"Imagine you could enter a world filled with wonderful and Magical characters and beings, simply by taking a walk down your street and catching...the streetcar to Andromeda."
Synopsis
“Imagine you could enter a world teeming with strange and wonderful characters and beings simply by taking a walk down your street and catching ―The Streetcar to Andromeda.”
The Streetcar to Andromeda is a Science Fiction fantasy adventure that deals with imagination and the dreamer.
It begins in late 1938.’
Jesse, Parker, and Emma, are three intelligent and imaginative friends of high school age with high hopes for the future, not realizing that in three short years WW11 will be upon them.
Their fascination with pulp Sci-fi magazines leads them to re-invent themselves in an imaginary and humorous world of their own as Martian Exiles who were driven from their home planet eons ago by the malevolent Madman Roth. They end up crash landing here on Earth, in a vacant lot, near an old Victorian home — smack dab in the middle of Wichita, Kansas.
From Jesse’s imagination comes the story of their exploits and adventures through which a cosmic Empire is fashioned. The Exiles alternate world of The Martian Empire lays the 81st dimension, which in reality is a counterpart of a four- block area in their very own neighborhood. Thereby, simply taking a walk down the street could involve them thus in a journey through space, in which our heroes might encounter all sorts of fearful hazards.
The conflict between Good and Evil that is happening in the real world of the 1940’s is mirrored the Exiles alternate world in space and the ultimate goal of Jesse and the Exiles is to someday soon, re-capture Mars from the enslavement of Madman Roth, who is hell bent (like Hitler) on conquering the entire Universe..
Shultz’s Beer Parlor lies in the 81st dimension and is a favorite hangout of our stalwart band of Exiles and their Allies. At Shultz’s they carouse with their friends like, The Mighty Moscovitch, the demon Veri, and various assortments of Dragons, heroes, and gods.
During some of their adventures Jesse and the Exiles outwit the scheming Ex-Robot Dictator and his menacing Bots. In a later escapade when the nasty little race of the U.Us (the Utterly Unpronounceables) accidentally blow up Asteroid Qum23 which is the pivot of the universe, it causes the whole universe to collapse. With the protective layer of The Goodrum Screen down, Madman Roth escapes from the Netherworld free to wreak havoc.Several Exiles are caught in “Space Time Traps” where they witness The Crack in the Universe, and watch as evil sloth-like creatures from the sub and supra spaces emerge. In this new Universe, Jesse saves the day by reversing time to stop some of the dissolution by using his slide rule to calculate space and time, thus arriving at another outcome, but not before the famous Wichita Vortex is created.
Eventually The Triumphant Victory battle for Mars takes place in the capital City of Isfenfearth and the Exiles accomplish their goal with the help of a celestial event, sending Madman Roth and his minions packing.
In the course of the adventures there are instances of themes that deal with the environment, a handicap, greed, rejection, prejudice, the value of imagination plus creativity, heartwarming family values and morals, and a rich camaraderie in the style of the Marx Brothers humor with a real sense of the innocence of the past. The power of imagination, and creativity and their importance is illustrated by our hero possessing the seemingly magical quality of a dreamer and thus sometimes a creator.But, one of the main lessons is to be brave and hold tightly to your dreams especially in times when the whole world seems to have gone bad.
So — with a little humor, a little history and a lot of entertainment The Streetcar to Andromeda is a fresh original approach to storytelling that can give young adults a perception in imagination and creativity that they can build upon.“Sometimes looking back can show us the way forward.”
CelesteStreiff, Hammond
Excerpt
CHAPTER 20
THE CREATION OF THE WICHITA VORTEX
One day out of the blue Jesse wrote a really fascinating story for the Martian News Letter about a nasty little race of people called the U. U.’s. U.U. stands for The Utterly Unpronounceables. It seems that the U. U.’s were trying to blow up the Goodrum Screen which was a protective barrier that surrounded Earth, but while doing so, they had inadvertently caused the collapse of the whole universe!
