Part of the Traveller Role-Playing Game is dealing with alien races. So, as a game master for the Traveller Adventures back in the 1980’s, I had the opportunity to create alien races of my own. Truthfully, the alien Telleron race that I created for the novel Catch a Falling Star already existed in my cartoons and fiction stories before I began playing the role-playing game. The Nebulon Race, however, was invented entirely for the game. Only later did they become a part of my fiction.
So, what are Nebulons? Gyro Sinjarac on the left in the picture is an example from Aeroquest of a Nebulon. They are aliens who are human in every respect except for their blue skin. Interestingly they can even successfully interbreed with Earther humans. This is apparently due to either the evolution of Nebulons from Earther explorers, or, more likely, the galaxy being seeded with Earth humans and Earther DNA by the mysterious alien race known only as “the Ancients”. What is not debatable is that Nebulons have unique skin. The blue skin with high levels of natural copper sulfate in it has evolved as a protection from interstellar nebula radiation. No one who has learned their language and studied their culture has ever identified a planet of origin. Instead, the Nebulons have been a space-born race since humans first encountered them, travelling in their symbiotic space-whale space cruisers. They are a mysterious deep-space race of alien beings who use organic symbiotes, in other words, living creatures, as their pervasive technology.
Junior Aero makes an excellent example to use to explain what Nebulons are. You can see by this picture that not only does he possess the Nebulon blue skin, but also the bright yellow hair, the red heat-transfer cheek organs, and the small stature that makes them easily satirized as “Space Smurfs” in honor of Peyo’s beloved blue comic characters.
The Nebulons as a race are often cited as evidence of the evolutionary trend of intelligent races towards neoteny, the retention of childlike features into maturity and adulthood. Even the oldest and the most physically fit of the adult Nebulon population resemble children and young teenagers rather than Arnold-Schwarzenegger-like humans. But believing them to be soft and weak like children is a mistake that often yields tragedy for those who contend against them, especially in battle. The Nebulons have often fought in space wars like the 5th Unification War, both for and against the human-led Imperium.
But the Nebulons are not automatically at odds with humanoid races in any way. They are generally happy in demeanor and temperament, easily befriending other races, even the snake-eyed Galtorrian humans that tend to dominate the Imperium. They seem to be particularly fond of Pan-Galactican Space Cowboys, having helped them during the border conflicts with the mysterious race known as the Faceless Horde.
So, there is a glop of information about an alien race from my science-fiction comedy writing that you can sort out as you like, and can probably learn from as a science fiction writer yourself. They are probably an excellent example of what not to do when creating a science-fiction-style alien race of your own.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Man in the Mirror
Every now and again we have to stop what we are doing for a moment and examine ourselves. If we are writers, we tend to do it every fifteen minutes or so. You have to expose the soul to the light of day for a moment and take a look with eyes wide open, prepared to see the worst… but also open to seeing beauty where you may not have seen it before.
So what do I see when I look in the mirror? More darkening age spots, more patches of psoriasis with increasingly red and irritated potential infections. Drooping eyes that have lost their sparkle and now darken with blue melancholy. I see a man falling down. Falling slowly, but falling never-the-less. It happens to everybody with age. I can no longer do the job I loved for 31 years. I am no longer the goofy Reluctant Rabbit with the big pencil in the front of the classroom, telling stories and making learning happen.
Once I was a big deal to little people. Once I created magical experiences involving books and great authors, poems and great poets… and I taught little people how to write and master big words. I mattered like a big frog in a small pond, able to make the biggest splash in that particular pond. I was the froggiest. But I haven’t drawn myself as a frog yet.
Of course, I was never as big as that other Michael. He made a really big splash in a really big pond. He was a really big frog.
He and I have a lot in common. Not far off in age. We got married about the same time. Both had three kids, two boys and a girl. Both were associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses at one point. Both of us never really grew up. He had Peter Pan Syndrome, and I stayed in school my whole working life.
And everybody has a dark side, in counterpoint to their better angels. I’m not entirely sure what my dark side entails. Being a grouch? A diabetic? A closet nudist? But I have one. I trot it out to make fun of it constantly.
But as I was feeling sorry for myself, being forced by the city to remove the pool, becoming a bankrupt poor guy thanks to Bank of America, and generally in such ill health that I feel like I am wearing a lead suit all the time, I stumbled across one of those life-affirming moments. A former student asked me on Facebook to post a picture of myself so he could see how I was doing. I posted this picture.
Yep, the man in the mirror is definitely me. I got loads of complements and howdys from former students, former colleagues, a former grade school classmate, and my Aunt Wilma. I heard from people I care about and they reaffirmed that they still care about me, even though some of them I haven’t seen in more years than I am willing to admit. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror to see what needs to be changed. Sometimes you just need to see the precious few things that were always good and haven’t changed. It is a process worth the effort.
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Filed under battling depression, commentary, empathy, feeling sorry for myself, grumpiness, humor, insight, inspiration, Paffooney, rabbit people, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as humor, Michael Beyer, Michael Jackson, rumination, self=examination