Tales of Tinfoil
edited by David Gatewood
Foreword by Joseph E. Uscinski
ASIN : B00VMPROEM
- Publication date : April 17, 2015 Language : English Print length : 540 pages
I very nearly skipped over Tales of Tinfoil. Between QAnon, Russian Troll Farms and the usual crowds of nuts, we get hit by conspiracy theories, mostly malignant and designed to undermine us on a daily basis. The best ones manage to be entertainingly stupid.
The title alone suggested that this wasn’t going to be a dreary collection of semiliterate tracts on Nazis under the Ice, bigfoot, chemtrails, or claims that Sherlock Holmes was real and Winston Churchill an invented figure played by Holmes. (Come on: they don’t even LOOK similar, and besides, I just made that one up.)
But I recognized a couple of the authors’ names, people whose work I liked. One of them, I knew to be the least credulous writer around. I suspect his eyes narrow and his hands drift threateningly over his keyboard when he hears the words “Do the research” or “I’m just asking questions.”
So if you’re expecting a celebration of the life and times of David Icke, or “proof” that Dick Cheney personally wired Building 7 with C4, move along. There’s woofests all over the place that will charge exorbitant amounts to show material that descended from 20th generation Xerox copies.
In this compilation, each author was asked to pick a conspiracy theory and write a short story that in some way revolved around that old wives’ tale.
They settled for a dozen stories, each uniquely linked to a discrete theory. (I’ve abused the Fair Use laws to copy and paste the story synopses from the book below). Some were known to everyone: the JFK assassination, faking the Moon landing, and Elvis Lives!
Richard Gleaves is from Dallas, where, he says, “everybody has a theory.” His engaging and informed story about the one man in Dallas who didn’t have a theory of his own is one of the best in the collection and is surprisingly engaging.
Others are ones that people have heard about in a vague kind of way: HAARP, the eternal light bulb, Area 51.
Lucas Bale tackled the HAARP story with Chukotka, a tale of a man stranded on the shores of Siberian Russia and at the mercy of the local Inuit tribe. The story reminded me of why I always liked Jack London and Robert W. Service.
A couple of the stories revolved around conspiracy theories I didn’t know about. The French killed and replaced Abraham Lincoln and replaced him with an actor with the intention of losing to the South? There was an arcade game in the 80s that caused players to go out and murder? (I’ve seen movies based on similar premises.)
The Lincoln story by Chris Pourteau is particularly well-crafted, supposedly written by Jean-Pierre Barras, the actor who supposedly stood in for Lincoln, and how his change of heart in 1863 saved the union. The Elvis story by Jennifer Ellis is warm, engaging, and heartfelt.
One story of note was about a Hollywood child actor being disposed of and replaced by a dopplegänger. Told in the style of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing” it makes for a raucous wild ride in the night in the city of light from Jim Morrison’s fevered imaginings.
Peter Cawdron decided all conspiracy theories were real, and told a tale of pod people and a mad scientist whose dialogue would have been right at home in a Roland Emmerich movie.
They’re all good stories, and actually softened my own stance toward conspiracy theories a bit. We love conspiracy theories whether we affect to believe them or not, and they fill a basic human need for mystery and drama. I’ve often suspected that all religions got their start from neolithic conspiracy theories, tales told around a campfire to keep the big cats at bay and to explain the thunder, and death, and why the world is as it is. Many conspiracy theories are evil and/or malign, but most are just human curiosity, imagination, and credulity facing an imponderable universe.
All the stories here are good, and some are truly excellent.
And everyone knows Abraham Lincoln was actually played by Bigfoot. Do the research, sheeple!
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STORY SYNOPSES
Under the Grassy Knoll (Richard Gleaves)
Don Petterman sells Kennedy assassination DVDs in Dealey Plaza. He’s spent fifty years hunting for Kennedy’s real killer and has nothing to show for it except unpaid bills and a lonely apartment. But when his new iPad falls through the sewer grate, he climbs down a rabbit hole to get it back, and finds more below the streets of Dallas than he’d ever imagined.
