Fly
Twice Backward
by
David S. McCracken
Genre:
Alternate History, SciFi
You
wake back in early adolescence, adult memories intact, including ones
that could make you very wealthy now. Your birth family is here,
alive again, but your later families are gone, perhaps forever. What
has happened, what should you do about coming problems like violence,
ignorance, pollution, and global warming? You realize one key
connects most, the fundamentalist strains of the major religions
disdaining science, equality, and social welfare. You see that there
are some things you can change, some you can’t, and one you don’t
dare to.
Fellow
idealists help you spend your growing fortune well--such as an
artistic Zoroastrian prince in the Iranian oil industry, a rising
officer in the Soviet army working to find a way to destroy his
corrupt government, a Bahai woman struggling against Islamic
brutality, a Peruvian leader working for a liberal future, and a
snake-handling Christian minister, grappling with doubts, sexuality,
and destiny. They are supported by an ally who develops essential
psychic powers. The group faces familiar-looking corrupt politicians,
religious leaders, and corporate czars, but there is an ancient force
in the background, promoting greed, violence, hate, and fear.
This
exciting, emotional, thoughtful, humorous, and even romantic sci-fi
novel weaves progressivism, music, movies, and literature into a
struggle spanning the globe. Vivid characters propel the action back
up through an alternative history toward an uncertain destination.
Three Excerpts from Fly Twice Backward
12. David: Ungodly Problem! (Winchester, KY, Sun., 9/14/52)
Waiting for breakfast, reading the Sunday paper at the table, I realize Mom’s not heading for the kitchen: Oh, oh! It’s church day. Mass. Fasting. Acolyting! What’m I going to do about that?
“Mom, am I supposed to serve today?”
“Of course!”
“Well, I can’t. I have no idea how to do that anymore. I guess we need to call Padre and tell him I’m sick.”
“No, David, we’re not playing that game today!”
“Mom, I hate to say this now, but I have no choice. I don’t know how to serve, so I can’t do it, and, frankly, I’m not ever going to do it. I’m an agnostic, a Unitarian, actually.”
She’s slamming the pots I washed and put in the drainer last night as she puts them into the cabinet under the counter. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t know enough to be an agnostic.”
Fortunately, Dad has come in and heard this exchange.
“Nev, whether his story is true or not, or he knows enough or not, he has a right not to go. He was old enough to be confirmed, so he’s old enough to choose. I’ll serve in his place.”
“Lie about being sick, on Sunday?”
“Mom, it’s a temporizer. I can’t reveal to him why I’m not going to today, much less why I’ll never again do it, and I know you wouldn’t want me to be open about it. I might not even be here next Sunday.” I chuckle. “Maybe I’ll have fallen back to age four, with Dad off in the Navy!” What a sharp look I get!
“We need a few days to sort this out, Nev.”
19. David: Duck and Cover (Winchester, KY, Tu., 9/16/52)
“Up in the mornin’ and off to school!” plays in my head as I hear the latest hits on WVLK, while we eat breakfast on this third school day. Chuck Berry actually won’t be along with those words in “School Days” for several years, but I’m enjoying what is coming over the radio. Old friends. This morning I’m surprised to hear “Jambalaya.” I didn’t realize our station played anything so country/Cajun. Listening to these songs reminds me that back then, well, now, we all listen to pretty much the same songs, except for those of us who are very country or African American. A shared culture. People are starting to watch the same TV shows, too, though not my family.
I am so eager to start band today. First thing in the day, though, is the whole school going to the cafeteria to watch the film, Duck and Cover. How chilling to see the atomic war message made realistic. Especially in our room full of largely unaware children, surprisingly quiet: “We must always be ready for an atomic explosion, no matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing.”
Unfortunately, my very first band class is mostly consumed by a bomb drill and discussion of it. Thank goodness, I know the Cold War does end before any bombs fall: Wish I could tell everyone not to worry, now and for the next forty years. Wish I could say we can go ahead with band and our lives, worry-free!
