Category Archives: science fiction

September 18, 2024 · 12:31 am

Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons – Part 8

Retribution

The situation began to feel more hopeful as Princess Verumi took off to lecture Prince Porodor and make him regret being born.  Cissy’s small crew, with Wylo and Taro’s family decided to hunker down and await whatever was going to happen in the little white house.

“Do you think your cousin can get us freed from this mess?” Cissy asked Suki.

“Verumi has a very forceful personality.  But she hates Porodor nearly as much as he hates her.  Her rank in the clan is equal to his.”  Suki looked out the window nervously after answering.

Crocodile Guy shimmered back into visibility.

“The space whales are on our side,” he said.  “They have been talking about the situation amongst themselves.   They are very intelligent, maybe more so than me.  But they don’t have much in the way of mechanisms or powers to help us in any way.”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” said Cissy, understating the fact of it by a factor of a million.

“You really think the space whales are smarter than the average Nebulon?”  Suki asked Crocodile Guy.

“They have a collective intelligence.  Anything one whale learns is almost instantly known to all of them.  And they are discussing things all the time.  Only a few Nebulons with Psionic powers know that they talk like that.  And the mind-readers among your people generally keep their knowledge of whale talk to themselves.”

“That figures.  The warlords and royalty generally punish and limit that kind of power among our people.”  Suki frowned.

“Judging by their statements of philosophy and rationality, they are very wise, very empathetic, and possessed of an inner peace far greater than any I have encountered among any humanoid species in the galaxy,” Crocodile Guy said.

The group awaiting punishment engaged for a while in the Nebulonin games of Phokkocaraht and Akkohrahtia for the remainder of the afternoon.  The Earther nearest-equivalent games would be checkers and tiddlywinks.

Along about supper time Crocodile Guy had more news via whale observations.

“I am afraid things did not go well for Princess Verumi.  The whale saw her confront Porodor, become exceedingly angry, and she threw ceremonial dinnerware at his head.  He responded by yelling and having his honor guard throw their ceremonial halberds at her.  She received two flesh wounds and still managed to escape capture or being killed.  The guards are searching for her now, not realizing that the space whale is helping her hide from them.”  Crocodile Guy delivered it in a deadpan voice.

“Ooh!  I iz maddening up!” declared Friday.

Diznee, sensing the little Lupin’s distress, put her arms around the puppy girl’s neck to calm her down.

“The Prince has dispatched an execution squad to deal with all of us,” said Crocodile Guy.

“Oh, good grief!” said Cissy in answer.

“Can the whale hide us?”  Suki asked Crocodile Guy.

“It says to get the condemned into the tailward corners of the house.”

“Tahkaarac nah timbuhran,”said Taro.  “Ahckah na Saronac sah!”

“What did he say?” Cissy looked at Suki.

“He says we do what the whale says.  He and his family will deal with the squad and send them away.”

So, Cissy, Suki, Friday with Diznee around her neck, and Waylo took up positions along the tailward wall.  Taro, Sonno, and their sons put themselves in between the door and the wall where the prisoners stood.  A section of the floor bulged and grew like a blooming vegetable and formed itself into a new interior wall, concealing the prisoners, and shortening the room in ways that were barely discernable to anyone who hadn’t seen the transformation take place.  Crocodile Guy made himself disappear once again.

When the execution squad showed up, they confronted Taro with a lot of angry yelling in the clakkity-clack-ur-ack language of the Nebulons.  Suki didn’t translate and no one was even breathing loudly behind the partition.  Then they heard what could easily have been some sort of shooting and Taro’s voice was not heard again.  Friday hugged Diznee tightly to keep her silent.

There followed further thumping and dragging and scraping sounds, followed by utter silence as the executioners gathered things and left, presumably to find the escaped prisoners.

When the secret wall finally came down, only Crocodile Guy stood in the empty room with a stunned look on his holographic face.

“Taro sacrificed himself and his family to help us escape.”

Diznee now sobbed uncontrollably.

Suki looked grim.  “It is up to us to make sure his sacrifice was not for nothing.”

