|
Tom Green I fell in love with the bright boys almost immediately. Fascination, respect, and admiration followed soon thereafter. I read everything that I could find about them and their times. During my research I was astounded by the myriad crosscurrents and connect-ions seemingly from every quarter--science, engineering, society, business, education, and govern -ment --that everywhere at every turn encountered the bright boys and somehow touched upon their work. Most of the story material I found hidden away in rather dry engineer-ing and Air Force journals or in weighty academic tomes. Then too, some of it I discovered in books of social commentary and current history that, I thought, didn't quite hit the right angle on the bright boys. I felt that a retelling was in order. So much of the bright boys' story has gone untold and so much of their true impact on the future unrecognized that I felt compelled to write about them. I wrote at first for myself, to make sense of it all, to tie all the loose ends together into a coherent picture of the bright boys and their world. And when my brief, initial paper on them suddenly blossomed into a 20,000-word monograph, I knew that I had something very special and quite powerful on my hands. The story had "snap" to it, and the bright boys' work had powerful appeal. I knew that others would feel the same way about this remarkably American saga of a band of bright guys dragging a big chunk of the future into being. Working in the Boundary Zone I am a writer who works in print and video to tell stories about science, technology and engineering. I inhabit a kind of strange but wonderful boundary zone that separates twin worlds.
One world is that of complex science and technology from highly technical experts, some of who have difficulty in plainly articulating what it is that they do all day; and the other is that of the educated general reader, who truly enjoys knowing about all the whiz-bang technology that's going on but has difficulty understanding it all. I love to facilitate the difficulties. |
Taking a Closer Look at the Bright Boys Most times I'm successful. I feel that I bring to that zone of interaction some fair skills at gathering information, storytelling and experience in a variety of media. I have always had an interest in telling stories about fascinating people and what they do with themselves and with others. I use whatever medium to tell my story that seems most appropriate to the telling. I am an award-winning short story writer and playwright, and have been Emmy-nominated for writing a few laughs into sitcoms at Boston's local ABC-TV affiliate. My stage plays were produced at Boston's Next Move Theatre and then reproduced as radioplays for National Public Radio. I wrote and produced the forum-based TV pilot Lifelines at Boston's WCVB-TV, Channel 5 . My mystery-detective novel The Flowered Box recounts the gumshoe adventures of two Boston-based private investigators; and my magazine and newspaper articles have appeared in various publications. I have worked for others as writer/ producer and then as vice president of video development. And I have worked for myself: for nearly 10 years, I owned and operated a video production company, producing both corporate video and broadcast TV. Since 1995, when my eyes bugged out with the coming of the Internet and World Wide Web, I have been busily evolving my storytelling skills and video-making experience for this new and astounding medium. Bright Boys is my first, full-length adventure into this new world. Please join me on the journey. Thanks, |
