- and now here it is. I know what you're thinking* - "Now that she's single again, people like me me me have a chance of romance with Gwynnie!"
No! Wrong! Well, not about a chance of an amorous entanglement with Gwynnie, rebound-love can partner the strangest of couples (e.g. the urbane, talented all-round entertainer Lyle Lovett somehow collected that toothy ironing-board Whoosit Roberts).
What I meant was that you should be thinking "Another themed blog?"
Yes. Mercury has much to offer.
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| Also, it's shrinking. Get out there and conquer it whilst you still can! |
"Mercury has much to offer" - not in sci-fi literature it doesn't! It's a small, barren, cratered, airless ball of rock that bakes close in to the Sun, with very little to recommend it. The above named novel by Isaac Asimov, writing under the pseudonym "Paul French", is one of the few science-fiction novels set there. "Lucky" Starr (these were novels for juveniles, dear reader) investigates murder and sabotage at the research station for Project Light, set in a research dome on Mercury.
IIRC, Arthur C. Clarke (the "C" is to distinguish him from all the other "Arthur Clarke"s who infest the science-fiction market) had a brief aside in "Islands In The Sky" (another for-juveniles) which mentions a manned mission to Mercury.
That's it for Mercury in SF.
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| Ah, a Bruce Pennington cover. Evocative, even if nothing to do with the novel! |
Before the Apollo programme came the Mercury programme. This was the predecessor to Apollo, when astronauts went up in a Mercury capsule, did a few orbital hi-jinks, then splashed down. The capsules were small tin cans -
| "Cosy", "Cramped" or "terrifyingly Claustrophobic". Only you can choose! |
- sitting on hundreds of tons of dangerously explosive rocket fuel and these men were pioneers in a very real sense, because it was all novel and being made up on the hoof.
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| These guys flew dangerous things very fast |
"The Right Stuff" is a book by Tom Wolfe about the original Mercury Seven astronauts, a best-seller turned into an excellent film also called "The Right Stuff", with an absolutely stellar cast that is by turns poignant, exciting and funny. If you haven't seen it, please do, as it is considerably more than a Boys Own gee-whizz! adventure flick. Also, the commentary is by Levon Helm (a member of The Band, that's who).
| Chuck Yeager, a.k.a. Captain Awesome. If he hadn't been born, someone would have had to have invented him |
An Aside To The Aside
Keeping up the musical theme, Hawkwind have a song called "The Right Stuff" that
refers to Mach One and flying and is undoubtedly inspired by the film**.
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| What the hell. It probably made perfect sense at the time. |
An antiseptic that used to be available over the counter, dating back to the early decades of C20, with a lovely red colour that was because of the presence of mercury. Yes, that mercury - the poisonous heavy metal mercury. It was slowly appreciated that slathering this stuff over cuts and grazes might - just might! - not be a good idea. Nobody appears to have keeled over dead as a result of having lovely blood-red mercurochrome applied, but why chance it? So it's now banned.
| Perhaps not everywhere ... "Poison your child with a pretty kitty!" |
Adjective. Having the quality of being changeable, after the god Mercury, whom used to hop around all over the place at startling speed. Typically it refers to a person whose mood can change abruptly and startlingly, and it's a polite way to refer to them instead of "that moody 8ugger". You might have to explain it to your audience, though***
| Mad-Eye Moody. Close enough. |
The singer, showman and frontispiece of Queen. Never liked him with a moustache.
That is all. You want more, go write your own blog!
| Freddy Pluto. Close enough |
As ever, a picture of Edna. She does not spend all her time asleep; as explained on Facebook, she's never still when awake, and if she is she avoids the camera-phone because it flashes in her eyes.
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| Edna in photo-friendly mode |
** Note - no cheap cracks about getting "high".
*** Unless they've been reading BOOJUM! - recommend it to them.
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