 storms, blood-thirsty creatures of all kinds contrast violently with the paradisal beauty of the scenery.
11. All three age groups are increasingly fascinated by Amerindians and secret wisdom. The White Indian series of Donald Clayton Porter, Castaneda’s books, Stephen R. Donaldson’s series, the Don Coldsmith series of the Spanish Bit Saga, even William Sander’s The Wild Blue and the Gray with its Cherokee Indian hero, testify to the best-selling properties of the theme. My series contains Amerindians, secret wisdom, and “White Indians.” The Amerindian characters in the series hold pivotal positions in the plot.
12. All three age groups are enamored of intricate time travel yarns. Poul Anderson’s The Shield of Time (1990) is still current reading. Time travel also figures in The Wild Blue and the Gray and Rose Estes’ The Hunter on Arena (1990). Terry Gilliam’s “12 Monkeys” cinematic nightmare world of the future connects with an almost equally macabre past in order for the time-traveler to discover a way to save his future world from a Doomsday Plague that has killed billions of people and put the survivors in sewers. In my series we have a planet spinning, technologically, back in time. It plunges from the zenith of the 22nd Century Crystal Age to wind-powered society, and thence to the tooth and claw of Dark Age society and a era dominated by alien spider-scorpions and superhuman mutants. The series spans over 5,000 years, which gives plenty of scope for the action, while communication takes place between both ends of the time continuum, connecting the 20th Century to the 60th!
13. Adults and growing numbers of young adults suspect there is a giant conspiracy in the scientific-political arena. My series is timely and will be judged so by millions of Americans who have grown increasingly aware of the dominant and clandestine position non-partisan elitist establishments--who enjoy “Black Project” status and nearly unlimited funding for their projects--enjoy and have enjoyed for many decades in this society. This question is openly discussed on radio and people are very concerned, many of them very angered and frustrated. The HARP project on Alaska’s North Slope is but one instance of dozens of billion-dollar mega-projects they see as evidence of an elite that no one seems able to control. The conspiracy syndrome, clearly shown in the latest film on the Kennedy assassination, fuels some of this unrest, no doubt. Even though the media (not including radio) have maintained a strange silence regarding the subject, the existence of an American elite, operating quite like the former Soviet Union’s notorious “Nomenclatura,” has been well-documented. Dr. Nick Begich, co-author of Angels Don’t Play This Harp (1995), is a prime example of the latest breed of muck-rakers. The book would not have been written if only money was involved. It concerns the abuse of public trust by the government and the special elites it favors, not to mention the possible catastrophic effects secret research facilities such as HARP may have on people and the environment.
14. Adults and young adults have tuned into the sciences, particularly those dealing with radio, terrestrial, and human body/mind frequencies. Widespread research is being conducted on these subjects, with experts and books proliferating. The HARP project, again, is but one example. Years ago Dr. Patrick Flanagan invented the “neurophone” by which digitized radio waves could be broadcast directly into mental processes to change moods and thoughts (exactly what many fear the HARP facility is already doing to the American public). His was the earliest of the new wave of “brain entrainment technologies.” Valerie Hunt, a neurospecialist by description, authored The Infinite Mind: The Science of Human Vibration, which illustrates the “auras” that plants, animals, and humans emit with varying frequencies. Every person is a radio transmitter and receiver, interacting with terrestrial auras and also those of the wider Universe. Hunt states that particular individuals are more in tune with auras. One such “biosensitive” gave warning of the Mt. St. Helens’ eruption before the scientists and geophysicists were concerned.
A Chronicles character, Marty Gantry Yeager (M.G.Y.), initiates the series by emitting a radio frequency that draws the alien. His broadcast was preceded by one that took place long before. The distress signals given by Yeager and others continues to play a part in the series from beginning to end, for the signal is composed of the call letters “MGY” that comprise a signature shared by a great doomed ship, a planet, various murder victims, and even those who inadvertently draw the monster to the feast.
