Rock Space Fighters, Old Water Heater Space Cruisers, and Space Hamster

You are probably looking at the title of this post and wondering if I have flipped my lid. Actually, the title sums up the beginnings of my love of science fiction and the genesis of some of my current science fiction worlds.

I grew up in a lower class family near the St. Louis area in the early 1980s. We did not have a lot of money for the latest toys, so my sister and I made do with what we had. I used to play in our small backyard for hours at a time. I did not have any friends in the neighborhood, so I played by myself a lot of the time. We owned the adjoining lot that was empty. My grandfather used it for a small garden most of the year. There was a lot of junk in the backyard: old bricks, pipes, and assorted bits and pieces here and there. It was not much, but it provided a world of opportunity for a young boy with an overactive imagination.

Most of the science fiction that I consumed during this time came in the form of old SF movies from the 1950s-1970s and Saturday morning cartoons. The Buck Rogers, Star Trek, and Star Wars live action shows were served up with huge helpings of Orbots, Transformers, Space Ghost, and an assortment of other cartoons. My sister would help me reenact many of our favorite shows in that small backyard. (We also came up with many original adventures on our own.) That backyard was a place where we could travel in time or go to distant worlds light years away.

My mother did buy us quite a few of our favorite toys, but we did not get everything that we wanted. I just resorted to using whatever materials were available to me at the time. I loved to have space battles with fighters and the like. I used the small triangular shaped rocks from the driveway for the fighters. The larger rocks were used for space bombers. (Another advantage to using the rocks was that when you destroyed them, you did not feel bad and you could easily replace them.)

An old water heater in the backyard served as a space carrier and exploration ship on many an adventure to the Andromeda galaxy.

I used to draw my own comics that I put together by stapling a few pieces of typing paper together and drawing the story on the resulting pages. My favorite character that I created was Space Hamster. He was inspired by the 1980s remake of the Space Ghost cartoon and my burgeoning love of hamsters. (My first hamster was a beige colored one named Ray. He served as president for a few of the nations and planets that I created.) Alas, these early creations have been lost over the years.

I guess that the main point of this nostalgia trip is to say that you can create whole worlds and adventures for your fiction despite an humble surroundings that may be around you. Just trust the Creator to nurture the ideas in you.