– Charles D. “Chips” Woodruff, USAF Ret.

Sotto Voce is one of my idea incubators; Terror is ready to leave the nest and start feathering its own. So over the next week, I’ll be re-posting each of the current six chapters of Terror over on Channel 37. After that, all new chapters — and new serials and shorts — will be posted there exclusively. Then we’ll see where things go from there . . .

Apparently, serving as a stand-in for the stereotype of “The Expert” circa 1955 — the button-down brainiac with the goatee and the glasses. For Dr. Hynek’s visage accompanies an article titled “The Trouble With Experts” by Alissa Quart. (NOTE: Unfortunately, the photo no longer accompanies the story. I’ll try to find a copy somewhere else.) Decked “The Web allows us to question authority in new ways,” the article takes a look at how the web has propelled the rise of the “fauxpert” — people “who have emerged online because they write well and/or frequently on their subjects, rather than becoming an expert by acclamation of other experts or because of an affiliation with a venerated institution.” (It’s a thoughtful and well-written piece, BTW.)

In the photo, Hynek — who isn’t even mentioned in the article — certainly looks the part of an acclaimed product of a venerated institution: young yet wise, suitably straight-laced, seated at a table apparently shoulder-to-shoulder with other grandees, the inevitable stereographic-projection world map behind him subtly reinforcing the message that men of knowledge collectively possess mastery of the world. But Dr. Hynek is, in many ways, the antithesis of the quintessential “Expert” discussed in Quart’s article, because he is perhaps best known as an expert who came to question his own expertise.

In the 1950s, Dr. Hynek was an astronomy professor at Northwestern University when the Air Force invited him to be a consultant on a top-secret project. And accept he did, of course. Back then, the Air Force was in the vanguard of America’s stainless-steel, delta-winged, rocket-powered future; to be invited to join the national brain trust was a privilege as well as a career aspiration. This was, after all, the era when the macho nerds of the RAND Corporation were publicly divining their punch cards to herald a golden era of pure (pro-free-market, anti-communist, all-American) rationality.

Dr. Hynek’s top-secret job was to review selected reports of “flying saucers” to determine whether they might have been misinterpretations of astronomical phenomena. Dr. Hynek took to the job with gusto and soon became the Air Force’s public face of skepticism, holding forth on the illusory powers of swamp gas and temperature inversions for the dutiful press stenographers. For like every government consultant since the guy the Pharaoh hired to design the Pyramids, Dr. Hynek quickly learned that he would always get more pellets pecking the “official line” button than the other one. And so for nearly two decades, Dr. Hynek served as the very model of an Establishment-sanctioned “expert” on flying saucers.

But Dr. Hynek was first and foremost a scientist — and a distinguished one at that — and so eventually he became disenchanted by the Air Force’s highly unscientific approach to “studying” the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects. As the program degenerated from a serious inquiry of a potential security threat into a rubber-stamp clearinghouse for debunked reports, Dr. Hynek changed his mind and decided maybe these reports deserved to be treated with some semblance of scientific objectivity.

That’s what Dr. Hynek was busy doing while I was a kid growing up in Santa Fe buying and utterly devouring every book on UFOs I could find. His two major books on the subject, The UFO Experience and The Hynek UFO Report, were still in print, and of course I devoured them, too. By then, of course, Dr. Hynek appeared to be playing the role of The Quintessential Expert again, but this time on the side of “the believers,” who could now claim they had their very own Man of Science on their side. There he is on the cover of The Hynek UFO Report, in front of a giant telescope, wearing the requisite White Lab Coat and sporting a pipe, his hair and beard now a suitably Wise Man shade of gray.

I consider it one of the great good fortunes of my intellectual life that the first scientist whom I “met” was a man who was so determined to never stop asking questions that he was willing to walk away from The Establishment and risk being labeled an apostate by his scientific peers in order to be able to keep on asking them. Not only that, but in his books Dr. Hynek claimed that he was no “expert” on UFOs at all — simply because until anyone could figure out what, if anything, they were, no one could claim to know anything about them. In the meantime, all one could do was to toil away humbly, collecting stories, investigating sightings, and trying to find patterns amid the data from which the first tentative hypotheses could be made and tested — to lay the foundation that future researchers could build on, in order eventually to solve the mystery.

Dr. Hynek’s books are as much journeys of self-discovery as they are exciting behind-the-scenes narratives of the formative years of “flying saucers;” their candor imprinted on me at an impressionable age. It is fitting, I think, that this astronomer and thinker should have been born in a year that Halley’s Comet visited, and died the year of its next return. Just like Mark Twain.

I don’t have any real grand points to make here about expertise, or about the power of the Internet to influence people, or about the role of science in public policy. I just wanted to write about a man whose career I think exemplifies what real expertise looks like.

Also, I wanted publicly to thank his memory for the good influence he had on a young mind.