15. Needless to say, the Titanic figures in contemporary society as the most famous ship that ever sailed, and adults and young adults continue to devour articles, films, videos, anything that can possibly shed light on the drama, cause, and enduring mystery of its sinking. Books and movies are too numerous and well-known to warrant mention here, but the Titanic’s tremendous mystique and ability to draw audiences is currently demonstrated by a fresh spate of jokes in popular magazines, Danielle Steel’s Titanic shipboard romance No Greater Love on the bestseller list, and continuing research on the disaster, as evidenced in an article from Popular Science’s February 1995 issue, “What Really Sank the Titanic.” My series begins with a crime on board the ship when it is still in dry-dock. It is this crime this enables the Alien to pinpoint the planet’s location. After that the ship’s sinking proceeds, but with a twist no one at the time lives to appreciate.
16. Though not all elements of this series are developed here (we could easily add the revival of Ethnicity in America and the bi-polarization of the races that have emigrated here or existed here since time immemorial), the author can say that many readers of all three age groups will read science fiction/fantasy of this kind because: the series is attuned to their aspiration, imagination, and spirit of adventure, not just their anxieties, fears, and suspicions. My characters, which number in the dozens, find excitement and fulfillment in this life and, in some cases, find meaning in the hellish Underworld as well.
RETRO STAR is certain to appeal to a vast readership among primary age groups because, like Columbus, Marco Polo, the Apollo astronauts, the various new explorers of cyberspace--it demonstrates enough nerve and guts to show what stuff humanity is truly made of. It seeks the Unknown of human potential, to show that human beings can achieve mastery in insuperable difficulties and not passively resign to a fate beyond human influence. From eight to eighty, people today are game to develop their hidden potentials and abilities, and this series provides a window on humanity, its wretched lows and its glorious highs.
17. The Protagonist, Scale, and Huge Array of Characters set this series apart. Science fiction and fantasy has always centered on space exploration, depicting alien worlds and species, and the struggle between humans and aliens. Certainly, innumerable books on this theme have already been written, but are their protagonists as formidable as Wormstar--the Destroyer of whole universes? And do such books contain such people as Gabriel Tall Chief, Dr. Pikkard, Pieter, Anne, Nilsson, Chillingsworth, Orfeo, Dr. Garcia, and a host of others like them? They are not cardboard cut-outs either. This series presents not only a super-alien beyond anything yet created but an unforgettable cast of characters.
The scope of the series, about five thousand years, demonstrates both the scale and, hopefully, the mastery required in any such undertaking. Many years of research and writing have produced a product that the author himself could not find on the shelves. If the author had found a series or a book in any way equivalent to RETRO STAR, he certainly would not have written it. He also believes that science fiction and fantasy buffs--imaginations sparked by Star Trek and Superman and Cyber-space Virtual Reality--are just waiting for something like this. Beyond the Looking Glass of Carroll’s series, beyond the Wardrobe the Attic of C.S. Lewis, beyond the raft on the Mississippi, beyond the Muscovite cotillions and battlegrounds of Napoleonic Russia, beyond them lies a Blue Room with a door to marvels and terrors few people have dreamt of. The teen-aged Virgil of this series, CP patient Gabriel Tall Chief, unlocks that door to readers.
1. Radio: Marketing for this series can easily tap the potential of the radio audiences, which are vast and growing larger all the time as the huge syndicated television and comsat networks fail to deal substantively with the themes that intrigue, alarm, fascinate, excite, and obsess Americans. The populist and subcultural aspect of this media cannot be overlooked (Nostradamus has a large following among the listeners), but it is growing at such a rate it will cease very soon to carry that stigma and engulf the so-called mainstream culture. The series should be sent to radio talk show impresarios from Laura Lee to Mike Reagan to Art Bell. Their audiences extend to the whole nation, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Virgin Islands, not to mention, Canada. There is something in this series for everyone.
2. Television talk shows will pick up on it too, but radio should be first and easiest to penetrate. Film scripting will not be unlikely, for