More of the Same, Just Because
DIRTY LAUNDRY 3
"A Recipe for Sour Mash"
Two of the most attractive genres/subgenres for young people in the late 1970s/early 1980s were the revived space opera (Star Wars, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Space: 1999) and the car chase-intensive "dramadie" (Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey and the Bandit, Corvette Summer, etc.). Of course, a mass media-addled brain like mine could easily see the possibility of combining the two...
In some technically advanced but politically corrupt star system in the Milky Way, a Captain and First Mate of a space freighter see their ship confiscated by the local authorities due to a loophole in the Stellar Navigation Act the government is exploiting out of pure greed. When their court appeal to reclaim their ship goes nowhere, the two men (yeah, they're Good Ol' Boys of the Spaceways) go outlaw, steal a (Star Trek: DS9 runabout-sized) shuttlecraft and hot-rod it with new engines and weapons. Then they raid the authorities' enforcement assets all over the galaxy, leading wild lightspeed chases through space and causing interstellar havoc.
No, I had no illusions that this was going to be Hard SF. This was lowbrow SF at its stupidest, and I would have been damn proud of it at the time I was concocting it.
DIRTY LAUNDRY 4
"The War That Never Ended, But Should Have"
I had an unnatural fascination with World War Two since about first grade. Relatives of mine (heck, relatives of just about EVERYBODY) served in the military then. Movies about the war still played on TV frequently then. War comics were plentiful, in spite of it being just after the Vietnam war. People were beginning to feel a little nostalgic about a time that seemed to be the apex of American nobility and idealist desires. As somebody who never lived through the troubled time, my view of the conflict was naively skewed.
I tried several times to invent a World War Two-setting comic. Like all of my other projects, these stunk to high heaven. The main thrust of these came from the time my brother and I would play epic rounds of Carrier Strike! (a Milton Bradley board game--which I still own). We played House Rules; I let my brother play the Americans and almost always let him win. The resulting story, then, was about a flotilla of American aircraft carriers in the Pacific War and the pilots of their embarked squadrons--a proto-Top Gun without the love interest or the rock soundtrack. Or to look at it another way, a revisionist Buzz Sawyer. The central characters would be two brothers...assigned to different ships but often participating on the same missions. The younger brother would be a hotshot ace with one of the fighter squadrons, the elder brother a long time veteran of the attack bomber forces.
A second concept was a mishmash of dozens of influences, set in the China/Burma theater (ala Terry and the Pirates). A Southerner American expatriate (serving in a British colonial fighter squadron because his criminal record back Stateside forbid him from joining the Army), gets involved in a plot involving the betrayal of his unit by a profiteer in the officer ranks. Likewise, he has a relative (a cousin) serving as a bomber pilot in the American forces in the same theater. A subplot of the story dealt with an ancient evil power the Japanese were exploiting against the Chinese.
Of course I realize now that what I was doing was cliche and politically incorrect. I'm a big fan of Ted Nomura these days; I doubt I could do anything like he does. Knowing is half the battle.
FP
"A Recipe for Sour Mash"
Two of the most attractive genres/subgenres for young people in the late 1970s/early 1980s were the revived space opera (Star Wars, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Space: 1999) and the car chase-intensive "dramadie" (Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey and the Bandit, Corvette Summer, etc.). Of course, a mass media-addled brain like mine could easily see the possibility of combining the two...
In some technically advanced but politically corrupt star system in the Milky Way, a Captain and First Mate of a space freighter see their ship confiscated by the local authorities due to a loophole in the Stellar Navigation Act the government is exploiting out of pure greed. When their court appeal to reclaim their ship goes nowhere, the two men (yeah, they're Good Ol' Boys of the Spaceways) go outlaw, steal a (Star Trek: DS9 runabout-sized) shuttlecraft and hot-rod it with new engines and weapons. Then they raid the authorities' enforcement assets all over the galaxy, leading wild lightspeed chases through space and causing interstellar havoc.
No, I had no illusions that this was going to be Hard SF. This was lowbrow SF at its stupidest, and I would have been damn proud of it at the time I was concocting it.
DIRTY LAUNDRY 4
"The War That Never Ended, But Should Have"
I had an unnatural fascination with World War Two since about first grade. Relatives of mine (heck, relatives of just about EVERYBODY) served in the military then. Movies about the war still played on TV frequently then. War comics were plentiful, in spite of it being just after the Vietnam war. People were beginning to feel a little nostalgic about a time that seemed to be the apex of American nobility and idealist desires. As somebody who never lived through the troubled time, my view of the conflict was naively skewed.
I tried several times to invent a World War Two-setting comic. Like all of my other projects, these stunk to high heaven. The main thrust of these came from the time my brother and I would play epic rounds of Carrier Strike! (a Milton Bradley board game--which I still own). We played House Rules; I let my brother play the Americans and almost always let him win. The resulting story, then, was about a flotilla of American aircraft carriers in the Pacific War and the pilots of their embarked squadrons--a proto-Top Gun without the love interest or the rock soundtrack. Or to look at it another way, a revisionist Buzz Sawyer. The central characters would be two brothers...assigned to different ships but often participating on the same missions. The younger brother would be a hotshot ace with one of the fighter squadrons, the elder brother a long time veteran of the attack bomber forces.
A second concept was a mishmash of dozens of influences, set in the China/Burma theater (ala Terry and the Pirates). A Southerner American expatriate (serving in a British colonial fighter squadron because his criminal record back Stateside forbid him from joining the Army), gets involved in a plot involving the betrayal of his unit by a profiteer in the officer ranks. Likewise, he has a relative (a cousin) serving as a bomber pilot in the American forces in the same theater. A subplot of the story dealt with an ancient evil power the Japanese were exploiting against the Chinese.
Of course I realize now that what I was doing was cliche and politically incorrect. I'm a big fan of Ted Nomura these days; I doubt I could do anything like he does. Knowing is half the battle.
FP