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September 4, 2024 · 1:54 am

Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons… Part 7

Visitors Both Pink and Blue

A sudden shift in the lighting of the house occurred as everyone was about to settle in for a night’s sleep.  Without warning a ball of bright light began to manifest in the center of the room.

“This is not normal, is it?  Shactuhrac sah?” asked Suki.

“Abeck nah!” said Taro.  Cissy didn’t have to ask if that meant no.

The light resolved itself vaguely into the form of a Humaniti male holding a small crocodile.  Something was making him entirely funky looking.

“Crocodile Guy?” asked Cissy, shocked.  “How did you get here?”

“Ah, Captain Cissy!  I finally made it.  I have been communicating with space whales.  Their nervous systems are almost electronic in nature.  There are data streams so full of visual and auditory data that it took me forever to sort my way here.  Space whales have amazing brains and communication methods.  And they were entirely pleased to let me knock about through their works till I found ya.”

Crocodile Guy was unable to delineate himself in anything but black and white.  And yet, he was fully there in the digital flesh.

“Iz youz here ta reskooz us?” asked Friday.

“I am here to start planning and thinking about it.  The space whales told me that you are doomed to be whale food, and the idea upsets them greatly, but they don’t have any suggestions.   And the starship is definitely stuck in the middle of Nebulon security forces.”

“But we do at least have options now that we didn’t have before,” said Cissy resolutely.  “We can start thinking about how to escape.  We have two Earther days left to figure it out.”

“We have to remember that Taro’s family will be killed if we escape.  We would be sacrificing innocent lives to help ourselves,” reminded Suki.

“We need a plan that also saves them.”  Cissy folded her arms as the others had often seen her do when her mind was made up.

“Someone’s coming!” warned Wylo.

It was then that Princess Verumi Vorranac entered the home of Taro, Sonno, and their children.

“Tahracurrac, Suki.  Nah suurrhac sharanna hourcka.  Kampuhrac nah sah!”

“What did she say?” Cissy asked timidly.  Whoever this was, she sounded angry.

“She says it is unbelievable, Cousin Suki, that you have gotten yourself into this mess.  Princess Verumi and I grew up together.  She’s the daughter of the current Vorranac Warlord.”

“She also says it will not be so,” added Wylo.

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August 27, 2024 · 12:26 am

Andre Norton, Sci-Fi Royalty

It began for me in 1977 with this wrap-around cover illustration. I knew there were a lot of this guy’s books on the shelves of the college bookstore along with works by Robert E. Howard, Roger Zelazney, and Theodore Sturgeon. And I knew this guy had also written paperback books under the name “Andrew North”, a name I had seen on the twenty-five cent novels in the drugstore where you could buy the really good pulp fiction novels only slightly used.

I had never before bought one of his books. And the book money I had for the fall quarter at Iowa State was supposed to all go towards the book-list given to me as a Junior-level English major. But the naked kid on the cover had a wired-up collar around his neck. And I had only recently recovered long-suppressed memories of being a victim of a sexual assault. I had to have it. I had to know what that illustration had to do with the story inside.

So, I bought a book that I judged by its cover.

And it was not the wrong thing to do.

The main character was a boy named Jony, the naked boy on the cover of the book. He is taken by alien beings as a study specimen along with his mother, the pregnant woman on the back of the wrap-around illustration. The story starts with Jony in a cage, treated like an animal. His mother, also a study specimen has been mated to a Neanderthal-like humanoid specimen who cannot speak, and she has given birth to twins, a boy, and a girl. They are kept in separate cages by their inhuman captors.

Jony manages a mass escape, taking his mother and his younger siblings with him, and releasing as many of the other study specimens as he can. Luckily they escape onto a very earth-like planet. But unluckily, the mother is in very poor health and dies soon after escaping. Jony is then responsible for his little brother and sister in a wilderness that is not empty of others. Luckily, the others they first run afoul of are the bear-like ursine aliens who share their need to not be recaptured by the zoo-keeper aliens.

It was a perfect novel for me. I identified strongly with the main character, who had been violated in a very personal way by monsters. And then had to build a new life in a world full of potential other-monsters. Andre Norton shared my pain and helped me overcome it.

