My esteemed editor at the The Voice of Tucson, Mark B. Evans, emailed me recently to ask if I would be taking a booth at this year’s Tucson Festival of Books. Since I myself published a new book just last month, I really should have organized precisely that, but the idea of renting a booth had simply not occurred to me. My excuses would probably be that I was focusing on shipping out copies of the new science book, recovering from the 2011 Tucson gem show, and pondering what we could and should do during the upcoming third season of my TV series Meteorite Men. Okay, they’re excuses, but fairly good ones at least.

To my delight, Mark asked if I might be interested in appearing at the TC.com Voice of Tucson booth during the weekend and, of course, I said yes. Enthusiastically. So, my staff and I packed a big meteorite, and many small ones, a few boxes of books, and some photos and collectibles into the Aerolite Meteorites truck and headed down to the U of A campus in preparation for two 1 to 5 pm stints on Saturday and Sunday. Somebody told me that 80,000 people were expected—that’s roughly the same number of spectators in attendance when I saw Joe Cocker, Echo & The Bunnymen, and Ian Dury & The Blockheads at the massive Glastonbury Festival in the UK! Are there really that many people here interested in books in this modern world of social media? Good news if it’s true.

I was expecting some traffic around the campus, but was not prepared for complete mayhem: Closed streets, police barricades, and more bumper-to-bumper car jamming than I have ever seen in Tucson, and that includes the gem show. We eventually waded through the morass of vehicles, dolly-dragged our books and space rocks past the crowds of pedestrians, and met up with Team Voice of Tucson.

One of the issues with appearing at big public events is that I often miss things I’d like to participate in, because I am manning the booth. That’s not a complaint, just a fact. I had hoped to catch a couple of science fiction writer panels, but once I started talking to viewers of my TV series, meteorite and science enthusiasts, and fellow writers, I found myself happily engaged for the rest of the day. The was, however, one event I was not going to miss: The featured lecture by astronomer Mike Brown, author of How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming—a lively and entertaining speaker. We had a brief chat after his presentation and Mike seemed truly delighted that he’d made his large audience laugh. No surprise there—he talked about his work with a gently self-deprecating humor that was both engaging and illuminating.

Another high point was a surprise visit to the TC.com booth by author and illustrator Eric Rohmann. He was extremely complimentary about my TV show, and went on to relate an extraordinary tale about how he’d found a genuine meteorite in Illinois, at the advanced age of nine, and later had it positively identified by the Field Museum in Chicago. He certainly had me beat! I was in my thirties before I found my first meteorite. As we were chatting I pulled out a copy of my book and began inscribing it to him. “Oh, we’re going to do the book exchange thing now, aren’t we?” he asked, in a jovial manner. “We don’t have to do that,” I replied. “I’m just giving you a copy after hearing that amazing story.”

Eric then asked if I happened to like squirrels, so I freely admitted that Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin has always been a favorite of mine. I added: “And with a name like Notkin, you can imagine what the kids called me at British school.” So, he inscribed a copy of his gorgeous children’s book, Last Song, “For Geoff Nutkin.” I’ll treasure it.

The author at the 2011 Tucson Festival of Books, with a favorite space rock. Photograph © Andy Morales

The low point of the event was our first-ever meteorite theft. Well, to be entirely fair, I should really say attempted theft. On the Saturday afternoon, a family with five unruly kids descended upon the booth. These were the type of kids who are compelled to rub and grind their hands over every piece of merchandise within reach, crease book covers, and knock things on the ground. I noticed that one little boy palmed a small iron meteorite—worth about $50—from my table and then walked off in an overly-elaborate nonchalant manner. I called out to his parents: “Hey, your young man is walking off with a meteorite he hasn’t paid for!”

“Is this true?!” the father boomed (to his credit he believed me, instead of instantly lashing out at me for accusing his son. Perhaps it was regular behavior for his kid). Sure enough, once the kid’s sweaty palm had unfurled, the stolen space rock appeared. The dad dragged him back to the booth and forced him to apologize. He looked pretty shellshocked and I bet he was in for a decent spanking later on. Richly deserved in my opinion.

