#153: The Blow Dryer

The orbiting killer satellite of the Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning made for a pretty picture against the stars and black space and misty-white horizon of Earth. Shaped like a handheld hair pistol, but scaled a thousand times bigger, it amply earned the nickname agents of ICHHL called it—the Blow Dryer.

#152: Shore Leave

There was commotion on the bridge of the starship. Something had gone slightly wrong. Already, officers were scrutinizing monitors, recalculating calculations, looking for answers …
        “What just happened?”

#151: Around the World

Volume VI: Starship Summer

A small group of kids assembled on the sidewalk to watch something they had never seen before. The tallest of the kids, a boy around ten or eleven, stood straddling a black, rugged-looking his old bike that looked like it might have been new in the 1950s. He was about ten or eleven, with greased-back longish hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses, corduroys that were too short, and a light blue cotton button down shirt—definitely out of style for 1985. His nose was too big for his longish face, and his mouth had too many teeth, out of which he tended to breathe as he watched through lenses that were too thick. His complexion made him look older than his age, as if it were already preparing for the pockmarks of severe acne to come.

#150: Megahero Gossip

That was my spring 1985 semester in a nutshell, completing my first year of grad school. It wasn’t the entire semester of course; just the main highlight. I still had several weeks of finishing up my classes, both those that I taught and those I was taking, along with seminars. But grading papers and all that stuff is boring, so you get the gist of it.