Ever since I was a kid, I've been intrigued--and creeped out--by the idea of alien possession. Colin Wilson's tour de force, The Mind Parasites, scared the hell out of me, as did Heinlein's classic, The Puppet Masters. The very idea of some foreign entity feeding on your brain and thoughts was viscerally disturbing, and I mulled over adding my own fiction to the canon for many, many years, until something finally gelled in my head, and “Screaming Rain” came together into a story.
For my NOMADs, I owe inspiration to Cordwainer Smith's, “The Game of Rat and Dragon,” in which human space traffic is menaced by creatures born of the dust between the stars, which attack becalmed interstellar vessels, only to be fought off by augmented feline gunners. In “Screaming Rain” I wanted to flesh out such aliens with scientific plausibility--and to posit that their impact on humanity, rather than being malicious, might simply be a byproduct of their intrinsic strangeness, a strangeness engendering both madness and transcendence . . . the usual outcomes of any encounter with the celestial.
I also wanted to take a stab at emulating Wilson's remarkable literary feat of writing a thirty-page fight scene entirely in the head of his protagonist. Of course, “Screaming Rain” as a whole doesn't weigh in at thirty pages, but most of the story does take place in Bernie's mind. Equally, I wanted to write a story based on the trinity of classical drama: unity of action, time, and place--think of Fritz Leiber's, The Big Time--and so “Screaming Rain” is told in a rush of action, in a single location (OK, barring the introductory Po' Boy scene, mea culpa), over a span of fifteen or twenty minutes. Only you, Electric Spec readers, can decide whether I succeeded in these endeavors.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Star Wars and The Matrix, but I have a bone to pick with any fiction that depends on a savior with mystical or meta-human powers. I want my hero to be an everyman--an ordinary human who succeeds because of their wits and intelligence, not because they are anointed by the force, and whose solutions are within the reach of any reader of sufficient determination. Keep this in mind if our solar system ever enters a Big Cloud.
Finally, as to my choice of a protagonist, Bernie, well, here's some background. I am Jewish, but secular. I go to shul only on the High Holy Days, if then, and I regularly eat pork (bacon!), and I positively love oysters, especially soaked in buttermilk and dredged in flour and deep-fried until crispy. In none of my forty or so published stories have I ever given my protagonist a religion, mainly because belief was never a consideration of the plot or integral to the character, but while sketching out “Screaming Rain,” various threads came together--oysters, the name Bernie, his fascination with transcendence, his moral quandary--which made me understand Bernie was Jewish. It also made me think of my late poker buddy, Bernie Passeltiner, whose catchphrase while pondering whether to raise or to fold was “Bernie, baby, bubala.” May you rest in peace, dear friend.
Interesting! Thanks, David! Be sure to check out "Screaming Rain" and the rest of the stories May 31!
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