His reputation is evil. Bent on destruction, the Dark Lord exists to exterminate those who refuse to submit to his will. He’s been known to randomly snuff out lives for simple misunderstandings and disagreements. Obliterate entire worlds through that diabolical intergalactic weapon-megastructure-spaceship known as the Death Start. Not one to mess around, this guy doesn’t take nothing from nobody, no how.
You know who I mean.
Yeah, it’s the Darthster. Good Ol’ Vader.
So why is it that this fearsome foe has taken on such a cute and cuddly image? I mean, look at the above picture. I know I’d love to have this on my front lawn, except it’d probably get stolen. It doesn’t end there, however. I’ve looked around just to see the vast selection of cute and cuddly Christmas gifts one could slip under the tree. After all, Thanksgiving is next week and we all know what that means: SHOPPING.
Here’s a few ways that everyone’s favorite baddie has been humiliated through mass marketing.
Who better than to greet our guests with a Darth Vader candy dish? If you think about it, his dark reputation isn’t beyond offering unwelcome visitors with a piece of rejected candy, like all the green Starbursts. He’ll just dare you to take a piece. And hey, if you don’t like it, well, then…complain at your own risk…
What better way to get out of bed in the morning than being strong-armed by Darth? Here he is, marching towards your mattress, ready to hurl you to the floor if you don’t get up already. His chest bears the time, reminding you that if you’re late for your appointment with doom, there’s far worse consequences for you in store.
Brrr…it’s cold out there in galaxies far, far away. What better way to stylishly keep warm and carry our Dark Lord’s message of cheer? This holiday sweater comes in three fashionable colors, and is suitably tacky enough to be seen at the best of Christmas parties.
Aww…Daddy Darth…doesn’t he just make you smile? Taking little Luke out for ice cream, or playing tea party with Leia, he does his best to be attentive, except after a busy day with the twins, and then he conks out, like any Daddy would.
Darth had to start somewhere, even though at his birth he couldn’t possibly know he’d be reborn as a helmeted hellion. I’m not sure what’s more hilarious – a pacifier or the onesies it goes with. Perhaps Luke and Leia wore the second piece?
Darth’ll protect your latest novel or business spreadsheet from ever getting lost…that is, until you forget to take this stick drive out of your pocket and slip those trousers in the wash. Then you’ll face the consequences of the Dark Side.
The next time you tool around the universe in the Death Star, be sure to be prepared with this stylish spinner suitcase. There’s plenty of room for your light saber and all other accoutrements of waging intergalactic Empire wars.
Ah, there’s nothing like being able to relax after a hard day of fighting off your sworn enemies. This chillaxin’ chair offers cushiony comfort for even the toughest of badasses.
Who’s gonna mess with your kid when Darth’s on patrol? The eyes seem a little too weird for me, but that ready-to-go light saber tells me he’s at your kid’s side to fight off the ghosties and goblins lurking under the bed.
C’mon. You. Want. This.
I’m sure Darth’d rather be spinning in his grave with deep humiliation if he only knew he’d be paired with Yoda in a Santa suit. Darth won’t go that far, but he awkwardly holds a candy cane just to show he can be a good sport about these things.
So there you have it! Your must-have Darthness for Darthmas – a holiday EVERYONE can love. Enjoy!
If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about our service…
What is it these days with businesses wanting to know how they’re doing? No matter where you go, who you see, what form you fill in or school you attend, there’s always some nosy person sticking a form or link in your face, begging to ask how things went, what they did right, wrong, fair-to-middling, or other such intrusive questions that you really don’t think hard and long enough to answer.
Take the other day, for instance. I had to go to the doctor. Nothing fancy, just a routine body inspection to make sure the organs weren’t grinding and bits weren’t falling off. Even got my arm stuck with a flu shot. Afterwards, I’m handed a clipboard. “Could you please fill this out?” says the nurse. “They want all of our patients to, nowadays. You know, to rate the service.”
I nod and smile, believing this is my opportunity to explode about my 3:15 appointment actually occurring at 4:10. That’d be admitting failure and besides, they already know they’d be inviting a lot more than negative responses. And it isn’t enough that patients have to fill out a lengthy questionnaire about the myriad of ailments you didn’t have, might have had or just plain had (aren’t they supposed to know this already?). They’d like to drain whatever we’ve got left in our pocket-protected pens and finish off our opinions of what was supposed to be an already lengthy process to begin with (let’s face it: NO ONE goes to the doctor believing they’re going to be in there for any less than two hours).
