Roger M. Wilcox's stories

Roger M. Wilcox's really old stories

Written by hand in pencil

• The F-114 was the 1st story I wrote as a 5th grade generative writing assignment. Plot: I wish real hard, and the arcade game I'm sitting in becomes real. I wish myself back, though, when I find myself leaving Earth and running out of story ideas.
• The Six Millionth Dollar Man was the 2nd story I wrote as a 5th grade generative writing assignment. Plot: Steve Ocran. Astronaut. A man barely alive. We rebuild him with a budget of 1/6,000,000th of a dollar. Then he dies before he can have any adventures.
• Creatures That Live in the Sun was the 3rd story I wrote as a 5th grade generative writing assignment. Plot: I fly a rocket to the sun and meet a friendly space alien there, who follows me back to Earth in his own spaceship. Faced with the unprecedented opportunity of first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence, we make small-talk with him for a few minutes. Then he leaves.
• The Man with the Incredible Mind was the 4th, and final, story I wrote as a 5th grade generative writing assignment. Plot: A man gains psychic powers. Then I drop the pretense and say that the "man" was me. I see aliens landing on Earth, who plan to take over the bodies of eighteen million people. Fortunately, they share the same vulnerability as the Wicked Witch of the West, making it easy for me to telekinetically wipe them out with a fire hydrant. Then I go home for dinner, and lose my powers the next day.

Written on my mom's old mechanical typewriter

• Apt. 2-B was the first story I ever wrote on a typewriter. I was only 9 years old at the time, and boy does it ever show. Plot: I explore an old house that must have been built by Rube Goldberg, which contains a passage to China, two spacecraft, a time machine, and various telekinetic computers.
• The Whitemail Machine was the second story I ever wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. The title came about because of a book we were reading in class called The Blackmail Machine, combined with the fact that I hadn't a clue what "blackmail" meant. Plot: I build a helicopter out of a rainbarrel, explore the country in it, enforce Smokey Bear's edict against forest fires, and catch a bank robber in a Scooby-Doo-esque trap. (Many, many years after I wrote this, I began writing a re-telling of parts of 2 chapters from the viewpoint of another character.)
• Power is More than One! was the third story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. It was also one of my shortest. Plot: I form a gang to beat up a tough thief.
• The Tree That Blasted Off was the fourth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. I got the idea from a story my dad wrote, which had talking, angst-ridden trees in it. Plot: A tree chats with a Martian.
• The Egg With the Enormouse Size [sic] was the fifth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. Plot: Hen lays an egg that hatches into a giant pterodactyl.
• And Weve Got the Bird [sic] was the sixth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. Plot: I raise a condor with an extra pair of arms, then run away from home.
• The Shrinking & Enlarging Machine was the seventh story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. Plot: I build a clock that affects the fundamental interatomic forces of matter, and use it to make root beer.
• Johnnys Amazing Wether Machine [sic] was the eighth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. Plot: I build a machine that controls the weather, and it accidentally creates a substance called "sodium M-Y1" that contains no actual sodium and which massively enlarges anything it touches. This makes everyone ignore the whole weather-control thing. Also, I cause a worldwide sugar shortage, and it takes forever for anyone to think of using sodium M-Y1 to enlarge sugar.
• 2005: a space oddyssey [sic] was the ninth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. For a while, it held my record for the longest story I'd written, at a whopping five (5) single-spaced typewritten pages. Plot: Space block teaches our ape ancestors to kill, then shows up again to the Neanderthals and tells them, hey, you're still allowed to eat plants too, guys. Then in 2005, the space block shows up on the moon and orders us to explore Mars and Saturn. We take along a bionic man whose bionic parts don't work in space. We set up a long-range teleporter on Mars, and meet the Martians, who had nothing to do with the space block. Then on the trip to Saturn the space ship's computer malfunctions and kills almost all the crew. I confuse Heywood Floyd with Dave Bowman and confuse the number of moons a planet has with the strength of those moons' tidal influence, and leap to strange conclusions about time dilation during faster-than-light travel. Then, space baby.
• Yellow Planet: a man from planet Venus was the tenth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 9. Plot: A Venusian crash-lands on Earth and plays tennis with the Six Million Dollar Man.
• By the Rings of Saturn! was the eleventh story I wrote on a typewriter, at age 10. Plot: In the distant future year of 1987, humanity receives a radio broadcast from Saturn. Astronauts investigate, and discover a thriving civilization on one of Saturn's moons. So, we blow it up.
• The Hyper-Space Dimension was the twelfth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 10. Plot: I accidentally build a dimensional conveyance, and see lots of pretty colors; however, I am snatched back to the third dimension before I can get my eighth-dimensional driver's license.
• The Big Fight was the next thing I wrote on a typewriter, at age 11. I hesitate to call it a "story." Plot: I get in a fight. Many Batman-esque comic book sound effects ensue.
• Super Chicken & the Tallest Man in the World was the thirteenth story I wrote on a typewriter, at age 12. This represented an unprecedented 2-year hiatus in my oevre. Plot: Super Chicken fights a 36-foot-tall truck driver wearing a stovepipe hat as tall as himself. Heaven knows how tall his truck was.
• A Runner from Tunnel City was the fourteenth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 12. This was, thankfully, the only story I tried to type on both sides of the paper. Plot: Logan's Run (the movie) with the cops from THX-1138, with a method of execution inspired by the ads for a movie called Stunts. Also, space maze.
• Windboy was the fifteenth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 12. Plot: Two counterrotating hurricanes collide, breaking the time barrier and summoning a super hero who utterly fails to do anything super or heroic. Many, many years later, I rewrote this story.
• The Green Planet, when a plain old yellow planet just won't do. It was the sixeenth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 12. Plot: Recent college grad invents time machine that sends him to Mars two million years in the past. He converses with a lithium-winged Martian, and suddenly shifts into a first-person narrative. Then, as with all my stories at the time, something blows up because I couldn't figure out how to end the narrative.