The Long Slow Burn (Ernie Lindsey)
Bo Sheppard is content with being a small-time thief. It’s easy work. Pays well. Keeps the lights on and affords him enviable freedom. It’s never about walking away from it all after one big score. It’s about the challenge. But when he’s approached with an opportunity that could be worth billions, the real challenge lies in uncovering the truth, because he’s about to step into a conspiracy that stretches from a bedside lamp to the towers of Wall Street.
Day for Night (Forbes West)
Key West, 1981. The beers are cold, the nights are hot, and a mind-bending new arcade machine is about to turn the life of one innocent bartender upside down. Reality and illusion mix in this tale of a terror that lurks in the alleys and bars of a quirky beach town after dark.
Chukotka (Lucas Bale)
Two Alaskan cold-water surfers sail the Bering Strait in search of the gnarliest waves. A dying Chukchi hunter leaves his village for the desolate Siberian tundra, seeking to prove his usefulness to the wayward youth of his people. When the perfect man-made storm provokes the towering black waves of the Bering, and surges over the frozen Russian wilderness, it throws together old and young, East and West, forcing them to confront their prejudices in a desperate fight for survival.
That’s a Wrap from the Sea of Tranquility (Eric Tozzi)
Meet Harry Waldo McNixon, film director. He’s a big shot. Worked for all the studios. Got a list of credits a mile long. But his greatest work as a filmmaker—his masterpiece—went uncredited. That’s because in 1969, Harry McNixon helmed the filming of the world’s most famous footage: the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Disappear (Wendy Paine Miller)
The last person on earth Rowan Aduro could stand to lose is her sixteen-year-old daughter, Kiran. She’s too young. Too young to live without her missing father. Too young to lead an uprising. And far too young to be one of the hundreds who’ve been “disappeared.” But with cameras everywhere and the government monitoring every electronic communication, there is nowhere for Rowan to hide. Except in her dreams.
One Arm of the Octopus (Michael Bunker)
When Matthew Luedecke leaves his small town for the university, he’s hoping for a new start and a more exciting life. He’ll get more than he bargained for. Recruited by a shadowy group of Nicaraguan ex-pats, Matt soon discovers how sheltered and blinded most Americans are when it comes to the covert machinations of world powers and the intricacies and danger of international intrigue. From an innocent pool party to a bloody firefight along the Coco River in Nicaragua’s dense jungles, Matt is about to find out that an “exciting life” may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Heil Hitler! (Peter Cawdron)
What if every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard was true? What if the contradictions between various theories could be explained? What if, like Schrödinger’s cat, every theory was both dead and alive, both true and false at the same time? What would you believe? This is the dilemma faced by Suzie Harmon when her husband greets her one morning, saying, “Heil Hitler!”
The French Deception (Chris Pourteau)
In the waning days of World War II—just as the Allies liberate Paris—a frail, weathered letter is discovered in France’s Archives diplomatiques. It’s a confession, penned in 1865 by Jean-Pierre Barras, a French Creole. He claims that Abraham Lincoln was murdered in 1862 by the Sûreté—the French intelligence bureau—and that he, Barras, a Southern sympathizer and Lincoln look-alike, has been impersonating the president ever since.
Manufacturing Elvis (Jennifer Ellis)
When Anna Rooney accompanies her grandfather’s new girlfriend, Dolores, to Bermuda in search of Elvis, she doesn’t expect to find much. After all, Elvis is dead, Dolores is crazy, and Anna has her own challenges to deal with. But Elvis turns out to be a substantial ghost, and Anna discovers that perhaps fresh starts are possible, and that there might be as much to be gained from the chase as from crossing the finish line.
The Final Flight of Michael Aoki (Edward W. Robertson)
It’s 1947, and the Soviet Union has nuked the West Coast. Within weeks, the rest of the United States will follow. The government has one hope left to defeat the enemy: the UFO recovered from Roswell. And pilot Michael Aoki.
Fear of the Unknown and Loathing in Hollywood (Nick Cole)
An ex-government insider goes deep into darkest Hollywood, chasing a story. What starts as the search for yet more page-turning gossip turns into a gonzo-esque quest up a dark tributary along the river of fame, fortune, and the occult. Is The Fresh Prince of Bel Air really about a dead kid from the projects? Did Walt Disney really make a cartoon that offers an insanity-inspiring glimpse of Hell? And did a TV idol sacrifice his rival for stardom? Doc Midnite is on assignment, and not even his allies are safe.