Sometimes I feel like the proverbial Little Green Man from Mars. That's the creature from another planet who visits Earth to have a little "look see" and then who winds up living here. But not exactly fitting in. In fact, being the Little Green Man from Mars pretty much sums up my life here in Pennsylvania and on this backward planet.
So much so that Little Green Man from Mars is also the title of my sixth sci-fi thriller. Except the main character in that book is not me. He's someone a lot worse off than me in terms of not fitting in. Plus, he's a lot more interesting than yours truly.
Even as a little boy I could tell that there was something terribly wrong with the world. In my kid world the boys were divided into two groups. The boys who were bullies and the boys who ran away from the bullies. And I noticed that the bullies always won, always came out on top. They were the winners in the kid world, even though they were not the best life had to offer the boy world. In fact, they were the worst life had to offer us.
I preferred the girl world where most the of the girls seemed to be equal. I mean, some were prettier than the others but the girls didn't seem to hate and fight each other all the time the way the boys did. I liked the girls. I liked them a lot. I wanted to be around girls all the time, in fact, whenever I wasn't playing sports with the boys. I was a typical boy where sports were concerned. I loved playing sports.
When I grew up I was keenly aware of the fact that not much had changed since boyhood. Grownups fought and lied and cheated and hated a lot and that seemed to be the general rule for human beings. Especially for men. The men who were the strongest were usually the meanest and the nastiest. And the winners. Plus, they didn't play sports anymore. They just watched them on TV. And they were all experts in the most boring part of sports involvement. Sports statistics.
In the grownup world, the women wanted to be ruthless winners like the men and that threw me way off guard at first. I thought women were better than that. But this was called "survival of the fittest" and it was simply "nature's way" I was told. 2 + 2 = 5. It was a stupid but very real equation that didn't make any sense to me at all and I intended to get to the bottom of it one day.
Later, I would come to the simple conclusion that nature was something that the best of us would one day learn to overcome. That, in my opinion, would make 2 + 2 = 4 the correct equation again. But I would never be able to prove it. That's where fiction would begin playing the big role in my life that it does now. Then I started writing science fiction novels.
And my world hasn't looked or been the same ever since.
So much so that Little Green Man from Mars is also the title of my sixth sci-fi thriller. Except the main character in that book is not me. He's someone a lot worse off than me in terms of not fitting in. Plus, he's a lot more interesting than yours truly.
Even as a little boy I could tell that there was something terribly wrong with the world. In my kid world the boys were divided into two groups. The boys who were bullies and the boys who ran away from the bullies. And I noticed that the bullies always won, always came out on top. They were the winners in the kid world, even though they were not the best life had to offer the boy world. In fact, they were the worst life had to offer us.
I preferred the girl world where most the of the girls seemed to be equal. I mean, some were prettier than the others but the girls didn't seem to hate and fight each other all the time the way the boys did. I liked the girls. I liked them a lot. I wanted to be around girls all the time, in fact, whenever I wasn't playing sports with the boys. I was a typical boy where sports were concerned. I loved playing sports.
When I grew up I was keenly aware of the fact that not much had changed since boyhood. Grownups fought and lied and cheated and hated a lot and that seemed to be the general rule for human beings. Especially for men. The men who were the strongest were usually the meanest and the nastiest. And the winners. Plus, they didn't play sports anymore. They just watched them on TV. And they were all experts in the most boring part of sports involvement. Sports statistics.
In the grownup world, the women wanted to be ruthless winners like the men and that threw me way off guard at first. I thought women were better than that. But this was called "survival of the fittest" and it was simply "nature's way" I was told. 2 + 2 = 5. It was a stupid but very real equation that didn't make any sense to me at all and I intended to get to the bottom of it one day.
Later, I would come to the simple conclusion that nature was something that the best of us would one day learn to overcome. That, in my opinion, would make 2 + 2 = 4 the correct equation again. But I would never be able to prove it. That's where fiction would begin playing the big role in my life that it does now. Then I started writing science fiction novels.
And my world hasn't looked or been the same ever since.
