Orlo James Goodson
The Scorpion takes place in the near future in a day where when you die, they take your brain and hook it up to a computer giving it the ability to think like a human with the speed and accuracy of a computer.
The Scorpion, a USS starship, comes back to Earth to get a new brain because the old one has gone senile. Upon returning to Earth the Captain of the Scorpion is informed that they must head out by the end of the week, with or without a brain, on a rescue mission to save two scientists and their families who have been studying the collapse of a sun into a black hole. The scientists have been there three years. Their inter space shuttle has been destroyed and the sun is collapsing inward. The only ship close enough and fast enough to have any hope at all of getting there on time, is Scorpion. And even then it’s marginal.
At the last minute a brain is found and installed but the brain is drunk so it is hooked up all but the main plug while they wait for the brain to sober up. Meanwhile the Scorpion gets underway. The captain falls in love with a new recruit. There is a stowaway and they come across an enemy flattop that is breaking up in space. They rescue the survivors. The brain is functioning perfectly. Everything seems to be going just fine.
Due to the high alcohol levels of the brain, the program to obey orders did not hold. Unbeknownst to the Captain and the crew, the Scorpion has a new master. One that holds grudges. One that plots and schemes working to fulfill an agenda of its own. Using a disgruntled officer who felt that he should be in command, along with the rescued crew members of the Kobon flattop, and the ship’s own onboard robots, hell is about to break loose on board the USS Scorpion.
Orlo James Goodson, born March 7, 1952, in Ogden, Utah.
I started writing skits for community road shows in my grade school years. I also started producing paper Mache headpieces for costumes at about the same time. By high school I organized my own theater group that presented short skits, pantomimes and monologues, to charity groups all over Davis County, Utah. I wrote the plays, directed them, acted in them and booked the shows. I was invited into Who’s Who in Utah High School Drama, although I never accepted the invitation. I lettered in drama and received the Thespian Guild award for the most outstanding student in theater over the four years at Davis High School.
I spent two years on an LDS Mission in Northern California 1971-1973. I returned home to Utah, entered college at Weber State College, studied Sales and Marketing, transferred to Brigham Young University to study motion picture, television and radio production in the College of Fine Arts and Communications.
I met Maxine Corson and changed her name to Maxine Goodson in 1975. We now have six children, three sons and three daughters and two grandchildren. We had three of our six children before we graduated from BYU and the fourth one about a year afterwards.
It was at this time that I experimented with film production, single cell animation and radio production and started writing screen plays. In 1978 I finished the Scorpion. I rewrote the Scorpion in 1990-91. In 1985 I wrote To Zion. In 1986 I wrote the Miners and the Devils. In roughly the same period of time that I rewrote the Scorpion in 1990-91, I wrote the Jacksonville Norseman Society, or Tyranny and Reprisal. I rewrote the Jacksonville Norseman Society, or Tyranny and Reprisal in January of 2006. Somewhere in this same time frame, back in the early 1990’s, I wrote the USS Texicana and the Great Lacon. In 1995 I started work on the Star Trek Wars and the Man of the Spectrum. I finished it up in late summer of 2005.
I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Brigham Young University in 1980. I graduated with a Technical Degree in Machining from the Davis Applied Technology Center in Kaysville, Utah, in 1993. In approximately 2005 I started taking classes at the Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah, in computer animation, multi-track recording and basically upgrading my education to be able to use computers to do what I trained to do at BYU. While there, in the Spring of 2006, I produced an audio dramatized book of the Jacksonville Norseman Society or Tyranny and Reprisal. I am also self-publishing both the Scorpion and the Jacksonville Norseman Society or Tyranny and Reprisal in 2006.
Over the years I’ve also been to school to become an Insurance Agent, which I did for a time, and a Real Estate Agent, which I currently am. As well, I’ve been a Traveling Salesman, I’ve driven long-haul trucking, I’ve worked as a machinist in a number of shops, and I’ve made everything from parts for nuclear reactors to the spy satellites to molds for bowling balls. And it’s been an interesting life.
My wife and I have been married now for 31 years and it’s been, for the most part, an enjoyable experience.
