Mars Attacked!

Ha!  And About Time, Too -
For the  boot has, lo, been on the other foot for these many decades, ever since Hubert George penned "War of the Worlds", making a sWell job of it.  I refer to the films, rather than the very low-budget television series which made Seventies 'Doctor Who' look lavishly financed and well-produced by comparison.

More Martian

     I don't think you can include the Ice Warriors in the annals of Martian Invaders, because 'Doctor Who', as a responsible dramamentary, never actually calls them Martians, so they are probably interstellar squatters of some description.  And Earth is far too inhospitable for them, before you ask.
     Well, that's a leading Intro.  You probably wonder what I'm pontificating about now.
     Insight!  No, not the useful human ability that I envy on a daily basis, rather a scientific mission being sent to the Red Planet as of today.  Art?

Thar she goes!

     InSight is a composite instrument and experiment packet that is slated to arrive on Mars in 6 months time, where it will carry out seismological (areological?) testing, to see what Mars is made of.  Literally.  Art?

An accurate image

     The idea is that InSight will be able to determine and discover what the internal composition of Mars is; solid rock?  Molten core?  Molten-girdled solid core?  Hives of Ice Warriors waiting to pour out?  All or none of the above?
     We shall find out!  Conrad suspects - though I cannot prove - that NASA might have incorporated a 1 megaton thermonu - foofoodilly - er - a 1 megaton foofoodilly aboard InSight, after that rather scary novel by Barry N. Malzeberg "The Falling Astronauts", which would really allow some dramatic seismological readings to be taken.  Then Mars could definitively consider itself attacked.  Art?

Not that good a novel, but this cover artwork is brilliant!  And the back-cover blurb makes it sound a lot more interesting than it really is.

     Well there we go, a whistle-stop tour of the inner planets.  Let us now throw metal frisbees at the motley and get this show on the road!

Whilst On The Subject Of Books -
I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH!  I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH!  but enough of my woes.  I was re-watching "We Were Soldiers -" last night, because I can, and because Greg Kinnear's expression when he flies into the Ia Drang Valley is worth the price of admission.  Here's the original cover for the book when it came out in 1992.  Art?

How very iconic

     I can tell what you're thinking - "What an iconically-posed photograph of a South Canadian officer during the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley".
     You think wrong.
     This is Lt. Cyril "Rick" Rescorla, and that surname's not Italian, it's Cornish, because Rick hailed from the beauteous landscapes of Cornwall, right here in Perfidious Albion.  He ended up, a British citizen, in the South Canadian army, fighting in Vietnam, because he couldn't find a combat gig with the British army, and whilst he was young and restless, a combat gig was what he desired above all else. 

South Canadian flag, for the confused

 He was one of those occasional people who have to look up the word "fear" in the dictionary, because they don't know what it is.  He kept up the spirits of his South Canadian troopers by singing - er - Cornish folk songs, which probably puzzled them no end, and if the North Vietnamese were listening the Lord Aloft only knows what they made of songs about "Trelawny".  Art?

Cornwall: the hellish breeding-ground for British super-soldiers

Finally -
Don't worry, this will all make sense in the Facebook and Twitter postings. Sorry, that should be "will make as much sense as anything round here", because not all blogs out there on Blogger take the time and effort to warn you about KILLER EELS!

A killer Eels album, almost the same thing

     Right, onto the obligatory weird vehicle end photograph, and how could I resist this?

This one might not be your friend.  Just saying.

     Conrad not sure where the driver sits, or even if they sit, since with a monster like this you might have to lie down backwards and steer remotely via a monitor screen, as with the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle, used by Spectrum in their endless conflict with the Mysterons, who lived on - Mars.
     |Which is where we came in!