But she also fooled me big-time. She was not a he.

She was a librarian and editor of pulp fiction who wrote enough sci-fi and fantasy in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s to finally become a full-time author.

She was already on book number 29 when she retired from being a librarian to write full time.

And I would go on to own and read several of her other books, which were good, but never quite lived up to that first one I read. Of course, that may have been because of the timing and circumstance that led me to a book that I actually needed to read. That book set me on the road to recovery from my personal darkness. And it may have sparked in me the need to eventually become a nudist. And more important than that, it may have led me to a lifelong need to teach reading.

Andre Norton was a real writer. And she made me one too. Though I never knew who she really was until after I bought that book because of the picture on the cover. And I never got around to properly thanking her for all of that… Until this very moment.

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August 21, 2024 · 12:31 am

Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons… Part 6

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The Pink Dresser

The white cottage that was home to Taro and Sonno’s family didn’t look like any of the house-type structures that Cissy was used to from her limited time on civilized planets or in holo-vids.  It didn’t have any of the right angles, square corners, or perfectly straight lines that most spaceports and planetary cities used in such structures.  It was more like it had been molded out of clay by a huge child of some sort.  And she noticed the window structures looked exactly like whale eyes in the greater hull of the space whale.  They probably functioned like whale eyes too, meaning the whale watched everything.

Cissy was sitting at the table with Taro and Suki watching Diznee and Sonno try to calm the crazy-sad tantrum of Friday the Lupin dog girl.  Sonno sang an indecipherable lullaby of great beauty while little Diznee wrapped her naked little girl body around Friday on the pad that served as a bench or bed, cuddling the inconsolable dog girl until the exhausted child fell into a fitful doze.

“So, why does the prince want to execute us, anyway?” Cissy asked nobody in particular.

Suki said something complicated to Taro.  Then, to Cissy, she said, “Our people and your people have a history of hostility between them.  Since the first Earther explorer entered the Great Nebula we have been treated with little besides suspicion, aggression, and exploitation.”

“But I am twelve.  I never had anything to do with Nebulons my entire life.  Why does Prince Porodor blame me?”

Suki said a whole string of Nebulonin words to Taro.  He answered back with a long string of, “Ek-ek-akakaw tac and something more that Cissy couldn’t follow,” that Suki had to translate. 

“Taro says that it all goes back to Porodor’s father who was the Vorranac Warlord.  An Imperial task force started a war with the clan by attacking while the space whales were grazing at an Imperial-owned gas giant.  They targeted the space whale that the warlord was commanding from and killed it with the warlord on board.  Porodor was too young to be crowned warlord, and that is how he lost the office to my great uncle.”

Wylo had been listening to the conversation from the corner of the room where he had been eating the blue food that Sonno had prepared for him.  He got up and came to the table.

“Porodor has more than just that as a reason to hate Earthers.  It was an Earther colony on the edge of the Imperium that he attacked and rescued my family and me.”  Wylo’s eyes were as serious as Cissy had ever seen a pair of dark blue eyes.

“You were enslaved by Earthers?” Cissy asked.

“My grandmothers were taken as slaves.  Both of my parents were born from Earther fathers.  That’s why I turned out pink instead of blue.”

“Oh?  Can Nebulons and Earthers make babies?”

“It is believed that Humaniti and Nebulons had common ancestors millions of years ago,” Suki said seriously.

“How can that be so?”

“All intelligent races in the galaxy were probably created by the Ancients,” Wylo said.  “In a way, all life is the same.”

“It still doesn’t seem right that we have to die just for being who and what we are,” said Cissy, beginning to feel angry.

All were in agreement.

And suddenly there was a delighted squeal from Friday.

“I gots un dresser on! Un pink wun!”

Everyone looked at Friday, standing there in a frilly pink dress like the ones Cissy had made for Friday on board the Happy Luck.

“How…?”

“It’s the Danjer suit,” Suki said.  “It read Friday’s mind while she was dreaming.  It’s a living creature that wants to please its master.”