• One Alien Life

“It seems to be getting worse. Vacuum dream, screaming, crying, headache, general feeling of itchiness all over, but also specifically inside my brain, which is very disconcerting. Like I want to take my brain out and soak it in an oatmeal bath. . . . “

• LURKER7

“It is my profound pleasure to report that as of this date, LURKER7 is operational. While not all systems are online, we have defense and espionage capabilities. We are also expanding the facilities under the lunar surface. This moon is excellent for construction purposes. . . . “

Bookmark them, add them to your feed, and spread the word. Hey, everyone! Getcher free SF serials here!

Little could the invaders know that, in this stubby airship, they were about to meet their unlikely match.

* * *

In a smooth, practiced motion — his eyes never leaving the three saucers dangling several thousand feet ahead of them — Captain Rick Darrow slid into his pilot’s chair and slipped his headset over his ears. “I have the ship,” he said to his copilot, Lieutenant Don Stewart, who nodded in acknowledgement. Darrow pulled back on the throttles to slow his blimp, and turned the wheel a few degrees to the right to face the saucers directly.

Standing behind Darrow’s seat, Professor Abbott gasped, her hand involuntarily reaching for Darrow’s shoulder “You’re not turning toward them, surely!”

“Face-on makes us a smaller target,” he said, reaching for the microphone on his left-hand windowsill. “General quarters, general quarters,” he called into it. “All hands to your action stations.” Returning the microphone to its holder, he shouted back to the radar compartment. “Tell me what you see, Sparks.”

“Radar is still crazy, sir, but I’m definitely picking up the three saucers dead ahead. Range one seven three zero and closing fast.”

“Give me the count,” Darrow called, as everyone watched the saucers zooming closer.

“Aye, sir. One six five zero. One five zero zero. Boy, they sure are fast!”

“Fifteen hundred feet,” muttered Stewart. “That doesn’t give us any room to maneuver.” Blimps were notoriously slow to turn, slower to climb, and almost impossible to dive.

“In about ten seconds, that will be a purely academic matter,” Darrow said.

“One three five zero sir! They’re accelerating!” No one in the control cabin, however, needed to be told that; the saucers were already beginning to blur as they steadily filled the panoramic windows. As the saucers approached, their throbbing whistle filled the control car, drowning out Sparks’ countdown.

“Nine zero zero!”

Professor Abbott shouted something to her daughter, standing behind Stewart.

“What?” Darrow yelled.

“I said, they should have fired by now!”

“Four five zero feet and accelerating!”

“Sound collision!” Stewart hit the alarm, but the jangling bell was lost in the overpowering noise generated by the saucers. It looked like the middle saucer would slam right through the control car.

“One hundred . . .”

And suddenly, the saucers were gone — two sweeping by on either side, and the middle one rocketing past just below the gondola. The sound faded just as quickly, leaving a cockpit full of stunned people.

After clearing his throat, Darrow called back, “Sparks! Where are they?”

“Two thousand yards astern already and opening up fast. Course two-six-five. They just ignored us like we weren’t even here,” he added, voicing the thought in everyone’s mind at that moment.

“Why didn’t they shoot us down?” Darrow asked no one in particular.

“Perhaps they were able to detect that we aren’t a threat,” ventured Professor Abbott.

“I’m not sure whether to be relieved or insulted,” Darrow said. “We’ll never be able to catch them.”

“For the moment, Captain, I think it would be more important to find out where they came from, rather than where they’re going.”

Darrow and Stewart turned to look at her in disbelief, then looked at each other in resignation. Dr. Abbott was right — unfortunately.

* * *

Sparks and Miss Abbott, the professor’s daughter, worked as a team to recalibrate the Peregrine’s sensitive radar gear. Darrow and the Professor stood behind them silently as they worked. Finally Sparks looked up at his commanding officer.

“I think I have it now, Skipper.”

“The location where the saucers first appeared?”

“Aye. It’s about four nautical miles due west of our current position.”

Darrow patted O’Casey on the shoulder. “Well done, Sparks. Keep your eyes open for any more surprises.” He began to walk balk to the blimp’s cockpit when Professor Abbott touched his elbow.

“Hold it, Captain. What are you expecting to find there?”

“I don’t know, Doctor Abbott. Presumably we’ll find out when we get there. But as you said, they apparently don’t consider this ship a threat, so I think it’s at least safe enough to take a look.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until the rest of the fleet arrives?”

“By then, it could be gone.”

“It, Captain? What exactly is it?”

Darrow took off his ball cap to scratch his scalp. “I don’t know, Doc. You’re the scientist, you tell me. Aren’t you curious?”

“The part of me that’s a professor of atomic physics is absolutely dying to go. The part of me that’s a mother to a daughter on board an airship that was just menaced by a trio of flying saucers is dead-set against it.”