Written on my dad's old mechanical typewriter

• The Debbi Daly Look-Alike Contest was the seventeenth story I wrote on a typewriter, at age 13. Plot: Bitter 8th grade me blames Debbi Daly for everything wrong in his life, and takes revenge by dressing up to look like her and sing her song. Despite reading like a teenage self-insertion fanfic of Glee, it actually represents a watershed in my writing — it's the first work I wrote that was genuinely intended for others to read.
• TIE Fighter Pilot was the eighteenth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 13. Plot: Abandoned tie fighter (one of the Imperial fighters from the early Star Wars movies) is found by a bungling native who ends up saving the Rebellion. Sort of. Hilarity tries to ensue. The next year, I revised it.
• The Death of Roger M. Wilcox was the ninteenth story I wrote on a typewriter, at age 14. Plot: I die in a way that's never explained, except I'm not dead. Then I chase some bad guys whose M.O. is also never explained.
• Light Acceleration was the twentieth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 14. Plot: Once again, I become an accidental inventor, this time of a beam that inflicts gratuitous amounts of special relativity on its target. I plan a meeting with, apparently, the entire United States Air Force, who are fooled by a thief until I show them my I.D.. Plus, light speed warp.
• The Brooks Syndrome was the twenty-first story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 14. Plot: My classmate Brooks Pickering turns out to be from an evil galaxy-spanning race of aliens. So, I use a yellow blazer as a weapon.
• Cubit Zirconia [sic] was the twenty-second story I wrote on a typewriter, less than a week after The Brooks Syndrome. It was the, ahem, long-awaited sequel to that story. Plot: I invade the home planet of the shape-shifting aliens and begin wantonly killing the natives. But it's okay, 'cause I'm the good guy. In the ensuing battle, you can practically hear the 20-sided dice rolling.
• Tidal Wave was the twenty-third story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 14. Plot: A shipping accident sends a 200-foot-high combustible tsunami toward Santa Monica beach, and only a giant network of freezers can save us. Hilarity ensues.
• The Magic War was the twenty-fourth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 14. It has the dubious distinction of being the first story I actually typed double-spaced. Plot: AD&D characters roll dice at each other. Hilarity tries to ensue.
• Godzilla and the Negative Fleet was the twenty-fifth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 14. It was 6 pages long, beating out 2005: A Space Oddyssey [sic] by one page; but as the latter was single-spaced and this newer story was double-spaced, it still didn't break my record for longest story. Plot: The Smith powers attack Zirconia, but are beaten back; the Zirconians then come to Earth and mind-control Japan's national mascot in an attempt to wipe out the Smiths. Many 1st Edition AD&D psionic strength points are expended.
• Predictions for 2076 was the twenty-sixth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 14. This was the only one of these stories that was originally written as a class assignment, not on a typewriter. Plot: I'm sent forward in time to 2076, where computers hold all the newscasting jobs and people still watch televisions through department store windows and have to look things up in books.
• The Vial of Doom was the twenty-seventh story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 14. It shattered my previous record for longest story written. It's also significant in that I turned it into a text adventure game on the TRS-80. The influences on this story included the following:
  • The vial itself was inspired by the movie Laserblast, in which the power source for the alien zap-rifle was a small glass vial on a chain that the hero wore around his neck. Sometimes it twinkled, and sometimes it made him go berserk and changed the color of his irises.
  • The progression from twinkling, to glowing, to shining brightly came from The Dark is Rising.
  • The personifications of Law and Chaos were inspired by the works of Michael Moorcock.
  • The mummy and basilisk were based on the listings for these creatures in the 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual.
  • The ingredients for the vial's destruction were inspired by the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, in its suggestions for making the expensive ink necessary to write magic scrolls.