“Ent I purdee now?” Friday cooed.

Cissy laughed.  It was not over yet.  In fact, the battle to survive was just beginning.

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August 13, 2024 · 1:29 am

Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons, Part 5

Going to the Happy Place

As they were being led down further into the massive space whale, the lead warrior turned back to Prince Porodor and bowed.

“You need to consider that sacrificing Suki Vorranac along with these Humaniti scum will not sit well with the counsel or the Warlord Vorranac himself.  She has the prime bloodline (said in Galactic English for Cissy’s benefit.)”

“That is my worry, my argument,” said the prince flatly.

The lead warrior nodded and turned away, signaling the group of the condemned to follow him.  The naked boy who looked human hugged his twin and then joined them.

“I can almost understand why they are going to kill us, but why are you going to be executed?” Cissy said to the boy.

“I am not enough like them to remain among them.  I would die here eventually anyway.  This just makes it happen sooner.”

“Won’t they at least give you a Danjer suit?” Cissy asked.

“I will be given one when we get to the happy place.”

“The happy place?”

“Prisoners to be executed as whale food are given time to make their peace with the universe.  It is something I understand the Imperium does not do.”

“Yes, I’m afraid that’s true.  Of course, the Galtorr Fusions are half lizard people, which probably explains that.”

“My name is Wylo Voron, though I have to stop using the Voron part now that I am being cast out.”

“My name is Cissy Moonskipper.  I ain’t giving up any of that.”

Wylo shook Cissy’s hand and smiled.  He was a cute kid.  Probably at least three years younger than Cissy.  Or three Spltzblixes, or whatever the heck Nebulons called a year.

The interior of the space whale was like a vast hollow tube with gravity-downside carpeted in villages, lakes, rivers, forests, and meadows.  Hand-built structures covered the sides, and the ceiling was a combination of pulsating whale organs and Sun Sources.  Clouds and mists obscured some of the ceiling.

“This is a really beautiful place,” said Cissy, nearly breathless with awe.

“I have never been in this space whale before,” said Suki.  “But my home whale was almost as beautiful as this.”

The lead warrior delivered the small group to a pretty white cottage on the edge of the nearest lake.  They were met there by five people.  A Nebulon man who was the same size as Suki, his wife who was slightly smaller, and three blue children.

“You will be cared for by Taro Vorranac and his family.  They will do anything you ask but help you escape.  They don’t speak Galactic English, but Suki can translate.”  The lead warrior saluted Taro and then led his troop back toward the whale head.

Suki introduced everyone to everyone in another endless stream of Nebulonin ak-ak-ak-oohwak in which Cissy recognized names and nothing else.  Taro’s wife was Sonno and the children were two boys named Taroon and Jaffouhc.  The girl was Diznee.  All three of them were naked and happy that way, but Sonno recognized the need to give Wylo a purple Danjer suit.

Their Nebulon hosts were all generous and kind people that Cissy easily warmed up to.

Later as they sat around the family table drinking a delicious blue juice that Sonno called Perhoucahac, Cissy asked Suki, “So, what do we do now?  Can we try to eIscape?”

“If we do, Taro and Sonno’s family will be sacrificed in our place.  And I don’t want that on my conscience.”

“Budd… I doan wanna die…” whined Friday.  Diznee petted her because, although she didn’t understand a word of what was said, she could feel Friday’s fear and pain.

“I’m not giving up yet, Friday,” Cissy said, patting the dog girl’s paw.  “There has to be a way out of this.”

“The Nebulon way is to eat and drink and be happy until the end is here.”  Suki let a tear escape her right eye.  It ran down across the red dot on her cheek.

“Your Prince Porodor is not a very nice landlord.”

Taro’s family looked at each other in confusion.

“My family doesn’t like him either,” Suki admitted.

Inside a space whale with a Nebulon child.

