing that makes the case most strongly for me is the provable amount of cover-up and misdirection that the government has applied to this body of knowledge.  They are still doing it.  NASA footage and photographic records are open to the public and available online.  Lots of people have examined the wealth of evidence very closely and have found things that the government apparently overlooked.  There are also an even more impressive number of identified re-touched and faked photos of the Moon and Mars and especially the Earth from space.  Things have been removed so that we the people will not see.  Some nut-cases even believe we never actually went to the moon.  Some of the moon footage and photos are provably fake.  (But you can also spot the landing sites of the Apollo missions on the surface of the moon with some of the very good telescopes available now… The proof of our moon landings is there.  The stuff was redacted and faked for different reasons… a different cover-up.)

So, why does this matter?  Maybe we are better off being protected from this secret knowledge.  We are too fragile to take it.  There will be riots in the street and the economy will crash.  We are safer being ignorant of all of this.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…no!

It’s time we were given the straight poop (because everybody hates crooked poop… at least they should.)  Our world is dying from pollution and global warming, yet the alien technology can provide clean, free energy.  Rich people are exploiting the poor and the middle class and so much suffering occurs that doesn’t have to happen if we embrace the potential for taking our place in a galactic community that apparently already exists and that we are excluded from solely on the basis of how dangerous our own ignorance makes us.

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March 22, 2022 · 1:42 pm

The Mirror in the Clown’s Hand

Self-reflection is the bane of stupid people. Essentially, they don’t want to risk encountering evidence that they actually are stupid. It would shatter their world to learn that they are idiots and most of what they believe is true is actually wrong. This fact goes a long way towards explaining why the Republican Party in its current form even exists, let alone the actions of the current mutant Cheetos monster that pilots their agenda and hates healthcare, the Special Olympics, and Puerto Rico.

So, if I am doing a self–reflection piece today, then that proves I am not a stupid person, right? What do you mean you agree with that? Yes, I can actually hear you mentally answering my questions as you read this. And if you believe that, then you have proven that even relatively smart people like you and I are capable of stupid thinking.

I believe in some stupid things, even though I think I am not stupid.

An example of this stupidity factor is my lingering belief that I am a nudist. I mean, I am rarely ever nude any more. I keep most of me covered up constantly because when my psoriasis plaques dry out they tend to flake and itch and force me to scratch to the point of infected bloody sores.

Obviously this is not totally a photograph from the 60’s. That does not make it a total lie either, though.

I have been pretty much accepted as a member of the nudist community on Twitter. I enjoy the artful pictures of nude people they share with me. And since I did a couple of blog posts for nudist websites, there are actually completely nude pictures of me available on the internet. I can be found on Truenudists.com for one, if your eyes can stand the horror. But I have only been to a nudist park, the Bluebonnet Nudist Park in Alvord, Texas. one time as an actual nudist. I can tell you, it was a very hot day even though I was not wearing clothes. I am comfortable with nudity. I am comfortable around nude people. I fully accept it all as a non-sexual thing. But am I really a nudist? Or am I only playing at it? If you follow me on Twitter, then you know I don’t retweet pictures of naked people. I engage a lot with other writers there, and most of them are not also nudists, or even open-minded about naturism. I write about nudists in some of my books, but they are not about nudism, and most of them don’t even mention it. So, what good does it do me to think I am a nudist? Well, the very idea of it does a heckuva good job of embarrassing my wife and daughter. So, I do get some crazy-old-coot satisfaction out of it. Otherwise it simply proves that rational and otherwise intelligent people can be committed to irrational ideas.

I am also of the often mocked and ridiculed opinion that not only are alien beings from other worlds real, they are capable of space travel and have been visiting us for as long as there has been an us. I did not always believe this, however. Before I wrote my novel Catch a Falling Star I believed as Carl Sagan said on the original Cosmos that it is wrong to accept things without proof, and true results are testable. My novel was about aliens who watched a lot of Earther TV and learned to speak English from watching I Love Lucy reruns, I wanted to make the aliens different from humans, but at the same time, alike with humans in the most fundamental ways that translate easily into humor and relatability. Not all of my hero-characters were Earth humans.

