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Big Idea 1 (rv.13.7.9)
Ethereal goes way back – there is a story behind the story. It's got real-world "black" budgets, hundreds of thousands
of man-hours and the highest classifications a government can make. It has spawned a pantheon of urban mythologies and a whole
culture of inquisitive fans. Without clear answers, though, some truly wild theories bubble up. These proffered explanations
usually wind up being a mirror to society, reflecting what we want to see. It's rich material for psychologists and sociologists
(and probably a lot of therapists, too).
If you dig just a little deeper and filter some of the signal from the noise, you start to find an odd patchwork of facts.
Intelligence experts call this method of sifting for truth the " mosaic theory" – sort of like finding where random pieces of a puzzle go and using them as benchmarks to figure out the whole picture.
The mosaic theory is one of the reasons the current US administration is so heavy-handed in the use of classification: to
let particular mundane details remain in the public eye could constitute a security threat.
On that note, urban legend seems an odd place to find government dabbling, but in their defense, they got drawn into it. At
it's deepest, the roots of the phenomena go back to ancient and mysterious records, such as the Nazca lines or Old Testament
descriptions of cherubim. The modern movement, though, really began in WWII with pilot descriptions of interacting with " foo fighters" (no guitars were involved). This bit of aerial lore laid the groundwork for a series of alleged incidents that has since captured modern-day
imagination.
By 1947, the US was staggering through the beginning of the cold war. Rocketry and atomic power were the way of the future
– for good or ill. Social tension was high, and the "red threat" was growing. With this backdrop, Search & Rescue pilot
Ken Arnold reported a series of unidentified flying objects near Mount Rainier, Washington. In the process, through a misquote, he unintentionally
coined the term "flying saucer." Either way, the whole incident might've faded from public consciousness if it weren't for
the " Roswell incident" just a few weeks later.
The government angle really starts here and it's a study in PR errors. With Arnold, the Army Air Force first endorsed his testimony, then backpedaled, stating he must've seen a mirage. They didn't
do much better with Roswell, first issuing a statement claiming to have recovered a flying disc, then backtracking hours later
to restate that it was "a weather balloon." Where ever the truth lie, the authorities weren't engendering any trust with the
common man.
It's worth noting that the Wells-Welles "War of the Worlds" radio hysteria wasn't quite 10 years old. When a real-world analogy suddenly seemed right around the corner, the "saucer" phenomena exploded
as a real social movement. Common interest paved the way for social statement films like " The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) – an argument against war. Two years later, Paramount pictures capitalized with their own cover of the " War of the Worlds." Interest would wax and wane, eventually shuffled to the fringes of society by several factors, mostly lack of progress.
The official denials and debunkings continued, though the establishment was losing credibility. While laughably bad PR had
something to do with it (" swamp gas"?), authority all around was sowing distrust. From the fall of McCarthy to human radiation experiments to conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of a beloved president, America was losing it's innocence. By Watergate,
there was a powerful disillusionment with government. One would think, under these conditions, that there would be a resurgence
of interest in the "UFO phenomena" – but it was just the opposite. In the face of these down-to-earth problems, the
saucers had run their course.
By the 70s, UFOs had been saddled with the " giggle factor," a social effect that essentially discredited the phenomena and anything associated with it. Part of this had been through
carefully orchestrated psyops, but much of it came naturally – there was no shortage of honest mistakes, con artists
and real delusions adding noise to signal. That's not to say unexplained incidents weren't still happening, or that the first
ones had lost their kernel of truth; but even credible evidence would be tainted and relegated to the shadows. Formerly sensible,
stock terms, like "UFO", were obsolete. Any serious discussion had to euphemize the vocabulary or risk drawing fire from all
sides.
Enter the Writer...
My own role in this story started in dead winter, January or so of 1977. I was 6 years old at the time, my parents were
fresh off a divorce and I was on a road trip with my mom. On an isolated highway somewhere in deep rural Missouri, in the
middle of the night, my mom and I witnessed what can only be described as an unidentified flying object.
As you might imagine, my memory is hazy. To this day, I don't know what it was and I hesitate to theorize. Even now, though,
I do remember bits and pieces of the experience. I know there were other witnesses – I remember seeing truckers swerve
to avoid being "spotlighted." I don't remember anything about the shape of the object, but I do remember it hovered
silently.
Looking back, I've found no news reports or public records of the event. That's not entirely surprising. What counts is the
effect it had on a young imagination. At the time, I was a short version of my retired Marine father, surely destined for
a career in the service. After the event, I craved everything "space". Pop culture piled on, with "Star Wars" coming out several
months later. For the next year, I would channel Han Solo. Almost as important was the same-summer release of "Close Encounters
of the Third Kind." I saw a little of what I experienced, taken several orders of magnitude farther. In a way, it helped me
come to grips with it.
I would never lose the fascination with the subject, though with Star Wars influencing my formative imagination, the real
event would fade under the weight of science fiction. Nor would I really lose the martial influence of my father – I
was pretty sure I was destined to live and die in the story arc of an action movie. Obviously, thankfully, that didn't happen
– though as I grew up, I found was influenced more and more by my reporter/actress mom. Instead of becoming a soldier
or rocket scientist, I became a story teller.
I graduated in 1993 after a 5-year tour of college duty. I had a BA in English (writing concentration), and fully intended
to make a career as an author. My minor, though, was television production – and it paid the bills. I climbed from shooting
educational video to directing/TDing for KOB, an NBC affiliate in Albuquerque. I moved to NBC West in Burbank, worked local
L.A. news, Jay Leno, Access Hollywood, and a smattering of other studios (including the NFL). That's the life of an independent
contractor, a freelance broadcast engineer, and it paid just well enough that my dreams of becoming an author started fading
away.
Not to say I lost the inspiration; I'd never stopped researching. Heck, I never really stopped writing. There were a million
stories I wanted to tell, and still do, but there was one in particular, a fusion of the two big influences on my imagination.
I had a vision of friction at the crossroads of science and modern mythology. Instead of flitting between different stories,
I honed my craft writing, learning and rewriting the same idea. How else could I judge if my writing got better?
Through a dozen rewrites from scratch, I hammered out a narrative style that felt commercially smooth, but kept my artistic
integrity. The story changed and evolved, the writers' conceits chiseled away, but the core concept remained the same. I learned
to say more with less.
Ethereal has me excited again: my dream has come back strong. From working as long as I have in news, I know the world is
ready for this story. With the guidance of the right agent, through the hands of the right editor, my story is now ready for
the world.
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