Another surprising and not entirely useful event was the inexplicable performance, on the main Arizona Daily Star stage, by a teenage rock band, at 4 pm on Sunday. I’ve been a professional musician for more than two decades, so don’t think I’m being a fuddy-duddy. I’m a punk rocker too and nobody likes the guitar feedback more than I do, but really, at a book fair? Organizers please note: There is a time and place for everything. Our booth was adjacent to the big stage and as a result of the band attempting to rock out we were unable to conduct any business (or even talk) for the last hour of the festival. Suggestion: Next year, if you want to feature some rock ‘n’ roll—and there’s nothing at all wrong with that—please ask the nice people at Plush if they’ll host a post-festival gig for you, instead of blasting the passers by, who were doubtless expecting a somewhat more literary experience. Odd thing, but bookworms and rockers don’t usually fit together that well.

Towards the end of the afternoon an older lady came up to the booth, looked at our display table for a moment, then asked if the meteorites were free (as least this one asked, instead of just palming one). “No,” my charming sales manager replied. “Meteorites are rare and valuable. Can I show you anything, perhaps a copy of Geoff’s new book?” To which the punter answered: “No, I’m just here for the free schwag.” Thank you for participating! One of my staff members also commented: “Most of the people here don’t seem that interested in books.” Whether or not that was true, they were out on a sunny day, at least looking at printed words, and that beats Xbox in my book. Oops, accidental pun.

I really had a blast at the festival, so don’t think I’m knocking it with my little anecdotes. I enjoyed the whole thing immensely, and I plan on returning next year when we will hopefully have less theft, no rock ‘n’ roll, and I may even be able to finally catch up with author Charles de Lint.

The author wishes to thank fellow Voice of Tucson blogger Andy Morales for permission to use his photograph.

The annual Leonid meteor shower is one of the night sky’s most exciting events. Our planet is currently passing through a debris trail left behind in space hundreds of years ago by Comet Tempel-Tuttle. As those small fragments of ice and stone hit our atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour they burn up, producing bright trails known as meteors or shooting stars. Fragments that make it to the surface of the Earth are meteorites, but the diminutive particles that generate the Leonids are too small and friable to survive their passage through our atmosphere.

Artist's impression of a meteor shower

Peak meteor activity is expected to occur between midnight and dawn tonight and into Tuesday morning. Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office stated: “We’re predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas.”

The Leonids take their name from Leo, due to an optical illusion that sometimes make it appear as if they emanate from that constellation.

Tucson’s dark skies are ideal viewing for meteor showers, especially for night owls who are happy to stay up into the wee hours. If you’re so inclined, turn off the house lights, mix up some hot chocolate or a favorite tipple, head outside after midnight, park yourself in a spot with an unobstructed view of the heavens and see what transpires. It may be a memorable celestial show.

Yesterday I received a phone call from a most serious sounding web promotion/search engine optimization guy. He represented “the biggest company in the industry” and claimed to have hundreds of thousands of clients. Not himself, obviously, but the company. Maybe it was true; don’t know, don’t care. For many years I handled my own web promotion and now I have a local tech genius who consults for me. I like to spend my money here in town whenever possible.

Back to the phone call: The caller seemed much more like a salesman than a tech person, bandying about phrases such as “activating all your listings” and “checking your keywords for optimization,” which are semi-nonsensical anyway, and probably intended to befuddle the web novice. He then asked me to confirm that I was the owner of megaspacenews.info and went on to exclaim, very enthusiastically, how sure he was that I would be wanting to expand my site and promote it on a national, or maybe even international level.

I couldn’t help laughing, but I did try not to laugh directly at him.

“That site is an April Fool’s prank. I’m a science writer and that is a one-page site that I put up as a joke.”

“Oh. I guess you won’t be needing our services then,” he replied, and apologized for calling me. It was immediately clear that I wouldn’t be spending any money with him. Game over.

The fake graphic banner for one of my fake April Fool's websites

I have the greatest affection and respect for my colleagues in the meteorite world. Well, nearly all of them. There are a couple of extremely nasty people in my field, but we can save that story for another day. Let me rephrase my statement: I have the greatest respect and admiration for nearly all of my colleagues in the meteorite world, but I am also a career prankster, and I do so enjoy a complicated little joke at the expense of my friends and peers. I go for “the long prank” as a con artist might say, or “the overly elaborate prank.” A burning paper bag of something unpleasant on the neighbor’s porch just does not do it for me.

