-- 'Armada' Screenplay In the Offing

Young Hollywood screenwriter Will Wallace is taking around his screenplay of "Armada," my 1982 cult science fiction thriller.

Says the SF website "Stainless Steel Droppings:"

"Though television and film planted the seeds, the birthplace of my love for science fiction was a small farmhouse in rural Nebraska. The vastness of space and time opened up to me on the floor in front of my uncles’ small, four-shelf book case. On the uppermost two shelves sat my passports to other worlds; my introduction to heroes beyond, but including, Captain James T. Kirk and Han Solo. As silly as it sounds, those two shelves were a whole universe to me, the influence of the books no doubt enhanced by the fact that this was my ‘cool’ uncle who did not loan his books out to just anyone. I used to go out to my grandmother’s house and sit in his room and look at those books over and over again, deciding which to choose to read next, mesmerized by the fantastic images that graced the covers of those books. It was at that shrine to the final frontier that I was introduced to Han Solo’s pre-Star Wars adventures; where I read my first sex and swearing in Michael Jahn’s "Armada" ..."

He neglected to mention that it was the first zero gravity sex. As I recall, there also was zero gravity soccer. The swearing was earthbound.

"Armada" was the Battle of Britain set between the Earth and the moon. A giantic alien ship that sprouted weapons and emitted boomerang-shaped fighter craft had come to eliminate life hereabouts. After a lot of marginally effective dogfights, it was destroyed in a spectacular explosion engineered by a white man who was forced by circumstance to become an amateur warrior and a NASA pilot who was person of color, using an improvised technological solution. One of the alien ships was shot down and its nasty alien pilot was beaten to death during interrogation and and if all that reminds you of a certain blockbuster movie that hit the theaters a decade or so on, I can't be held accountable for your conspiracy theories.

Sigh.

It was a good movie. But given the advanced state of computer graphics and a masterful adaptation of my book, Will's will be better.

Somebody, in Hollywood, buy it, please, and let me retire.