The Return of Captain Conquer. Mel Gilden

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      BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY MEL GILDEN

      Dangerous Hardboiled Magicians

      The Planetoid of Amazement: A Science Fiction Novel

      The Return of Captain Conquer: A Science Fiction Novel

      THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN CONQUER

      MEL GILDEN

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1986, 2011 by Mel Gilden

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      For the man with forty pounds

      of brains in his nose,

      And his wife,

      The smartest woman in the world.

      INTRODUCTION

      “CAPTAIN CONQUER”

      Though The Return of Captain Conquer was the first novel I had published, it was not the first one I wrote. In junior high school (what they now call middle school), I almost finished writing a fantasy novel called The Golden Kazoo. Running out of steam is normal for inexperienced writers, and I was no exception. It was many years before I tried the long form again.

      One night I was at a party where most of the guests, me included, were science fiction fans. I was standing in the hallway discussing writing with a friend who knew even less about it than I did. We commiserated about what a long, difficult process writing a novel was, and we agreed that keeping the whole project in the air for a few hundred pages was nearly impossible. As I heard myself agreeing with this guy, I had my epiphany. I did not want to be like him. I would start another novel, and I would finish it. So there.

      Thus began The Electropomorphic Man, a story about people who did surgery by recording a person on tape and then slicing out the lengths of tape they didn’t want. (This was years before computers and compact disks were common. Recording on tape seemed pretty jazzy.) It was not a very good novel, nor was it very long (145 pages or so), but I did write the story out to the bitter end. Which was a triumph of sorts.

      I wrote four more novels after that, each a little longer, and I think a little better, than the one before it. I learned that writing did not get easier, and the fact that I was typing on a manual typewriter did not help.

      More years passed. I attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in Clarion, Pennsylvania, moved to the San Francisco Bay area, moved back to Los Angeles, and wrote short stories—a few of which I sold. I worked at the Los Angeles Times for three and a half years, became the editor of a magazine for people who collected antique slot machines, and, after a while, blindly joined a few of my friends in writing scripts for TV animation.

      One of the shows I pitched to was called The Getalong Gang. It featured a sort of Our Gang/Little Rascals group made up of animals instead of kids. I thought it would be fun if the youngest of the Gang met her TV hero, and together they solved a big problem. Apparently, the people who owned the show disagreed with me because they rejected the premise.

      However, the idea continued to nag at me. I thought the idea might make a novel, but I had no idea how to approach the material.

      A few years before this I had been cohost of Hour-25, a radio program on which Mike Hodel and I interviewed anybody and everybody who had anything to do with speculative fiction. I even had a few fans. One of them sent me a copy of The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater. The book was both beautifully written and hilarious. It inspired me to get on the stick and write my TV hero novel.

      Attempting to follow closely in Pinkwater’s footsteps, I began to fiddle with the original cartoon premise, rearranging characters and situations. The gang of cute animals was one of the first things to go. I added a mixture of the heroes I watched on TV when I was a kid along with the products they sold and the mementoes they would send you in exchange for proof you had purchased their product and sometimes the investment of a quarter. Eventually I had an outline for the novel you hold in your hands. A few months after that I had my first draft.

      One of the main characters in the book is the man with forty pounds of brains in his nose. And the book is dedicated to him and His Wife, The Smartest Woman in the World. The man with all the brains is my father. He always made the same claim I put into Fred Achziger’s mouth. The smartest woman in the world is his wife, my mother. Who else? She was smart enough to marry him, wasn’t she?

      For a first-time author such as myself selling a novel can be difficult, more so without the help of an agent. I sent stacks of query letters to publishers and agents. Some answered back. Of those, most were not interested; a few agreed to have a look at my book. Then one Saturday I got the letter of my dreams from Houghton Mifflin. They liked my book! They wanted to publish it!

      Perhaps winning the World Series or the Super Bowl is comparable to the feeling one gets selling his or her first novel, but I am sure that few other life experiences come close to generating the high I felt that day—and for days after. Knowing very little about the publishing biz, I felt that I needed the guidance of an agent more than ever. And I figured that with a book contract in my metaphorical hand I could now get one. Nothing attracts the attention of an agent quicker than waving cash in her face.

      On Monday morning I called one of the agents who had not yet rejected me and explained my situation. Sure enough she was delighted to hear from me. She went so far as to claim that she had been about to call me. It might even have been true.

      When the book was released at last—or escaped, as my friends say—it got good reviews, but it was not the blockbuster I had hoped it would be. Still, very few conventions and book fairs pass without someone or two approaching me with a copy and asking for an autograph.

      My agent and I tried to get the book reprinted in England, but the publishers over there misunderstood the title. They assumed that Captain Conquer was a real American TV show, and no one in the UK had ever seen it. No amount of explanation would change their minds.

      A few years down the line a couple of independent movie producers suggested that they would be pleased to film Captain Conquer if there was a script. So I wrote a script. I did it less because I believed a movie would ever get made than because it gave me the opportunity to rethink a few items. For one, a fan pointed out that the book contained no major female characters. I was horrified to note that she was correct! So in the script I added a female friend for Watson Congruent. I also made Berkowitz the actor who’d played Destructowitz, rather than a prop man, adding more fun to the mix. Perhaps some day, if anybody cares, I will publish the script and you can compare the two versions yourself.

      Little did I know that five years after the publication of Captain Conquer I would write a sequel called The Planetoid of Amazement, featuring Watson Congruent’s son, Rodney.

      —Mel Gilden

      Los Angeles, California

      April, 2011

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE HOUSE WITH

       TWO FRONT DOORS

      Well, this could be interesting, Watson Congruent thought hopefully. He stood behind the counter of the Captain Conquer PX, one hand resting on the cash register, watching the man at the other side of the room read the big cardboard sign that dangled on wires from the ceiling.

      The man was not only Watson’s sole customer, but he was also decked out in a really impressive Captain Conquer uniform. He wore a leather flight cap with goggles that he could pull down. A thin microphone reached on a wire arm from one ear hole and hung stiffly before his lips. His short khaki jacket had a Captain Conquer emblem on one shoulder and a Chocolatron emblem on the other. Medals covered his chest. Watson wondered what in the world he could have done to earn them. The man wore khaki pants that flared at the hips, but were skin tight as they went beneath his tall black boots.

      The sign the man was looking at featured a big glass of chocolate milk and a squat