• Tubolution was the twenty-ninth story I wrote on a typewriter, at age 15. (The 28th was Battlestar CRAP-tica, which is archived on my Screenplays page.) Plot: My brother, who apparently paid me to write a story about his awesome surfing skills, "shoots the tube" of an incredibly long wave, which deposits him on an alternate Earth with a red sky and humanoid blobs that try to kill him. He uses his awesome surfing skills to escape.
• Tie Fighter Pilot revised was the thirtieth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 15. It was a rewrite of the Tie Fighter Pilot story I'd written the previous year. In fact, this represents the first time I'd ever gone back and revised a story I'd written earlier. Not that there was really all that much improvement.
• Messiah to Super-Human was the thirty-first story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 15. Less than a year later, I attempted to rewrite it as a novel, but I never even made it all the way through the back story. Plot: Social pariah John Reekor inherits a mind-amplifying device from a dead psychic, and uses it to fight for truth, justice, and the American way. Plus, space cube.
• The Pentagon War was the thirty-second story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 15.  Plot: Centuries from now, humans and space aliens from Alpha Centauri create "hyperlinks" between their five solar systems, then decide to have a war. Then the ghosts of a long-dead alien species from "Epsilon Urandi" contact our heroes and tell them they have to save the universe. I've toyed off-and-on with the idea of turning this 40-page novelette into a novel ever since.  This novelization has never been completed, but I did come up with some rather long-winded sketches as to the future-history, the aliens, etc., which I've compiled in The Future History of the Pentagon War Universe.  WARNING: This article was not intended for publication, and contains major SPOILERS for The Pentagon War novel, if I ever get around to finishing it.
• Shark! was the thirty-third story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 15. Plot: Killer shark defies the laws of physics to terrorize people. Hilarity ensues.
• Godzilla Versus Monster Q was the thirty-fourth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 15. Plot: Badly-dubbed Japanese astronauts lead a Kaiju to Earth, and only Japan's national mascot can save us. Well, him and the giant robot from Voyage Into Space. Strained hilarity ensues.
• Launch of the Civic was the thirty-fifth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 15. Plot: The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, when viewed from the side, looks like there's a flying saucer encased inside it. Maybe there really is!
• Shōgun Sushiburger was the thirty-sixth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 15. Plot: Your basic chop-socky martial arts movie happens. Then Flash Gordon shows up. Hilarity ensues.
• Premature Nova was the thirty-seventh story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 15. It was the last story I could fit in my "Bumblings of a Cosmic Rut" 3-ring binder. It was also the very first story I typed that used right margins — which I introduced about 2/3 of the way through. Plot: The sun looks like it's expanding, but no one but me seems to care, thus proving how much better I am than everybody else. To escape the soon-to-swallow-the-Earth sun, I hitch a ride on an interplanetary "space shuttle" bound for the asteroid belt, and forget my space suit. I spend the entire trip trying to survive, because the astronauts manning the shuttle are callous losers who don't care about a precious little flower like me. Can you tell I was a teenager when I wrote this?
• The Sphere was the thirty-eighth story I wrote on a typewriter, at age 16. It was the first story I put in my brand-new-at-the-time "Advanced Bumblings" binder. Plot: Remember how, in Abbot's Flatland, a sphere passed through A. Square's two-dimensional universe, and A. Square could only see a 2-D slice of it at a time? Well, what would happen if you added a dimension? And had it happen in a universe where it made sense to talk about an absolute frame of reference? With aliens that looked and acted almost exactly like people, but weren't? And had names like "Zirflak"?
• A Concept wasn't a story at all, but a diatribe about the evils of religion. It was riddled with inaccurate, made-up details about the history of religion and the history of atheism. No date appears on it, so I can't tell when I wrote it, only that it was prior to our acquisition of an electric typewriter in 1982. I didn't include it in my "Advanced Bumblings" binder because, hey, it wasn't a story.

