If you read speculative fiction stories you are a very special person. You, the reader, bring these stories to life. The creation of any character is possible even for me, then a thirteen-year-old boy, now a mature man. In these days of financial turmoil and uncertainty, do you feel like you want to escape life for a few hours? Escape from this world of disunity and chaos is essential. It is not just today that we have to do this. The turmoil of world events that in turn affect us and the way we live have been here for centuries. In times past, before books, there were storytellers. They told stories passed down by others from their own minds. My own grandfather was a storyteller who told me stories when I was very young.
The advent of books spread the stories to thousands more people, and little by little a world market emerged. Today, our youngsters immerse themselves in movie clips and computer games to escape from reality, and the best ones are based on stories from books. The gilded creativity of the 1950s of my teens hit me hard. The music changed considerably. From the smooth sound of big band and jazz came rock and roll and the creation of what I describe as the big emotional ballad. The music appealed to the teenagers of that time, men and women who are now in their 60s and 70s. Due to the wonderful advancement of technology, now I sing those songs. As a kid in Sheffield, I would walk miles to different local cinemas to see the movies of the week, including Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, George Formby and a host of escapist sci-fi. Even in a certain Sunday school they were showing fifteen episodes, one every week of Flash Gordon.
The decade brought great changes to many markets. In the UK, if he failed his eleven plus (an exam he took when he was eleven years old), they put him on the scrap heap. He was considered inferior by the establishment. It took great personal pain and commitment to fight for a way out. Schools then had their share of poor academic teachers. Men and women with great qualifications who did not know how to teach! Teaching is not something that can be judged by putting ticks on a piece of paper. It is a strong quality of interaction between teacher and student. The good teacher needs to report everything he knows in a way that provokes a response from the majority in a classroom, it is a vocation more than a job. My father was a teacher whom I never knew; he disappeared in the war on a plane somewhere over the ocean when I was two years old.
My imaginative side fueled me and kept me from getting depressed. It was a great age of science fiction and speculative fiction – The Forbidden Planet – The Day the Earth Stood Still was the classic movies of that era. Cinemascope and 3D movies arose with thousands of comics in stores illustrating strange alien creatures and superheroes. The Eagle comic was born with the famous character Dan Dare on the cover. Inside were pages of scientific knowledge of the day, not only written but also illustrated in comic book form. At 6:45 pm Special Agent Dick Barton was on the radio and, changing the channel to Radio Luxemburg at 7 pm, Dan Dare, the pilot of the future, could be heard. He was rich in the age of illusion and took your soul out of the physical drudgery around you. Television has now taken over that option. In the 1970s and 1980s, life became more prosperous, a lot of money could be earned by working hard. This, in a way, eliminated the escapism and brought about what was called ‘the kitchen sink drama’.
People immersed themselves in observing each other’s problems. Like the Great Roman Empire where the crowd screamed to see if a gladiator could survive being killed by another or by a lion. Soap operas were flourishing and the cinema followed with a series of heavy family dramas. This has now evolved into reality television where humanity shows all the hate, jealousy, stupidity and tribulations of real life. This is now slowly declining as a financial depression hits the world. Now, Doctor Who is back and flourishing once again, as is cinema with sci-fi and supernatural blockbusters. We have reached an age again where we can all escape our lives and our homes for a couple of hours.
Today people buy software and experiment in a ‘self-taught’ environment. Hours spent on word processing, much easier now than with the old typewriter, then more hours on PDF to be able to create e-books. Building a website took many hours of work, including HTML work. Then you dominated a movie show and put several trailers on You Tube. This all happened in the last 8 years, not bad for me at age 65+.
My first attempts at writing a novel were by hand and then by typewriter. It was a long process and due to the intense writing I had a mark on my index finger where the pen rested. I don’t think modernism, the use of sex or swearing is necessary. In a future advanced technology-based society, there would be no need for foul-mouthed adjectives to give orders or directions. Therefore, I like to think that the books can be read by teenagers and up. However, the evil in men will escalate to new heights, and that’s ugly, as any hero strives to ultimately defeat them.