So, when my calendar announces it is late March I start thinking about what type of April Fool’s jape I will foist upon my usually good-natured science comrades. Since we are all such a bunch of modern Internet junkies, I usually end up with something that lives and laughs within the digital realm. The past few years I have gone to considerable trouble to construct fake websites featuring a science article that looks and feels genuine, but with content so absurd that only the most stoned readers could possibly think it real. At least, it seems that way to me. The truth is, many people still get taken in.

This spring I purchased the domain name megaspacenews.info, for the amazingly low price of $1.99. There was some kind of .info sale going on. I guess that domain suffix is not as hot as the originators hoped it might be. I came up with the tag line “BECAUSE IT’S YOUR UNIVERSE TOO,” and went on to type up a nonsensical ditty intentionally filled with misinformation, entitled “Bush to Join Panel on Meteorite Alertness, Defense and Evasion” and built the site around it. I tossed in a few genuine web ads to make the thing look real, added a nice astronomy background image, inserted a whole lot of links to fabricated stories (and one real one that sounds crazy but is actually true: “Texas dog finds rock from outer space”) and, shazam!, a fake website in no time. Actually, it takes a lot of time, and one of my ex-girlfriends used to chastise me endlessly: “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” And of course the answer to that was: “No, I really don’t. Time spent on April Fool’s is time spent well.”

So, here is my April Fool’s joke for 2009. Don’t miss “THIS WEEK’S TOP ASTRONOMY AND SCIENCE STORIES” links at the bottom of the page; my favorite part.

The good people in meteorites and astronomy are not the only ones to be targeted by my deformed sense of humor. That just wouldn’t be right. I’ve had my fair share of fun with esteemed colleagues in biology and paleontology as well. A few years ago, my good friend Tom Caggiano—a highly skilled fossil hunter with a devilish sense of humor, and secretary of the New Jersey Paleontological Society—invited me to concoct a bogus article for the April edition of their journal, the Paleontograph.

I wrote a lengthy review of a book that never existed, entitled: Bone Idol: My Life in Time. I so amused myself devising quotes in the author’s overblown writing style, that I called up a friend, in the middle of the night, and read a few hundred words to her. I laughed myself silly; she was not amused.

I fabricated this cover for Arthur Burleigh Chaplin's non-existent autobiography, as part of an April Fool's joke on the paleontology community.

Ostensibly the autobiography of a famous paleontologist, Arthur Burleigh Chaplin, Bone Idol is a Forrest Gump-like tale in which “Burley” survives the Titantic’s fatal 1912 voyage, appears in one of the films by his cousin, Charlie Chaplin, talks his way onto Roy Chapman Andrews’ Central Asiatic Expedition of 1922, flies with Eagle Squadron during the Battle of Britain in World War II, works for Special Operations, discovers some kind of strange new dinosaur, gets involved in shenanigans during the Cold War, moves to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s and lives out the last of his 102 years in the kooky town of Jerome, Arizona. In other words, a ludicrous fantasy, but it was great fun to write. I even designed a cover for the book.

Quite recently, I received an email from the editor of a paleontology publication asking, very courteously, if she could quote from my review of Bone Idol for their newsletter. I wrote back, thanked her for her interest and said of course she could use anything she liked, but was she aware that the article was an April Fool’s prank and the book didn’t actually exist (although I so enjoyed creating it that perhaps it lives on in some alternate universe). Shortly thereafter, I received a very terse reply: “Well, I guess we won’t be needing it then.” (I think she was embarrassed, poor thing).

My regular readers will now immediately understand why I am concerned about the veracity of information presented on the web, as discussed in last week’s tale: “Ning Probably Means ‘Unisex,’ The Marginal Merits Of Wikipedia, And William Gibson Was Right Again.” If I can cook up a fake website in a few hours, then so can a lot of other people.

The enthusiastic salesman who called and tried to convince me to spend upwards of $70 a month on optimizing a one-page joke website didn’t spend much time looking at the site himself. There is just the one goofy made-up story there, along with some links that lead to “error message” pages. Yes, they are keen to sell you web optimization services, but I don’t think they are doing a whole lot of research on the sites they target.

Well, I suppose I have really let the cat out of the bag now and you all think you will be ready for me next April. Hah! Now I shall be forced to devise an April Fool’s prank of Moriarty-like complexity to perplex my dear TucsonCitizen.com readers. And really, I do it all out of affection.