The Idea for a Nemesis
Leaving the adventure of a lifetime and not being able to fly the Beast was devastating. I threw myself into my new work. I was a burgeoning champion racquetball player and I was winning medals running, riding a bike, and playing racquetball. New ideas came to me when I was running. I started attending grad school and worked on an MBA. Much of my new job involved writing and of course, homework was an every night affair. I did boatloads of homework and there was no time to write. One of the stories banging around my head, like a BB in a boxcar, involved a murderous pilot. With no computers, word processors or typewriters available—I wrote out a plot longhand.
When everyone in my class turned in their 35-page papers, my master’s thesis was a 105-page monstrosity. I argued that there will never be another airplane like the supersonic Concorde, for a variety of reasons.
One of the more interesting reasons no one would build a follow-on airplane, no “Son of Concorde,” was because of the growing influence of environmentalists who railed at anything and everything, and somehow convinced a body of politicians that the jets were so bad, that if they were built, they would pollute the upper atmosphere and extinguish life on Earth. These Luddites seemed to be related to the morons I encountered in Boulder, Colorado. And these guys were deadly and dedicated. Some of the things the left and the environmentalists did to stop the Concorde was to try to damage it before takeoff or during landing; they would try to throw ball bearings into the engine intakes.
Few airport incursions by these wackos were ever officially reported. Why write about a murderous pilot when there were potential murderers seemingly always trying to take down a jet? Over the years, environmentalists, hijackers, and terrorists have all tried to down or attack jets or aircrews or passengers in their own evil way. I bundle them all together and call them "aviation terrorists." And because these guys (in the real world) are supported and bankrolled by radical and oftentimes communist elements, they are the villains in my books.
James Bond fought world-dominating megalomaniacs with his crazy toys. Duncan Hunter fights aviation terrorists with his YO-3A spyplane.
Maverick out!
Leaving the adventure of a lifetime and not being able to fly the Beast was devastating. I threw myself into my new work. I was a burgeoning champion racquetball player and I was winning medals running, riding a bike, and playing racquetball. New ideas came to me when I was running. I started attending grad school and worked on an MBA. Much of my new job involved writing and of course, homework was an every night affair. I did boatloads of homework and there was no time to write. One of the stories banging around my head, like a BB in a boxcar, involved a murderous pilot. With no computers, word processors or typewriters available—I wrote out a plot longhand.
When everyone in my class turned in their 35-page papers, my master’s thesis was a 105-page monstrosity. I argued that there will never be another airplane like the supersonic Concorde, for a variety of reasons.
Few airport incursions by these wackos were ever officially reported. Why write about a murderous pilot when there were potential murderers seemingly always trying to take down a jet? Over the years, environmentalists, hijackers, and terrorists have all tried to down or attack jets or aircrews or passengers in their own evil way. I bundle them all together and call them "aviation terrorists." And because these guys (in the real world) are supported and bankrolled by radical and oftentimes communist elements, they are the villains in my books. James Bond fought world-dominating megalomaniacs with his crazy toys. Duncan Hunter fights aviation terrorists with his YO-3A spyplane.
Maverick out!
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