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July 11, 2024 · 12:23 am

Barbie’s Little Sister is Inspired by Webb

Barbie’s little sister, Stacy, is an incredible nerd (for a plastic doll from Mickey’s doll collection.) She is constantly using one of the laptops to keep up with the latest news in Science. Lately, she has been thrilled to see pictures start rolling in from the James Webb Space Telescope, the superior imaging system to its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

You may have noticed that Stacy surfs the internet in the nude. She is not a porn-obsessed pervert or anything. She simply found research online that indicated that nudists are happier in many ways than people who are addicted to always wearing clothes. She joined the AANR (American Association for Nude Recreation,) found a local landed nudist club to join and discovered how lovely it is to play in the sunshiny air totally bare.

If you knew Stacy the way I know Stacy, you would realize she now has a real dilemma. She is very intelligent… but her head is made of plastic, and so it stubbornly resists compromises once an idea has found its way inside.

This is called internal conflict. But never fear. Stacy is highly intelligent, smarter than Skipper, and even smarter than her oldest sister Barbie. This is why she is the only sister so dedicated to nudism.

So, Barbie pointed out to Stacy that, being made of plastic, exposure to outer space will simply freeze her solid. And as long as she avoids getting dropped by a doofus while she’s frozen and brittle, and she gets thawed out slowly enough at the end of the journey, she should be fine. Now, all she has to do is convince Mickey to sell her to an astronaut who is not a doofus but is just goofy enough to take a doll into outer space. So, now Stacy is researching non-doofus goofy astronauts online, further preventing Mickey from writing something dumb.

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July 1, 2024 · 12:04 am

What Do Martians Look Like?

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As Catch a Falling Star was a science-fictiony sort of comedy, one of the questions that I have pursued in internet research is the one I have presented here in the title of this picture-and-Paffooney-filled post.  Seriously, the image search of Google’s answer to that question is enough to make you snort milk through the old nostrils as you sort through them while stupidly drinking a glass of milk.  The milky nose-snorts are the reason I have not sited picture sources on this post.  Cleaning the computer screen took too long.  I have merely randomly snatched and pirated pictures.  The only picture of a Martian presented here created by me are these two;

I admit to being surprised by my actual research into the whole question of whether or not we have ever been visited by intelligent life from the stars beyond the sky.  While I have not found proof that aliens exist, I have discovered there is actual proof that the government, and NASA in particular, have covered something up.  And it goes beyond Area 51 defense research.  But now that I have got the attention of the NSA and the Men in Black, this post is only filled with a collage of the unreal, made-up, and mostly silly.

Malevolent Martians;

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Martians Who Make the Mistake of Liking Us;

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Inexplicably Goofy Martians;

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Cartoon alien rendered on white background. 3D model licensed from DAZ3D.

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Probably the only REAL Martians… from the future;

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May 19, 2024 · 2:15 am

Philip K. Dick

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There is a major drawback to being so smart that you can perceive the edges of infinity.  It makes you bedbug crazy.  I love the science fiction that populated the paperback shelves in the 50’s and 60’s when I was a boy.  I love the work of Philip K. Dick.  But it leads you to contemplate what is real… what is imaginary… and what is the nature of what will be.

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the robot Philip K. Dick who appeared at Comic Con and answered questions

There are numerous ways to investigate life.  But it is in the nature of imaginary people to try to find ways to make themselves real.  When the replicants in Bladerunner try to make themselves into real people, they must try to create memories that didn’t exist.  They try to mirror human life to the extent that they can actually fool the bladerunner into letting them live.  Of course, it doesn’t work.  They are not real.  (Bladerunner is the movie name of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep).

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It is like that for me as well.  Being an imaginary person is difficult.  You have to constantly invent yourself and re-invent yourself.  By the time you finally get to know yourself, you have to change again so that the anti-android factions don’t destroy you.  Although, I think I may not actually be an android.

Does that sound a bit crazy?  Well Philip K. Dick’s life story may in fact have led him down the path to really crazy.  In 1971 he broke up with his wife, Nancy Hackett.  She moved out of his life, and an amphetamine-abuse bender moved in.  In 1972, ironically the year I began reading Dick’s work, he fell in love at the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention.  That was immediately followed by erratic behavior, a break-up, and an attempted suicide overdosing on the sedative potassium bromide.  This, of course, led directly to his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly.

