TVS: Conspiracy Theory...remember that old Mel Gibson movie? Even if you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you...Conspiracy theories are grist for the writer’s mill, and my guest Linda Andrews agrees…
I love conspiracy theories. I don't know what attracts me to them. Sure some are just plain crazy, others have a nugget of truth in them that makes me go 'hmm' and then there are the ones that stop me for a moment before I say, 'yeah, I'll buy that.'
Okay, before anyone call the padded wagon, I know it's a little bit nuts, but some of them are just plain fun and others are perfect fodder for a writer's imagination.
Take the Lights Over Phoenix. In this I'm referring to the ones in 2007 and 2008. For those who don't know what they are, they're a series of lights 3-5 that appeared orangish or white over the state of Arizona. They flew extremely slow and many people took photographs of them as they flew in a vee-shaped formation.
The official government line was that these were flares dropped by A-10 Warthogs during training exercises. The governor at the time, Fife Symington had a good old time poking fun of the lights even going so far as to bring a fake alien on stage.
All in good fun, right?
Well, what better way to dismiss something and those who witnessed it than ridiculing it? Anyone who believes such nonsense has to have a lug nut loose. Which in turn makes it highly unlikely that many professional people would bring it forth and also effectively gags those in government who might have a different opinion.
Perfect fodder for a conspiracy and a novel.
But I wanted something different for my urban scifi, so I twisted the theories further while being true to it's roots. So here's what I came up with: The government was just as freaked out about the lights as many citizens, but instead of admitting that alien technology breached our high tech defenses they came up with the lame flare theory. Which if you're a fan of UFO theories, this is often cited as a reason.
Then the question became, why would aliens bother coming here?
Well, what if they're coming home? What if humans went to space and were trapped there for a time, only to return and find we'd gone from push button fireplaces to pounding rocks together to get a spark? Ooohh. I liked that idea, but to really make it interesting I had humanity resetting the civilization clock multiple times over the millennia. And some of those space humans didn't like the others.
But why make such an overt ploy to expose their presence?
What better way to force Earth governments into making an alliance? Given the nature of many of our politicians, couldn't you see them selling the rest of us out so they could retain a little power?
Here's the Blurb:
The extraterrestrials have landed and they're human.
Rae Hemplewhite didn't believe in aliens until a close encounter with out-of-this-world technology drags her into the extraterrestrial security program. Helping alien refugees adjust to life on Earth is difficult enough, but her first clients have a price on their heads. Plus, her new partner seems torn between the urge to kiss her or kill her.
And that's the good news.
The bad news: Alliances are forming in deep space. If Rae doesn't keep her witnesses alive long enough to transfer their top secret information to the right faction of humanity, Earth will become a battlefield.
TVS: This all harkens back to the consiracy in The X-Files, but I’d never thought of the “aliens coming home theme,” Linda. Hmmm… I’ve asked that other question quite often when viewing an Independence Day-like movie…Why would aliens want Earth anyway? It’s not even a good home for its own inhabitants.
A great blog!
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