†
Sitting at his mahogany desk Jesse moved his unlit pipe back and forth in his mouth as he wrote: “Today, the particularly nasty little race of the U.U.’s, known to most of you as The Utterly Unpronounceables, have caused a disaster. While trying to blow-up the Goodrum Screen that separates us from the rest of the cosmos, they have inadvertently triggered the collapse of the universe. By accidentally blowing up Asteroid QUM23, which is the Universal Pivot, they have caused a temporal, spatial whirlpool. Mars was blown out of its orbit and returned to the Solar System just in time to be caught up in it. The only thing admirable that occurred during this unfortunate incident was that the U.U.’s also blew up themselves.
So far as we know right now this whirlpool is the only remaining section of the universe still in existence. —The Andromeda Nebula was sunk into sub-space as a single unit and maintains its existence there.”
Jesse then put the News Letter together with a new cover, a vivid drawing of the explosion by Mac, a Martian friend, and fellow artist, and sent it out into the world. When Carter received the News Letter and read the article aloud, it sparked a chain reaction of imaginative ideas that eventually led to the creation of the concept of “The Wichita Vortex.”
At first Carter was aghast, but then in his mind’s eye he began to see what had really occurred. Writing at his desk he elaborated upon Jesse’s story. His description of the events that happened, are as follows:
“Dear Jesse,
Yes, I saw it all happen before my very eyes —The Goodrum Screen fell on December 7th 1941’ Tellus time —”
Carter paused and stared out his window at the beautiful countryside that lay quiet and peaceful before him on this seemingly bright winter day. As he watched, the sky turned sinister and foreboding and a dark storm began to form. Seemingly out of nowhere came a whirling, howling tornado devastating the landscape before his very eyes. One by one the trees in his yard were ripped from the ground by their roots and soared away. Nearby, a large tree hugged the farmhouse with one of its branches repeatedly scaraping across his picture window as if asking permission to come inside.
Out of the corner of his eye Carter could see that little by little the shape of the objects in his room were stirring, growing elongated and warped. Afraid to look up, he forced himself to stare down at his writing. Then all of a sudden the very desk beneath him slowly began to slide outward. Carter held on tight to his desk. Suddenly there was a CRASH! and he jerked around with fearful wide eyes and watched as the wall beside him shifted in segments, jutting upwards with tremendous force and speed. Anxious and Afraid, he watched as the ceiling rose further and further away. He stared up at the tiny chandelier now wavering no less than fifty feet above him. Frightened Carter turned and saw that the window before him was growing larger in depth and width, stretching and stretching until it expanded across the whole wall of his room. In the windows corner he could see the tree branch and it was now just a twig in miniature, whispering imperceptibly at the edge of the window, drowned out by the howling whirling storm that raged outside.
Suddenly Carter heard a strange scuffling sound. He jerked around breathless, and watched as his dresser cabinet began a shape-shifting dance across the room towards him. It warped out from side to side and moved in angular positions as it stepped and strutted across the floor in a haughty manner and settled grotesquely, mocking before him. Even the floor beneath him was now rippling in waves and shifting under his feet, rousing them this way and that.
Aghast Carter started to scream, but as he looked outside a huge explosion occurred.
The farmyard had completely disappeared and he realized he wasn’t in Idaho anymore. Somehow he’d been thrown into space and now there was a raging rolling thunderous fire —edged by the blackness of space surrounding his house. Carter watched anxiously as the explosion roared and rolled into an enormous mushroom cloud like that of an Atomic bomb. As the heavens rolled and thundered, stars and planets were flung from their orbits out and across the firmament. Some exploded and others vaporized in a fire that now seemed to engulf infinity.
Carter now understood what had happened and he feverishly began to write.