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The story is about a police detective who is corrupted by a dangerous addictive drug that takes him down the rabbit hole of paranoia, and being assaulted by the perception of multiple realities simultaneously.  His novel Ubik from 1969 is a story of psychics trying to battle groups of other psychics even after they are killed by a bomb.  The crazy seems to have been building for a while.

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In 1974 he had a transcendental experience when a lady delivering medicine to his door wore a fish-shaped pendant which he said shot a pink beam into his head.   He came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and clairvoyance, and also believed it to be intelligent.  He would later admit to believing he had been reincarnated as the prophet Elijah.

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Imagination has its dangers.  It is a powerful thing able to transform reality.  Science fiction writers often use their imagination to shape what the future will actually make come into being.  But it can also turn your mind inside out.  A great science fiction writer like Philip K. Dick can contemplate the nature of reality and turn his own reality inside out.  It is a lesson for me, a lesson for all of us.  Wait, is that a pink beam of light I see?  No, I just imagined it.

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April 24, 2024 · 12:32 am

Astronuts in Spacetime

I have always cherished science fiction. Not just Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Not just Star Trek and Star Wars. But all of it. Buck Rodgers, Flash Gordon, Brick Bradford, Galaxy Quest, Mars Attacks, and E.T.

Space is important to me. I feel like all of mankind will be a failure as a species if they don’t start moving out amongst the stars.

It’s not just that I am ensorcelled by the magical adventures that space-travel stories mixed with a romantic view of facing existential danger with a smile and a ray-gun can provide.

I watched with wide 12-year-old eyes when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon for the very first time.

That was all the way back in 1969!

I am disappointed that my George-Jetson expectations of life in 2023 have not even remotely been met.

Sure, computers are great. But where are the flying cars? The fishbowl helmets for walking on the Moon? Personal jetpacks to get to school and back?

It isn’t the dreamers, it’s the doers that have let me down.

And I know we could well run the risk of meeting something out there that might want to eat us.

But are we truly alive anymore if we are afraid to risk death in the face of Space Exploration and Discovery? We are not immortal. We need to achieve things that outlast us to justify our existence.

So, come on, people! Let’s make the world over again and start building cities on Mars.

Let’s start building what we have dreamt of rather than hiding from what we fear!

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April 22, 2024 · 12:28 am

The Making of a Paffooney

There is a certain amount of worry now in Mickeytown. My hands have begun to tremble. I see things that aren’t there. I have become excessively forgetful. Possibly Parkinson’s… but not diagnosed by a doctor yet.

Maybe it’s only paranoia… but that’s a Parkinson’s symptom too.

And it worries me because I need to be able to draw new Paffoonies. But it is definitely becoming harder.

Yesterday, when my computer was breaking down again, the scanner miraculously reconnected itself and began to work.

I scanned this old pen-and-ink drawing.

Do I know why I drew it, or what it is supposed to be about?

I do not.

But I can still swirl colored pencils and color within the lines, at least as well as I did when I was nine.

You may remember this one from yesterday,

Of course, forgetful me, I couldn’t remember where I had stored my best art pencils. I had to crack open the bag of old school pencils that I still have from my last hurrah as a Texas pedagogue (a word that means a teacher of children, not that other thing that the evil-minded ones among you were probably thinking.)

So, now I have a colored picture of a young-girl space traveler. What to do with it?

Like any old mad god who makes a girl come to life like this (old mad god of colored pencils, a little “g” god, not a blasphemous big “G” one,) I needed to name her and give her a story, a purpose in life.

So, I called her Cissy Moonskipper (a suitably satirical and comic sort of name playing off of Luke Skywalker.)

And I stranded her on a family-owned free-trader starship, alone in deep space. Her family is gone permanently. The ship has everything she needs to survive. She is a sole-survivor on a deserted island in deep space in an unexplored star system. And all she has is a starship owner’s manual and a copy of the novel Robinson Crusoe.

So, I added a background and now I have started a new book idea. That is essentially what a Paffooney is. Words and pictures by little ol’ me.

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