Then there’s the oil change I had the other day. What’s so mind blowing about a routine procedure for your car? Apparently, the place where I took it wants to know what they could do better. I really have no idea – change the little reminder sticker to a “Hello, Kitty” stick-on that blankly stares at you to take your Chevy in at 48,000? That questionnaire came in the form of a request. “If you don’t mind, could you take five minutes and go to our website and rate our service? It’ll take less than five minutes.” Having other things to do, I simply didn’t get around to it. Today, I received a phone call on both my land line and cell reminding me to do fill in that questionnaire so they can serve me better. To really get me in trouble, they called my husband’s cell, too. I guess they think a woman isn’t capable of knowing harassment when she sees it.
Amazon’s great for relentless pressure to rate your product, too. Sure, it’s terrific for books and larger items, like washer-dryers. But do I really need to review the rubber wristband for my kid’s watch? He’s going to break it anyway in about two days, and I only ordered it because I got a few CDs and it was convenient. Yeah, I get them too from every single online order I get – shows up in my mailbox that’s devoted exclusively to receiving quasi-necessary but easily forgotten emails.
Gas stations, chain restaurants, clothes stores, the babysitter…all of them need to know what I think about them. Is self-esteem in that short of supply these days? Do we really need to be patted on the back or smacked in the face? Why?
Of course, we all know the answer: Leave. Me. Alone.
The truth is, if someone’s doing a good job, they should be told about it. Praised, even. Same goes for bad work – boy, they ought to hear about it. Voluntarily. But why go asking and asking and asking? Yeah, sure, they’re going to tell you it’s all about providing you with better service. But does it really? I haven’t noticed anyone rushing to get my doctor to see me any faster. My oil change predictably gets changed every 3000 miles and the car still runs just fine. My life hasn’t been altered because of any basic, essential or throwaway service I’ve received anywhere, and that’s including the places where I actually did fill in the survey.
Tell you what. I’d love to write a short story on the person who’s filled out one too many surveys. Imagine a corporate hack processing all of these forms. He gets that one-off where the questionee provides blunt, tasteless answers. The hack checks out the person and winds up in some kind of cyber netherworld wherein he desperately tries to fulfill requests and never, ever gets it straight. Or the woman who answers a request with snarky comments. She trips down a portal and every snippety comment she makes comes back to bite her. What kind of world would those people inhabit? Or take the classic stoning scene from Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Instead of stones, the woman has thousands of anonymous hands shoving questionnaires in her face. Her inability to gauge billions of satisfying or unsettling performances, accompanied by a pen with a very short supply of ink, causes her hand to tremor, leading to an exploding brain and quite messy demise.
Now imagine you. There you are, paying the tab at Blammo Burger, when the chipper, youthful customer service assistant asks you if that cheese-onion-sausage-kale-acai-pilchard beef burger met your definition of yummy. How you gonna respond?
Been a tough few weeks since I posted. And again, nothing horrible happened. Just me trying to reach the finish line.
After my, oh, sixth rewrite of my book, I finished it! I’m gasping and panting, sort of looking back at the experience, gazing upon it with bleary eyes, hoping I got it right this time.
Perhaps one of the most exciting, excruciating and frustrating things about putting a work of your own creation together is taking that rough assemblage of unruly words and whipping them into a recognizable form. I put off all forms of recreation and relaxation in order to finish, once and for all, this wonderful story I’ve drummed up in my head. My agent liked it very much, but said it needed work on the dialogue. My sister, the published author, liked the story but told me I gave out too many details when it wasn’t necessary.
Not wanting to rush through it, I read the whole thing through without doing one single edit. I wanted to absorb it, then take the suggestions of both my agent and sister and see how to fix it. I learned long ago not to take criticism personally. You can’t, not when you’re editing. Sure, it helps to have beta readers, and I did, but in the end your story’s going to have to win over the hearts of editors and publishers. There’s no room for taking criticism personally. I couldn’t.