“─I realize now that I am caught in a Space-Time Trap. Outside my window a storm is raging ─I was a witness to it all. When the asteroid exploded and the Goodrum Screen fell irreparable harm occurred. The U.U.’s, by destroying Asteroid QUM23 which is at the edge of our galaxy and subordinate to our sun, is the pivot of the universe by mass, but not by position, and made the whole universe that revolved around it collapse. When this occurred, no energy was left —no matter —NOTHING.”
Carter looked up and saw that the hellish inferno that was burning wildly outside just moments before, was now a gigantic smoking rolling cloud. In shock he stared as the cloud gradually began to drift away and what was left was a stark well of nothingness. In horror Carter returned to his writing. “When the pivot disappeared, the entire universe fell apart — literally fell apart. Space was torn into fragments and a malevolent void was left…But then, creeping from the sub and supra spaces — THEY CAME.”
As Carter stared out into the blackness before him, he saw a thousand mile long jagged crack of light splitting the cosmos in twain. In the blackness, yellow white light burst through the crack shining out at weird angles in the emptiness of space. As the crack began to widen, a parade of sloth like evil ghouls and monsters emerged. Some crawled out from the crack while others floated. All moved in a zombie-like progression past Carter’s window. Some of the ghouls moved closer and pressed their hellish faces against his windowpane, peering in at him though ominous vacant eyes. Carter shrieked again and again out of his mind with fear. Then he saw what Jesse had once described as ―The Horrible Jovian Things. Their huge gigantic eyeball bellies were pressed frantically against his window, darting back and forth, searching his room for life. When their eyes connected with Carter’s he could see their terrible, pitiful, and pained hunger. If Carter hadn’t been so afraid, he could have almost felt pity for them that is until they began to scratch and claw frenzied against his pane seeking desperately to get in at him. Frightened out of his wits, Carter screamed out. Then suddenly the ghouls stopped! It was as if some mysterious phantom voice had called to them. Zombie-like and in mass they turned away and drifted off continuing on their ghoulish weary march —to where? Carter wondered.
As Carter stared after them he suddenly caught a glimpse of Madman Roth at the head of the grisly procession. “Roth,” Carter thought, was leading them. He quickly jotted this down. When Carter looked back up Roth had disappeared from view.
Covered in sweat and visibly shaking, Carter continued writing. “Jesse, these are the creatures that were only hinted at by a few Tellurian authors like Lovecraft and Merritt. I even thought I saw Madman Roth amongst them, but I am not sure. Today I watched as one of the monsters, a huge black indolent mass with thousands of eyes and hundreds of greedy mouths, destroyed Arisia. He quite literally gobbled it up. Arisia, you remember was the armature through which Asteroid QUM23’s energy flowed —and, so now my friend, there is only one ―One quiet zone left in the entire universe!”
As Carter’s vision moved out through space, the gigantic whirlpool swirled and howled around him. His mind’s eye passed through a spinning swirling wall of chaos and crept into the quiet zone of the vortex that lay just beyond. In its calm center a few planets and stars were still shining.
Anxiously Carter returned to writing. “—a storm center —a sort of Vortex, is all that is left. And within this 20 billion mile quiet zone a few planets and stars are still in existence. As far as I can discern they are: Mars, Tellus, Statos and Beelzebub, five asteroids and of course —Shultz’s Beer Parlor.”
Lost somewhere in the cosmos Carter looked out upon the gigantic whirlpool raging outside and felt infinitesimal in contrast to the huge window that in its distortion now seemed to have overtaken his entire room. Far away in the distance he suddenly saw the figure of Madman Roth being flung out through space and seemingly landing somewhere in the vicinity of Earth.
Nervously he resumed writing. “Now I’m pretty well sure it was Roth that I saw earlier. I think he just flew by me heading towards Tellus, but my Space-Time Trap is so warped and distorted it’s hard for me to be certain what is real and what isn’t.
Jesse —I sit at the edge of this New Universe Vizing out this Vis-a-gram from the Space-Time Trap that was left behind by the Utterly Unpronounceables. Outside is a raging howling tempest, sound where there should be no sound, and the planets and stars are gone.”
