What the author has to say about

Years ago as I searched high and low for meaning and feared most of all being irrelevant, if anyone had told me that not only would I write a novel about baseball but that it would be science-fiction based, I'd have protested loudly. Meaning, or so I thought at the time, was a complicated construct at best and needed quite the hefty key to unlock. Fortunately for the reader, I was disabused of that nonsense.

What came to life, then, in my imagination was a world where meaning resides simply in the most basic aspects of life, not the least of which, for an American boy, is baseball. Baseball is an arena littered or spangled, if you will, with dozens of Don Quixotes. This was the place to talk about honor, fairness, possibilities, or simply to ask why we do what we do, why we joust at all, given the improbability of victory. So I wanted my Don Quixiote to be an alien, his ally to be an Apache, and his counselor to be a wise-ass southpaw from Harvard. This way, we get to leave our own backyard and take a little trip, you know, get out of the house for a while. Is that why we read? I think so. It's certainly why I write.

Back when I was in college, a good friend of mine stole my girlfriend. He had the audacity, subsequently, to relate to me a conversation between himself and my erstwhile girl. They were playing ping pong when she suddenly stopped and said, "I would have liked to have played ping pong with Calvin." "Why?" my larcenous friend asked. "Because he would have taken it seriously!" The pair of lovebirds then shared knowing chuckles. This my friend shares with me after stealing my girl. Boy, was I chagrinned. How irrelevant can you be?

Now I'm older and I haven't changed. But I suggest that I was right all along: Games are the only things to be taken seriously. If nothing else there's a freedom in that.

As for meaning, I hope, in The Aliens of Summer, that you find it where I left it. If not, I hope you enjoy just getting out of the house for a while.