Sure, my sister and I argued over plot points and she tossed my pages back at me when I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to tell me. You might say I have a different way of interpreting her lessons. But she didn’t write the book, I did, and if she can’t figure out what I’m saying, then how will the reader? And yes, once I read out loud my dialogue, my agent was right on the money – people don’t talk like that! Too stodgy, too boring, too…ugh…
So I fixed it all, wrote, rewrote and rewrote some more, even entire pages, until my eyes went numb. Fingers, too. And even after I rewrite the thing for the fifth time, I still wasn’t happy. I gave the whole kit-and-kaboodle one more look-over. Found those last few troublesome spots, as well as some missing commas, periods and other missing punctuation points.
And, for now, I’m done.
Boy, I showed those words a thing or two. So now, I’ll be making regular entries again. I missed my blog. A lot. But I’m doing a lot better now, having whipped my book into the best shape it’s ever been.
Oh God, what’s it been…nearly three weeks? That’s what happens when you’re surrounded by utter turmoil. No, nothing horrible happened. Just a lot of stuff going on and on and on. Adding to that, I’ve VERY DETERMINED to finish my fifth rewrite of my book so that my agent can go out and sell it already. Yeesh! I get so caught up in trying to snip a bit here, swap out a word there, punch up this bit and calm that bit down that next thing you know, all this time has passed. The good news is that I’m getting there and hope to really end the rewrites SOON.
But in the meantime, I’ve taken a break here and there to clear my head and bleary eyes. Last Saturday night was one of those opportunities. I felt like watching a movie but as we flipped through our various overpaid channels, the only things worth watching was “Star Trek – The Search for Spock” and “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Okay, so we can pretty much quote all the lines in each movie. And hey, we could have downloaded something. Yeah, yeah, but that would’ve taken effort. In the end, we went with “RHPC.”
After all, it’s Science Fiction, right?
Who doesn’t have a story to tell about this film? Was it your first midnight show? Did you remember to carry all the accessories and toss/hurl/light at the right moments? Someone prompt you on the right times to say the right lines?
My first experience with this film was in some theatre in Manhattan…I have no idea which one. I’d like to say it was the Waverley, but I’m probably wrong. All I remember is my friends and I carried in a whole bunch of stuff, didn’t know what to do with it, fiddled around and wound up tossing things everywhere and squirting the water gun in the wrong direction at people who weren’t happy we did. Next time, I got it straight. Got everything cued up and made sure I was on the ball. After about the ninth or tenth time, I was a pro. And no, I didn’t go every Saturday night – just when it seemed like the right thing to do. See, you could go by yourself to one of these shows and no one’d notice or care. That’s the beauty of Manhattan – you do what you want and it’s cool, man.
I got to admit, Tim Curry looked really splendid in his getup as a Transylvanian Transvestite. The role suited him. And you know what? Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon did too. They’re all forever locked into their own time warp, playing one of their early roles over and over again, never aging, never breaking out in other roles, doomed to live in the same crazy environment until…until…it’s time to do the time warp again.
Once, I had the opportunity to see “The Rocky Horror Show,” the play upon which the film is based. My friend Carl just happened to get tickets for a midnight showing of it. See, twice a year, Broadway theaters put on performances for just their own – usually at or after midnight. Once all the theaters go dark, one stays open and puts on a performance for those who work the shows – cast, crew, house staff. Often the money raised at the door is given to a particular charity. Carl took me to one of these performances. We had fantastic seats (he knew someone, of course) and the narrator, the iconic Dick Cavett – stood about four inches away from us, reading his part. As we entered the theater, we received a bag of all the proper accessories to make the performance complete. Carl HAD NEVER SEEN THE MOVIE and so I had to go through the bag and let him in on when one uses the contents.
Oh God, what a great evening that was. I have to say it’s much better than watching the usual live performers who act out the movie in front of it…although there’s a lot to be said for them, too. As I hopped out of my cab at 3:00 am, I was awful glad I took the next day off from work (it was a Friday, anyway) and it seemed like I was in on something. A secret club, maybe.
Now, there’s a tribute to the 40th anniversary of the movie. YouTube had this posted from NBC’s “Today Show”:
It gives you the rundown of the 40 glorious years this movie’s been on screens throughout the world.
But perhaps the most important thing from the film is this: its underlying message. It’s a good one to carry around with you, no matter where you go or what you do.
