Power Unlimited is a science fiction humor piece about an accidental meeting with aliens from roughly 1985. The story’s based on my experiences lifting weights back in the day when gyms had weights; no machines (or few which were mostly homemade cable pull devices); no aerobic equipment of any kind; were in basements, garages, warehouses; men lifted, you wore heavy, heavy sweats; and you stank and were proud of it.
I wrote the story for a writing class I took at the time. My teacher loved it. LOVED IT!
He wrote he wished he’d written it. It was brilliant. He called (this was back when long distance charges applied. I was in northern NH, he was in western Ohio) to tell me how good it was and how impressed he was.
Should I send it out?
A definite yes!
I sent it to George Scithers (sp?), then editor of Amazing Stories. He loved it. He thought it was brilliant. He also wasn’t going to buy it because the concept was weary and done too often before, but “please send me more if you have it.”
Which I did.
To which he threatened to black list me if I continued.
To which I realized editors and publishers (at the time) were…different.
How’s that for political correctness?
Meanwhile and thanks to the internet’s expansion of markets, Power Unlimited‘s been published in ARAASP April 1992, my self-pubbed anthology Tales Told ‘Round Celestial Campfires 2016, Daikaijuzine July 2021, and now Tall Tale TV April 2025.