Suddenly his phone rings loudly, practically jumping off the desk. Carter stares at it a moment then slowly, fearfully picks it up. “Hello?” he pauses and listens intently, “Yes, this is John Carter?” Suddenly his expression turns to glee, “Yes, Yes” were here, waiting…” Then he becomes saddened. “Oh, I see, Well, Thank you anyway.” Carter hangs up the phone then resumes his writing but again, suddenly jerks up.
In the distance, through stillness from somewhere outside, Carter hears a metallic meshing sound that grows louder and louder until it becomes deafening. Clasping his hands over his ears, he stares out. Where his yard had once been, there was now a floating wrenching sea of space debris with vast weirdly angled objects resembling pieces of burning planets and sinking galaxies. Upon these objects, armies of fiends sat slumped, ogling him.
Carter stared back at them in horror and disbelief as the fiends passed by. Hurriedly he resumed his correspondence. “—strange objects now stir by me infested with entire populations of the former sub and supra spaces. Fortunately I think the monsters are afraid to go near the vortex, because they are of the New Time and Space and the vortex is of the old, so I believe that you Jesse are safe. I was just told by some Statosian scientists that a Martian Fleet had tried to extricate me and some others from our Space-Time Traps, but that they were destroyed by the fires that burn out of control at the edge of the cosmos —Jesse, despite the horror of it, there is certainly something wonderful about this New Universe. Shall we explore it? Do you think we might find intelligent life out there, life being besieged by monsters? Life that we might possibly save?”
May the light of the vortex shine long upon you, as there are no more suns left in the Cosmos.
Your friend and fellow Exile,
John Carter
†
When we read Carter’s reply to the collapse of the universe, we were certainly tickled by his imaginative tale of the events that took place, according to him, that is. As usual Carter had gotten himself into another fine mess in The Space-Time Trap and now Jesse would have to figure out a way of rescuing him.
With all of this, Jesse and Carter had created something wonderfully magical, something that years later would become a legend in its own right, and that was — The Creation of The Wichita Vortex.
That Mystical Myth was carried from Wichita in some later years to San Francisco in the late 1950’s with some friends of mine that were Poets and Artists. They were a particular group of friends who had taken Jesse’s famous Martian Test and had become honorary Martians in their own right. Years later in San Francisco they embellished upon Jesse and Carter’s vortex story a little further, claiming that the residents of Wichita and especially those in the Martian Empire group were being held captive as outlaws from another planet, and that they were deposited annually in Wichita, Kansas, endowed with fabricated memories of the time of the WU homecoming game in the early1950’s. Their embellishments went on to say that all outside of Wichita was an illusion of The Vortex and no matter how hard one might try to leave it or think that one had left —The Vortex would in time, snap them back to where they were eternally trapped. Jesse and Carter’s inspired story of The Vortex was elaborated upon and spoken of so often that it eventually reached the ears of the famous American Poet, Mr. Allen Ginsburg who in 1966’ to be exact, visited Wichita, Kansas and wrote his famous poem entitled, “The Wichita Vortex Sutra,” which is in itself has become universal. So, now you can see my friends how a story or tale can grow and transform, and understand how myths and legends are born.
I know where the exact spot of the vortex is located in Wichita. In fact I wrote a poem about it called “the Man in the Earth.” My daughter recently showed the spot to one of Wichita’s Historians, George Laughhead and now they’ve made it an official site in the park.
