Today is a special day for Futures as we’re being visited by the Galaxy’s greatest hero, Simon Clash. We are fortunate that James Aquilone managed to get hold of an extract from Clash’s life story enabling us to see the hero in action. When James isn’t chasing after galactic heroes, you can usually catch up with him at his website. James kindly took a moment to reveal how he managed to scoop this exclusive with Simon Clash (warning this contains spoilers, so you’ll want to read about Clash’s exploits first).

Writing Simon Clash: the Galaxy’s greatest hero

As much as I love Star Wars, the 1980 Flash Gordon movie has always occupied a more special place in my geeky heart. After I saw it in the theatre, I stayed and watched it again. And for many years, I made sure I saw it every time it aired on television. Maybe it was the Queen music or maybe it was Max von Sydow’s bald head that resonated with me. But most likely it was the fact that Flash Gordon was more fun than Star Wars.

So when I started writing the space opera that would turn into Simon Clash: the Galaxy’s greatest hero, I knew I wanted it to be fun.

I also wanted to play with the plot that the two movies shared. Luke and Han’s mission is to save Princess Leia, just as Flash’s is to save Dale Arden. That trope is as old as storytelling itself, which makes it the perfect target for subversion.

My inspirations for Simon Clash himself were a couple of wacky TV shows I watched as a kid: Get Smart and Inspector Gadget. Maxwell Smart and Gadget, both played by Don Adams, were bumbling, idiotic, oblivious characters. They were heroes who really weren’t heroes at all, and I’ve always found that funny and endearing.

There were two other things I wanted to do with the story.

One was to create a weapon as awesome as the lightsabre (one can hope, right?). Simon Clash’s sonic wand was based on Green Lantern’s power ring, which can create just about anything the superhero needs. And now that I think about it, the wand is also similar to Inspector Gadget’s ability to whip out an endless array of gadgets when necessary or not.

The other thing was to name a space opera character after my favourite Pixies song, Velouria. And regarding that, I can say I was 100% successful!

There are a few other things that inspired Simon Clash: the Galaxy’s greatest hero as well as Easter eggs, but I’ll leave those for the readers to discover.