Tonight is Halloween. Or perhaps I should say tonight was Halloween, since as my better half put it when we turned out the lights and brought in the decorations because we had actually run out of candy for a change, “There’s another Halloween in the books”– even though it was only eight o’clock–because we had, as I say, run out of candy and brought in all the decorations we had used to advertise our contribution to the sugar-bombing of other people’s children. (To which I can only say, “You’re welcome.”)
But tonight was an unusually successful Halloween, not only because we gave away all of our candy (only a couple of pieces for ourselves! That’s the horror.), but because early on we were not getting a lot of traffic. The way our house is set up, on Halloween you can only see that we’re open for business if you walk down the nearest cross street in our direction. Then you cross the road and meet us in the driveway where we like to set up (figuring it’s easier for us and easier for parents than letting their kids walk all the way to our front door). But tonight, someone was having a party in the neighborhood, and one of their guests parked his car in a red zone directly across from our house, blocking the view of children coming from that direction.
Since we couldn’t move the car, we changed the visibility of our operation. I took a lantern down to the end of the driveway and waved it slowly whenever kids came into view. Now what you have to know is that I was wearing a hooded cloak (we like to dress up, too), and whenever someone would come along, I would use the lantern to indicate where the candy was located–but I wouldn’t speak. It freaked out more than one kid and even some parents. One guy (an adult) actually said he wasn’t sure I wasn’t a robot until he saw me up close. Yay me! I got your Halloween scary right here, folks! (Same time next year.)
But the point is that I created a convincing illusion by means of a simple cloak, a lantern, and an attitude. No mask, no other costume. Just move the lantern slowly and don’t speak. It goes to show that you can create a fantasy by hardly changing anything. Many people still think science fiction is all spaceships and ray guns and aliens (okay, starships and light sabers and droids, but you get my meaning), but that’s a gross oversimplification.
You can create a fantasy with a guy in a cloak carrying a lantern. You can create science fiction merely by changing a dog’s lifetime from 15 years to 50. (I’ve done it.) Nothing more than that. You don’t need starships; you don’t need a magical ring that plunges the world into war.
Fans will ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” Sometimes, it’s as simple a matter as needing to see what’s behind that car parked in front of you.
Graffiti on the Walls of Time 