Written on the electric typewriter we got in 1982

• Creatures that Live in the Sun was the thirty-ninth story I wrote on a typewriter, at age 16. It was the first story I wrote on the new electric typewriter my dad got for the household, to replace our aging mechanical typewriters. Plot: The TRS-80 adventure game of the same name comes to life! Adventure! Mystery! Chills! Thrills! Frills! A guy walking around on the surface of the sun! Space snakes! Space piggies! What more could you ask for? Later that same year, I rewrote it.
• Every Fifth Attack Wave was the fortieth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 16. Plot: The arcade video game Defender. Then, the arcade video game Stargate. Really. That's about it.
• New Star was the forty-first story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 16. Later that same year, or perhaps the following year, I rewrote it. Plot: Humanity turns Jupiter into a star, but somebody didn't get out of the way in time.
• My Mission Is to Infiltrate was the forty-second story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 16. Plot: The arcade video game Scramble. With a few made-up planet names. That's about it.
• The Liberty Man was the forty-fourth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 16. (The 43rd was Star Trek: Not of Matter, which is archived on my Screenplays page.) Plot: As in A Runner from Tunnel City before it, humanity lives in a dystopian future where life must end at age 35. But this time, one man implants a crystal in his forehead that gives him superhuman agility, stamina, and (sometimes) intellect. A big chase ensues.
• Medieval Space Warrior was the forty-fifth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 16. Plot: The TRS-80 adventure game of the same name comes to life! Adventure! Mystery! Chills! Thrills! Frills! Indestructible computer-generated space ships! Overly long sentences! What more could you ask for?
• Night of the Greatest Dawn was the forty-seventh story I wrote on a typewriter, at age 17. (The 46th was a Battlestar CRAP-tica sequel, which is archived on my Screenplays page.) Plot: Big blinding white light engulfs the whole world for 7 minutes. Many generic people have generic reactions to it. Then we learn that it was the light from a second Big Bang, happening inside our own universe, and that it would have been much much worse had space aliens not shielded our galaxy.
• Tracer was the forty-eighth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 17. It was the origin story and first major encounter of the fourth Champions character I ever created. Three years later, I rewrote it.
• Bicycle! was the fiftieth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 17. (The 49th was Star Trick: The Ion Tempest, a later rewrite of which can be found here.) Bicycle! was the first story I put in my brand-new-at-the-time "Further Advanced Bumblings" binder. Plot: 31-passenger bicycle tries to complete a cross-country ride, while the Exxon corporation (and its cartoon tiger) attempts to sabotage it. Hilarity ensues.
• Creatures that Live in the Sun was the fifty-first story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 17. It was a rewrite of the story of the same name from earlier that same year.
• Teleporter was the fifty-second story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 17. Plot: In The Future™, space ships and psychic powers are everywhere. But when a breeding program produced a man with the power to teleport, he went crazy and escaped. You can probably guess how he escaped. Later, I rewrote this story on a word processor. (In the process, I changed the ending, though.)
• Stop the Flow of Time was the fifty-third story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 17. It was inspired by an unbelievably stupid Deus-ex-machina from the movie Starcrash. Plot: A space ship, under attack by moustache-twirling card-carrying villain space ships, discovers a button on its control panel labeled "Stop the flow of time." Strained hilarity ensues. You can tell I'd read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time shortly before writing this. The next year, I transcribed and rewrote it on a word processor.
• The Misguidance of Forces Redirected was the fifty-fourth story I wrote on a typewriter, also at age 17. This story was originally written as an assignment for my 12th grade English class. It was also the last story I wrote on a typewriter, because later that same year we got WordStar for the IBM PC and a daisy-wheel printer, and I never looked back. Sic transit gloria mundi. Plot: In the distant future on a human-occupied world, a lone psychic battles for his life against high-tech meanies who hate Nature for some reason. Pseudoscience ensues.

