I love Halloween. Driving to the train station today, I passed a faceless, cloaked, and hooded ghoul riding his bike to school. On the train, I sat next to a middle-aged Raggedy Ann doll. And now at work I’m sharing cubicle space with a cowgirl, a saucy pirate wench, a proofreading fairy (she’s wearing a tutu and a t-shirt that says “I’m smarter than you”), and a short, female Mr. T. It’s awesome…

Halloween is actually the best day of the year for science-fiction fans. It’s the only one when you can dress in an outlandish costume, adopt a persona that’s the exact opposite of your own, and not worry about people thinking you’re strange. And speaking of the science fiction/Halloween connection, here are a couple of suggestions if you’ve not yet carved yourself a jack o’ lantern for tonight:

• The Klingon pumpkin is a simple design that won’t be recognizable to anyone but a Trekkie, but the narrative explaining its creation is a hoot. I especially love the line about how “You will have to carve out the insides, just as Kahless did to his enemies.”
• If Doctor Who is more your thing than Star Trek, try making a Dalek pumpkin.
• If you’re really ambitious, you can make a pumpkin that resembles an old-school Cylon from the original ’70s-vintage Battlestar Galactica — right down to the creepy red “eye scanner” lights! (I’m thinking I may try to do this one next year, when I have a little more time to experiment with the electronics…)
• And finally, after you put in all that effort to create a really bitchin’ jack o’, you’ll want it to stick around for a while. You may have heard about various techniques to preserve them (or at least extend their lifetime), but how can you know which really work and which are just a load of slimy pumpkin guts? Simple… read about this experiment that compared several different methods. Looks to me like you’re better off not doing anything and just letting nature take its course. Not that it matters much in any event; if your neighborhood is anything like mine, every jack o’ lantern on the street will be smashed in the middle of the street by dawn tomorrow…