Carrington often met me for drinks on a Friday. We would catch up on our respective lives — his as an astrophysicist at Melbourne Uni, mine as a child psychologist with a well-known quango — and our wives had become fast friends as well. We'd known each other since high school and despite our disparate career paths we had maintained our association. More due to geographical convenience than anything else, I often speculated.
When he sat down opposite me this Friday however, his brow was furrowed and there was a distinct air of dejection about him that was uncharacteristic.
The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy appeared as a radio play (broadcast in Australia by the ABC) around the time I was becoming a fledgling adult. Uniting two of my passions: science fiction and humour, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. When I discovered the novelisation I devoured it then passed it around to friends with the zeal of a religious convert, desperate for people to speak the language of towels, hoopy froods and Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.
The word “stalker” hadn’t entered the general vernacular, but I was a fan, and courtesy of co-operative work colleagues and flexi-time, I was able to get to a number of Australian book signings by Douglas Adams. In 1985 I even managed to get to one of his book signings at Forbidden Planet in London prior to attending a Hitch Hikers Guide convention in Birmingham run by the international fanclub, ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.
You have to feel sorry for the Zips. Since losing the war and their home world to our victorious armada and superior technology, they have been a sad and demoralised people, living as an underclass among us. How that must hurt. It’s not like they don’t deserve it. They’d have annihilated us had things worked out differently. Their numbers reduced to a few tens of thousands from the billions of them that challenged us. Now they live in abject poverty and appalling conditions in their ghettos and on the streets of our great cities. Hated and despised, they are a pitiful lot.
LT Karen "Buster" Reynolds turned her F/A-18H inbound toward the carrier and flew at low cruise airspeed into an empty sky filled with stars. The Moon was new, not even above the horizon at the moment. It was always beautiful to see so many stars in the sky this far from land. She moved her head to see whether a blur was a smudge on the canopy or a distant nebula. Not a smudge. Combat Air Patrol could be tense, but what could go wrong on a night like this?
"Alpha Romeo 46, this is Alpha Romeo 35," Dave ‘Reef’ Black called over the CAP frequency, "I've got a bogie on my heads-up display!"
It was one of those days.
One of those days where I’d woken up angry without reason. I rolled out of bed with a belligerent cloud swirling about my head as I stumbled through my day, seeking amusement or distraction from my stress. Had I the courage to be honest with myself, it was me I was angry with. I was frustrated at having risen so late, and for expending so many wasted hours upon my couch, staring blankly at various screens as I beseeched them for stimulation.
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Coming In Issue 272
Buchstabensuppe
By Tony Owens
Content
By Ashley Cracknell
Drowning
By Chris Karageorge
Fodd Prints
By AE Reiff
For More Options Press 9
By Myna Chang
Hotel de Mort
By Emma Louise Gill
The Hot Equations
By Simon Petrie
The Smeg
By Harris Tobias
The Walls Have Tongues
By S. A. Mckenzie
Tribunal on the Misuse of Swords and Knives
By Len Baglow
Speculative Fiction
Downside-Up
ISSN 1442-0686
Online Since Feb 1998
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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.