Roger M. Wilcox's old (but not really old) stories

Written in actual word processing software

• Gaea's Rising is a novelette I wrote during my Glory Days as a graduate student, based on a dream I had that featured the word "Swazibots" and a small robotic unicorn.  For the morbidly curious among you who've ever played the Champions® role-playing game, the main character's capabilities and weaknesses are also written up in Unic's character sheet for 5th Edition HERO System™ (Champions®).
• Several of my old stories are about characters I or my friends created in the Champions® super-hero role playing game.  These include:
  • Tracer: I created the character in 1981, wrote the novelette in 1982, and rewrote it in 1985. (An unfinished attempt to rewrite it again in 1989, 2008, and 2022 can be found here.) I liked the character so much, I now use the name "tracer" as my favorite on-line nickname.  See also Tracer's character sheet for 5th Edition HERO System™ (Champions®).
  • Infra Man!: I created the character way back in my youth (1973 or thereabouts), and wrote this tongue-in-cheek novelette in 1984.  The names "Mor Pay" and "Law Rox" that appear briefly in this story are inside references to characters created by Ramin Shokrizade.  See also Infra Man's character sheet and Infra Boy's character sheet.
  • Mauler was a novelette I wrote in 1983, featuring 3 characters (Mauler, Brick One, and The Scientist) created by Michael Gersten. See also Mauler's character sheet. Canonically, this story takes place in 1985.
  • Brick One!, written in 1986, overlapped with Mauler.  The name Brick One came from the fact that he was the first "brick" type Champions® character Michael Gersten had created.  I was inspired to write this story for Michael Gersten's birthday, based on his brief origin story for this character: "He just woke up one morning, and he was a brick.  And he didn't remember how he got that way."  See also Brick One's character sheet. Canonically, this story takes place in 1985.
  • The Blue Avenger was a novelette I wrote in 1986, which overlapped with Brick One.  Blue Shooter was Michael's character; Foxbow was my own parody of the classic Champions® villain Foxbat. See also Blue Shooter's character sheet. Canonically, this story takes place in 1985.
  • Buccaneer! was a novelette I wrote in 1984, featuring a character created by Todd Williams, which in turn was based on the ludicrous contention by Ramin Shokrizade that a photon torpedo only does as much damage as 25 sword hacks.  The story is a tongue-in-cheek mish-mosh of Star Trek and Inspector Gadget.  The fight scenes, on the other hand, are a mish-mosh of Champions® and Star Fleet Battles.
  • Starlane Destroyer was a novelette I started writing in 1985, and didn't get around to finishing until early in 2022. Set in the far future, it features a man trapped in a metal body against his will, forced to commit acts of war by his cruel government. Plus, he's got a really neat alien club. See also the Starlane Destroyer's character sheet.
  • Life and Devices was a novelette I started writing in 1983. It is not finished and, at this rate, probably never will be. It features two superhero characters of mine, Ice Maker and Metal Mind.
  • The League of 250 Point Characters, started in (and set in) 1987, was just what its name implied. It answers the immortal question, "What if all these standard 100 point Champions characters suddenly got an extra 150 points to spend?" It features Havok 250, Keybounce 250, The Scientist 250, Mauler 250, Brick One 250, Blue Shooter 250, Wake, and a cameo appearance by Infra Man. They fight against the evil forces of Laser and M.A.C.R.O.N., uuuuuuugh!
  • I Am Wo-Man, set in 1989, is the origin story of Wo-Man, alias Steve Rorkiel, a man given a super-powered woman's body by aliens. It's set in the same universe as The League of 250 Point Characters above.
  • Areopagiticon was a novelette I started writing in 1985. It is not finished and, at this rate, probably never will be. Set on a future Earth where the United Constitutional Government rules with an iron fist, and a small but well-armed group of rebels in powered armor fights to overthrow them. See also the character sheet for a typical "human tank" infantryperson from this story.

