"Feathered Serpent 2012"

Junius Podrug is an accomplished writer of both fiction and nonfiction. He lives on Cape Cod.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Feathered Serpent 2012, and reported the following:

My books are suspense thrillers rather than hardcore science fiction, and I love “stranger than true” scenarios. Along that line, I’m fascinated with alien abduction stories—there are so many of them, often from credible people, that it’s hard for me just to reject them all as nonsense.

The instructions NASA has sent out with space probes to allow aliens to find us also interests me. The messages began in 1972 when a golden plaque about the size of a license plate describing who we are and where to find us was placed in the Pioneer 10 space probe. NASA says the messages are like a “ms. in a bottle,” thrown into the galactic sea, hoping it will be found by someone faraway.

Naturally, that led my twisted mind to the notion of a person who claimed to have been abducted by aliens has possession of the Pioneer plaque.

I dealt with that and other themes in Feathered Serpent 2012, in which the lead character, an astrobiologist, believes that the best place to find signs of other life in the universe is right here on earth from visitations in the past—and present.

Caden Montez, the astrobiologist, has an “alien abduction” experience in the tomb of the ancient Feathered Serpent god ancient Mesoamericans identified with the planet Venus. She later gets abducted by government agents to keep her quiet about the incident and is rescued by a secret group of people who called themselves “Frogs” because they claim to have been abducted and even dissected by aliens. The following conversation takes place between Caden and the leader of the group when he shows her the Pioneer 10 plaque.

“Are you going to tell me it’s real?” Caden asked.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore. Was Joan a prisoner in an alien brothel ... or her own imagination? Is Neo’s memory of abduction a security blanket against the terrible truth that he caused his wife’s death? Did you experience an alien creature in Teotihuacán ... or have a bad acid trip after an hallucinatory drug was blown into your face?”

When the character says he doesn’t know what’s real anymore, it rings true to me: There are so many changes in this world, happening so fast, that I don’t know what’s real anymore—and what’s science fiction.

Read an excerpt from Feathered Serpent 2012, and learn more about the book and author at Junius Podrug's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue