Even though I'll be there all weekend here are the following panels, I will be on.


Lawrence Johnson

* Fri 10:00 PM in Plaza VI (Six)—Buck Rogers Rides Again (13)

There is a new web series, there is a new comic book series. Why the resurgence?

Nathan Lilly (mod), Lawrence Johnson, C.J. Henderson, Orenthal Hawkins, Ted Rickles, Bill Spangler

* Sun 3:00 PM in Plaza II (Two)—Book Discussion Ideas (68)

Readers tell us their notions of what would make for a good book discussion.

Oz Fontecchio (mod), Scheherazade Jackson, Lawrence Johnson, Evelyn Leeper, Mary Spila


Stop by and join in on the discussions!

I'm looking forward to this event!

www.escape2earth.com
www.lawrencejohnsonsr.com

Philadelphia Science Fiction Author to Attend the Third Annual Free Library of Philadelphia Festival. Escape 2 Earth author Lawrence Johnson Sr. will be attending the annual event on Saturday April 18, 2009 at the Parkway Central Library. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Escape 2 Earth is a science fiction novel that follows three heroes on their journey to warn the world of its destruction. The three discover that there are ominous secret hidden messages from aliens within the crop circles and that there are clues all around the Earth to help them escape the planet. But first they must prove to the governments of the world that the Earth is in danger and the plans of an escape to a new planet without exposing their newfound alien friends.

Every day people are learning more about the conspiracy theories of the 2012 doomsday prophecy that date back to the time of the Mayans. In Escape 2 Earth, two crop circle photographers Matt and Will and a computer expert, Art, uncover the truth and the lies behind Earth’s greatest mysteries.

“I just finished reading Escape 2 Earth and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I look forward to getting and reading Return 2 Earth.” Michael L. from New York

“I read the book two weeks ago. It was quick and easy to read. I found it to be pretty interesting. I would like to read the sequel.” Stephen K. C. from Largo, Maryland

While growing up in South Philadelphia, Lawrence had always been drawn to the world of science fiction. Soon he will be ready to release part two of his science fiction novels entitled Return 2 Earth.


For questions and interviews, please write to Lauren.Johnson@escape2earth.com.
To stay up-to-date on the Escape 2 Earth series, visit
www.escape2earth.com or the author’s website
www.LawrenceJohnsonSr.com

Crop Circles

I am truly baffled by the lack of interest that the main stream media has shown in uncovering the mysteries surrounding crop circles.

For many years these circles have been appearing in fields and in country sides around the world but more recently they have become much more intricate and sophicated prompting many to believe that they are extraterrestrial in origin. Over the past three or four years crop circles have begun to show up in the shape of DNA, the Mayan Calendar, and my personal favorite Earth’s solar system with the planet Nibiru included.

Why is this important? Well, it may not be at all, it may be a hoax, but if that’s your option you must ask yourself who would go through all of that trouble, and how would you explain so many of these crop circles in so many different parts of the world with some appearing in broad daylight in a matter of hours? On any given day you can turn on the news and see reports about Britney Spears, or what Mrs. Obama wore on Letterman or Leno but it is rare to see any reporting done on things that we do not understand except the occasional UFO story.

According to Heritage.org, between 1997 and 2003, the United States Defense Department purchased and then left unused approximately 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a total cost of $100 million. Let’s say that a portion of that wasted money, your money went to a grant to investigate crop circles and the investigators found nothing, at least the money was spent on something which is far better than wasting it on unused airline tickets.

In my novel Escape 2 Earth, 2012 the crop circles contained hidden messages left by a secret alien origination. The messages were warnings of the coming apocalypse in the year 2012. Yes, it’s science fiction but my point is that we have no idea of who is making these circles or how these crop circles are made. We don’t know if they are just pretty patterns laid out in some farmer’s field just to piss him off or if someone is trying to tell us something.

As I have stated before many people who have not read the Escape 2 Earth story believe that I am attempting to predict the future. Why because they have watched the book trailers on YouTube. Most book trailers receive one to two thousand hits a year but since July of 2006 the Escape 2 Earth trailer has gotten 252,675 hits, and that’s just on YouTube alone, why? The answer is simple. Four of the elements in the story are aliens, 2012, Stonehenge, and crop circles. People are curious and some are really afraid, afraid of the unknown.

You can put me down in the first category, I would like to know who are making these crop circles and why? Are they important? And why are the governments around the world ignoring them…….or are they?




"Do you believe that most are hoaxes?"

We have been asked this same question many times, and we always stated, that when a formation is claimed to be a hoax, there is very little evidence to actually prove one hundred percent that it was. Some crop circles can look very irregular and messy in their construction, which can point towards human involvement. Many of the formations are so complex in design that it would seem impossible to make in the middle of the night. Of course you can't rule it out entirely, as we mustn't underestimate ourselves, because there have been man made formations down through the years. We do believe that some are hoaxed every year, but there is definitely a real phenomenon interacting with these man-made designs!

Science Fiction Re-Re-Remakes

When I hear that another science fiction movie is being re-made the first thought that comes to mind is “Why?” Really, how do the studio execs come to the conclusion that this film should be redone versus the other?
What exactly is the criteria? If you’re going to take someone else’s work and redo it then there should be rules.