Autumn, fall, change of the seasons, whatever you call it, occurs in the northern hemisphere on September 23 at 8:20 UTC. It’s a time when things start winding down in gardens, the kids are probably already back in school and you’re looking at your heating bill with a bit of trepidation, knowing that winter’s beating a steady path to your door.
But let’s stick with autumn for now.
Autumn occurs when the sun hits a point in the sky called the autumnal equinox, or here:
Credit: H.A. Rey, “The Stars”
It’s the little “V” you see underneath Virgo’s head, as if she fell down and tripped on the ecliptic (the path in the sky where the sun, moon and stars “travel” along the zodiac). The sun hits this spot on or about 21 September each year, but as noted above, this year it falls on the 23 September. But if you look in the newspaper or even on many weather web sites, you’ll notice that the times of sunrise and sunset are anything but equal. It’s close, but not exactly 12 hours of day and dark. A lot of that depends upon your latitude. The further south you go, that date creeps into October.
Here’s a handy chart to show sunrise and sunset times for New York You’ll see day and night aren’t equal until September 26. Why? You’ll find an explanation here.
This National Geographic video explains not only the autumnal equinox, but also nifty cultural practices that go along with it.
(You might want to watch it before Rupert Murdoch gets ahold of it and turns it into an exploitive clip about the sun ripping off the nighttime sky by getting dark earlier and earlier).
Want to hear the definitive theme song of autumn? Here’s a short, catchy tune by the band Screeching Weasel called “First Day of Autumn”:
Most important of all, nighttime sky watches CAN’T MISS the total eclipse of the moon! It takes place on September 27/28, 2015. Click here for details to look out for it in your neck of the woods. In New York, it actually begins at a decent time, starting at 8:11 pm, with the full eclipse occurring at 10:11 and lasting until 10:47. If you haven’t seen a total lunar eclipse, it’s worth watching. It’s a slow process, but you’ll have time to truly enjoy it. Don’t take your eyes off of it between 9:50 and 10:15 – watching the moon turn red is the coolest thing ever. Break out your binoculars!
A few weeks ago I wrote about space junk. This entry’s a bit different. And yes, while this stuff was deliberately placed there, it’s not your garden-variety space program detritus. It’s all simply for fun.
My first entry has an awful lot to do with “Star Wars,” which, thanks to Disney utterly saturating the market without mercy, hasn’t quite gone this far to promote their film. In fact, the producers of this little clever snippet are garnering worldwide attention just to snatch a couple of opening night tickets. Hey, for what it’s worth, I say these guys deserve it! Attaching an X-wing fighter to a weather balloon’s a pretty nifty idea and puts a bit of a scientific spin on a sci-fi icon.
But why stop at an X-wing fighter? Haven’t you ever wondered what would happen if a pink glazed doughnut took a updraft hike?
Credit: Stratolys
Curiosity knows no bounds as a small team of Swedes gather in what appears to be a running track and launched the first doughnut into space. There’s little fanfare, but it seems the Coast Guard comes to the rescue.
Now that you fought a war and ate a doughnut because you’re starved, how about celebrating your achievements with some space whisky? Ria Misra from i09 writes about gross-tasting, overpriced whisky that Ardbeg, a single malt Islay Scotch whisky company tested, was sent in space to the ISS in 2011 and returned to earth in 2014. Hey, it was worth a try, eh?
Credit: Ardbeg
Clearly, those with enough money and resources know what’s going to capture attention. Sure, doughnuts and X-wing fighters are great do-it-yourself projects. But we’re talking classy booze here! Discriminating palates await! After a hard day’s walk out into the Great Vacuum, you’re going to relax and take a nip or two.
But for those of us stuck here on the ground, there’s always this:
I’ll admit I’m the first person who hates flying, but I do it anyway. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the vessels that transport people from A to B. However, the winged method of transportation I’m talking about here are joyrides of a different kind – military style.
Yes, this past weekend Stewart Airport hosted the New York Air Show, a parade of the latest and vintage military aerial vehicles dating back to World War II. My husband, Andrew Chattaway, a photographer, shot all of the pictures you will see (except the one above – I did that). Andrew, me and our son Matt braved the heat and crowds of 15,000 people to get up close to classic planes and helicopters. I even had the chance to go inside a Chinook and sit in the pilot’s seat. Despite $3.00 bottles of water, parking about a two days’ journey away and standing the entire four hours we were there, we had a magnificent time.
