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The Order of Oddfish

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Shrinky-dinks and Georgia’s ending for The Strange Ship: Part II

July 8, 2009

A couple weeks ago I met the enviably talented young actors in the Broadway touring production of Mary Poppins who were fans of The Order of Odd-Fish. They were kind enough to give me four tickets to see the play, and so I took Freya and Theo.

It was fantastic! Bryce and Aida were playing the Banks kids that night, and they were incredible. We got to meet them backstage after. How I wish I had been a glamorous child star like them!

I had mentioned they had made really cool shrinky-dinks of some characters from Odd-Fish. Above is Colonel Korsakov, and then Colonel Korsakov’s digestion, and then one of the Odd-Fish ostriches; below is Mr. Cavendish’s head flying around the Dust Creek cafe, Aunt Lily slapping Ken Kiang, and a shrinky-dink that didn’t quite make it through the baking process. Or it’s very modern. In any case, these ingenious, unique pieces of Odd-Fish fan art are all on my refrigerator now.

Earlier I posted on this blog two books I had written when I was seven years old, The Strange Ship and The Strange Ship Part II. They were about two “moneymen” (one of whom, it turned out, was secretly a cylcops) and their continuing adventures against the monsters of the Strange Ship.

Somehow I’d lost track of the final pages of The Strange Ship Part II, so I invited readers to come up with their own ending to this book I had written 30 years ago. I’ve gotten a lot of great endings (see here, here, here, here, and here) but I can’t post them all.

However, I do want to post this last one I received, by Georgia, because it’s so fantastic. I’m particularly impressed by Georgia’s artistic abilities! I love the cute spin she put on the robots and monsters. And the surprise ending is refreshingly forgiving. (Her first draft she sent me was hilariously bloodthirsty, though.)

To catch up all the references, you might want to read The Strange Ship and The Strange Ship Part II before diving in. At the point where it broke off, the monsters were chasing the moneymen on the orders of the Commander of the Strange Ship, but then one of the monsters’ legs was blown off, and it was revealed that all the monsters were in fact robots.

Georgia, take it away! And thanks for finishing the story I started 30 years ago!

Then the moneymen saw that they were robots.

“Oh,” said one.

“That makes life easier,” said the other.

“Yes, it does,” he agreed, for, as you should know, cyclops are good with mechanics. So in no time flat all you could see was bits and pieces of metal, nuts and bolts, wires, and motherboards. Then the cyclops grinned at his friend. His friend grinned back and said “You know what to do.” And he did. He used all the stuff from the old robots and made new robots, so they could battle the bad guys.

It would have been a bloody battle, except for one thing. When they thought all the bad guys where gone, and all the dust settled, they found a miraculous sight: all the bad guys were robots too!

“But that can’t be . . . ” said the cyclops slowly. “This is the whole planet’s population . . . who made these robots?”

“Well, I don’t know much about robots,” said the other, “but they were very convincing! The whole time we thought they were real!”

Suddenly they heard a noise! “Wha-?” said the moneyman. could it really be—?

“Umm……… hello commander?”

It was the commander! And he was crying! “I’m—so—sorr-yyyyy!” wailed the commander. “I-I f-found-d th-this p-p-p-planet and-d w-was l-lonel-ly s-so i-i b-b-built all th-these r-r-robots f-f-for c-c-company!”

His crying was slowing. “It-it was just in-in their n-nature t-to w-want t-to d-d-dominate! I n-never r-really w-wanted to h-hurt anyone!”

“Erm . . . ” said the moneyman thoughtfully. “Oooookaaaaaayyyyyyy. Ummmmm . . . we forgive you.”

“Hey, ya wanna come to our planet? We could use a guy who builds robots as well as you!” said the cyclops.

“Really? Do you really mean it?”

“Of course.”

So they walked away into the sunset to find their ship and go home . . . for good this time.

Thanks, Georgia! I really enjoyed that!