Learning the Family Business-from Nazareth to Beverly Hills

I’d like to welcome fellow author Jason Karpf. With Mother’s Day coming up, Jason has shared a remarkable family story of working alongside his mother in writing show business scripts. Their shared love of science fiction lives on today through him, and now his grandson. “Yes, Christian sci-fi is a thing,” he states. Enjoy!

Learning The Family Business—from Nazareth to Beverly Hills

How a Christian sci-fi author acquired the craft from his screenwriter mother

By Jason William Karpf

Learning the family business is a time-honored tradition, from a carpenter in Nazareth to a screenwriter in Beverly Hills who passes down the craft to a child. I lived the latter apprenticeship with my mother, Elinor Karpf-Hager (1939-2013), as the master craftsperson, her workshop the dining table where the Smith Corona sat ready.

Mom was always writing, from my earliest memories in Chicago where she was a media major at Northwestern University, to Southern California where we relocated in 1966. The thrum and clatter of the electric typewriter. The oily smoke of the Jiffy-Pop popcorn sustaining her labors. I absorbed the sights, sounds, smells, and lessons of the family business. Mom’s workshop cranked out whatever the customer (studios, producers) ordered: scripts for motion pictures (Adam at 6 A.M.), program episodes (The Name of the Game, Dynasty), TV movies (Rolling Man, Letters from Frank), miniseries (Captains and the Kings), soap operas (Capitol.)

But Mom had a first love: science fiction. She was a fan before she was a professional writer, and she brought me into the fan club right away. We watched King Kong (the original) on TV when I was three. She took me to the drive-in to see Five Million Years to Earth when I was five. She let me stay up outrageously late to view The Thing (the original) when I was eight, fortified by homemade Jello chocolate pudding (another stovetop wonder, like the Jiffy-Pop.) Reruns of Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits strung between the movie showings. It was decades before streaming video, a good ten years before our first Betamax. Back then, you had to catch the sci-fi classics on the studios and networks’ time.

Only a couple of Mom’s credits were sci-fi/horror—the TV movies Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, co-starring Yvette Mimieux (The Time Machine, The Black Hole), and Gargoyles, a cult classic that launched the career of makeup/special effect legend Stan Winston (The Terminator, Aliens, Jurassic Park). Together, Mom and I were going to increase the genre tally. In the 1980s, I dropped out of college and began writing science fiction scripts with her, hoping for a sale.

One came close—Winchester ’99, a futuristic western. A big producer was interested, but the studio already had a sci-fi script in development, with an Oscar-winning actress and a leading director committed to the project. And the executives had decided they were only going to make one science fiction movie in 1989. Winchester ’99 was never produced, but neither was the other script with the A-listers attached. Fast forward four decades, and the majority of the ten highest-grossing films are sci-fi.

In the mid-nineties, Mom and I left show business, our personal relationship frayed by the heartaches of Hollywood. We repaired the bond as I went back to college in the 2000s and began a career in marketing and public relations using the storytelling skills Mom had taught me. I met my wife Anni in 2004 when we were single parents getting our bachelor’s degrees online. She brought me to Jesus when we got engaged in 2005. Mom was happy. She had been a believer since attending church as a little girl in Missouri in the 1940s.

Today, my grandson receives the sci-fi tutelage. He likes the Six Million Dollar Man battling Bigfoot and Abbott and Costello meeting Frankenstein (the doctor’s monster to be precise, along with frenemies Dracula and the Wolfman). I don’t just watch science fiction with loved ones. I’m writing it again in the name of the ultimate loved one, Jesus Christ. Yes, Christian sci-fi is a thing, and I have several published books and award recognitions to prove it. Thanks, Mom, for passing down the family business.

Jason’s Bio:

Jason William Karpf is an author and host of the live study series “Christian Sci-Fi Night with Professor K.” He grew up in the entertainment industry and was a child actor and four-time Jeopardy champ. His latest book, HONOR System from Elk Lake Publishing, Inc., is a Christian sci-fi anthology about believers battling the ultimate AI in the near future. The book’s two novellas are finalists for Christian book awards: Sinflowers, Selah award; Through a Glass, Darkly, Realm Award.