Sojourn Book Jacket
Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
The year is 2048 and Tom Loftus is cornered by animated dreams that seem as real as his life. Bulky seven foot green beings kill with no remorse. They have sliver cluster ships that produce powerful blue energy beams. A group called the Montang try to escape the Creod clutches.
The Montang flee to the cliffs
Loftus awakens and is back in his apartment across the bay from San Francisco.
The "City by the Bay" is under siege
Powerful forces pull Loftus toward his destiny. His dreams transcend the night, he loses consciousness frequently and imagines the intergalactic passageway.
When I stared at the horizon from the beach, I never saw the Pacific nor the Atlantic Ocean. I saw an intergalactic passageway.
Harlan Ellison's Guardian on the edge of forever
City on the Edge of Forever by Harlan Ellison was my favorite Star Trek episode. Stepping through that portal into another time and place was fascinating.
The idea of an intergalactic passageway formed in my mind many years ago. Having a passageway between planets surely circumvents conventional and speculative space travel. It also elevates those who constructed such a passageway to super-intelligent status.
Perhaps our own fears about extraterrestrial contact are merely a projection of our own backwardness...
We would discover the nature of other civilizations. There would be many of them, each composed of organisms astonishingly different from anything on this planet. They would view the universe somewhat differently. They would have different arts and social functions. They would be interested in things we never thought of ...
Carl Sagan, Cosmos
But Loftus must first begin his journey. He and his compadre, Zach, are whisked back to his college town in Vermont, where he left Kath behind.
The land Loftus left behind
Something is amuck in Appleton and Loftus gets in the thick of it. In the process he changes his own life and the lives of those closest to him.
Scared me as a kid
Anybody can create an alien. Kids do, adults do, and the universe is more than likely strewn with them.
(only space is so vast we haven't met them)
The name alien means:
Belonging to, characteristic of, or constituting another and very different place, society, or person; strange.
Creods are not the alien next door. They are not only scary, but highly intelligent, huge and unabashedly ruthless and brutal.
I grew up with Star Trek aliens, half of whom looked human, but there were some good ones.
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| The Horta |
The Salt Creature |
The Gorn |
What are the chances aliens really see themselves as human?
Any living species sees itself as acceptable in appearance and moderate in size and strength, existing comfortably in a moderate temperature range. Their minds and bodies have evolved to cope with the changes in their environment, so they suit it and it suits them, the normal in neutral to them and hard to notice, and the only differences attract attention.
Katherine MacClean
Science Fiction Short Story writer
Loftus and Zach arrive on another planet and face the customs of that planet.
The buck stops here
Construction of believable societies is not a craft but an art; there are no simple formulae. It remains one of the most important tasks the science fiction writer must face. A believable society is one in which gives believable motives to the story's characters. It is therefore impossible to write science fiction without giving attention to social order.
Jerry Pournelle, First winner of the John W. Campbell Award for best science fiction writer of the year.
The Cantina Scene in Star Wars
Edmund Dantes in Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and Loftus are both imprisoned, but with different results.
Richard Chamberlain as Edmund Dantes
But escape is not easy and the terrain is brutal.
Loftus realizes the spiritual meaning of his own past and the quest to attain his destiny and all Mantari. He leaves the planet to face the sadistic Creods: against the odds. A battle for the high ground.
Mix in Ta-Buhn-Shar and all bets are off.
How can one urkle be so valuable?
The upper levels of reality have no longitude and latitude and are quite confusing.
Fair is foul and foul is fair
The risk is great, but the rewards are just.
Time has many ripples, Mr. Loftus
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas A. Edison
Further Reading:
Robert A. Heinlein :
Tunnel in the Sky
Citizen of the Galaxy
Between Planets
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Sir Arthur C. Clarke :
Beyond the Fall of Night
Expedition to Earth
Harlan Ellison :
City on the Edge of Forever (teleplay)
Phoenix without Ashes
* Cosmos quotes pp 311 & 314
Copyright c 2000
by Robert P. Fitton
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