Rule #1 - The remake should resemble the original work.
I recently saw the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. I think that Keanu Reeves is a great actor when given the proper roles but whoever re-wrote the script for this movie has given new meaning to the word disaster movie. Less than 50% of this film stayed true to the original and the story line was weak so to say that it was a remake was a joke.

Rule #2 - Taking a 50 year old movie like War of the Worlds and adding really cool special effects is not reason enough to do a remake.

Rule #3 - There should be a limit as to how many times you can remake a film.

In the case of War of the Worlds Gene Barry starred in the original movie version while C. Thomas Howell played the lead in the remake before Tom Cruise starred in the version directed by Steven Spielberg. That’s three versions that I know of. What I am getting at is that there are plenty of great sci fi stories waiting to be told on the big screen.

The website Book Town has dozens of sci fi authors who’s novels would make great movies but in most cases if comes down to who you know. I ask you, would you have rather sat through a remake of Lost in Space or would you like to see something fresh and original? And just to make things a little more interesting you can throw in Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise.

There has been a lot of buzz about the new Star Trek move due out on May 8, 2009. This is the eleventh outing for the franchise and according to the synopsis this movie "explores the early Starfleet careers of future Enterprise officers Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, McCoy, Sulu, and Chekhov. A Romulan, Nero, and a much older Spock are influences, as well as Captain Pike, the first captain of the USS Enterprise."

This took me back to last year when I was invited to promote Escape 2 Earth at a sci-fi convention in Dallas, Texas. Seated across the room from me was Garrett Wang( Star Trek Voyager), two tables to my left was Connor Trinneer (Star Trek Enterprise) and next to Conner was the hardest working man in the business John Billingsley also from Enterprise. He told me a very funny behind the scene story but I can't repeat it without getting him into trouble.
Anyway as you would probably image with three stars from Star Trek in the same room (not to mention several Klingons roaming about) it wasn't very long before I got into a conversation with a few of the conventions volunteers about which Star Trek series was the best. I was not surprised that after much discussion that no consensus could be reached but what did surprise me was the division between the hardcore fans who were not at all happy to see the demise of Captain James T. Kirk and those who were more than happy to see him go. With that in mind I can't help but wonder how this current movie with a much younger version of Kirk will be received.

As for me it's difficult for me to pick one series because there were elements from each that I thought were better than the other, for example, the story lines on the original Star Trek were great but for obvious reasons the special effects were lacking. I also liked the story lines and special effects on Voyager but the most disappointing of all the Star Trek series has to be Deep Space Nine, it just didn't live up to its potential.

Sorry I still haven't mastered the art of the cut. I'm told it's easy, so it must be just me.

2012 VS Y2K

Okay let me get something cleared up right off the bat. I do not know what will happen on December 21, 2012. I have thoughts on what I think may happen around that time period but I will save that topic for another day.

What I do know is that the closer we get to 2012 the more I hear people comparing it to Y2k and that makes absolutely no sense to me. "Why?" you ask. Well first let's look at the statement.

"Well why should I worry about 2012 when that's the same thing they said about Y2K and nothing happened". "Nothing happened then and nothing gonna happen on December 21, 2012 either".

My response is that the reason that "nothing happened with Y2K" is because governments and private corporations around the world spent years and BILLIONS of dollars to prevent something from happening. It is a well known fact that we would have had worldwide catastrophic results had we just sat on our hands and done nothing.

So what are governments and private companies doing about 2012? Well, the answer is nothing. In my novel , I am sorry, my science fiction novel, I have to be sure to put that in because when I don't I get e-mails saying that I am trying to scare people, anyway in Escape 2 Earth I talk about aliens, crop circles, space ships and secret messages but in reality there is enough concern in certain circles that one would wonder why the government would not as least consider the possibility of a pole shift as many scientist have predicted and what would be the consequences of such a shift.

Could it happen? Yes, I think it could. Will it happen? Well I certainly hope not because after what I saw in reguards to Katarina I think that it's safe to say we will all be up the creek.So Y2K vs 2012 there is no comparison and I hope that those who think that there is would just take a minute and look at the facts.

I'm not saying something will or won't happen, but I do think it's possible. I'm just explaining that I used these conspiracies as devices in my novel, Escape 2 Earth.

For almost a year my daughter has been encouraging me to start a blog.

Yeah, right, I said.

I am in the middle of not one but 3 writing projects a (with the help of my persistent daughter) we have just launched a social networking site for writers, artist, and book lovers called Booktown. www.booktown.ning.com

But after a year of prodding I have decided to make the time to share my thoughts about the world of sci fi. That world being books, movies, tv shows, ( don't even get me started about Heroes) conventions, websites, etc.

This is my world, I hope that you will stop by from time to time to see what's going on.

Myspace

Lawrence Johnson Sr.

Escape 2 Earth

Kindle

Twitter

Livejournal

YouTube

DeviantArt

BlogSpot

BookTown

Coming Up Next - Who'd I Would Cast in an Escape 2 Earth Movie

Here's the list of where you can find me online

www.myspace.com/escape2earth
www.twitter.com/escape2earth
www.escape2earth.livejournal.com
www.youtube.com/lovelylj
www.lovelylj.deviantart.com/

more coming soon

Very good news