But wait! —I’m getting way ahead of myself. First we had to rescue Carter from his Space-Time Trap. Jesse didn’t have to think too long or too hard about it, he just wrote a new article the next day entitled: UNIVERAL MESS CLEARED UP —and here’s what followed:
“Friends and fellow Martians —The Martian Empire announced today that its entire resources were diverted to create a temporal beam strong enough to prevent the dissolution of the Universe. The beam was projected back in time to the attack by the U.U.’s and the universe was held together. This is no contradiction, because the universal segments made a loop in time and rejoined the rest of the universe at the time it started to leave, so the rest of the universe remained intact, and for those who were outside the segment, the rupture did not even occur —although, those who were inside the segment have full knowledge and evidence of the rupture and thus the vortex was created. The Goodrum Screen did fall, but has now been safely put back into place to protect Tellus. We just hope that it wasn’t Madman Roth that Carter saw slip through. As a side note to some of you out there, Martian Fleet ships piloted by the Exiles; Spike Morgan, Shorty Runyon, and Slug Sherman, are now being sent forth to rescue those unfortunates who got caught in some of the Space-Time Traps that occurred during the rupture. Also, the fires at the edge of the cosmos have now been extinguished so their missions should be successful.”
†
A few days later in Blackfoot Idaho, Carter sat on his porch swing reading The Martian News Letter with Jesse’s explanation of the clearing up of the universal mess. As Carter read the story he slapped this leg and began to laugh very, very loudly, and very, very long —And his laughter echoed throughout the Universe.
†
Now as I think back about all of this, something occurs to me concerning the whole idea of the collapse of the universe and the monsters that arose destroying entire planets and populations. Carters last question: “Is there intelligent life out there possibly being besieged by monsters, life that we might possibly save?” was a very poignant one because unbeknownst to us at the time, Jesse, Parker and Carter and the rest of the Exiles would soon be off exploring Europe and the world, saving intelligent life from the monsters that arose in the collapses of our own world, during WWII. It was very odd indeed — and almost like a premonition of things to come.
Professional Reviews
press release
Press Release
A New Title in the fall of 2011’ for Author Celeste Streiff, Hammond
“Imagine you could enter a world filled with strange and wonderful, character and beings, simply by taking a walk down your street and catching… the Streetcar to Andromeda.”
Pasadena, CA. September 2011—(PR.com) — Author, Celeste Streiff, Hammond’s website www.streetcar2andromeda.com has been heralding the coming release of her new book for the last 3 months, and now the time has finally come! Right now you can view or Buy the e-book at: ebookit.com or Amazon.com. The Streetcar to Andromeda is an amazing and imaginative YA Book that will début’ this fall, and as promised will be available everywhere, by the end of September.
The book has 151 pages along with the Book cover, including 42 colorfully illustrated graphics pictures, that were mostly all wonderfully done by the Author, herself.
The Streetcar to Andromeda book is a Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Adventure that is destined to become a true “Classic,” in every sense of the word. Filled from top to bottom with imaginative dreamers, humorous Characters, alternate Universe’s and enchanted beings, it is a fresh and original approach to storytelling that can give young adults a perception in imagination and creativity that they can build upon.
The Streetcar to Andromeda is in some ways based on a true story that has a time line that begins in late 1938’, when elsewhere and elsewhen was the youth of our storyteller. The Good and Evil that was happening then in the “real” world of our heroes, was in turn, mirrored in their Alternate world of Outer space.
The Streetcar to Andromeda will capture the hearts of kids of all ages, and that includes you Adults too.
As our main character Jesse, in his wisdom says, “After all, in their hearts, Adults are just little kids with older faces.” Jesse also said, “Sometimes looking back can show us the way forward.”
There will be a significant amount of media releases about the book, by many top TV. Radio Magazine and News Paper outlets concerning the books description and Author contact information. If a reviewer wishes to read and review the book, a free copy can be given by contacting the author.
The Streetcar to Andromeda will be released and distributed world wide through normal channels such as; Google Editions, Apple iBookstores, Amazon.com, Sony’s Reader store, Barnes & Noble, Kobo Book sellers, Borders Books, Diesel e-book store and Ingram’s Digital.
Author Contact information
Celeste Streiff, Hammond
626 660-6268
celestehammond@earthlink.net
www.streetcar2andromeda.com
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