Tag: fiction

Extreme alien immigration enforcement

By Joe Diorio

From the introduction of my fourth book, The Ultimate Illegal Alien (in development.)

Science fiction storytelling is the perfect tool to point out the absurdity of a situation.

The Twilight Zone episode titled “Eye of the Beholder” was about a woman who had facial surgery to make her look “normal.” Indeed, she looked perfectly normal when her bandages were removed, UNTIL you saw the doctors and nurses. She was in a society of people whose faces are anything other than the accepted norm. Everyone except her had drooping facial features, thick brows, sunken eyes, swollen lips, and snout-like noses. To everyone in this society, this “look” is normal. It is the woman, portrayed by an attractive young blonde, who is considered disfigured.

The episode was aptly titled, since everyone thought it was the young woman who was disfigured. The episode called into question what beauty is and who makes that decision.

Nine years later Star Trek aired the episode, “Let this be Your Last Battlefield.” It told the story of a 50,000-year-old civil war between citizens of the planet Cheron, a war with blatantly absurd origins. Part of Cheron’s population had a skin coloration that was dramatically different from the other part of the population. Everyone on the planet bore a striking physical appearance—they had white skin on one side of their body and black skin on the other. This color difference was not subtle. There was a clear line of demarcation between the two sides, as though someone had used masking tape to make the line. (Truth be told, in the makeup chair someone probably did exactly that.)

One half of the Cheron population had black skin on the right side; the other half had black skin on the left.

And each side hated the other because of this difference. Each felt their pigmentation was normal. This raised racial stereotype prejudice to a striking level of absurdity. As with any absurd situation, there was no resolution to their difference.

The Twilight Zone and Star Trek stories demonstrated the power of storytelling in a science fiction setting. All storytelling can bring out the obvious. Science fiction storytelling can make the obvious seem absurd.

Nowadays we find many amongst us in a heated argument about immigration. Who stays in the United States and who cannot? Managing immigration in America has gone on for over a century and has never had a pretty face. Since 2025, the face has become uglier than most dared to imagine. Daily news feeds seem to contain a regular dose of immigration agents chasing down and arresting people, protestors violently clashing with immigration agents who use tear gas and flash bang grenades, even live ammunition to disperse protesters. Arguments presented to defend this action have become as unwatchable as the events themselves. And all the immigration tactics are undertaken under the guise of keeping the country safe.

So, if Star Trek and/or Twilight Zone writers were to sit at their keyboards to write a script for immigration, then what would they write? How could science fiction depict the situation? Rather than a government trying to forcefully keep people out, what about an alien planet forcefully bringing people back to their home world?

I imagined a scenario where citizens of a planet visit other worlds and sometimes must rely on a paramilitary force from their home planet to rescue them should the need arise. What if that rescue was not necessary and there was a misunderstanding? Imagine the home world using individual homing beacons on citizens traveling to other worlds, and if a homing beacon stopped working the home planet would move to rescue their citizen, using violent tactics if necessary.

If alien rescue efforts were to turn violent, then what happens? Rather than guns, tear gas, and flash bang weapons wielded by masked ICE agents today, space helmet-wearing alien rescue teams might be armed with powerful laser weapons or something even more destructive. If forced to use such weapons, the devastation they cause could be catastrophic. The ugly face of this reverse immigration enforcement would be a shock and awe experience for the planets these rescue teams visit.

Whether it is masks, gas cannisters or helmets and laser weapons, such tactics would be polarizing for anyone looking on from near or afar. At first the two sides would be “either you agree with it or it is horrifically inhumane,” but in a science fiction scenario this may morph to intergalactic condemnation.

Can anything create a softer edge to immigration enforcement?

Public relations can positively influence a situation. It can educate a public and build an informed basis from which people can make up their own minds. But it cannot on its own change minds, especially when the answers are rarely black and white. Yet sometimes with thorny subjects P.R. becomes a tactic.

That was my starting point for this book. Immigration in the United States, and a reverse immigration taking place on another planet. Both the U.S. and alien immigration officials face heat from their superiors, from the public, and from other sources over their tactics, yet they insist what they are doing is keeping everyone safe.