Here, let me show you some of the sights of this fantastic show. And if anyone’s looking to do research for space vehicles, you’ll find plenty of inspiration here!
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
This is a beautiful example of a B-Class Bomber from World War II with its payload doors open.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Here’s a U.S. Marine Corps AV-88 Harrier. This bad boy’s totally cool feature is that it hovered over the runway for what seemed like ever, much to the crowd’s appreciation.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
U.S. Army helicopter rescue demonstration, achieved in mere moments.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Geico Skytypers do an amazing job of scrolling trails and daredevil stunts
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Old-fashioned stunt flying that made everyone, us included, hold our breath.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
The U.S. Navy F-18 Super Hornet flies gracefully in just about any direction – straight, sideways or upside down.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Here’s a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor really showed everyone that it pretty much could do anything, including blast out our eardrums. It went past us at 700 miles per hour and left such a retort that my ear, blocked by my hands, banged anyway. Take a look at this thing – it really seems like some kind of alien attack vessel, you know, the kind that comes down by the millions from the mother ship hovering just above our atmosphere.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
At the end of the show flew a top-of-the-line WWII fighter plane next to the F-22 Raptor. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like much of a comparison. Yet both flew proudly and with such grace, it really was a marvel to watch. The F-22 slowed to keep in time with its much older companion, but it didn’t take away from the fact that both protected our nation and allies.
Well, I hope Andrew’s photos inspire you to write some really good speculative sci-fi, military sci-fi, what your father did during the war (any) or present you with the opportunity just to marvel at some really incredible feats of aviation engineering. Enjoy!
Steampunk surrounds itself with proto-modern examples of past ingenuity updated for today. Take, for example, the above video. It’s described as the best steampunk robot of 2014. I didn’t fact-check to make certain it was, I merely took its word. What’s obvious is any steampunking robot has to prove its worth by dancing…and it does…to great accolades from the audience.
A category woefully underrepresented is animated Steampunk. James Lopez, a former Disney animator, has set about to create his dream, Hullabaloo. He crowd funded the project and updates are regularly found on the Hullabaloo Facebook Page and official website. Using 2-D techniques instead of computers, this project does homage to the past by actually recreating it – by hand drawing the cels, just like they did back in the day.
Has anyone seen this? It’s been making a tour of Facebook pages over the globe. How do I know? Just Google it and you’ll see. Here’s dancing of a sort, although I must admit I have no idea what’s the purpose. Sure, the guy in silver seems to be a superhero type, beating up the Godzilla-ish beast, but how does the bear-y thing justify jumping hysterically while clutching Godzilla’s tail? I mean, what’s really going on here?
This, my friends, is a classic. I first saw this Kikkoman anime around the turn of the millennium. A friend sent it to me when emails were still kind of new and fresh, as was the internet. As far as bizarre things go, this one definitely holds the test of time. The accompanying tune is unavoidably infectious – just try to not hum, “Kikkoman, Kikkoman, show you, show me…” It shows even better if you’re altering your own reality through artificial means, too.
Hope you didn’t make any plans to take that much-needed restful vacation to Puerto Rico from September 15-28, 2015. And while that’s the heart of the hurricane season, this wrath-of-nature event’s going to create giant waves not as the result of intense low pressure, but the crashing of a honking huge space rock. Yes, folks, this sucker’s got our name on it and it’s that apocalyptic nightmare we’ve been long warned about. So if any of you were thinking about paying bills or going to college, your time’d be better spent making plans of an otherworldly sort – the kind that involves a sudden belief in religion and hoping that all of those priests, preachers and other sorts are right.
NOT!
Oh geez, here we go again. Once again, life on Earth is going to end. Or that’s what they’d like you to believe on the internet.
So much buzz and inquiry flew around in cyberspace that the American authority on such matters, NASA, had to release a statement that categorically denied our home planet’s days were numbered.
As things go, this latest rumor of our planet’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. There is no asteroid, the Earth is still planning to turn and as far as vacations to Puerto Rico are concerned, it’s still hurricane season and you still might want to check the forecast before you leave.