“Mother!” protested Miss Abbott. “I’m an adult. You could have told me to stay at home if you were worried about me.”

Professor Abbott chuckled, stroking her daughter’s hair. “You’re absolutely right, Claudine. And you wouldn’t have stayed even if I had told you to.”

“You’ve got that right, Professor,” Miss Abbott said with a perky salute.

“Now that that’s settled,” Darrow said, pointing to the front of the ship, “mind if I go back to flying my blimp now?”

Professor Abbott threw a smart salute of her own. “Just tell us what you want us to do, Captain.”

“Miss Abbott, keep on helping Sparks here with the radar. Doc, do you think your gravitational whatever detector could be of any use in this situation?”

Professor Abbott nodded. “It can’t hurt, that’s for sure.” She turned and started climbing the ladder back up to the wardroom. “Just don’t go flying us into some parallel dimension without coming to get me first,” she called down behind her. “I wouldn’t want to miss that.”

* * *

“We should be nearing the spot any minute now,” said Darrow as he looked at his instrument panel. “Bring us around a few points to port.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.” Lieutenant Stewart turned the wheel gently to the left. “Do you know where we’re going yet?”

Darrow’s silence made Stewart turn his head to look. “Skip?”

Darrow pointed straight ahead. “There.”

Stewart turned back to follow Darrow’s finger. In the distance, he could see a dark circular smudge, like a photo-negative of the moon, hovering at roughly their altitude.

Before either of them could say anything, Miss Abbott ran into the cockpit.

“Sparks told me to tell you we’ve just started picking up . . . ” she saw the object through the front windows ” . . . that.”

“You’d better get your mother,” Darrow said with forced calmness. “She said that she didn’t want to miss any dimensional portals.”

Miss Abbott swallowed nervously and glanced at the mysterious orb one more time before hurrying out of the cockpit.

“Dimensional portal?” Stewart asked, incredulously.

Darrow shrugged. “That’s what the Doc said she didn’t want to miss. So I guess that’s what they look like.”

“Sounds good to me. They didn’t cover those in flight school.”

“I don’t think they cover them in anyone’s flight school. On this planet, at least.”

The two Abbotts arrived in the cockpit a few moments later. One look at the mysterious dark sphere, and the professor’s face beamed — for just a moment.

“Perhaps we study it from a distance for the moment, Captain,” she said.

“Yeah,” Darrow said. “I think you’re right. Stewie, idle us here, please.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Stewart slowly pulled back on the throttle levers. The descending pitch of the engines’ vibration was the only sound in the cockpit as the four of them stared at the large, dark object.

“Captain!” Sparks called from the radar cabin.

“I’ll go see,” said Miss Abbott, turning back through the cockpit door. A few moments later, she returned.

“The radar is picking up a flight of six saucers coming in behind us, heading right towards the dark spot.”

“Is it just me, or is it getting larger?” said Stewart.

“It’s not just you. Are we moving?”

Stewart looked at his controls. “No, Skip, we’re holding station.”

Professor Abbott could not keep the awe from her voice. “It expands and contracts to allow ships to pass through it. Probably by some sort of radio command.”

Darrow’s concern grew along with the size of the object, which had nearly filled the front windows, making it appear as if they were about to enter a long tunnel. “Well, I’d feel a lot safer if we were examining this interesting phenomenon from a nice, safe distance.”

“Agreed, Captain,” said Professor Darrow.

Darrow rammed the throttles to full speed. “Stew, bring us one hundred eighty degrees about.”

“Aye.” Stewart turned the wheel to the stops. But it seemed that the ship was now completely surrounded by the darkness. “Umm, Skipper . . . ”

* * *

Has the crew of the Peregrine indeed fallen into a tunnel that leads to another dimension? If so, what awaits them on the other end? Be sure not to miss the next exciting, thrilling, terrifying installment of . . . The Terror from the Other Dimension!

So I’ve been thinking a lot about my imagination since moving to Annapolis and returning to my creative life. I definitely wasn’t using it much in Baltimore. But now, having set up my hobby space in the basement with Zorak the halogen lamp, my blue tackle-box of tools, and (of course) my brother Mike’s dirtbike painting, I’m feeling ye aulde feelings again. Nothing like a little styrene therapy, the smell of hot airbrush thinner.

This morning I was listening to the latest Alan Watts Podcast (Taoist Way #5, for future reference) and he reminded me why kids have such active imaginations, why so many people lose theirs as they grow up, and why I haven’t entirely lost mine yet:

“If you see, then, that ‘what you experience’ and ‘you’ are the same thing, then realize also, going beyond that, that you are in the external world you’re looking at. You see, I’m in your external world, you’re in my external world. But I’m in the same world you are. My inside is not separable from the outside world. It’s something the so-called outside world is doing, just as it’s doing the tree and the ocean and everything else that is in the outside world.