• It's Going to be a Rylon Night is a story I wrote in 1985, inspired by some characters in a Rolemaster campaign I played in.  (Rolemaster is a fantasy role-playing game, whose monetary system includes tin pieces.)
• The Mightiest Man on Earth, written in 1984, is the very short story (only 1308 words long) of a man in powered armor.
• Flyers Live Free was written in 1983, back when I still believed in orgone energy.
• Laser Pack, written in 1983, is a short story exploring the age-old theme of the Problem of Evil, and the cold injustice of the universe. (And lasers! Pew pew pew!) The centerpiece "macguffin" of the story was inspired by the laser packs you could mount on fighters starting at Tech Level 9 in Starfire II.
• Teleporter was a 1989 revision of a 1987 rewrite of a 1983 short story. You can probably guess what the central figure's superpower is.
• Stop the Flow of Time, written in 1983 or 1984, is a short-short story transcribed (and cleaned up a bit) from the typewritten story of the same name. I submitted this to UCLA's on-campus humor magazine Satyr, but they rejected it. I can't for the life of me imagine why. <whistles nonchalantly>
• ICEMAN!!, written in 1983, is my own twist on a day in the life of everybody's favorite former X-Men character, ICEMAN!!  (The idea came to me from an episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, in which two kids had some super-hero trading cards autographed by the heroes themselves.  One said, "I'll trade you seven Icemans for one Captain America."  Bobby Drake don't get no respect!)
• The Liberty Man (rewrite) was an aborted attempt to rewrite my 1982 story of the same name. I've lost track of the date this rewrite project began; all I can say for sure is that it happened some time before 31-May-1989. It is not finished and, at this rate, probably never will be.
• Cretaceous Park (for want of a better title) is a novelette I started writing in 1993.  It is not finished and, at this rate, probably never will be.  It seeks to answer the question, "What if humans weren't the first technological species to evolve on the Earth?"
• The Registry is a story I started writing in 1993 or 1994.  It is not finished and, at this rate, probably never will be.  In the wake of the Anita Hill scandal, the whole business world seemed to go into lockdown mode, overreacting to even the mildest hint of possible sexual harassment out of fear of crippling lawsuits and PR fiascos.  I was chock full of bitterness when I wrote this; the scenario it paints comes across like some paranoid fantasy from Fox News.
• Borf! is one of the strangest things I've ever written.  It's a script, or at least a treatment, for a sequel to the old laserdisc video game Space Ace.
• Ode to Pizza is just what its title suggests.  I guess it really doesn't belong on a webpage called "old stories," but I don't have a webpage called "old poetry."

