Transformations

In response to my post about the new Transformers trailer, asks “but does the car have sex?” In case you were wondering what that was all about, I’ll explain that this is a (slightly exaggerated) reference to my story “Transformations,” my wry, affectionate, and slightly warped take on the pop culture phenomenon of robots that transform into cars, and the boys that love them. And yes, the story does feature a sex scene involving a transforming robot, but no, not like that.

Anyway, normally I wouldn’t even mention it, but now my wild enthusiasm for the Tranformers movie is tempered by mortal terror that the movie is going to “steal” some of my ideas, and that then my story, which I wrote back in January, won’t seem as fresh when the story finally comes out in Realms of Fantasy magazine late this year or early next. So I’m just going to state right now that if the movie features either a sex scene that takes place inside a transforming robot in its car form, or if the movie includes the idea that you could smash a person into pulp by having the car transform into a robot while the passenger was still inside, I did it first.

Of course, hopefully the movie won’t use these (or any of my other) ideas, and will just feature lots of robots blowing each other up, in which case I’ll be very happy. And one of my (many, many — ridiculously many, actually) fantasies is that the makers of the movie will read my story and then say to themselves, “Duh! Why didn’t we think of that? Man, from now on let’s give this guy a billion dollars to think up stuff like that for us.” And then transforming robots from outer space would hear about me and seek me out and say, “We’ve been hiding in plain view this whole time, just waiting to reveal ourselves to one special human being who really understands us.” And then the robots would whisk me off on an interstellar adventure, and I’d save the universe, and … well, you get the idea. Okay, seriously, I know, that’s a little outlandish. I’d just settle for the billion dollars.