TheStar.com: For author Peter Watts, life can be stranger than science fiction.Watts – who has written six books in the genre – was on his way back to Toronto Tuesday after helping a friend move to the U.S. Before he crossed the border into Sarnia, American customs officers pulled him over.
When they began rifling through his car, he got out to ask what was going on. They ordered him back into the car; he asked again.
What happened next has become the talk of the blogosphere.
Watts, too, has waded in, posting on the Internet that he was assaulted, punched in the face, pepper-sprayed and thrown in jail for the night, only to find himself facing charges of assaulting a customs officer.
Globe and Mail: A Canadian science-fiction writer who faces criminal charges in the U.S. after being arrested at the border says he was beaten and pepper-sprayed without provocation.
Peter Watts was arrested on Dec. 8 after being stopped at Michigan’s Port Huron border crossing.
“I believe I was assaulted. I did nothing to provoke it,” Mr. Watts said from his home in Toronto, where he returned on Dec. 9 after posting bail.
His arrest mobilized science-fiction writers and fans to launch a fundraiser to help him cover his legal fees. He is scheduled to appear in court in Port Huron on Dec. 22.
Peter Watts, a science fiction author, in his own words about the incident:
If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.
Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.
In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.
But that is not this universe.