Continuing Stories, collaboratively written on BBSes

• The Incredible Hero! is actually not just my story; it was a collaborative "continuing story" on Michael Gersten's old Serial Tree Board from the early 1980s, where anyone who wanted to could post another chapter or paragraph.  It's based loosely on Todd Williams' Champions® character The Incredible Hero.  There are a lot of in-jokes laced throughout this oevre, centering around the local dial-up BBSses operating in the West Los Angeles area at the time.
• Dan Justice and the Sword of Clay!, like The Incredible Hero!, is a continuing story that was posted to Michael Gersten's old Serial Tree Board in 1985. It came from the notion of the para-elemental planes — if there's a plane that combines the Elemental Plane of Earth and the Elemental Plane of Water, surely it must be the Elemental Plane of mud! Most of the posts (or "moves") in this story were made by me (under several sock-puppet aliases), with substantial contributions by Michael Gersten and Todd Williams.
• Neutron Star & White Dwarf, like The Incredible Hero!, is a continuing story that was posted to Michael Gersten's old Serial Tree Board in 1987. It's based on two of my Champions® characters, one of whom was as dense as a white dwarf (a ton to the teaspoon), the other of whom could vary his density anywhere from that of a normal human all the way up to that of a neutron star (a billion tons to the teaspoon). Most of the posts in this story were made by me (under several sock-puppet aliases), and the second-most of the posts were made by Michael Gersten.
• The Sanders Group was a continuing story extolling the exploits of my single-purpose Champions characters. They were called the Sanders Group because of the slogan for Kentucky Fried Chicken in the 1980s: "We do one thing, and we do it right!". Sadly, this continuing story was not preserved and has been lost. From my own dim memory of this story, the stuff that happened in it included:
  • The Sanders Group fight the X-Men for some reason.
  • Roger E. Murray's character Mentalis shows up, and uses his psychic powers to make everybody sit down and have a beer.
  • Computer Programming Man defeats Storm by hacking the sky with a skywrench ("LINE FEED ERROR IN 1730. CAN'T COMPLY.").
  • An anthropomorphic dog named Dogma mind-controls a whole bunch of chanting monks. Someone comments that, as mindless disciples of Dogma's church, they're now just a bunch of eunuchs. Computer Programming Man (CP/M for short) replies, "Did you say UNIX?", and proceeds to defeat them with a shell script.
  • Megatron and the Decepticons make a cameo appearance. Did you ever notice how the Constructicons individually were quite intelligent, but when they merged to form Devastator, Devastator acted like a drooling moron? Well, the five combining Transformers I knew of at the time — Devastator, Menasor, Superion, Bruticus, and Defensor — all got together, and Megatron commanded them to "Transform, phase 3! And merge into ... Duuuuuuuh!". Thus they combined to form the biggest combined Transformer evar; and following the Constructicons/Devastator rule of combiner stupidity, it was also the biggest drooling moron ever, capable of only saying "Duuuuuuuh!" over and over again.
  • The entire Sanders Group needs to get to the big climactic battle near the end, so they all pile into Force Field's car.
  • Force Field has a huge, unrequited crush on Jumper which finally gets requited at the end.
  • After the end, Michael Gersten complains that they didn't all look into the camera and say "How many experience points do we get?"
• Ninja Mouse was a continuing story extolling the exploits of, you guessed it, Ninja Mouse. Sadly, this continuing story was not preserved and has been lost.
• Thundercats/Transformers was a continuing story exploring the limitless possibilities of "what if the Thundercats could turn into vehicles?". Sadly, this continuing story was not preserved and has been lost. From memory, the players in this story included:
  • Pink Panthro, who could transform into Pink Panzer.
  • Tigrome, who could transform (painfully, but with no memory of the pain) into Earth Elemental. (Why "Tigrome"? Think Grome, the lord of the Earth elementals from the Michael Moorcock mythos.)
  • Wily K.I.T.T., who could transform herself into the car from Knight Rider.
  • Wily Kat, who could combine with Wily K.I.T.T. to form Wily Kit-Kat, a giant chocolate-covered wafer cookie bar.
  • Links-O, who was basically just Lynx-O with a different spelling.
  The Villains included:
  • Ssssssssssssssssssslythe, who had to ssssssssssssssspeak every sssssssssssss as a long hisssssssssssssssss.
  • Jackal Lantern. (Get it?)
  • Mumm-Ra the Ever Dying, who was based around a rules exploit. In Champions, a character was "dying" when his BODY points reached 0, and dead when his BODY reached negative his original BODY total; so a normal person with 10 BODY would be dying at 0 BODY and dead at -10 BODY. When a character was "dying," he'd lose an additional BODY every 12 seconds. But ... what if a character started out with -1 BODY? Then he'd be dying, and his BODY would go down by 1 every 12 seconds, but he wouldn't be dead until his BODY reached positive 1. So he'd be constantly dying, but never die! This was Mumm-Ra's great power. Since he'd been around for a thousand years, his BODY was now down to -2,629,800,000.
  Events included:
  • Lion-O held the Sword of Omens up in Tigrome's face, and shouted "Look!". Tigrome complained "You brought me all this way to show me a dirt speck on your sword?", to which Lion-O replied "Oh, right, the sight-beyond-sight thing only works for me."
  • Cheetara kept on getting all hot for Lion-O, at least in the moves posted by REM. ("Oh, yes, shoot me with your big, hard missile!")
  • The only way to defeat Mumm-Ra was to heal him all the way to +1 BODY. To do this, the heroes constructed a massive, Death-Star-sized healing ray.
  • When the heroes finally defeat Mumm-Ra, and he's lying there dead, he gets in the last word: "Little do they know that the Champions rules don't say that anything changes for you when you're dead!"