What would happen if each side decided to try some public relations to smooth over their rough exteriors? Would that work?

Let’s find out.

I am stubbornly sticking to it

By Joe Diorio

My second book, Crisis Communications and the art of making nothing happen (Beaufort Books), turns one-year-old on January 7.

It has succeeded despite a lot of roadblocks thrown in the way.

First, my publisher took over a year to agree to publish the manuscript. I submitted a proposal in Spring 2022 and didn’t hear until almost the Summer of 2023 that it was a go. All along my editor said it was on her radar, but if so then it must’ve been ground clutter.

Second, the publication date kept getting pushed back; October 2023 to later in 2023, then to January 2024 and – if I hadn’t thrown a polite tantrum (let me go no further than that on this topic) – it might have been pushed back even further.

Third, Advance Reading Copies (ARCs), which are used to generate early reviews of the book, were delivered so late that few early readers got a copy. I resorted to emailing volunteer readers a PDF of the edited manuscript.

Fourth, fewer than one third of the people who agreed to write reviews did so. I am not going to drop names, but you know who you are.

And finally, for the initial print run my publisher ordered only 500 copies. Yes, just 500 copies. The size of a press run for new books varies, but usually at least 2,500 to 3,000 often comprise a first pass. My first book, A Few Words About Words. A common-sense look at writing and grammar (Beaufort Books, August 2021) had about that many copies printed. Crisis Communications had just 500. Say you have no faith in a title without saying you have no faith in a title.

But remember at the outset I said it has succeeded? It has.

For starters, people who have read the book – and it has sold just over half of the press run – love it. Not just like, love. A friend relayed the story that she sat down in a diner to have breakfast one morning and started reading the book after she ordered her meal. She tells me she was so taken in by the book that her server gently tapped her on the shoulder to ask if everything was OK.

“Yes, I’m fine. Why do you ask?” my friend asked.

“Because your food was delivered 45 minutes ago and you haven’t touched it,” the server said.

Yes, the book can be THAT engrossing.

Crisis Communications is a story about how a business survives a mass shooting. I wrote the book as fiction, basing it on personal experience. Yes, I was in a mass shooting. It sucked.

I thought the book would appeal to professionals in the communications field because they often spearhead the development of a crisis communications plan. And since over 30,000 people in the United States work in some form of public relations or communications, I figured that was a sizeable market. I also thought people working in the news business would like it since the book provides a glimpse at what goes on in a company behind the press conference.

To use an overused cliché, well I wasn’t wrong. A friend who wrote the forward for the book called it a “master class” on crisis planning.

This past August Crisis Communications won the President’s Award from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association; it was roundly applauded by readers. It was (and still is) a good book.

And I have faith in my book. Both of my books, in fact. So much so that I am donating all royalties from both books to food bank charities throughout the United States, figuring I can help people and maybe sell a book or two.

Sure, you can just donate directly to a charity, but buying the book helps a charity and it helps you hone your skills.

Crisis Communications is the book a public relations professional would want their crisis planning reluctant client to read (or at least summarize it for them). Reviewers recommend it for both educational and its entertainment value.

“This book provides an education on the importance of communications and PR when tragedy strikes a company. There’s more behind a story and this book reminds us of the importance of controlling the narrative or someone else will,” one reviewer said.

“Joe writes from both training and experience. His central point is the most important – be prepared in advance,” another reviewer wrote.

As for A Few Words About Words (AFAW), remember that at one time or another we all must put pens to paper, fingers to keyboard, or thumbs to a smart phone. I tell parents that AFAW is a great summer beach read, too, since many of us will have to help our kids write their annual “What I did on my summer vacation” essays.

So, I am sticking with my books. And why not? Who abandons a one-year-old?

Let’s write carefully out there, people.

Joe Diorio lives in Lee County, Florida and will gladly send you an autographed copy of his book in exchange for a review on Amazon. Contact him at diorio@comcast.net.