The film that made it even more personally real, later? Oh, The Day After. I still remember vividly the horror the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, felt when they saw the missiles based around them erupting from the ground, knowing the war was on, and hostile missiles would be coming back at them. The pathos of a survivor finding his way back to his home, trying to take possession of the rubble, from other survivors picking through it for anything that would help them survive. A woman with kindness and embarrassment, offering him an apple she’s found. What an impact on me now, remembering the innocent opening scene of it, in a band class . . . . Maybe it was the lack of having seen the later film that made the earlier Duck and Cover film pass unremembered, or perhaps I just wasn’t mature enough to be scared.
But how many of these boys around me will too soon die in the jungles, mud, and rot of Vietnam?
21. David: Unicorn? (Winchester, KY, Tu., 9/16/52)
When she gets home from school, Mom surprises me with a borrowed newspaper, El Mundo: “I thought you might want to catch up on Latin American news. You can read this OK, can’t you?”
Ah, a test. Thank goodness I’ve been brushing up scanning her upper-level texts. I take in her sly, wolfish grin, restrain one of my own, and say,” Oh, good here’s an article on the coming Venezuelan election, Mom. Have you read it?”
“Um, no, not yet.”
I proceed to summarize the article and mention that the junta had called the elections confident of solidifying their mandate. I go on to add they would lose—and turn power back over to the military. Who’d have thought that my Latin American studies focus would come in so handy, so long before I pursued it!
Mom slinks off to putter in the kitchen, but soon our doorbell rings. She seems to run to answer it.
“David, there’s a man here, Mr. Walker, I’d like you to talk with.” Looks like trouble.
“Oh, about what?” I ask.
“Well, just to get acquainted, for now,” Mom says. “Um, we’re thinking you might be able to use a special teacher.”
Walker is a serious-looking tall man of middle age, conservatively suited.
“Are you a math teacher? I’d love to learn advanced stuff, like algebra.”
“Oh, do you already know about it?”
“No, not past the name. Can you teach me algebra?”
Mom puts in, “Maybe history, David?”
“That’d be nice. I don’t know much, except some about the Second World War. I was amazed a friend of mine didn’t know who General Rommel was, though.”
“Mrs. McCracken, is there something in particular you have in mind?”
“Well, he says he came back from the future.”
“Mom, if I’d done that, I wouldn’t have been so surprised by this. You’re worrying me. You don’t want to do electroshock again, I know. You were really confused after the last time.”
“This is nonsense! I’ve never had electroshock.”
“Oh, Mom, are you back in that state? Don’t you remember? You denied it then, but . . . well, you know you wet your pants whenever you’d think about it. She was doing so well, Doctor . . . .”
Why did I want to write about going back in time and living forward?
When I was a boy, my father read Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to us, enjoying the story of a modern man who found himself far in the past, as much as my sister and I did. It wasn’t until I was writing this novel that I understood why Dad might particularly have enjoyed it, as I savored the idea of a second chance at doing something significant. I came to see this diary of my falling back to early adolescence and living forward as a perfect medium for bringing to life many things I care about. Ah, and my body was literally rejuvenated.
Why did I choose the diary format?
As I wrote, the novel transformed into a worldwide saga, with a sizeable cast needing to feel their lives, blending eventually into a great friendship, a noble undertaking. To keep track of them all, for me and readers, a blended diary let me economically identify the POV in each diary entry, along with the place and time. It also let me give immediacy their strands—a goal that also led me to write it always in the first person, present tense. I enjoyed, in the process, playing out some events from different points of view, like the son who had no idea why his mother broke off with the man he wanted as a step father….
David
McCracken was born in Louisville, KY, in 1940. Raised mostly in
Winchester, KY, he now lives in Northern Virginia, with his third and
final wife. He has three children, two stepchildren, and six
grandchildren.
After
three years in the U.S. Navy following a lackluster academic start,
he graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1963, in Diplomacy
and International Commerce. He then worked as a Latin American
country desk officer in the U.S. Department of Commerce until he
returned to school to earn an M.A. in Elementary Education in 1970
from Murray State University, having always been intending to teach.
Eventually realizing his children qualified for reduced-price lunches
based on his own teaching salary, he studied computer programming at
Northern Virginia Community College and worked as a programmer until
shifting back into elementary teaching.
He
began working on what became Fly Twice Backward in 1983 and finally
finished it in 2019! At 79, David strongly doubts he'll be doing
another novel of such scope and complexity, but is preparing to work
on a children's science fiction novel with a progressive bent, being
a devout progressive in politics and religion, as well as a lover of
learning.
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