Thursday, September 20, 2012

Thursday's Twisted Links

Do. Not. Try. This. At. Home!  This week's Twisted Links are:

Aliens.       Shapeshifters.       Cell Phones.

On the surface, these three things might seem wildly divergent. If you think in terms of speculative fiction, you might easily connect the first two. But the third...well... But I'm not going to make the obvious connection here. That would be way too easy.

The secondary possibility is also too obvious. And, let's face it we don't actually know if aliens and shapeshifters use cell phones. In real life, aliens probably communicate via some kind of three dimensional, thought-initiated device, and everybody knows shifters communicate telepathically. Yeesh!

Don't insult my intelligence.

So let's investigate another angle. Is it possible shapeshifters could be aliens, aka Declan Sands' Blood-Hound series? Maybe. Again, we might never really know for sure. Either way, however, unless cell phones came from Mars or were invented by a mad, wild-eyed, tangle haired shifter scientist, there's no connection there.

Hmmm. On the surface, this would seem to be an impossible linkage. But fear not. You're dealing with a professional here. I can do this.

I think.

How about this. Believe it or not, if you started talking about the existence of aliens some people would look at you like you're crazy. I know...weird right? I mean, have they not seen the pyramids? Or observed pictures of crop circles? Did they not watch the movie ET twelve times? "ET phone home..." God I loved that movie. Anywho...

Similarly, there are actually some people who don't believe in shifters. It sucketh to be them. It really duth.

Point is, with imagination all things are possible right? Do you think the first users of Alexander Graham Bell's invention called the telephone could have ever envisioned today's smarter than the average bear cell phones? God no. If you went back in time and told Bell himself about your iPhone he'd probably laugh in your face and then have you fitted for a tight, tangly white jacket.  When Martin Cooper imagined the first cell phone in the seventies, I'm guessing his peers at Motorola probably thought he'd lost his mind. Despite the fact that it was bigger than my head, that first mobile phone was an incredible accomplishment, one which could never have been realized without someone having the guts and imagination to "go there" against the tide.

In the same way, aliens and shapeshifters are sometimes considered merely concepts derived from the imaginations of writers and film-makers. Maybe they are. But maybe, like Martin Cooper we're just visionaries who are way ahead of our time. I think most writers would prefer being called visionaries to drooling psychopaths wearing tangly white jackets, so I'm going with that.

I mean, at the very least we're entertaining right?

Happy Reading!




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