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It’s time for a half-hour trip into space and Other Times, and I’m ready for takeoff!
Right now, I’m back in the 1950′s—a teenager who longs to be Elsewhere and Elsewhen. But I am a prisoner of Now, a captive of Reality—which means I don’t have a bicycle, can’t yet drive, am unemployed, thus dependent upon the means and whims of parents.
This is long before television enters my life. There is only radio, audio recordings, downtown movies, the written word.
My sole escape this special Sunday afternoon is to leap into the Toynbee Convector, batten the hatches, strap myself in, and engage the Master Controls for a thirty-minute escape into Anywhere Else But Here.
What this means is, I sneak into the only room of the house where sits an AM table radio that isn’t being used or censored by someone else. I stretch out alone on my parents’ twin bed, tune the set to the local NBC outlet and wait for the most daring of all shows, this week’s episode of X MINUS ONE.
Back here in the ’50′s science fiction is not mainstream, nor does it enjoy the approval of grown-ups and the literati. It is actually considered mind-rotting, or at least a waste of time, what with all that speculative ranting about alternate universes and what Might Be instead of What Is.
This is exactly what makes Sci-Fi exciting and daring in the ’50′s—you aren’t supposed to be indulging it!
Anyhow, X MINUS ONE hits the airwaves and I am ready for launch.
Through the tiny speaker, dulcet announcer Fred Collins delivers the show’s opening words, which go something like this: “Countdown for blastoff… X minus five, four, three, two, X minus one… Fire!” (Big noise of rocket engines and a long whistling sound.). “From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future; adventures in which you’ll live in a million could-be years on a thousand may-be worlds.”
Wow! It doesn’t get any better than this! The announcer continues:
“The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with Street and Smith Publications, presents… X Minus One.” (each word echoes down an imagined Space Chamber).
For the next two dozen minutes, I’m Elsewhere, listening to dramatized stories by Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Robert Sheckley, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp and a hundred other authors whose works I follow in paperback novels and pulp magazines.
And right now, I’m the only person in the universe, and these tales are being told just for me.
Through ensuing decades, as life continues beyond X MINUS ONE, I continue to be attracted to this special style of eyes-closed storytelling, and, as you may imagine, I eventually become a follower of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, STAR TREK, THE OUTER LIMITS, NIGHT GALLERY and the like.
These shows give me permission to imagine better things when times are harsh, they provide a protected place for me to go when I need re-charging and de-brainwashing. And, as time goes on, the only thing better than listening or reading or watching is writing…writing my little tales to entertain myself and anyone else who might be inclined to pay attention.
The only twist I use when relating my own personally-conceived stories is the Anti-Sci-Fi Turnabout: I never write anything that isn’t true, that hasn’t really happened. Because, you see, it occurs to me Elsewhen that life itself is more fantastical than any sci-fi or fantasy story. My life and yours—they are the true sci-fi adventures. The act of not ever making anything up, the process of just looking around and observing, will reveal beauties and horrors more profound than anything I’ll ever find in the works of these majestic tale-tellers of yore.
I become my own science fiction stories.
And even though X MINUS ONE is nearly past remembrance, I can still entertain myself with my own writings.
My real stories, my real life, are more mind-bending than anything I can manufacture
(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed