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# The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything & Target: Berlin!

George Alec Effinger

These stories appear in _Live! From Planet Earth_ , a collection of stories by George Alec Effinger. To purchase the complete collection visit ereads.com and enter Planet Earth in the Search box, or visit George Alec Effinger's author page for a complete list of available titles.
**The Aliens Who Know, I Mean, _Everything_**

I WAS SITTING AT MY DESK, READING A REPORT on the brown pelican situation, when the secretary of state burst in. "Mr. President," he said, his eyes wide, "the aliens are here!" Just like that. "The aliens are here!" As if I had any idea of what to do about them.

"I see," I said. I learned early in my first term that "I see" was one of the safest and most useful comments I could possibly make in any situation. When I said, "I see," it indicated that I had digested the news and was waiting intelligently and calmly for further data. That knocked the ball back into my advisors' court. I looked at the secretary of state expectantly. I was all prepared with my next utterance, in the event that he had nothing further to add. My next utterance would be "Well?" That would indicate that I was on top of the problem, but that I couldn't be expected to make an executive decision without sufficient information, and that he should have known better than to burst into the Oval Office unless he had that information. That's why we had protocol; that's why we had proper channels; that's why I had advisors. The voters out there didn't want me to make decisions without sufficient information. If the secretary didn't have anything more to tell me, he shouldn't have burst in, in the first place. I looked at him awhile longer. "Well?" I asked at last.

"That's about all we have at the moment," he said uncomfortably. I looked at him sternly for a few seconds, scoring a couple of points while he stood there all flustered. I turned back to the pelican report, dismissing him. I certainly wasn't going to get all flustered. I could think of only one president in recent memory who was ever flustered in office, and we all know what happened to him. As the secretary of state closed the door to my office behind him, I smiled. The aliens were probably going to be a bitch of a problem eventually, but it wasn't my problem yet. I had a little time.

But I found that I couldn't really keep my mind on the pelican question. Even the president of the United States has _some_ imagination, and if the secretary of state was correct, I was going to have to confront these aliens pretty damn soon. I'd read stories about aliens when I was a kid, I'd seen all sorts of aliens in movies and television, but these were the first aliens who'd actually stopped by for a chat. Well, I wasn't going to be the first American president to make a fool of himself in front of visitors from another world. I was going to be briefed. I telephoned the secretary of defense. "We must have some contingency plans drawn up for this," I told him. "We have plans for every other possible situation." This was true; the Defense Department has scenarios for such bizarre events as the rise of an imperialist fascist regime in Liechtenstein or the spontaneous depletion of all the world's selenium.

"Just a second, Mr. President," said the secretary. I could hear him muttering to someone else. I held the phone and stared out the window. There were crowds of people running around hysterically out there. Probably because of the aliens. "Mr. President?" came the voice of the secretary of defense. "I have one of the aliens here, and he suggests that we use the same plan that President Eisenhower used."

I closed my eyes and sighed. I hated it when they said stuff like that. I wanted information, and they told me these things knowing that I would have to ask four or five more questions just to understand the answer to the first one. 'You have an alien with you?" I said, in a pleasant enough voice.

"Yes, sir. They prefer not to be called 'aliens.' He tells me he's a nup. That's their word for 'man,' in the sense of 'human being.' The plural is 'nuhp.' "

"Thank you, Luis. Tell me, why do you have an al—Why do you have a nup and I don't?"

Luis muttered the question to his nup. "He says it's because they wanted to go through proper channels. They learned all about that from President Eisenhower."

"Very good, Luis." This was going to take all day, I could see that; and I had a photo session with Mick Jagger's granddaughter. "My second question, Luis, is what the hell does he mean by 'the same plan that President Eisenhower used'?"

Another muffled consultation. "He says that this isn't the first time that the nuhp have landed on Earth. A scout ship with two nuhp aboard landed at Edwards Air Force Base in 1954. The two nuhp met with President Eisenhower. It was apparently a very cordial occasion, and President Eisenhower impressed the nuhp as a warm and sincere old gentleman. They've been planning to return to Earth ever since but they've been very busy, what with one thing and another. President Eisenhower requested that the nuhp not reveal themselves to the people of Earth in general, until our government decided how to control the inevitable hysteria. My guess is that the government never got around to that, and when the nuhp departed, the matter was studied and then shelved. As the years passed, few people were even aware that the first meeting ever occurred. The nuhp have returned now in great numbers, expecting that we'd have prepared the populace by now. It's not their fault that we haven't. They just sort of took it for granted that they'd be welcome."

"Uh huh," I said. That was my usual utterance when I didn't know what the hell else to say. "Assure them that they are, indeed, welcome. I don't suppose the study they did during the Eisenhower administration was ever completed. I don't suppose there really is a plan to break the news to the public."

"Unfortunately, Mr. President, that seems to be the case."

"Uh huh." That's Republicans for you, I thought. "Ask your nup something for me, Luis. Ask him if he knows what they told Eisenhower. They must be full of outer space wisdom. Maybe they have some ideas about how we should deal with this."

There was yet another pause. "Mr. President, he says all they discussed with Mr. Eisenhower was his golf game. They helped to correct his putting stroke. But they are definitely full of wisdom. They know all sorts of things. My nup — that is, his name is Hurv— anyway, he says that they'd be happy to give you some advice."

"Tell him that I'm grateful, Luis. Can they have someone meet with me in, say, half an hour?"

"There are three nuhp on their way to the Oval Office at this moment. One of them is the leader of their expedition, and one of the others is the commander of their mother ship."

"Mother ship?" I asked.

"You haven't seen it? It's tethered on the Mall. They're real sorry about what they did to the Washington Monument. They say they can take care of it tomorrow."

I just shuddered and hung up the phone. I called my secretary. "There are going to be three—"

"They're here now, Mr. President."

I sighed. "Send them in." And that's how I met the nuhp. Just as President Eisenhower had.

They were handsome people. Likable, too. They smiled and shook hands and suggested that photographs be taken of the historic moment, so we called in the media; and then I had to sort of wing the most important diplomatic meeting of my entire political career. I welcomed the nuhp to Earth. "Welcome to Earth," I said, "and welcome to the United States."

"Thank you," said the nup I would come to know as Pleen. "We're glad to be here."

"How long do you plan to be with us?" I hated myself when I said that, in front of the Associated Press and the UPI and all the network news people. I sounded like a desk clerk at a Holiday Inn.

"We don't know, exactly," said Pleen. "We don't have to be back to work until a week from Monday."

"Uh huh," I said. Then I just posed for pictures and kept my mouth shut. I wasn't going to say or do another goddamn thing until my advisors showed up and started advising.

Well, of course, the people panicked. Pleen told me to expect that, but I had figured it out for myself. We've seen too many movies about visitors from space. Sometimes they come with a message of peace and universal brotherhood and just the inside information mankind has been needing for thousands of years. More often, though, the aliens come to enslave and murder us because the visual effects are better, and so when the nuhp arrived everyone was all prepared to hate them. People didn't trust their good looks. People were suspicious of their nice manners and their quietly tasteful clothing. When the nuhp offered to solve all our problems for us, we all said, sure, solve our problems— _but at what cost?_

That first week, Pleen and I spent a lot of time together, just getting to know one another and trying to understand what the other one wanted. I invited him and Commander Toag and the other nuhp bigwigs to a reception at the White House. We had a church choir from Alabama singing gospel music and a high school band from Michigan playing a medley of favorite collegiate fight songs and talented clones of the original stars nostalgically recreating the Steve and Eydie Experience and an improvisational comedy troupe from Los Angeles or someplace and the New York Philharmonic under the baton of a twelve-year-old girl genius. They played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in an attempt to impress the nuhp with how marvelous Earth culture was.

Pleen enjoyed it all very much. "Men are as varied in their expressions of joy as we nuhp," he said, applauding vigorously. "We are all very fond of human music. We think Beethoven composed some of the most beautiful melodies we've ever heard, anywhere in our galactic travels."

I smiled. "I'm sure we are all pleased to hear that/' I said.

"Although the Ninth Symphony is certainly not the best of his work."

I faltered in my clapping. "Excuse me?" I said.

Pleen gave me a gracious smile. "It is well-known among us that Beethoven's finest composition is his Piano Concerto Number Five in E Flat Major."

I let out my breath. "Of course, that's a matter of opinion. Perhaps the standards of the nuhp—"

"Oh, no," Pleen hastened to assure me, "taste does not enter into it at all. The Concerto Number Five is Beethoven's best, according to very rigorous and definite critical principles. And even that lovely piece is by no means the best music ever produced by mankind."

I felt just a trifle annoyed. What could this nup, who came from some weirdo planet God alone knows how far away, from some society with not the slightest connection to our heritage and culture, what could this nup know of what Beethoven's Ninth Symphony aroused in our human souls? "Tell me, then, Pleen," I said in my ominously soft voice, "what is the best human musical composition?"

"The score from the motion picture _Ben Hur_ , by Miklos Rozsa," he said simply. What could I do but nod my head in silence. It wasn't worth starting an interplanetary incident over.

So from fear our reaction to the nuhp changed to distrust. We kept waiting for them to reveal their real selves; we waited for the pleasant masks to slip off and show us the true nightmarish faces we all suspected lurked beneath. The nuhp did not go home a week from Monday, after all. They liked Earth, and they liked us. They decided to stay a little longer. We told them about ourselves and our centuries of trouble; and they mentioned, in an off-hand nuhp way, that they could take care of a few little things, make some small adjustments, and life would be a whole lot better for everybody on Earth. They didn't want anything in return. They wanted to give us these things in gratitude for our hospitality, for letting them park their mother ship on the Mall and for all the free refills of coffee they were getting all around the world. We hesitated, but our vanity and our greed won out. "Go ahead," we said, "make our deserts bloom. Go ahead, end war and poverty and disease. Show us twenty exciting new things to do with leftovers. Call us when you're done."

The fear changed to distrust, but soon the distrust changed to hope. The nuhp made the deserts bloom, all right. They asked for four months. We were perfectly willing to let them have all the time they needed. They put a tall fence all around the Namib and wouldn't let anyone in to watch what they were doing. Four months later, they had a big cocktail party and invited the whole world to see what they'd accomplished. I sent the secretary of state as my personal representative. He brought back some wonderful slides: The vast desert had been turned into a botanical miracle. There were miles and miles of flowering plants now, instead of the monotonous dead sand and gravel sea. Of course, the immense garden contained nothing but hollyhocks, many millions of hollyhocks. I mentioned to Pleen that the people of Earth had been hoping for a little more in the way of variety, and something just a trifle more practical, too.

"What do you mean, 'practical'?" he asked.

"You know," I said. "Food."

"Don't worry about food," said Pleen. "We're going to take care of hunger pretty soon."

"Good, good. But hollyhocks?"

"What's wrong with hollyhocks?"

"Nothing," I admitted.

"Hollyhocks are the single prettiest flower grown on Earth."

"Some people like orchids," I said. "Some people like roses."

"No," said Pleen firmly. "Hollyhocks are it. I wouldn't kid you."

So we thanked the nuhp for a Namibia full of hollyhocks and stopped them before they did the same thing to the Sahara, the Mojave, and the Gobi.

On the whole, everyone began to like the nuhp, although they took just a little getting used to. They had very definite opinions about everything, and they wouldn't admit that what they had were _opinions_. To hear a nup talk, he had a direct line to some categorical imperative that spelled everything out in terms that were unflinchingly black and white. Hollyhocks were the best flower. Alexander Dumas was the greatest novelist. Powder blue was the prettiest color. Melancholy was the most ennobling emotion. _Grand Hotel_ was the finest movie. The best car ever built was the 1956 Chevy Bel Air, but it had to be aqua and white. And there just wasn't room for discussion: the nuhp made these pronouncements with the force of divine revelation.

I asked Pleen once about the American presidency. I asked him who the nuhp thought was the best president in our history. I felt sort of like the Wicked Queen in _Snow White_. Mirror, mirror, on the wall. I didn't really expect Pleen would tell me that I was the best president, but my heart pounded while I waited for his answer; you never know, right? To tell the truth, I expected him to say Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, or Akiwara. His answer surprised me: James K. Polk.

"Polk?" I asked. I wasn't even sure I could recognize Polk's portrait.

"He's not the most familiar," said Pleen, "but he was an honest if unexciting president. He fought the Mexican War and added a great amount of territory to the United States. He saw every bit of his platform become law. He was a good, hard-working man who deserves a better reputation."

"What about Thomas Jefferson?" I asked.

Pleen just shrugged. "He was okay, too, but he was no James Polk."

My wife, the First Lady, became very good friends with the wife of Commander Toag, whose name was Doim. They often went shopping together, and Doim would make suggestions to the First Lady about fashion and hair care. Doim told my wife which rooms in the White House needed redecoration, and which chanties were worthy of official support. It was Doim who negotiated the First Lady's recording contract, and it was Doim who introduced her to the Philadelphia cheese steak, one of the nuhp's favorite treats (although they asserted that the best cuisine on Earth was Tex-Mex).

One day, Doim and my wife were having lunch. They sat at a small table in a chic Washington restaurant, with a couple dozen Secret Service people and nuhp security agents disguised elsewhere among the patrons. "I've noticed that there seems to be more nuhp here in Washington every week," said the First Lady.

"Yes," said Doim, "new mother ships arrive daily. We think Earth is one of the most pleasant planets we've ever visited."

"We're glad to have you, of course," said my wife, "and it seems that our people have gotten over their initial fears."

"The hollyhocks did the trick," said Doim.

"I guess so. How many nuhp are there on Earth now?"

"About five or six million, I'd say."

The First Lady was startled. "I didn't think it would be that many."

Doim laughed. "We're not just here in America, you know. We're all over. We really like Earth. Although, of course, Earth isn't absolutely the best planet. Our own home, Nupworld, is still Number One; but Earth would certainly be on any Top Ten list."

"Uh huh." (My wife has learned many important oratorical tricks from me.)

"The hollyhocks were nice," said the First Lady. "But when are you going to tackle the really vital questions?"

"Don't worry about that," said Doim, turning her attention to her cottage cheese salad.

"When are you going to take care of world hunger?"

"Pretty soon. Don't worry."

"Urban blight."

"Pretty soon."

"Man's inhumanity to man?"

Doim gave my wife an impatient look. "We haven't even been here for six months yet. What do you want, miracles? We've already done more than your husband accomplished in his entire first term."

"Hollyhocks," muttered the First Lady.

"I heard that," said Doim. "The rest of the universe absolutely _adores_ hollyhocks. We can't help it if humans have no taste."

They finished their lunch in silence, and my wife came back to the White House fuming.

That same week, one of my advisors showed me a letter that had been sent by a young man in New Mexico. Several nuhp had moved into a condo next door to him and had begun advising him about the best investment possibilities (urban respiratory spas), the best fabrics and colors to wear to show off his coloring, the best holo system on the market (the Esmeraldas F-64 with hexphased Libertad screens and a Ruy Challenger argon solipsizer), the best place to watch sunsets (the revolving restaurant on top of the Weyerhauser Building in Yellowstone City), the best wines to go with everything (too numerous to mention —send SASE for list), and which of the two women he was dating to marry (Candi Marie Esterhazy). "Mr. President," said the bewildered young man, "I realize that we must be gracious hosts to our benefactors from space, but I am having some difficulty keeping my temper. The nuhp are certainly knowledgeable and willing to share the benefits of their wisdom, but they don't even wait to be asked. If they were people, regular human beings who lived next door, I would have punched their lights out by now. Please advise. And hurry: they are taking me downtown next Friday to pick out an engagement ring and new living room furniture. I don't even want new living room furniture!"

Luis, my secretary of defense, talked to Hurv about the ultimate goals of the nuhp. "We don't have any goals," he said. "We're just taking it easy."

"Then why did you come to Earth?" asked Luis.

"Why do you go bowling?"

"I don't go bowling."

"You should," said Hurv. "Bowling is the most enjoyable thing a person can do."

"What about sex?"

"Bowling is sex. Bowling is a symbolic form of intercourse, except you don't have to bother about the feelings of some other person. Bowling is sex without guilt. Bowling is what people have wanted down through all the millennia: sex without the slightest responsibility. It's the very distillation of the essence of sex. Bowling is sex without fear and shame."

"Bowling is sex without pleasure," said Luis.

There was a brief silence. "You mean," said Hurv, "that when you put that ball right into the pocket and see those pins explode off the alley, you don't have an orgasm?"

"Nope," said Luis.

" _That's_ your problem, then. I can't help you there, you'll have to see some kind of therapist. It's obvious this subject embarrasses you. Let's talk about something else."

"Fine with me," said Luis moodily. "When are we going to receive the real benefits of your technological superiority? When are you going to unlock the final secrets of the atom? When are you going to free mankind from drudgery?"

"What do you mean, 'technological superiority'?" asked Hurv.

"There must be scientific wonders beyond our imagining aboard your mother ships."

"Not so's you'd notice. We're not even so advanced as you people here on Earth. We've learned all sorts of wonderful things since we've been here."

"What?" Luis couldn't imagine what Hurv was trying to say.

"We don't have anything like your astonishing bubble memories or silicon chips. We never invented anything comparable to the transistor, even. You know why the mother ships are so big?"

"My God."

"That's right," said Hurv, "vacuum tubes. All our spacecraft operate on vacuum tubes. They take up a hell of a lot of space. And they burn out. Do you know how long it takes to find the goddamn tube when it burns out? Remember how people used to take bags of vacuum tubes from their television sets down to the drugstore to use the tube tester? Think of doing that with something the size of our mother ships. And we can't just zip off into space when we feel like it. We have to let a mother ship warm up first. You have to turn the key and let the thing warm up for a couple of minutes, _then_ you can zip off into space. It's a goddamn pain in the neck."

"I don't understand," said Luis, stunned. "If your technology is so primitive, how did you come here? If we're so far ahead of you, we should have discovered your planet, not the other way around."

Hurv gave a gentle laugh. "Don't pat yourself on the back, Luis. Just because your electronics are better than ours, you aren't necessarily superior in any way. Look, imagine that you humans are a man in Los Angeles with a brand-new Trujillo and we are a nup in New York with a beat-up old Ford. The two fellows start driving toward St. Louis. Now, the guy in the Trujillo is doing a hundred and twenty on the interstates, and the guy in the Ford is putting along at fifty-five; but the human in the Trujillo stops in Vegas and puts all of his gas money down the hole of a blackjack table, and the determined little nup cruises along for days until at last he reaches his goal. It's all a matter of superior intellect and the will to succeed. Your people talk a lot about going to the stars, but you just keep putting your money into other projects, like war and popular music and international athletic events and resurrecting the fashions of previous decades. If you wanted to go into space, you would have."

"But we _do_ want to go."

"Then we'll help you. We'll give you the secrets. And you can explain your electronics to our engineers, and together we'll build wonderful new mother ships that will open the universe to both humans and nuhp."

Luis let out his breath. "Sounds good to me," he said.

Everyone agreed that this looked better than hollyhocks. We all hoped that we could keep from kicking their collective asses long enough to collect on that promise.

When I was in college, my roommate in my sophomore year was a tall, skinny guy named Barry Rintz. Barry had wild, wavy black hair and a sharp face that looked like a handsome normal face that had been sat on and folded in the middle. He squinted a lot, not because he had any defect in his eyesight, but because he wanted to give the impression that he was constantly evaluating the world. This was true. Barry could tell you the actual and market values of any object you happened to come across.

We had a double date one football weekend with two girls from another college in the same city. Before the game, we met the girls and took them to the university's art museum, which was pretty large and owned an impressive collection. My date, a pretty Elementary Ed major named Brigid, and I wandered from gallery to gallery, remarking that our tastes in art were very similar. We both liked the Impressionists, and we both liked Surrealism. There were a couple of little Renoirs that we admired for almost half an hour, and then we made a lot of silly sophomore jokes about what was happening in the Magritte and Dali and de Chirico paintings.

Barry and his date, Dixie, ran across us by accident as all four of us passed through the sculpture gallery. "There's a terrific Seurat down there," Brigid told her girlfriend.

"Seurat," Barry said. There was a lot of amused disbelief in his voice.

"I like Seurat," said Dixie.

"Well, of course," said Barry, "there's nothing really _wrong_ with Seurat."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Brigid.

"Do you know F. E. Church?" he asked.

"Who?" I said.

"Come here." He practically dragged us to a gallery of American paintings. F. E. Church was a remarkable American landscape painter (1826-1900) who achieved an astonishing and lovely luminance in his works. "Look at that light!" cried Barry. "Look at that space! Look at that air!"

Brigid glanced at Dixie. "Look at that air?" she whispered.

It was a fine painting and we all said so, but Barry was insistent. F. E. Church was the greatest artist in American history, and one of the best the world has ever known. "I'd put him right up there with Van Dyck and Canaletto."

"Canaletto?" said Dixie. "The one who did all those pictures of Venice?"

"Those skies!" murmured Barry ecstatically. He wore the expression of a satisfied voluptuary.

"Some people like paintings of puppies or naked women," I offered. "Barry likes light and air."

We left the museum and had lunch. Barry told us which things on the menu were worth ordering, and which things were an abomination. He made us all drink an obscure imported beer from Ecuador. To Barry, the world was divided up into masterpieces and abominations. It made life so much simpler for him, except that he never understood why his friends could never tell one from the other.

At the football game, Barry compared our school's quarterback to Y. A. Tittle. He compared the other team's punter to Ngoc Van Vinh. He compared the halftime show to the Ohio State band's Script Ohio formation. Before the end of the third quarter it was very obvious to me that Barry was going to have absolutely no luck at all with Dixie. Before the clock ran out in the fourth quarter, Brigid and I had made whispered plans to dump the other two as soon as possible and sneak away by ourselves. Dixie would probably find an excuse to ride the bus back to her dorm before suppertime. Barry, as usual, would spend the evening in our room, reading _The Making of the President 1996._

On other occasions, and with little or no provocation, Barry would lecture me about subjects as diverse as American literature (the best poet was Edwin Arlington Robinson, the best novelist James T. Farrell), animals (the only correct pet was the golden retriever), clothing (in anything other than a navy blue jacket and gray slacks, a man was just asking for trouble), and even hobbies (Barry collected military decorations of czarist Imperial Russia; he wouldn't talk to me for days after I told him my father collected barbed wire).

Barry was a wealth of information. He was the campus arbiter of good taste. Everyone knew Barry was the man to ask.

But no one ever did. We all hated his guts. I moved out of our dorm room before the end of the fall semester. Shunned, lonely, and bitter, Barry Rintz wound up as a guidance counselor in a high school in Ames, Iowa. The job was absolutely perfect for him; few people are so lucky in finding a career.

If I didn't know better, I might have believed that Barry was the original advance spy for the nuhp.

When the nuhp had been on Earth for a full year, they gave us the gift of interstellar travel. It was surprisingly inexpensive. The nuhp explained their propulsion system, which was cheap and safe and adaptable to all sorts of other earthbound applications. The revelations opened up an entirely new area of scientific speculation. Then the nuhp taught us their navigational methods, and about the "shortcuts" they had discovered in space. People called them space-warps, although technically speaking the shortcuts had nothing to do with Einsteinian theory or curved space or anything like that. Not many humans understood what the nuhp were talking about, but that didn't make very much difference. The nuhp didn't understand the shortcuts either; they just used them. The matter was presented to us like a Thanksgiving turkey on a platter. We bypassed the whole business of cautious scientific experimentation and leaped right into commercial exploitation. Mitsubishi of La Paz and Martin Marietta used nuhp schematics to begin construction of three luxury passenger ships, each capable of transporting a thousand tourists anywhere in our galaxy. Although man had yet to set foot on the moons of Jupiter, certain selected travel agencies began booking passage for a grand tour of the dozen nearest inhabited worlds.

Yes, it seemed that space was teeming with life, humanoid life on planets circling half the G-type stars in the heavens. "We've been trying to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence for decades," complained one Soviet scientist. "Why haven't they responded?"

A friendly nup merely shrugged. "Everybody's trying to communicate out there," he said. 'Tour messages are like Publishers Clearinghouse mail to them." At first that was a blow to our racial pride, but we got over it. As soon as we joined the interstellar community, they'd begin to take us more seriously. And the nuhp made that possible.

We were grateful to the nuhp, but that didn't make them any easier to live with. They were still insufferable. As my second term as president came to an end, Pleen began to advise me about my future career. "Don't write a book," he told me (after I had already written the first two hundred pages of A _President Remembers_ ). "If you want to be an elder statesman, fine; but keep a low profile and wait for the people to come to you."

"What am I supposed to do with my time then?" I asked.

"Choose a new career," Pleen said. "You're not all that old. Lots of people do it. Have you considered starting a mail-order business? You can operate it from your home. Or go back to school and take courses in some subject that's always interested you. Or become active in church or civic projects. Find a new hobby, raising hollyhocks or collecting military decorations."

"Pleen," I begged, "just leave me alone."

He seemed hurt. "Sure, if that's what you want." I regretted my harsh words.

All over the country, all over the world, everyone was having the same trouble with the nuhp. It seemed that so many of them had come to Earth, every human had his own personal nup to make endless personal suggestions. There hadn't been so much tension in the world since the 1992 Miss Universe contest, when the most votes went to No Award.

That's why it didn't surprise me very much when the first of our own mother ships returned from its twenty-eight-day voyage among the stars with only two hundred seventy-six of its one thousand passengers still aboard. The other seven hundred twenty-four had remained behind on one lush, exciting, exotic, friendly world or another. These planets had one thing in common: They were all populated by charming, warm, intelligent, humanlike people who had left their own home worlds after being discovered by the nuhp. Many races lived together in peace and harmony on these planets, in spacious cities newly built to house the fed-up expatriates. Perhaps these alien races had experienced the same internal jealousies and hatreds we human beings had known for so long, but no more. Coming together from many planets throughout our galaxy, these various peoples dwelt contentedly beside each other, united by a single common aversion: their dislike for the nuhp.

Within a year of the launching of our first interstellar ship, the population of Earth had declined by one half of one percent. Within two years, the population had fallen by almost fourteen million. The nuhp were too sincere and too eager and too sympathetic to fight with. That didn't make them any less tedious. Rather than make a scene, most people just up and left. There were plenty of really lovely worlds to visit, and it didn't cost very much, and the opportunities in space were unlimited. Many people who were frustrated and disappointed on Earth were able to build new and fulfilling lives for themselves on planets that we didn't even know existed until the nuhp arrived.

The nuhp knew this would happen. It had already happened dozens, hundreds of times in the past, wherever their mother ships touched down. They had made promises to us and they had kept them, although we couldn't have guessed just how things would turn out.

Our cities were no longer decaying warrens imprisoning the impoverished masses. The few people who remained behind could pick and choose among the best housing. Landlords were forced to reduce rents and keep properties in perfect repair just to attract tenants.

Hunger was ended when the ratio of consumers to food producers dropped drastically. Within ten years, the population of Earth was cut in half, and was still falling.

For the same reason, poverty began to disappear. There were plenty of jobs for everyone. When it became apparent that the nuhp weren't going to compete for those jobs, there were more opportunities than people to take advantage of them.

Discrimination and prejudice vanished almost overnight. Everyone cooperated to keep things running smoothly despite the large-scale emigration. The good life was available to everyone, and so resentments melted away. Then, too, whatever enmity people still felt could be focused solely on the nuhp; the nuhp didn't mind, either. They were oblivious to it all.

I am now mayor and postmaster of the small human community of New Dallas, here on Thir, the fourth planet of a star known in our old catalog as Struve 2398. The various alien races we encountered here call the star by another name, which translates into "God's Pineal." All the aliens here are extremely helpful and charitable, and there are few nuhp.

All through the galaxy, the nuhp are considered the messengers of peace. Their mission is to travel from planet to planet, bringing reconciliation, prosperity, and true civilization. There isn't an intelligent race in the galaxy that doesn't love the nuhp. We all recognize what they've done and what they've given us.

But if the nuhp started moving in down the block, we'd be packed and on our way somewhere else by morning.
**Target: Berlin!

The Role of the Air Force Four-Door Hardtop**

****

****

PREFACE

Feeling neglected, my wife left me during those terrible months. I also lost the friendship of several colleagues, but we succeeded in modifying a Lincoln Continental four-door sedan into our first great bomber of the war, the B—17 Flying Fortress. It was a trying time, but I'll tell you about it if you care to listen.

__

_Effinger WWII Book Gossipy, Rambling_

Reviewed for the Rusty Brook, New Jersey, Sun by Louis J. Arphouse

The opening words of Effinger's memoir, the very first paragraph of his preface, give the flavor of the remainder of the book. After a chapter or two, it is not a pleasant flavor. This is the first eye-witness document we have gotten from the war, at least from so notorious a participant. One could have hoped for a more disciplined, less discursive book. Effinger was personally involved in many of the tactical decisions and technical inventions that shaped the Second World War. He has seen fit in his history of those years to give us instead his meager snapshots of great figures, mere glimpses of elbows and coats rushing out of the frame while momentous consequences remain hinted at in the background.

One might even think that Effinger's book was written well before the end of the war, as a kind of hedging of his bets. In places it seems like the author is placating his former enemies, smoothing over their errors in the hopes that, had they emerged victorious, they might have gone easier on Effinger in whatever hypothetical war crimes trials that might have ensued. It's unlikely that the book would have had even that effect. Instead, it is too stilted to be read with any pleasure as a personal memoir, and not strict enough to be of value as a history text. It is fortunate for Effinger, and for the free world, that his talents during the war were used in other directions.

PREFACE ( _continued_ )

The decision not to hold the Second World War in the 1940s was made by mutual consent of all combatant parties, and a general agreement was signed in Geneva. Simply speaking, most nations felt it would just be better to wait. But there were often more probing reasons, situations which reflected sophisticated and convoluted paths of national policy. The Japanese, for example, at the Maryknoll conference, were rankled at the oil embargo a suspicious United States had placed on that island empire. A Japanese delegate rose from his seat at one point and abandoned his polite but false diplomatic manner. "What's the matter?" he said in a loud voice. "I can't understand it. Your own Admiral Perry opened us up to trade. Now you won't sell us what we want. That's stupid." And the irate delegate walked out of the conference room, blushing at his own brazenness.

There was a stunned silence, and then a great deal of muttering from the American side of the table. One of the American delegates cleared his throat. "You know," he said, "we never looked at it that way. He has a point."

The conference went on more smoothly from there and eventually achieved a compromise that both sides could accept enthusiastically. Japan no longer felt threatened economically, and war with the United States was averted. However, there were other causes for the sudden mending of political fences, many of which might have seemed laughable at the time but which cannot be underestimated in the light of successive events. One of the emperor's younger nephews, a member of the Imperial War Office, was a great baseball fan, as were many of his countrymen; this influential person believed that it would be a shame to interrupt the career of such a star as Joe DiMaggio. The emperor's nephew, too, was a voice that counseled patience.

In Nazi Germany, the citizens were made aware of the activities of Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. These men, chiefs of the SS and the Security Police, were assembling vast dossiers on millions upon millions of people: Nazis, anti-Nazis, politicians, common people, rich, poor, old, young. No one in the Reich could escape their scrutiny. Of course, this news made the people of Germany nervous; at the first opportunity, the Nazis were removed from office. "Thank God for the American news services," said many German citizens afterward, for it was through the American newspapers and radio broadcasts that the Germans were alerted to the shenanigans of the Nazis. "The Americans are the sentinels of liberty. Once again they have had to save our necks." The political structure of Germany reformed, moving from the extreme right, stopping comfortably just left of middle; the new rulers in Berlin made it embarrassingly clear to Washington that there was no further reason to seek war. Italy, her trains humming along on schedule, followed suit a few months later. The trains got all fouled up, but tourists in Italy reported that otherwise things had changed for the better, except around Venice during July and August, and even Mussolini hadn't been able to do anything about that.

AT LAST, THE WAR AS IT WAS!

TARGET: BERLIN!

BY GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER

OFERMOD PRESS, $12.95

ILLUSTRATED

At long last, Ofermod Press is proud to announce the publication of the first genuine firsthand documentary to come out of the war. A searing indictment of the conservative voices in President Roosevelt's cabinet and of the timid liberal partisans, both groups which almost led the United States to ruin. MORE! A caustic attack on the fearful counselors who would allow other nations in this postwar world to maintain a superiority in number and type of bombing weapon. MORE! A vital book for all thoughtful citizens, a shocking, sometimes amusing glimpse into the world of high-pressure politics and top-level decision-making. MORE! This book is much more because it was written by one of the most influential men of the Second World War, and it contains an urgent message for all Americans.

NATIONAL ADVERTISING, PROMOTION, AND TWENTY-FOUR-CITY AUTHOR TOUR

$12.95, Publication Date September 9, 1981

PREFACE ( _continued_ )

I could see how the war was going to go, even at the very beginning. I know that isn't the kind of thing one should say about oneself, especially in a book like this. But in this case there isn't anyone else around to say it and, after all, my opinion was later seconded by President Roosevelt himself, in addition to a handful of lesser dignitaries. "Well, George," said the president, "you guessed which turn this war would take quite a while ago, didn't you?" I had to agree. And, in the same way, I can see which way this book is going, too, not that it does me any more good. Because during the war I had what I came to call a Cassandra complex. I'll discuss that in more detail later; let me just say now that I had a sense of the magnitude of the war's climax, but I never felt certain of the moral implications.

It must be made clear, prefatorily, that international disagreements had not been completely resolved without open conflict. No, rather, the war had merely been shelved. The more bloodthirsty members of Japan's Imperial War Office went underground for some years, as did their counterparts in France and Great Britain, in the Soviet Union, the war-seekers in the United States, Hitler's colleagues and Mussolini's. The world at large slumbered in three decades of what the Twenties and Thirties had been —a mixed bag of peace, prosperity, anxiety, and depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, relieved of many of his heaviest political worries, continued in office, as hearty as ever, a visual reminder, along with Winston Churchill, of a nostalgic time. The Forties passed, and the Fifties, and the frenetic Sixties. Then the Seventies began, and it looked once more as if the world were edging closer to that irrevocable stumble into total war. In Germany the populace, tired of thirty years of liberal politics and the rowdiness it induced in the younger generation, began a slow retreat toward fascism. Adolf Hitler, now eighty-five years old, came out of retirement to lead his country. Himmler dusted off his old dossiers. The people of Germany who recalled the old days smiled and nudged their neighbors. Hitler was something they could understand, not like the glittery transvestite singing stars of their children's generation. Hitler would show those guys something. The older people settled back to watch.

In Japan, the emperor's nephew no longer followed American baseball. He had taken up golf. With a worldwide fuel shortage in 1974, Japan found herself back in the same situation that she had been in the early Forties. "What the hell," muttered the Imperial War Office. "What the hell," muttered the emperor. Secret plans were made.

Prance watched nervously, Great Britain watched confidently, the Soviet Union watched slyly. The United States didn't seem to be watching at all, but it was difficult to be sure.

Events moved quickly thereafter, resuming their inexorable march to war along the very same lines that had been abandoned three decades before. But there were a few alterations, thanks to the progress of both technology and human relations.

Hermann Goering, leader of Hitler's _Luftwaffe_ , studied detailed maps of Poland and France. Goering, now eighty-one years old, looked somewhat ridiculous in his refurbished uniforms. His fat face was masked by broad striations of wrinkles. His hands wavered noticeably as he lifted small replicas of aircraft, moving them from bases within the Reich to proposed targets all over the mapboard. He beamed happily as he set an airplane down in Paris, another in London, a third in Prague. An aide moved still another airplane to Moscow, too far for Goering to reach by himself. The air marshal's aides whispered behind his back. Someone would have to tell the Fiihrer's trusted lieutenant about the _Luftwaffe's_ weak point. The young men, fearful of the senile yet powerful man, contested among themselves. Eventually the least assertive and most vulnerable of them presented Goering with a special file, one which had been placed on his desk several times before and which Goering had chosen to ignore. He could ignore it no longer.

**FROM THE DESK OF ...**

**... HERMANN GOERING**

Reich Master of the Hunt

June 10, 1974

Dear George:

It's been a long time since I've seen you. How are things in the Free World? Things are moving along at a rapid pace here, under the banner of National Socialism. I'm sure you're keeping up with events, but I'll bet we still surprise you. The next few years will be momentous ones in the history of the world. Isn't it kind of exciting, being on the inside?

Talk of war is heard on all sides. I'm sure you're keeping up to date on our air force, its size and capabilities, just as I receive reports on you and the others. I wonder if your reports are any better than mine. You must know that the _Luftwaffe_ is in no shape to face a long, drawn-out war now. But there's no talking to Adolf these days. He has this timetable, he keeps telling us. Ah, well, we do our best. You know just how difficult this job is.

You probably also know that we've scrapped the idea of long-range heavy bombers. I don't suppose I'm giving away any secrets in saying that. We'd have to restructure our entire automotive industry. You've already beaten us there. But don't count us out altogether! You might wake up some morning to the sound of Volkswagen six-passenger luxury bombers driving by under your window. You know us. We have more Situation Contingency Plans than anyone even knows about—including me, Adolf, the OKW, or anybody. If we could just get everything indexed and sorted, we'd be in great shape. Too many personalities clashing for that, though, I'm afraid... .

Tell Diana that my Emmy tried her recipe for Mad Dog Chili last week. Emmy saw it in the New York Post. It was so good that I was in bed recovering for three days. That was a very nice profile on Diana, too. She must be happy. Emmy can't get anything like it here, in the _Beobachter_. I think Emmy's jealous.

If there isn't war by then, I'll see you in the fall in Milan for the air show. I wish I had your youth; nowadays, a few days away from Emmy means only that I'll end up with diarrhea. Regards to your... President (I almost wrote you-know-what).

Best,

H.

PREFACE ( _continued_ )

In Tokyo, the War Office studied a photographed copy of Goering's file. The Japanese conclusions were the same as the German: the Imperial Air Force would also have to be drastically restructured. As things turned out, that did not prove to be so large an obstacle.

Finally, here in the United States, the clamor to arms did not sound so loudly. Nevertheless, President Roosevelt was aware of what the potential belligerent nations were doing and spurred production. The Air Force followed in the footsteps of Germany and Japan and turned from the development of aircraft to the exploration of the motorcar as a tactical weapon, both as long-range bomber and as fighter escort. The reasons were the same: the Air Force generals were astonished by the statistics concerning the vast amounts of petroleum products that an all-out war would demand. Oil was scarce, and supplies were dangerously low. There was no guarantee that overseas oil-producing nations would remain friendly. Automobiles could bring about the same results as aircraft and with much greater economy. All that was necessary was a certain basic alteration in military thinking. Naturally enough, because of the conservative outlook of the military mind, this change met some resistance. But when the facts were made clear and the economic and political ramifications were explained, the real business of realigning the Air Force began, in Washington as well as Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, and London.

It was against this background, then, that I began my work. I was given a suite of offices in the Pentagon; that was on February 18, 1974. Across the United States, huge lines of cars waited at service stations, unable to purchase gasoline with the freedom the American motorist had come to enjoy. On the way home each day I saw hundreds of automobiles still queued up hopefully; I remember thinking that it was ironic that the same gasoline shortage that paralyzed these motorists had made an all-out air war equally impractical and that the common solution of all the leading nations had been to replace their aircraft with automobiles. Billions of gallons of gasoline would be saved in this way—involuntarily, of course, as the gasoline was not actually available to be saved in the first place; still, I wondered if the man in the street would react as we hoped, would rise up in patriotic sacrifice and curtail his pleasure driving for the war effort, should hostilities become official.

CHAPTER TWO

George Alec Effinger, _Special Assistant to President Roosevelt:_ Then you were involved with the early _Luftwaffe_ attacks on Poland?

Oberleutnant Rolf Mulp, _pilot of the German Nazi_ Luftwaffe: Yes, indeed, certainly so. I commanded a _kette_ in an attack—

Effinger: " _Kette_ "?

Mulp: Yes. I'm sorry. It's a German word. Don't worry about it. Anyway, we were taking these three Stukas against a bridge just across the Polish border. This was September 1, 1974. The first day of the war.

Effinger: And the Stuka, the old terror bomber —

Mulp: Was now the 1973 Opel 53 four-door sedan. We had made the change in strategy and procedures very quickly, thanks to our basic German love of discipline. We practiced a lot, driving around shopping centers, aiming our fingers at people —

Effinger: And with Hitler and Goering and everybody back in power, it was like old times.

Mulp: I wouldn't know firsthand, of course. I was too young in the Thirties to remember them. But my parents told me stories of what it had been like. And we all joined in, and we all settled down quickly. It was so comfortable to have those familiar faces back, now grown so old, but still so familiar. Comfortable, like an old boot.

Effinger: A high black one, no doubt.

Mulp: It comes just below the knee. Ah, I see that you understand, do you not? Ha, ha, ha.

Effinger: Ha, ha, ha. We can laugh, now that the war's over.

Mulp: Ha, ha, ha. Indeed, yes. But those were terrible years. Me, driving the Opel at top speed. My tail gunner sitting in the back seat, worried, nervous, chattering nonsense while I was trying to keep my mind on the road. We had a constant fear of enemy fighters screaming toward us around the next bend in the road. And then the business of having to pitch bombs at bridges or whatever, or stopping the car and getting out to toss the things. It took a lot of skill and a lot of luck.

Effinger: And a lot of daring.

Mulp: I'm glad that you can appreciate that now. I'd like to ask you a question, if I may.

Effinger: Certainly. I'll bet I know which one, too.

Mulp: You were almost single-handedly responsible –

Effinger: No, for crying out loud, I don't want to hear it. I'm tired of hearing it already.

From the Cormorant, Indiana, _Flash-Comet_

ON THE TOWNE

by Craig Towne

This column's reporter went to an unusual promo party last week. In town for a few days pushing a new book was a former aide of the late President Roosevelt. The author, George Effinger, visited our little city once several years ago, before the war. I recall meeting him then, shaking his hand, and hearing him say that he was "glad I could make it." This reporter was very gratified that Mr. Effinger, too, remembered that brief acquaintanceship. Also, his book seems very handsome. But remember when books cost five bucks?

CHAPTER FOUR

Effinger: What was it like?

Maginna: It was awful, what do you think? Really awful. Anybody who lived through it would tell you the same thing. About how awful it was. We were all thinking such idiotic things while it was happening. And now, looking back, it's kind of hard to straighten it all out in my mind. I remember thinking, "God, they're all going to think we were idiots here." I was afraid that people would laugh or something, because we let it happen. That Pearl Harbor would go down in history as our fault.

Effinger: Of course, there was a certain lack of communication.

Maginna: Things seemed worse at the time. I've read about the attack since, many times. I'm glad, of course, that the whole thing wasn't as bad as it looked to me then. But the accounts never convey the real feeling we had, the loud awfulness. I thought, "There goes the shortest war in the world." I thought the Navy was sunk.

Effinger: Can you describe what it looked like?

Maginna: Sure. Nothing easier. It was mostly these Honda Civics—we called them Kates during the war—that did most of the bombing. And these Toyota Corolla 1200 coupes, what we called Zeroes, were the fighter escorts. It was such a quiet morning. I don't know, I can't remember what I had planned for the afternoon. Anyway, these Jap cars started driving up in long lines from Honolulu, a couple of hundred of them at least. They roared through the sentry posts, the Zeroes shooting down soldiers, sailors, a lot of civilians, even. The Kates screeched their brakes at the end of the piers, threw their bombs, and drove away. All the time their Zeroes, those Toyota coupes, were demolishing our planes before our pilots could get them started. Most of the damage was done real quick. We never knew what hit us.

Effinger: And you have no trouble recalling your feelings.

Maginna: No trouble at all. That's something I'll remember until the day I die. That's the reason I don't like to read about Pearl Harbor, because the accounts just don't capture it.

Effinger: I'm giving you the chance to correct that.

Maginna: Sure. A lot of us that saw the _Arizona_ get hit—some of us had friends on her—were glad of what you did at the end of the war. We would have voted for you for president. And you're right these days, about not letting other countries do that to us all over again. Sure. We ought to screw them down while we have the chance.

Effinger: That's not exactly what I—

Maginna: I wouldn't want that to happen all over again.

Effinger: Me, neither.

Maginna: Right. Right. ( _Pause_ ) Are you okay?

Dear Mr. Effinger:

I recently borrowed your book _Target: Berlin_! from the library. It isn't such a big library, here in Springfield, not so big as you'd think with a college right in town, but then the college has its own, of course, but we had your book, and since my husband was a pilot in the war I thought I'd read your book. My husband was killed in one of the raids over Germany that you talk about in Chapter Eight late in the war. We were married only a little while before Pearl Harbor, and when my husband was killed, it was a tremendous loss, but I have learned to live with it and accept it as God's will, something that a lot of us wives have trouble doing but I don't. That's just the way I was raised, I guess.

I liked your book a lot. A lot of us wives had trouble understanding just why our husbands were dying, dropping bombs on tiny towns that didn't look like they'd be worth anything to anybody. I liked your book because it made me understand for the first time that my husband was actually contributing and doing something important instead of just throwing his life away which is what we all thought for so long. I'm glad at last that somebody told us something. We all are, though a lot of us wives have trouble believing it, even still.

But I know that if Lawrence was alive today, he'd like your book too, on account of he was a part of what you describe so well. And the fact that it was you, personally, that did so much to help our country win the war, not only coming up with the idea of the big bombing missions but also making the decision to go ahead with the A-bomb, I know that would have impressed him no end. Of course, I didn't know who you were then, during the war I mean, and I doubt that Lawrence did, either, but I know that if he wasn't dead, he'd know who you are now and be grateful. I know that I am.

God bless you. I hope things work out all right for you.

Very truly yours,

Mrs. Catherine M. Tuposky

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dr. Nelson: I walked into the project director's office that first Monday, I recall it very clearly, and I was mad as a drowning hornet. I said, "Who is this jerk?" I figured I'd worked for twenty years, and now was no time for some idiot with no experience and a lot of nerve to come and tell me what to do, war or no war. It was the wrong way for the president to go about things, I thought. Roosevelt was always like that, even in his first five or six terms, if you'll remember. But, like I say, the matter was settled, and I didn't have anything to say about it. We were at war. We needed another heavy bomber to fill in on certain kinds of missions on which the B-17 had demonstrated a kind of vulnerability. The project director said to me, "This guy Effinger wants you to make something out of this." He tossed me a picture of a 1974 Chrysler Imperial Le Baron four-door hardtop. A beauty of a car. Well, I didn't know as much about the situation as the president or you did. I thought about all the work we did to rig up a heavy bomber out of the Lincoln Continental. I didn't want to have to go through all of that again. But what could I say?

Dr. Johnson: This was my first big project. I was very excited about it. I can still picture Dr. Nelson fuming and raging at his desk, but I never shared that feeling. I was still very much impressed by your development of the long-range bombing attacks against the enemies' industrial complexes. That showed a certain sophistication that I admired. Up until that point, the bomber was used only to support troops and armored attacks—in short, limited raids. But both Germany and Japan were learning the hard way that we meant business.

Dr. Nelson: It was a kind of perverse rebellion that forced me to include many of the Le Baron's luxury extras as standard equipment on what eventually came to be the B-24 Liberator. It was only later that I learned from B-24 crew members that these things which I intended as a harmless slap at the government, hitting it in the budget so to speak, actually saved many lives and greatly added to the crews' driving pleasure.

Dr. Green: The B-24 had certain advantages over the B—17, although some B—17 pilots say the same about their own bombers. Still, the Liberator was fitted out better in some respects, particularly the leather trim inside, rear radio speaker, glove compartment vanity mirror, carpeted luggage space in the trunk, and an interior gas cap lock release. These things had been left off the B-17 for monetary reasons, but they showed up on the B-24 as Dr. Nelson's little joke.

Dr. Nelson: Still, they saved many lives and undoubtedly shortened the war.

Dr. Johnson: And you, Mr. Effinger, you were with us through all of it, with the B-17, the B-24, and, later, with the B-29. I'll never forget how much I hated your guts.

Dr. Green: Still, our country will always be grateful.

Dr. Nelson: Still.

****

**FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT**

February 7, 1981

Dear George:

It's been a long time, I know, since we've last had the time to talk. Well, after all, I'm president now, you know. I sometimes miss the old days, before FDR died and I accepted the burden that so wears me down these days. I miss the pinball contests in the Executive Mansion. I miss the table-tennis matches with the Senate Majority Leader whose name I've forgotten, he's dead now. I miss being able to sneak out for some miniature golf and not being recognized.

It's silly to live in the past. They all tell me that, every day. Even Miss Brant says the same thing. Am I living in the past? That's a kind of mental illness, isn't it? I suspect that they're trying to convince me that I'm unstable. Sometimes I'm thankful that we don't have the vote of confidence in this country.

What brought all this on was I found the enclosed while moving a file cabinet this morning. Thought you'd like to have it. We all live in the past, just a little.

Regards,

Bob

Robert L. Jennings

President of the United States

RLJ / eb

Enc.

**FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT**

_August 21, 1979_

_Dear George:_

_How are things going with the you-know-what? Have you heard from the Manhattan District boys lately? Are you working on the delivery vehicle for the you-know-what? I suppose you are, but I can't help worrying that Uncle Adolf will beat us to it. Hitler is an even ninety years old this year. He dodders when he speaks these days, you can see it in the newscasts. I'm ninety-seven, but at least I have an excuse not to have to stand up. 1 do all my doddering with a shawl on my lap._

_War is hell, did you know that? It's also futile. And inhuman, if you listen to the right people. But it can be glorious, and no one can deny that marvelous things come out of war. For instance, if you recall your history, the elimination of a lot of odd little Balkan states (a wonderful thing, I wish they'd thought of that in my childhood) and, of course, the you-know-what. Hurry it up, will you?_

_I hope you're not feeling the weight of responsibility for the you-know-what. I mean, it'll shorten the war, won't it? Try to think of it like that._

_I remember when it looked like this war was going to be fought forty years ago. I thought about all the wonderful patriotic movies that could have been made: Fred MacMurray as a pilot, Pat O'Brien as a tough old naval officer, John Wayne in the Marines, James Stewart as a bashful hero. Who do we have today? Robert Redford? O'Toole? Newman? Gatelin? I miss radio._

_Eleanor tried Diana's recipe for chicken in honey sauce. In fact, she tried it on some Englishman over here for something or other. He said he knew for a fact that it was a dish that Rudolf Hess asks for a lot in prison. Hess calls it_ Poulet au Roehm; _he always gets a laugh from ordering it, poor man._

_So. Keep up the good work. Push on with the you-know-what, keep me posted, and let's have you over for supper some evening when I'm back on solid food._

_Hello to Diana_.

_Best,_

_F._

_Franklin Delano Roosevelt_

_President of the United States_

_FDR/sf_

CHAPTER NINE

Major Erich von Locher, _German fighter pilot_ : I am frequently ... Can you hear me? I am frequently ... How is that?

Effinger: Fine. Fine.

Von Locher: All right, I suppose. I am frequently asked these days to comment on what I feel to be the reasons for the sudden deterioration of the _Luftwaffe_ after the Battle of Britain. I generally avoid that question. It is too complex. I would be doing my former comrades an injustice by trying to answer.

Instead, let me speculate on the relative strengths of our "aircraft," such as they were. I feel I have more experience and more confidence to discuss such a concrete problem.

The chief workhorses of our fighter-interceptor arm were the Me 109, which the Messerschmitt people had built from the beautiful little Porsche 911-T, and the FW 190, which came later, a development of the ungainly Volkswagen Beetle. With the introduction of disposable fuel tanks, these two fighters had great range, great mobility. They were unmatched in the air during the early part of the war. However, it was not long before the Allies came up with planes that equaled and, finally, surpassed them. Much has been made of the supposed even match between our Porsche and the English Triumph Spitfire "Spitfire." As far as I'm concerned, it was an even match only when neither was destroyed. That did not happen often.

I piloted a Volkswagen during most of the war, first in the west, then on the Russian front. Is that all right?

Effinger: You're doing fine.

Von Locher: You don't think I'm being too pedantic? I don't want to sound like a professor or something.

Effinger: No, no. Just keep going like you were. It's fine. Von Locher: Where was I? Effinger: Here, I'll play it back.

Von Locher: _Was destroyed. That did not happen often. I piloted a Volkswagen during most of the war, first in the west, then on the Russian front. Is that all_ —

Oh, yes. Well. I remember one particular battle. A whole gang of American bombers was coming east, along the northern route. Our spotters along the way had counted over five hundred bombers, all Lincoln Continentals and Chrysler Imperials, the big ones. They had landed in France and driven across Belgium, then southeast toward Augsburg. This was '79, when the Allied bombing missions were going on night and day, without much resistance from the weakened _Luftwaffe_. Anyway, our Operations people had the facts on this wave, but all we could do was wait. That was the hard part, sitting in our Volkswagens with the engines revving, waiting.

Suddenly we got the call: the bombers had taken the freeway to Berlin. I felt a cold chill; this was the first actual attack on our capital. It had a tremendous symbolic meaning for us. We all gritted our teeth and swore to defend Berlin. Still, even then, all we could do was wait. The drive from France to Berlin was very long, even on the good roads. The Allied crews would have to stop in motels along the way. Our nerves were worn thin, if that is possible with nerves. At last our group leaders ordered us to pull out. We drove in squadrons, spaced out over all four lanes of the divided highway. We did not anticipate running into any civilian traffic, so we drove on both sides of the median strip. The civilians were mostly taking the trains at the end of the war, leaving the highways to the _Luftwaffe_.

We met the Allied bombers about 170 miles from Berlin. There we got the greatest and most horrifying surprise of the war. The bombers were escorted by fighter planes, the Ford Mustang "Mustang." Until this time the bombers were escorted by Plymouth Duster "Thunderbolts" and Chevy Vega "Tomahawks," which could not carry enough fuel to make a long journey into Germany and then return. The bombers were usually on their own during the last stages of their missions. That's when we had our greatest success. But the "Mustangs" changed that. Even Goering realized this fact. That's when he finally admitted that the end had come. And besides their range, the "Mustangs" were our superior in most offensive categories as well.

We did our best, weary and low in morale as we were. We were defending Berlin. I ignored the "Mustangs" and went straight for the bombers. I drove at about eighty-five miles per hour, approaching at a right angle to the path of a Lincoln ahead of me. The bomber's gunner began firing, but my Volkswagen made a small target. I also could turn quicker than he could; it was shortly after dawn, and the sun was rising in the Lincoln pilot's eyes. I drove out of the sun, swung in to him, and raked the side of the car with my 20-mm cannons. The bomber exploded, then swerved off the road and through the guardrail. The battle was less than five minutes old, and already I had a confirmed kill. My squadron leader congratulated me over the radio. I did not take time to relax. A "Mustang" was trying to position itself on my tail. All around me the battle raged; tires screamed as evasive maneuvers were made; burned cars, American and German, littered the highway, making tactics and strategy more difficult. By the end of the morning I had six kills. The Americans lost hundreds of planes, but enough got through to Berlin to shock our leaders into an awareness of just how defenseless the Reich had become.

We drove back to our base in a subdued —

Effinger: I'm sorry, I think the tape's running out. Let me change ... no, doggone it, that's the last one.

Von Locher: I wanted to talk about the time I held off three Ford Pintos while my machine guns were jammed.

Effinger: Tomorrow. As soon as I g—

June 18, 1980

Dear George:

I hope you understand. I just can't take it anymore, that's all. I suppose people will think I'm unpatriotic, but they don't know how much I've given to the war effort. I sit home every night alone, watching television, wondering what you're doing. And you're always saying that you're with those scientists of yours, trying to come up with a better airplane. Well, we're supposed to be married. Germany surrendered already, remember? Japan isn't going to last much longer, either, as far as I can see. Still, you have to go to "meetings." I'm beginning to wonder.

Last Monday you said you were going to have a meeting with the president. But did you know that at just the time you were supposed to be huddling with him in the Oval Office he was on TV addressing the nation? Did you know that? I won't even bother to ask you where you were. It doesn't matter anymore. I've left you before, and the Secret Service boys always convinced me to come back, for reasons of national security. But what about my security? Nobody seems to worry about that.

You spend all day tinkering with Imperials and things, and what does the government give us to drive? A Mercury Comet. I think it's ridiculous.

Don't think that I don't love you, because I still do. But it's just gotten to be too much. I really mean it.

What's-her-name, that old bag secretary of yours, can take care of you. She can learn to make macaroni and cheese, and after that you won't miss me at all. That's about all you needed me for, anyway. And don't worry about money or things like that. I'm not going to bleed you. I think I'll go back to Matamoras for a while, and then I think I'll go into the theater. I've already got an offer of a job from Mickey.

All good wishes,

Your wife,

Diana

CHAPTER TWELVE

Tanora Keigi, _Japanese fighter pilot_ : Now here's an interesting point. Today in America many people believe that the kamikaze pilots were religious fanatics or superpatriotic men hypnotized by their devotion to the emperor. As I recall it, this was not the case. We were merely defending our homeland and our families. The B-29 bases in the South Pacific were too numerous and too well-defended to be destroyed. With the fall of Iwo Jima to the Americans, the long-range "Mustang" fighters could be based close enough to the Japanese home islands to accompany the bombers on their missions. All that the dwindling Japanese air force could accomplish were attacks against the aircraft carriers that ferried bombers and fighters from the more distant American bases. And ammunition production was down, and fuel was scarce. We suicide pilots took our inspiration from several high-ranking officers who crashed their planes against American craft in demonstration of their love for their countrymen. It was not long before suicide squadrons were organized on a regular basis.

It was very difficult to crash an automobile against a ship, especially if the ship was still at sea. Therefore, our tactics called for waiting until the American ships dropped anchor near our shores, and the bomber cars and the fighter cars were landed on the beach. We could attack these enemy cars, or the landing craft, or, with the aid of the navy and our own motorized rafts, we might be able to crash into the American ships themselves. Few of us were that lucky.

We had very strange procedures, once these decisions to give our lives in suicidal attacks were made. A friend of mine who drove a Toyota Corolla "Zero" was given a large bomb to throw. The idea was that he would toss the bomb, the bomb would damage his target, and a few seconds later he would crash his Toyota into the same target. Of course, he had to throw the bomb from very short range. The odds were that the target would be shooting back at my friend. As it turned out, he threw the bomb too soon, the bomb hit the ground and bounced up, my friend's "Zero" hit the bomb, which exploded. My friend was already dead when the flaming mass of his car struck his target. He was a hero, and we praised his name from a position of safety about a half mile away.

I had my opportunity to emulate my friend the next day, but bad luck caused me to overshoot my target and waste my precious bomb. Three days later I was ordered to drive my Datsun into a flight of Cadillac Fleetwood "Superfortresses." Again, the gods willed otherwise. Although I weaved through the American bombers for nearly an hour, I did not hit a single target. The bombers passed me by, and I was left out of gas on a highway seven miles from the small town of Gogura.

I kept trying. My commanding officers were very sympathetic. One by one my comrades met glorious death, while I found only frustration. At last the war ended before I found my own moment of honorable sacrifice.

Today I am a moderately successful and prosperous automobile dealer, with a Toyota showroom in San Diego, California. I bear no ill will toward the people who slew so many of my friends and relatives. They seem to harbor no resentment toward me, at the same time. Years have passed, and old disagreements are forgotten. A group of fellow businessmen from Japan have joined me in forming a syndicate, and we are currently buying golf courses in America, athletic teams, and opening franchised fast-food stands. Everything is fine. Everyone is happy. The emperor must have been right, after all. My service mates did not die in vain.

December 10, 1983

Mr. George Alec Effinger

c/o Ofermod Press

409 E. 147th Street

Cleveland, Ohio 44010

Dear Mr. Effinger:

I recently had the pleasure of reading your book, _Target: Berlin!_ which was published a few years ago. I don't exactly know why I picked it up, except for the fact that I enjoy reading memoirs of famous people. Sort of like high-class gossip. Also, I've had acquaintances with several people mentioned in your book. I liked your book very much, though much of it was way over my head. I learned a lot from it.

This letter is being written for more than one reason. I don't know if you'll recall, but a couple of years ago I prosecuted a paternity suit against then White House aide Arthur Whitewater, who figures often in your work. Because of governmental pressure, the case was eventually dismissed. Another typical example of administrative self-preservation at the expense of the common man. In the following year I brought L. Daniel Dresser, former presidential press secretary to President Jennings during the close of the war, to court on similar grounds. Again, the case was thrown out before I ever had a fair chance to prove my charges. But I've learned to accept the facts that high-up officials can do just about anything these days. That's why I really liked your book, because it shows these people in everyday life, fallible and slightly stupid.

I saw you on a late-night talk show with Don McCarey, and I thought you were terrific, even if you only had four minutes. Just think, a few years ago you were one of the most influential men in the country. Now you're lucky to get four minutes of time at one o'clock in the morning. Still, that's more than I'll ever get.

Did you have any trouble publishing your book? I mean, did the government censors hassle you or threaten you at all? I bet they did. You have a lot of integrity, and I admire that. That's why I'm sure you'll behave with more honor than either Whitewater or Dresser. I can't say anything for certain as yet, but I go to the doctor the day after tomorrow, and I may have some important news for you then.

Keep up the good work. I know that in the years since the war you've had a constant guilt thing about being responsible for the dropping of the A-bombs on Japan. It shows up all the time in your book. I just want to say that we all have things to be guilty about, and we just have to learn to stifle those feelings before they interfere with regular life. So your situation is a little more extreme than most everyone else's. In a way, we're all responsible for those tragedies. Did you ever think of it like that? It probably doesn't make any difference to you, but I wish I could make you happier. I'd like to meet you in person some day.

Like I said, you'll get the results of the doctor's examination, and we can proceed from there. Surely the royalties on your book would be more than enough to cover the minor expenses that I might cost you. It's no big thing. It happens to people all the time. I don't hold any personal grudge. After all, you never really did anything; we've never been in the same state together. Still, you must admit that, as a famous celebrity, you're a target. This is just part of the circumstances you agreed to accept along with your notoriety. So there isn't any personal animosity between us. I want you to understand that.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to your new book. I saw an ad for it in the _Plain Dealer. The Lighter Side of Hiroshima_. Lots of humorous anecdotes collected in the years since 1980. That takes a little nerve, too, you know. I'm impressed. The wild, wacky world of nuclear holocaust. Perhaps it's good therapy for you, though. Who am I to say?

Hoping to hear from you soon (I enclosed a self-addressed, stamped envelope for your convenience),

Heather Oroszco

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Colonel Holbrook Leaf, _pilot of the B-29_ Enola Gay: I think that I was the only man in the entire 509th Composite Group that knew of the existence of the atomic bomb. I was the commanding officer of the Group, of course, and we had been assembled specially for the purpose of delivering the bomb on certain selected targets in Japan. We went through what seemed to the regular crews unusual training procedures and special treatment. I imagine that it must have been a hard time for the three other members of my crew.

Major Charles W. Bartz, _co-pilot of the_ Enola Gay: It sure was. The other men on the base on Tinian laughed at us and called us names. They couldn't understand what we were contributing to the war effort. We weren't going on regular bombing runs. We were contributing, but even we, except for Colonel Leaf, were unaware of just how. But everybody suspected that something special was in preparation. We never guessed that it was on the order of the A-bomb, though.

Major Andrew Douglas Swayne, _bombardier_ : The B-29 was a beautiful car. The Cadillac Fleetwood. After flying B—17s during the early part of the war, it was like a vacation to be transferred to the 509th. But we had to take a lot of ribbing from the guys. It's funny. When you meet those fellows today, they never remember all that happened before the dropping of the bomb. They just remember the awe and the pride.

Bartz: I've had to describe that moment to my kid at least a hundred times.

Leaf: Me, too. Your kid never gets tired of hearing about it.

Swayne: As bombardier, and with just the single bomb, I took over the job of navigator. They put us ashore in some Godforsaken rural area of Japan. I didn't even know where we were. It was Colonel Leaf and Major Bartz in the front seat, and me and Captain Ealywine in the large, comfortable back seat. We drove for nearly an hour before we saw a sign. It put us on the road to the main road to Hiroshima. We were really afraid that we'd run out of gas before we got there. The _Enola Gay_ wasn't going to make the return trip with us, but it still had to get us to the target.

Captain Solomon Ealywine, _gunner_ : The back seat wasn't as comfortable as in most B-29s, because the A-bomb itself was nearly ten feet long, and a hole had been cut to allow the nose of the thing to extend out from the trunk and across the seat. It separated Swayne and me. It was an eerie feeling, driving along with that thing under my right arm.

Swayne: And it made navigation more difficult. I had to sit in the back seat with the road maps spread out on my lap, and I didn't really have room to operate. In those days in Japan, the road-map markings and the routes they represented bore little relation to each other. Just finding our way to Hiroshima was a tough job. No divided highways with large green overhead signs.

Bartz: Still, we got there. I didn't have much to do, as it turned out. We weren't bothered the whole time. No enemy fighters to meet us or anything. It was like a weekend drive in the country. It seemed like a shame to abandon such a nice car, but we left the Cadillac in the parking lot of a largish shopping center in Hiroshima, where it would blend in with a lot of other cars, many of them prewar American.

Swayne: I had been trained to operate the bomb, although during the instruction drills I never had any idea of the magnitude of the bomb I'd be working with. I set it to explode in ninety minutes. ConComOp had worked out the schedule with almost split-second precision. That was their thing, even though it rarely worked in practice. Still, we kept amazingly to the schedule. We got out of the car, keeping our eyes on the ground, trying to be inconspicuous in enemy territory. We said goodbye to the faithful _Enola Gay_ , slammed and locked the doors, and walked across the parking lot to where we could catch the bus back to the village of Horoshiga. There would be a submarine waiting for us offshore. That's the last we saw of the plane, but ninety minutes later, many miles away, riding on the bus, we saw the sky turn pinkish-white. It happened with a suddenness like a bolt of lightning. We turned and shook hands all around. We knew that stroke would crumble the Japanese will to continue the war.

Effinger: Do you ever feel the least bit guilty about killing and maiming so many thousands of innocent Japanese civilians?

( _Pause_ )

Swayne: Guilty? Innocent?

Ealywine: We had the weapon. We had the Cadillac to deliver it. Our soldiers and marines, not to mention our fellow aircraft crews, were still dying in large numbers. For four years the Japanese had mercilessly waged war against us. Here we had the chance to end it all, with one shot, tie it up neatly with one hit.

Bartz: There were civilians killed at Pearl Harbor. There were civilians killed everywhere.

Effinger: But the numbers—

Ealywine: All right. According to your thinking there are numbers of civilian dead that ought to make us feel bad, like at Hiroshima. That implies that there are numbers of civilian dead that ought not to make us feel bad, that we ought to accept. Somewhere in the middle those feelings change. Say, if we kill five thousand civilians, it's all right, but if we kill five thousand and five hundred, we'll be haunted for the rest of our lives. You just can't analyze it like that.

Leaf: You may regret heading up the Manhattan Project, and you may regret encouraging President Jennings to drop the bomb, but I can tell you for a fact that none of the United States Air Force fliers, and none of the rest of the wartime servicemen, and, most likely, truthfully, none of the Japanese people regret the dropping of the bomb. They all appreciate how many lives it saved by avoiding a longer, more protracted war.

Effinger: You know, I've never been able to visualize it like that. But now I think I can begin to learn to live with it.

Swayne: That's the first step. Effinger: Thank you all very much.

Leaf: Not at all. That's what we're here for. Don't give the dead Japanese another thought. After all, they started it, didn't they? It's not often that we get involved in a situation with so clearly marked good and bad sides.

Ealywine: I'm glad we were on the right side.

Effinger: I'm sure that makes it unanimous. Good night, my friends, good night.

NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK!

SKIES FULL OF DEATH (Original title: TARGET:

BERLIN!)

The fascinating story of World War II as told by one of the most influential leaders of America's struggle for freedom.

SKIES FULL OF DEATH, by George Alec Effinger, a Gemsbok Book.

"The taste of truth pervades each page in a way that simply can't be found in works by mere observers. Effinger was there, and he tells it all the way it happened."

—The Destrehan _Sun-Star_

SKIES FULL OF DEATH is an amazing account of Effinger's efforts to hold Germany and Japan at bay, and the relationships he endured with less far-sighted members of our nation's leadership.

SKIES FULL OF DEATH will be published March 2, 1983. $1.95, wherever good books are sold. A Gemsbok Book.

TARGET: BERLIN! An eyewitness account of the sometimes madcap goings-on at the top of the executive heap during the Second World War, written by a member of President Roosevelt's inner circle. A must for hobbyists and collectors.

_PUB_. ED. $12.95: Our remainder price: **ONLY** $2.95
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

These stories appear in _Live! From Planet Earth_ , a collection of stories by George Alec Effinger.

"The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything," first published in _The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction_, October 1984.

"Target: Berlin!" first published in _New Dimensions 6_ , edited by Robert Silverberg, Harper & Row, 1976.

Copyright © 2011 by The Estate of George Alec Effinger

Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

ISBN: 978-1-4976-0554-1

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com

**GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER**

FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

Find a full list of our authors and

titles at www.openroadmedia.com

FOLLOW US

@OpenRoadMedia

# Table of Contents

Introduction

The Aliens Who Know, I Mean, Everything

Target: Berlin!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook


The board of directors is pleased to announce that Jean LeGwin, Wilmington, North Carolina, has been unanimously selected for AAW Honorary Lifetime Membership for her extraordinary contributions to the American Association of Woodturners and the advancement of woodturning. Jean has served on the AAW's board, chaired the publications committee, and is now a board advisor. Over the years, she has been a key strategist and supporter of the AAW, and has contributed a wealth of publishing knowledge to the organization. She is active in her local chapter and has been instrumental in making the Wilmington Area Woodturners Association a vibrant club. Jean will be formally presented Honorary Lifetime Membership at the 32nd AAW International Symposium in Portland. Learn more about Jean in the June 2018 issue of American Woodturner.
AAW's Tool Bank program has been recently expanded to include awards to chapters and other institutions. The AAW Tool Bank grant application is now available for your chapter, school, or group to apply.
Pictured above is Caleb Doornspleet, a 12th grader at St. Stephen Catholic Secondary School, Bomanville, Ontario. Caleb is one of many students who have been making bowls on the school's new wood lathe using tools generously donated by the AAW Tool Bank.
The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) is the largest architecture and design exhibition in North America. As part of the of the 2017 biennial, 16 contemporary architects reinterpreted the renowned Chicago Tribune Tower for an exhibition called, "Vertical City." The large-scale installation is on display in the Sidney R. Yates Hall of the Chicago Cultural Center until January 7, 2018. One of the towers, envisioned by 6A Architects, London, England, is comprised of 40 turned pieces made by members of the following AAW chapters: Chicago Woodturners, Detroit Area Woodturners, Des Moines Woodturners, Ohio Valley Woodturners, Mid-South Woodturners Guild, Zumbro Valley Woodturners, and Central Illinois Woodturners. Absolutely stunning!
Click here to view photos of the installation.
Phil Brown, Bethesda, Maryland, was recently named a recipient of Montgomery County's 2017 Lifetime Impact Award recognizing his contributions to the local arts and cultural community. Phil was the founder of Montgomery County Woodturners (MCW) and served as its first president. Over the years, MCW has continued to be very active and successful, with many members attending the demonstrations, critiques, and skill enhancement sessions each month. Phil has arranged exhibitions of members' work in eight county libraries bringing attention to the art and craft of woodturning. Pictured above are Catherine Leggett, Phillip Brown, and Montgomery County Executive, Ike Leggett. Photo: Clark W. Day.
AAW's Educational Opportunity Grant (EOG) program offers grant funding to selected applicants for woodturning education opportunities that expand and enrich the entire woodturning community. The application period for 2018 grants is open until December 31, 2017. Click here to learn more and to apply.
Chris Felicetti of Camden Hills Regional High School (CHRHS), Rockport, Maine, received a 2017 Education Opportunity Grant, which he used to purchase eight mini-lathes for woodworking classes at the school. He was able to match the grant with fundraising activities and purchased eight sets of carbide turning tools, abrasives, glue, various accessories, and enough kits for each student in his classes to make a mechanical pen and pencil. Approximately 45 students will be exposed to woodturning each year as a result. In the photo above, the CHRHS turning studio is up and running and the first students are practicing basic turning skills including, beads, coves, and swells.
Students in the Spin Masters club at Chester I. Lewis Academy, a school for at-risk students in Wichita, Kansas, recently received a $4,000 grant from the Wichita Community Foundation (WCF) to fund three projects: Freedom Pens Project, a woodturning library, and Beads of Courage bowls. The students are excited to make a difference, and the grant will enable them to gain valuable skills and share their giving spirit with others. Janet Sutter, a teacher and the club's sponsor, used an EOG grant to help start the club in 2016. "Woodturning has made such an impact on these students' lives and, in turn, they are using (the skills learned) to make an impact on the lives of so many others," said Janet. "They have already shown improvements in attendance, grades, test scores, leadership, teamwork, and attitude."
Read more about CA Savoy.
Fifteen years ago, Joe Coupe, Bradenton, Florida, walked into a classroom at Frances Wakeland Elementary School to fix a teacher's computer. But what he noticed first was a second-grade student, his head on a table, fast asleep while the other children completed activities. He sensed something was wrong. "The teacher said he was living at Salvation Army because his parents were in jail," Coupe said, adding the boy couldn't sleep at night because of the noise at the facility. "His only meals were from the school." It changed Coupe's perspective. "After that, anytime you want to do something good for kids, I'm in," Coupe said. The Food Bank of Manatee recently gave Coupe another opportunity. He used his woodturning talents, along with the talents of other members of the Sarasota Woodturners, to turn wooden bowls for an Empty Bowls fundraising event. For the event, guests enjoyed a meal of soup and bread and took home a commemorative ceramic bowl to help remind them that there are empty bowls to be filled. However, the more than 150 bowls created by the woodturners were reserved for individuals who purchased VIP tickets to the event! Advantage Lumber, in Sarasota, donated wood for the project. See the full article from Your Observer.
Plunge into the December 2017 issue of American Woodturner, which includes a skill-building project, "An Elegant Paper Towel Holder," by Bob Rosand, as well as holiday projects, "Turn a Faux-Segmented Ornament," by Janice Levi, and "Turn a Square Ornament," by John Lucas. Click here to view the current issue online.
Out of the Woods: Traditional Form Revisited, is the 2018 POP (Professional Outreach Program) annual exhibition, which premieres at the AAW Gallery of Wood Art in Saint Paul, Minnesota, then travels to the 2018 AAW Symposium in Portland, Oregon, where the works will be sold at auction. The online application period runs November 1, 2017, to January 1, 2018. Click here to learn more.
Dia*Log, is the 2018 AAW annual member exhibition. Two artist awards will be given during the 2018 AAW International Symposium. The online application period runs December 15, 2017, to February 15, 2018. Click here to learn more.
The AAW seeks videographers for its 32nd International Symposium in Portland, Oregon, June 14-17, 2018. Applicants must have experience with video camera equipment, possess technical competence, and be able to make decisions regarding lighting, shooting angle, etc. The application process will be open through January 15, 2018. Videographers are required to do six rotations to receive a free symposium registration. Selected videographers will be notified by March 2018. Apply for videographer role.
The 2018 WIT project is titled, "Topsy Turvy!" Participants are encouraged to submit a spin top for the project. There is a limit of one donation per person. The spin tops must be done on the lathe. No Trompo or whipping tops will be accepted. Tops may be no larger than 3.5" tall x 2.5" wide x 2.5" deep. Your contribution must be delivered by January 31, 2018. Work should be shipped to Tania Radda, 1519 W Augusta Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85021. Questions? radda@cox.net.
is an online learning experience that introduces the art and craft of woodturning to visitors. Discover Woodturning enables the general public to learn about woodturning, its origins, appeal, and how to get started. Check out Discover Woodturning.
Woodturning FUNdamentals Online, is a members-only web-based learning portal for building strong woodturning skills and essential techniques. Designed for new turners, it complements the Woodturning FUNdamentals digital publication. Visit Woodturning FUNdamentals online!
Solve a problem, research a new technique, or start a new woodturning project by quickly searching the most extensive online woodturning library in the world. Click here to begin your journey.


Roland DG Corporation, a leading manufacturer of wide format inkjet printers and printer cutters worldwide, today announced the launch of the VersaUV LEF2-200 20" benchtop UV flatbed printer.
The LEF series includes the popular desktop and benchtop versions of Roland DG's UV flatbed inkjet printers. The latest model LEF2-200 inherits the series' renowned ability to print amazing graphics and lifelike textures, including premium finishes such as simulated embossing, onto a vast array of materials up to 100 mm (3.94 in.) thick. New functions make the LEF2-200 even easier and more efficient to use.
"The VersaUV LEF2-200 makes it very simple to print premium-quality photographs, graphics and text on almost anything," said Kohei Tanabe, President of Roland DG's Digital Printing Business Division. ECO-UV ink cures instantly on the surface of the material, allowing you to print directly onto PVC and plastics, canvas, wood, leather, fabric, etc. In addition to full colour printing, you can produce premium gloss and matte finishes as well as simulated 3D embossing for amazingly lifelike textures with multiple layers of Clear ink. Capable of printing on corners and curves as well as soft materials such as leather and fabric, advanced Roland ECO-UV ink formulations are designed for both flexibility and beautiful imaging.
According to Tanabe, the new LEF2-200 incorporates a host of advanced functions to simplify high quality printing. A Start Timer Function completes the setup procedures of printhead cleaning and white ink circulation automatically by your designated start time. A positioning jig makes it easy to align items on the print table. The VersaUV LEF2-200 includes the latest VersaWorks 6 RIP software, featuring an intuitive interface for easy operation and job management. The LEF2-200 also adopts a new cleaning system to increase reliability. A Head Refresh Feature removes any ink remaining on the printheads and cleans the printhead surface to maintain the health of the printer. The airtight cover protects operators from UV light and prevents dust from settling onto the surface of materials while printing.
"With the LEF2-200, now anyone can print stunningly realistic and colourful images onto many different materials that you might not think possible," Tanabe said. "To be able to offer this print capability even to people who lack training, we focused on ease of operation and bullet-proof reliability so that everyone can enjoy printing graphics and textures with confidence. This LEF2-200 adds incredible value and opportunity for business growth."


text:
Duke Baseball Adds Mid-Year Transfer
DURHAM – Duke baseball announced the addition of mid-year transfer Giovanni DiGiacomo to the 2023 roster on Tuesday.
"We are really excited to welcome Giovanni DiGiacomo to Durham," head coach Chris Pollard said. "Gio comes to us after a really successful career at LSU. He brings speed, tremendous instincts, experience and a veteran left-handed bat to the roster. More importantly, Coach Manieri and Coach Johnson at LSU rave about his leadership and selfless style of play."
Giovanni DiGiacomo | OF | Naples, Fla. | LSU
An experienced left-handed outfielder from LSU, DiGiacomo posted a .275 average at the plate for the Tigers in his four seasons. The former 29th round draft pick in 2018 by the Pittsburgh Pirates, started 92 of the 133 career games he appeared in, tallying 12 doubles, three triples, six homers and 48 RBI. The Naples, Fla. native, was a member of the 2021 and 2020 SEC Academic Honor Roll, and the 2019 SEC First-Year Academic Honor Roll as a microbiology major.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Duke University…
Who Could Help Bring Power To Boston Red Sox Lineup In 2023?
Gwinnett Stripers to Host Virtual National Anthem Auditions

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Why Are Networks Hiring Pundits Barred From Bashing Trump?
The firebrand ex-Trump aide's in talks with a right-wing radio outfit. Insiders tell The Daily Beast his hiring would likely come at the expense of the network's anti-Trump voices.
The Singapore summit was a pre-cooked bromance based not on true love or respect, but on the need of both principals to be known and admired by audiences watching at home.
Former White House aide Sebastian Gorka and Fox News primetime host Sean Hannity will be in Singapore covering Trump's talks with Kim Jong Un.