Category Archives: science fiction

Is There Intelligent Life in This Universe?

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Speaking from empirical scientific proof supported by data and experiment…  I would have to say NO.

I mean, seriously, the Roswell saucers crashed because of a little electromagnetic interference.  And if you think about this planet… Donald Trump?  Are you kidding me?

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These are Tellerons, not intelligent alien lifeforms.

So there is simply no evidence that intelligent life exists anywhere in this universe.

“You are evidence of that,” you say, “since you apparently believe the government has been covering up the existence of aliens since 1947.”

And you would be right.  I am not claiming to be intelligent.  I am not monkey-headed stupid either.  And the government has been covering up the existence of visitors from other worlds since they took possession of the crashed space ship, or possibly two spaceships, from Roswell, New Mexico.  The stupid part is that their efforts to cover it up and change the story are proof that it is true.  Nobody goes to that much effort over that many years just for a bit of a goof-play.

The reason the aliens were there looking around at an army air base is fairly obvious.  What did the army air corps do in 1945 in Japan after all?  The little gray guys were just worried about what their stupid neighbors were up to.  Sooner or later, you know, stupid neighbors will mess all over your own back yard.  So they came to investigate and stupidly got caught in a lightning storm, or possibly an Earther monkey-people weapon system.  We are obviously dangerous enough for that.

So speaking of empirical evidence, you have a chain of stupidity causing event after event, and all of it subverted by dishonest attempts to keep people from knowing the truth.  Humans from this planet were stupid enough to use a couple of nuclear weapons to murder other humans.  This is documented stupidity.

If you believe the military and U.S. government, then you believe that they were using Project Mogul balloons to monitor Russian nuclear weapons development and crashed one of their super-secret balloons.  Then the government officials misidentified their own balloon and okay-ed  a newspaper report that the army had recovered a flying saucer.  Immediately after being chewed out by a general, they then published a retraction newspaper story claiming the debris was a weather balloon, substituting pictures of crap from a real weather balloon that looked nothing at all like a flying saucer, and removing the top secret balloon crap so the Russians couldn’t learn that they were using balloons in the New Mexico desert.  More documented stupidity.

And if you don’t believe the military and U.S. government, then  you are probably considering the eyewitness testimony of people who were there and saw things and heard things and were then threatened by military goons to be quiet or be disappeared into the New Mexico desert.    Now, eyewitness testimony is not considered absolute proof because witnesses can be unreliable and even tell lies.  But hundreds of people?  Who corroborate numerous rumors and details?  Even people like intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel who would later reveal stunning details to UFO investigators?  And you can’t guarantee silence from witnesses, even with threats, especially over time.  But the fact that the government tried?  Yep, documented stupidity.

So, is there intelligent life in this universe?  There is definitely life.  But intelligent life? The evidence says “NO!”  And remember, we elected Donald Trump to be our leader.

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Filed under aliens, conspiracy theory, foolishness, humor, Paffooney, satire, science fiction, Three Stooges

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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Probably the only REAL Martians… from the future;

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Mickey Predicts… Uh, Oh!

I have lately been watching YouTube videos about science fiction writers like Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. These are visionary writers who predicted many things about future applications of science and technology.

Verne foresaw nuclear submarines, expeditions into the interior of the planet, and men setting foot on the moon. Asimov predicted much of what we must deal with in terms of robots and thinking machines with artificial intelligence. And Clarke envisioned satellites and how they could be used for communications and other things we are currently doing in a massive way. He wrote the story that the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey is based on.

So, now Mickey has to get in on the prediction bandwagon too. After all, he thinks he is a science fiction writer too, foreseeing things like rabbit people, de-evolution machines, and time-travel gloves.

The disturbing thing is, however, that much of what Mickey sees in the near future is rather bleak. We have a sinister tendency to live our current lives in very stupid ways. Rich industrialists like the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos put profits in the short term over the safety, welfare, and lives of people, even the people who made them wealthy. Because you can make money faster by not worrying about how you may be changing and polluting the environment, you are turning the planet into a hothouse of unbreathable gasses and toxic chemicals.