“Now isn’t that great, you see? We’ve completely got rid of the person in the trap, the one who either dominates the world or suffers under it. It’s vanished, it never was there. And when that happens, you see, you can play any life game you want to. Link the past and the present and the future together, play roles. But you know you’ve seen through this . . . great social lie — that one accumulates, owns experiences, memories, sights, sounds, and from that other people, possessions, so on; building up always this idea of one’s self as the ‘haver’ of all this. If you think that, you’ve been had.”

This also obviously deals with the whole “transactional” issue that I’ve always wrestled with in regards to creativity — how can you transact what you never really possessed? The real value lies not with the artifact of the creation (the words, the painting, the sculpture, the song, the dance) but with the passion and the creative spark that created that work, and that can never be transacted, though it can (in the Zen sense) be transmitted. Otherwise it’s like trying to own the finger that points to the moon. It’s my fable: the man who bought the ashes because he wanted to own the fire.

Jack . . . tell me, Jack. When did you first . . . develop this theory?

Well, I . . . first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.

Hmm.

Yes . . . a profound sense of fatigue . . . a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.

In Kubrick’s fable, General Jack D. Ripper’s reaction to his impotence leads inexorably to the nuclear destruction of the world. Similarly, Carr concludes that his flaccid attention span must be the result of the Internet sapping his precious neural fluids, and therefore he must launch a book-length first strike to prevent a vast conspiracy from taking root.

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

An article of mine was recently published wherein I interviewed a college professor who wrote a book that was not, but should have been, titled The Kids Today: Why Today’s Whippersnappers Won’t Get Off My Lawn. In it, he claimed that today’s students were functionally less intelligent than previous generations of students in large part because they spend all their time string at tiny screens and only talking to their friends. His grand thesis — reinforced by the usual freight train of statistics — was sparked by his annoyance at the distracted behavior of his students and his own kids whenever he pontificated at them.

I don’t think it’s the Internet that’s sapping our precious bodily fluids.

Personally I blame the schools.

I’ve been reading a lot of the passionate articles and blog posts being written about both sides of the “death of the book” argument, and I’m beginning to sense a broad, vague, and completely unquantifiable pattern (one that I am not planning on launching any nuclear strikes over) — there seems to be a relationship between people’s opinion about the outmodedness of books and the way they experienced reading in school. The quick-n-dirty version of my gut feeling is this: People who claim that the Internet is freeing us from stuffy old boring literature probably weren’t inspired by their English teachers.

I mean, pick up any Clay Shirky interview at random and listen to him chant his mantra about how students won’t have to suffer through War and Peace and In Search of Lost Time anymore thanks to the Web. It’s like listening to the high school shop jock complaining about his English midterm exam. Who needs all that Dead White Male stuff, anyway? I want to go build engines.

And listen to any defender of traditional books; inevitably their argument will invoke the richness and layers of meaning that they found in books, the magical ability to be transported to another time and place in their imaginations, the worlds of possibility that books opened up for them. The Web will replace all that fresh fruit with crowd-sourced applesauce, they wail. They usually admit (with mock-sheepish pride) that they had been bookworms in school — staying up late to read under the covers, wandering through the shelves of used-book stores for hours on end, and on a first-name basis with the local librarian.

I am a writer and a lover of books in large part because I was fired up by passionate English teachers. And because language was the fire in me waiting to be stoked. It may sound trite, but my tenth-grade English teacher assigned the massive tome Of Human Bondage and it absolutely and completely transformed my life. Probably not so much the kid sitting next to me, whose passion maybe was chemistry and whose life was completely transformed by the cool and charmingly eccentric chemistry teacher, and who found the book to be too illogical and emotional. Or the kid in front of me, who was perhaps a gifted athlete and whose talents were fostered by our compact, pugnacious gym instructor, and who thought that reading literature was totally gay. Same book, three completely different and internally consistent reactions that will in some way affect each of their approaches to reading as adults.

Now say that any one of these three students goes on to develop the Internet’s dominant algorithm for assigning value to content. How would each one of them, when interviewed by Wired or NPR, rank the importance of making books like Of Human Bondage available to kids?

Generalizing outward from our own experience is always a risky thing. We’ll always find a study, an expert, a group, a news channel, a party that reinforces what we want to hear, what we “know in our gut” to be true. Big whoop. Doesn’t mean you’re right, just means a lot of people think the same way.

The funny thing is that I’m seeing all these Jack D. Ripper types on both sides of the debate relying on their respective echo chambers to bolster their arguments that the Internet will both free us from and ensnare us in just such a global echo chamber.

I love books, and I love e-books. I love reading on paper. I love reading on a screen. I will read them in a book. I will read them on a Nook. I will read them on a box. I will never, ever detox. I will always read more words, I will always read them, o you nerds.