As many of you know, my Darkside Universe of novels, seven total planned, is centered around the premise that black folks have been secretly living on the backside of the moon since before Neil Armstrong set foot there.
What I'm in the process of doing now is writing a story in that universe from the perspective of a black man, living in American, observing the country's response to the "Discovery."
Where I think you all may help is if you wanted to take the time to write a short piece detailing how your "character" would have responded to the discovery.
So, what I'm looking to do is create a story, written by a group of contributors and submit it as a tale written by various personalities here on BSFS.
If nothing else, I would love to hear your opinions and ideas, everything is on the table.
Here's the beginning of the story's intro:
Scott was born in 1955. The average house cost $10,950. The cost of a new car was $2,000. Disneyland opens in California. Ray Kroc began the McDonalds restaurant chain. Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, setting off the American Civil Rights Movement. And, fourteen year-old Emmett Till is murdered in Money, Mississippi for allegedly disrespecting a white woman. It was quite a year.
He was a middle-aged black man of 46 when the country discovered that African Americans had been living on the moon since a handful of years after his birth, years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface.
He lived through an unpopular war in Southeast Asia that ended in ignominy, the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., John’s brother Bobby. Malcolm X, and a host of others, for no better reason than what they said and did angered someone enough to kill.
He watched as blacks were battered and bruised by fire hose and baton, set upon by vicious dogs, and killed for no other reason than the color of their skin giving license to others for such deadly, and inhumane, treatment.
And, throughout his entire life, he observed how an entire industry persecuted, distorted and lied about the humanity of an entire race of people because whites needed a foil in their desperate need to cling to sociological, political and financial power over all persons colored. There was no love in his soul for the fictional tellings of a moneyed, corporate media.
But all that changed when a CIA spy satellite saw unmistakable signs of life on the moon’s surface. At first the US government tried to hide the fact, but too many people at NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and the Pentagon had seen the real-time download of images from the satellite for them to remain secret for long. In fact, it wasn’t more than an hour before the country was informed that the satellite had recorded signs of habitation on the moon.
In a belated effort to forestall panic and further rampant speculation, the President of the United States was forced to make an statement in an effort to calm the citizenry, to try to convey that this new circumstance was one that wasn’t a threat to the nation, and that whatever the challenge, the United States of America would meet it head on, and persevere.
Right. How does that old joke go: “Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans!”
Thank you for your consideration.
WmH
