Favorite Summer Moment — Sword Fighting, of Course!

Summer is drawing to a close, with a wistful sigh from me.  I grew up in Southern California where it’s can be 80 in January.  Seasons — and snow — were a new thing when I joined the army, and I find that I much prefer the sun and warmth of summer.

This year, my favorite summer moment was watching a sword fighting demonstration.  Actually, several.  As a reader, I love action novels, and my book Miasma has at least eight action scenes (maybe more as I revise my subplots.  Nothing like adding more action to the story!).

I’d gone on travel for work to Norfolk, Virginia, and then followed it up with a drive to North Carolina for a fledgling convention called ConTemporal, which was primarily steampunk.  But NC has a local group of people who like to fight with swords, so we got awesome demos!

The first demo showed us how the movies do sword fighting, which is different than how they happen in real life.  That fight where the hero is matched against five bad guys and still wins?  In real life, the fight would last about one second, with the hero on the losing end.  What the movies do is have each villain launch at the hero at about a second and half apart.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s significant amount of time in a fast moving battle.

The second demo was outside.  June + NC = hot, hot, hot.  The humidity was up, and we were melting — but the demonstration got a good crowd to watch people whack at each other with real weapons.

Two women fence against a male opponent.

The unexpected bonus was that I also got to see how a whip worked.  A whip is a frightening weapon.  When the tip snaps out, it breaks the sound barrier — CRRRRAAACCCKKK!  I was so surprised at the sound that I jumped enough that the guy doing the demo commented on it.  I think I’ll keep my distance.

What’s your favorite summer moment?

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Check out my review of the con, plus a gallery of photos that include cosplay.  The Escapist also has a huge gallery of Steampunk photos from the con that’s worth a look for all the great costuming.

My story “A Soldier’s Magic” has been accepted by Mosaic Indigo Publishing for their anthology The Darkness Within.  It’s a contemporary fantasy set after Desert Storm.  Two female soldiers have to make the difficult decision to kill a friend to keep a parasite from infecting the military world-wide.  The anthology is due out in September, so I will post more information when it is available.

 

60th Anniversary of the Great Alien Invasion of Washington DC

When I was growing up, every weekend was a movie or TV show about aliens invading Earth.  H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is probably among the most famous.  During the days of radio, they did it as a radio show and scared people to death — the newscast style sounded like it was really happening!  Then it was a movie, and one of the frightening scenes for me was when the soldiers got reduced to skeletons and then dust by the ray beam.  Stargate SG-1 jumped in with aliens pretending to be Egyptian gods.

Oh dear. I can imagine the traffic jams already starting.

But did you know that in 1952, unidentified flying objects (UFO) were spotted over Washington, DC?  It was a cluster of 7 UFOs, so it wasn’t just one flash of light everyone got excited about.  Then it happened again a week later — now 12 UFOs.  It was labeled an inversion layer, though people still have doubts today.

But let’s take a step further.  When I was at Marscon, they had a workshop on the military and the zombie apocalypse.   What if aliens did land in Washington, DC? How would the military respond?

In just about every movie about UFOs, it seems like it’s always the Air Force.  UFOs fly, planes fly, so it seems logical.  But once the aliens land, it might be a little different.  Probably no Navy involvement, unless the UFO ended up in the Potomac River.  Irwin Allen did that on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, with the episode “The Terrible Toys.”

I think the Marines would get called in.  They always go in first.  A former Marine told me, “If the Marines can’t stir up trouble, there isn’t any trouble worth stirring up.”  The Army would probably send in 82nd Airborne and the Rangers.  I don’t think the aliens would be treated as friendly forces by the military — honestly, you call in the military, it’s not for high tea.

Clearly Washington DC is a bad influence.

Of course traffic would instantly snarl up for miles and miles in either direction.  Heck, even a few raindrops will do that will send drivers into a panic.  An alien invasion?  Oh, yeah.  The resulting road blocks that would likely occur would definitely add to this problem.  It’s bad enough here when the Cherry Blossoms bloom!

Meanwhile, downtown workers would be trying to get past the roadblocks to go to work.  The aliens clearly aren’t a threat, and the workers need to finish their work.  (Trust me, people do think like this.  We have a fire drill, and there are always employees who want to stay back and continue working).  Since martial law probably would have been declared (then again, not; that would be really bad politically for any politician in DC), the military would be arresting workers.  The military would also be especially concerned by the other types of people arriving — family members demanding alien abduction victims be returned; alien groupies; people wanting to “shoot me some aliens”; and reporters hoping to get the money shot of the aliens.

It would be complete chaos!

What do you think would happen if alien spaceships landed in Washington, DC?

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Photos are from ClipArt.com