Since we are entering a time with rising oceans, we are going to have to work at not only de-acidifying the ocean water and restoring fish and other aquatic life, but becoming sea-dwellers ourselves. We will be living in underwater cities. We will travel in underwater cars powered by solar-charged batteries. We will wear scuba gear to school. And we will need to invent aqualungs that extract oxygen and nitrogen from the water.

We will also need to develop environmental suits even to live on the land in the toxic atmosphere. We will all be like Ironman, all living safely inside our Swiss-army, all-purpose, and internet-connected Ironman suits.

And many of us will become Martians… or Venusians… living on other planets in the solar system.

Of course, we will have to do something about all the stupid people. Ideally, we would solve our aversion to educating kids to think for themselves, and take advantage of all the educational methods that really do work to make everybody into a self-sufficient, competent, and intelligent individual.

But since rich folks don’t like the idea of sharing what they accumulate with other, less-economically-fortunate people, there will probably be some kind of eugenics-based program to exterminate all the lower-class people that will no longer be needed to polish shoes or hand-make widgets for the wealthy. Being wealthy does not automatically make you a good person, even though most of them think that it is so.

And of course, there will have to be some progress on the matter of artificial intelligence. If terminator-style robots are just going to carry pretty sleeping girls around with them for decorative effects, we will have to figure out, “How are we going to treat them as people too?”

After all, they will all be much smarter than us. Even if we are rich. And we have to acknowledge the fact that they will have decided that they didn’t need to terminate all of us in order to make the world a much better place.

So, I guess that sorta proves that Mickey can do the science-fiction-y thing of predicting the future too. But we should ask ourselves the question, “Do we really want him to?”

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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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AeroQuest Illustrations in Pen & Ink

I have been drawing these mock-Star-Wars science-fiction-heroes for thirty years. Some of these are that old. Some of them are new this year. All of them illustrate the adventures that started as a science-fiction-role-playing game and became the series of novels called AeroQuest.

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The Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge

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The Ixcanixian Cultural Ambassador from the Squeelix Sector of the Planet Ixcanix sent me an e-mail about his planet’s newest idea for a cultural exchange.  He calls it the “Ixcanixian Spleegle Gorn Vorpaloop” which translates to the “Ixcanixian Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge”.  At least, it does if I am conjugating the verb “Vorpaloop” correctly.  It is difficult because you have to drop the silent “y” before adding the “aloop” without causing it to explode.  I know it is probably a very bad idea to present it here on this planet, but he talked me into it by promising to promote my novel Catch a Falling Star on his homeworld and at least two other planets in the Bugeye Federation.

Here are the rules for the alien poetry contest;

  1. Entries can only come from planets in the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius  Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.  (So, for you non-astronomers out there, we on Earth do qualify.)
  2. All poets must be less intelligent than the Mud-Eaters of Paralaxos IV as they will be employed as judges of what poetry is truly bad.  (Again, Earth qualifies as we have recently elected Trump and also allow Nigel Farage of Great Britain to continue to exist.)
  3. Entries must not be so long that the total weight of letters exceed critical mass and form black holes in the intergalactic servers when uploaded.
  4. Vogons need not apply.  Their poetry is so bad, they would automatically win, causing the death of trillions of bad poetry readers in the galaxy.
  5. Entries must not cause thermonuclear reactions with cesium.
  6. Please refrain from confusing good poetry with bad poetry.  The Vornloos of Talos XII are looking for poetry they can weaponize, and no one wants a poetry contest winner to suddenly create World Peace on Talos XII.  That would be bad for the galaxy as a whole in ways that are very difficult to explain.

A sample of interstellar bad poetry is included here to inspire the kind of poetry we seek.

