Evil

The villain in Peter Pan is a pirate.  Now Captain James Hook honestly looks a little hilarious, with his goofy hat and Jay Leno chin and twitchy mustache.  His melodramatic temper tantrums and physical terror of the crocodile are also kind of funny.  It's hard to take him seriously.

But real pirates, we can take seriously.  Real pirates were (and are still, in places like Somalia) men who stole, tortured, raped, murdered, and kidnapped in order to gain power and treasure.  They were diabolical crosses between Bernie Madoff and Idi Amin who were untouchable in their floating fortresses.  They flew the skull-and-crossbones flag for a reason: it was fair warning to expect death.

We can say pretty fairly that real pirates are evil.  But I don't want to toss that word around.  I want to sit with it a minute.  The video clip below is one of the most important pieces of film I've seen in the last decade or so.  It changed the way I view evil.  Tomorrow, I'll look at the way I depicted evil in my book.

Dawn Hyperdrive and the Galactic Handbag of Death is available from Amazon for Kindle and Kindle apps and at Smashwords for all other e-readers.  Try before you buy at my website.