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First Saturday Sci-Fi - Nov 2018

See?? What did I say? Christmas is racing right straight for us.... get your list started !! For November we're talking to Alan Felyk.

Working as a groundskeeper, ditch digger, road crew member, waiter, surveyor, houseboy, and taxi driver provided him a perfect background for a career in journalism as a newspaper writer/editor and a publications manager for a space systems company. He is the author of Damaged Right Out Of The Box, a humorous and wistful review of personal experiences, and Damaged Beyond All Recognition, a novel inspired by the writings of Kurt Vonnegut. Alan is a serious music fan (his iPod contains more than 27,000 songs), and lives in Lakewood, Colorado.

1. Tell us about your favorite work… what makes it special?


Damaged Beyond All Recognition is my first novel—something I thought I would never write. My science fiction tends to be premise-driven and probably better suited to shorter forms.But when I dusted off a short story I wrote in college in 1969, it began to evolve into something that begged to be longer and more intricate. I had no intention of focusing on an unusual love triangle, but it seemed to blossom as a natural path for the three principal characters—Paul Tomenko, Maggie Mae Monahan, and Allie Briarsworth.


I’m a disciple of the Twilight Zone, and I love stories that have plot and end twists. And my novel is full of them.Paul is based on me, and it was fun to extrapolate how I would react to the situations he confronted. But a lot of readers have said they’ve never read a book as imaginative as this one. And that is music for my soul.


2. What do you think makes for good Sci-Fi?


I think the best science fiction keeps asking a simple question throughout the story: what if? Damaged Beyond All Recognition was fashioned through a series of what-if questions. What if God had created man in His own image because he, too, had been an ordinary man at one time? What if the Big Bang was a recurring event? And what if a new God had to take over each time it happened?


3. Do you think your books can help shape the future and if so how?


I think some visionaries write science fiction, but I don’t think I’m one of them. Jules Verne predicted the submarine and the helicopter, but most of the futuristic things I refer to in my novel have already been forecast. If I did anything predictive, it might be how I think those future technologies will be used.


4. Do you have inside jokes or true events hidden in your writing?


There are many actual events interwoven in the book. I wanted the novel to represent the world of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. So, I thoroughly researched the events I discuss. I think I spent three or four hours trying to nail down the exact peak date of the Perseids meteor shower in 1973. The circumstances surrounding Paul’s automobile accident actually happened to me. (Instead of hitting a tree, my car skidded to a stop on the opposite side of a divided highway, pointed in the wrong direction.)


5. Which do you prefer… model your characters after people you know or just make them up?


I love using actual people as character models. Except for Allie, every other character was built off a true-life person. For example, Maggie Mae is molded after a college girlfriend. In fact, I didn’t change much about her. She truly was a brilliant and career-driven woman.


6. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to take away?


I didn’t set out to create a new religion based on the premise of this book. It’s a story—nothing more. I think it presents a unique theory about how the Universe works and what our role within is.

I think if there’s one overriding message, it’s that our memories are the most sacred things we have.


7. What is your favorite review?


I can’t say that I have a favorite review. That’s because I usually find some helpful insights in all of them. I feel fortunate that all the editorial review organizations who have looked at the book have praised it. The novel has drawn comparisons to the works of Kurt Vonnegut, Robert A. Heinlein, and Douglas Adams, and for that, I’m genuinely appreciative. Kirkus Reviews labeled it “a love story meets theology meets The Matrix—but still comprehensible, for all that.”’


What comes next?


Right now I’m working on the sequel to Damaged Beyond All Recognition. It’s titled Damaged And No Longer Under Warranty, and most of the characters will return to continue the story started in the first novel.


Where can we learn more?


Readers can purchase my novel at

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077VJGJCD.









athttp://alanfelyk.com/,and my Twitter handle is @AlanFelyk.


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