Back in 1982, a rare alignment of all nine planets (back then, Pluto was considered one) occurred. Our entire solar system lined up within a 95° arc, all on one side of the sun in March of that year. This amazing event prompted horrific rumors of devastating earthquakes, shifts in gravitational forces and life as we know it’d go the way of Betamax players (also popular at the time). And no Earth-ending force would be complete without California’s San Andreas fault sliding off the West Coast and offering the residents of Arizona the beachfront property they’d been longing for. Of course, no one would have even given this planetary lineup a second thought had it not been for the book written by John Gribbin, Ph.D., and Stephen Plagemann, called The Jupiter Effect, published in 1974. For some reason, nothing really happened except nighttime sky observers had a fantastic view. Not long after, Gribbin and Plagemann published, The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, backtracking to say the actual event occurred in 1980 and was responsible for the monumental eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Finally, in 1999, Gribbin admitted he might have been mistaken about the whole thing.
There seems to be no end of apocalyptic predictions, it seems – humankind thrives on them. Most of them seem to revolve around Christ coming again and bible predictions, or some deity wreaking havoc, or even a random event magically pull the plug on our planet. To illustrate, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive (although by no means complete) list of popular end-of-it-all predictions. Suffice it to say, we’re all still here.
Why is it seemingly so popular to want life to end on our planet? Lots of reasons. Those in power used it as a means to control less sophisticated types, while others, through limited means of scientific understanding, considered such celestial events as comets to be a omen of death. The same goes for plagues, droughts and other extreme weather events, earthquakes, eclipses and more. I remember as a kid hearing Pat Robertson of the 700 Club predict the world would end in 1982. Why? He was a big fan of the Antichrist and figured that’d be a good time as any for the devil to show up. That, and this prediction bolstered viewers for his popular TV show. Hey, wouldn’t you want the latest details of your demise? Of course, if you were God’s Chosen, you’d be lifted up in The Rapture…and all of his viewers were special, natch.
Alas, as long as humans trod the earth, there will be naysayers for its future. The Assyrians are famously known for making this oft-quoted prediction, way back in 2800 BC:
“Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”
I’ve been glancing through the headlines, as most of you do, I’m sure, to not only figure out what’s going on in this world but perhaps troll up some fodder for fiction. When I’m stuck or need a break, I put down the project at hand, pick this up and scan headlines. Not blogs or other social media, but that quaint little collection of light grey pages that lands at the end of a driveway or plops on a porch.
Yep. A newspaper.
I subscribe to two local papers, have several digital subscriptions and read all sorts of magazines, both online and print. Listen to a whole bunch of different podcasts. From these sources, a virtual (literally) treasure trove of really neat stuff’s just waiting to be picked and eaten, occasionally alive. Though you might already know the stories and the sources, it’s worth consideration for sci-fi stories.
Random inspiration: El Nino (“the child” – male), a slumbering pre-conquistedor kid, awakes from his long-forgotten grave when San Diego sewer workers open up a bit of the freeway to repair a broken water main. See, this kid’s the ancient victim of a sacred ritual wherein young innocents’ lives were sacrificed to The Holy One in order to bring warmth and water for crops to grow. Trouble is, after one long, lingering look at his hot wet-nurse, this youngster planned to grow to adulthood. Kid’s last thoughts, right before his neck slicing, conjured up a curse, promising a time when his bones are discovered, he’ll unleash his vengeance and both fry and flood California. So when our unsuspecting sewer workers jackhammer and pickax the asphalt on a typical July morning, the steam rising from the broken pipe isn’t evidence of a pipe failure, it’s EL NINO manifesting a physical form so he can wreaked havoc with the weather…and unite with the one woman who’d give him what he needed.
Random inspiration: Though they might appear to be missing Japanese climbers, they are, in fact, only the remains of higher ascended beings who shed their disguises after studying the lives of those on Earth. Meeting at the foot of the Matterhorn glacier, their intergalactic stellercaster ship gracefully landed when said mountain, enveloped in dense fog, provided a safe and mysterious curtain for rescue. Once aboard, duo relates horrific story of nuclear war, cold war, resource depletion and disintegrating moral values, especially those having to do with free love. Ignoring all of the former and attentive to only the latter observation, lonely shipmates ditch the spacecraft to come ashore on this wild planet to learn a few firsthand lessons of their own.
So you see? It’s not much of a leap from reality to sci-fi. All that’s needed is a quick read between the lines and a spin on the details. After all, it’s what politicians do every day. Why not you?
Moon, Stars and Beyond 