Brekka the Telleron tadpole (also a nudist) with her friend Lester the man-eating plant (who only ate her once)

As I did research on the internet (a tool I didn’t have when I originally created the story in the 1970s), I found a ton of researchers and writers and con men and MUFON and the Disclosure Project and nuclear physicists and astronauts Gordon Cooper and Edgar Mitchell who were all believers and mostly not stupid. Wow! What a huge and complicated hoax! Why would anybody believe , based on so little tangible evidence, and so much contradictory evidence, that the government’s position could possibly be right? I learned that I now believed, until significant further proof comes along, that I believe stupidly in alien visitors.

Today’s self-reflection post has now proven that I am a stupid old coot who thinks he is a nudist and an insightful conspiracy theorist. But the results of my look into the mirror have not made me upset about my stupidity. Maybe I am simply satisfied nudism is healthy and the universe is more complex than I am capable of understanding. Whatever the case, that’s enough with the mirror for today. You have to keep such dangerous weapons out of the hands of clowns.

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March 16, 2022 · 6:22 pm

Wrestling with Themes… Part 5

Other books that are not Hometown Novels need to have themes too.

My novel-writing, book-publishing career began with a Sci-Fi Comedy published with a criminal book-publishing scam that has since gone out of business and was sued to oblivion by authors like me who it cheated.

My novel Aeroquest was a huge moronic mess made from the stories I created as a science-fiction-role-playing game’s game master. It was very loosely based on Frank Herbert’s Dune trilogy and Douglas Adams’s five-book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (quintilogy?)

It had way too many characters in it (just like Dune.) It had super powers tied to religious practices (just like Dune.) And it had totally ridiculous science and technology in it (just like Hitchhiker’s Guide.)

After I got the publishing rights back from the criminals behind Publish America, I tried to make more sense of it by rewriting it as AeroQuest 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5.

AeroQuest 1 : Stars and Stones

In the first book, Ged Aero and his brother Hamfast Aero are looking to find a safe place for Ged to pursue his trade as a space-safari hunter who is developing a strange psionic power to change his appearance, and eventually his shape and species. Since Ham is a pilot and owns his own space ship, they decide to set out into unknown space to get away from the Thousand Worlds of the Imperium where what Ged is becoming is made illegal.

He then encounters the Prophecy of Zhan (also known in the frontier as the Prophecy of Xan, the Prophecy of Shan, the Prophecy of Cyan, and… well, too complicated to re-explain because all of them identify Ged as the next White Spider of Prophecy, and he is destined to reweave the web of star travel in unknown and forgotten space.)

So, what is the theme? “You can’t solve your problems by running away from yourself.” Yeah, that’s probably it… But, as I said, this novel was a truly big mess that the scammers took advantage of rather than helping.

AeroQuest 2 : Planet of the White Spider

In the second book, among other business zipping from star to star system, Ged has to take on the role of the prophesied White Spider, which it turns out is stepping into the role of being a teacher to a class filled with students who have psionic powers. They turn out to be a mix of space samurai, space cowboys, space nudists, space lizard-people, and Nebulons (an alien race of blue-skinned people nicknamed Space Smurfs.) At the same time, Ham takes up his role as a pilot and warrior in the growing rebellion against the corrupt Imperium.

This book too has a broad general theme; “We are stronger when we make ourselves a part of a diverse group than we are when we stand alone.”

AeroQuest 3 : Juggling Planets

This is the hardest book to create a unified theme for. Ham and his allies are jumping from planet to planet, fighting battles and recruiting new systems into the New Star League. At the same time, Ged is working with his new students to establish a new school and a new way of teaching that optimizes the students’ abilities to deal with cosmic forces and interstellar problems.

The best theme I can make a case for is; “Adding new friends and building their skills is how you best rebel against an old order that is failing more and more people.”

AeroQuest 4 : The Amazing Aero Brothers

This book is written, but not yet published. It is the story of how Ham and the rebels prepare for bigger battles yet to come, and face their first significant losses and reversals of fortune. Ged and his students battle their evil counterparts and only manage to defeat them by crossing moral lines that they never intended to cross.

The overall theme is; “It is harder to stay true to yourself than it is to win a battle.”

AeroQuest 5 : It Ain’t Over Yet!

Yep, it ain’t written yet. Started, but a long way from finished.

So, can I tell you what the major theme of this book is?

NO!

I am still wrestling with this theme. It has me in an illegal headlock.

But, as you probably guessed by now, I have more books to talk about in Part 6. So, beware!

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