Roger M. Wilcox's not-so-old stories

• My Little Borg is that most hideous of creatures, a crossover fanfic. Written in 2013, when I was 47 years old and should have known better. In this story, the Borg invade Equestria and only unicorn magic (and a judicious use of the Borg's own collective against them) can save them. Plus, Twilight Sparkle gets to be a starship captain.
• My Little Borg: The Visitation (unfinished). A sequel to the above crossover fanfic.
• How David Weber Orders a Pizza. So convincing, you won't believe it's not really David Weber.
• Two-Timing. From a dream where someone was praising me for writing a short story filled with twos.
• Harry Potter and the Vorpal Sword from Hell. The most beautiful piece of Harry Potter fanfiction you will ever read!
• Dim-o-lan (unfinished). A re-telling of parts of two chapters of The Whitemail Machine, from the standpoint of Rick Harald Dim-o-lan.
• Starlane Destroyer. A novelette I started writing in 1985, and didn't get around to finishing until early in 2022. In the far future, a man trapped in a metal body against his will is forced to commit acts of war by his cruel government. Plus, he's got a really neat alien club. See also the Starlane Destroyer's character sheet.
• Inventions. What's a lab apprentice to do when he works for an impossible genius with an undead rival?
• Windboy. A re-telling of the 1978 story of the same name, time-warp hurricanes and all.
  I've recorded Windboy as an audio book, in eight chapters, in case you want to listen to me reading it:
  • Windboy audiobook, chapter 1
  • Windboy audiobook, chapter 2
  • Windboy audiobook, chapter 3
  • Windboy audiobook, chapter 4
  • Windboy audiobook, chapter 5
  • Windboy audiobook, chapter 6
  • Windboy audiobook, chapter 7
  • Windboy audiobook, chapter 8
• The League of 250 Point Characters. Begun in 1987, and set in the same year. Features an author self-insertion as an homage to the X-Men's Havok. It answers the immortal question, "What if all these standard 100 point Champions characters suddenly got an extra 150 points to spend?"
• I Am Wo-Man. The origin story of Wo-Man, alias Steve Rorkiel. Set in 1989.
• The Ray (unfinished). The origin story of, originally enough, The Ray, a godlike neanderthal speedster from Tau Ceti. I'd originally conceived of the character in the 1970s, as my answer to D.C. Comics' The Flash.
• Eternal Mankind and the Tree (unfinished). The Harbingers of Eternal Mankind (T.H.E.M.) were out to spread their gospel of transhumanism to the world in 1986, whether the world wanted it or not. But the forced conversion of one of their adherents into a wooden cyborg forged their greatest adversary.
• Windman (unfinished). The sequel to the above Windboy rewrite.

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