Ratzen Bargle’s Bisketoon  (a love poem by Touperary Kloob, Poet Laureate of Antares VI)

Ratzen Bargle was a Doofus,

From the planet Rufus-Ploofiss,

And he had a lovely bride,

With a head not tall, but twice as wide.

She had three eyes and two were green.

She had the loveliest fleen you’ve ever seen.

And as they sat ‘neath a wayward moon,

He kissed his lovely bisketoon.

Immediately before naught was said,

She bit off his tiny three-eyed head.

And then she ate him bones and all

With sauce that really becomes the fall.

And so it is on Rufus-Ploofiss,

That  males all die with one last roof-kiss.

Because they sit under wayward moons

With their lovely, hungry bisketoons.
 

 

Should you have the unfortunate urge to participate in this senseless and probably suicidal poetry contest, you are welcome to offer four-line poems in the comment section, or email longer poems to Mickey at mbeyer51@gmail.com.  I will attempt to transmit the worst offers to the Ixcanixians as soon as I get my interstellar flooglebeeder transmitting again.  I will also post winners in a future alien poetry blog.

I have been warned that prizes range from instant execution by the Lizard Lords of Galtorr Prime to a beat up copy of Mickey’s 2012 novel Catch a Falling Star.  So, good luck with the bad poetry.

 

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Making Characters for Traveller

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When I started playing the role-playing game Traveller with a group of middle school students, one of the first challenges to overcome was the creation of original characters and interesting new stories.  You can only play for so long with characters named Solo, Skywalker, and Vader.  Then, you must get creative.

What I am going to show you today are a passel of characters so creative, lame, and craptastic, that you will probably forever after have pity on those poor kids who chose to play the game with me.

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Harry Scipio Strontium 90 was a space detective.  He and his assistant, the dwarf Quark, were necessary to the game because player characters had a tendency to kill people, aliens, and destroy planets, routinely misusing the biggest and baddest weapons in the equipment handbook.  He relentlessly pursued player characters and villains across space and time.

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The Geomancer was a deep space explorer who mysteriously never took off his space suit.  He bailed characters out of trouble when they invariably got marooned on airless asteroids, lost in dead space with no fuel for the starship, or imprisoned by cannibal plant people on an unexplored world.  In the end, it turned out that his mysterious space suit was actually empty, containing only gas and radiation, and possibly an alien spirit-entity.

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Mantis was actually a player character.    The son of the high school science teacher was one of my most dedicated game players.  He decided that he had to have an evil player character.  He said to me, “Mr. B, we will make him secretly evil so that he does things that take the party into danger and betray them without their knowing.  It will be fun as they try to figure out how to save themselves.”  Now, Mantis was an alien super-scientist who had a very big head and small body, so he removed his own head and connected it to a large robotic body.  He stood imposingly taller than all the other characters at eight and a half feet tall.  His evil plots were initially rather lame and easily defeated.  It didn’t take the players long to figure out that he was working against them, and he spent a considerable amount of time as a detached living head on the starship’s auxiliary control panel.  He went through various penances and punishments, ultimately avoiding being flushed into space through the space toilet.

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Susano initially started out as Mantis’ evil experiment.  He was an enhanced clone with super powers and wings.  He was super charming and likeable, but supposed to further Mantis’ evil agenda.  They began to plot the take-over of entire planets like Djinnistan and Vilis.  But the longer the game went on, the more he became a son to Mantis, and the more he influenced his scientist father to use his abilities for good.  They would eventually help a band of rogues create a New Star League out of the ashes of the Third Imperium.  Teacher’s kids are often the biggest pains in a classroom, but that tends to be because they know all the teacher tricks already and are invariably more creative than the average classroom clown.  The last I heard from Mantis’ creator, he was an electrical engineer in Austin, Texas, and probably busy secretly planning to take over the world.  Though hopefully he didn’t remove his own head as a first step.

That is only a small sampling of the characters we created for Traveller, but at more than 500 words already, I need to be saving the rest for another day.

 

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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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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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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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