Vindicated

Just Had A Minor Revelation

You ought to know by now that the blog goes up on Facebook with some self-promoting guff about animals, armoured fighting vehicles and - astronomy.  One does keep that last one alive with the occasional post about extra-solar planets or, more recently, reference to the Perseverance rover on Mars.  However, it only just occurred to me that nearly all the Bonestell artwork we've featured, including his matte work on films, is astronomical in nature.  So you cannot sue for misrepresentation*.  Art!

     That above is from "Destination Moon", and before you mock about how unrealistic the lunar surface is rendered, please recall that it was made in 1950, seven years before Sputnik and nineteen years before Hom. Sap. placed boot on regolith.  So you can cut them a little slack.

     Conrad hasn't seen the film, and it's not in our DVD collection <booh!> but it is an acknowledged classic, and very hard sci-fi for the time.  There are no exotic space princesses who develop a pash for human males, nor are there any rubber monsters sporting both tentacles and teeth.  No ray guns, no space battles and  no women crewmembers - Valentina Tereschkova was a long way off at this point.  Art!

Red white and blue.  That reminds me of something ...

     We seem to have rather gone off-topic, don't we?  Quick, nurse - bring on the dancing horses!  <enter a sulky motley in silly costume>

More Of War

"War Of The Worlds", that is.  Let us get this one out of the way first.  Art!

     Hopefully the video clip works properly, and displays the Martian war machine's 'legs', which are too faint and erratic to come out properly in a still photo.  This scene is the first and only time these 'legs' are ever seen, as presumably the effect was too costly or time-consuming or both.  Just pointing it out.

     Next we have the bizarre-looking bomber that gets to nuke the Marts, which was doubtless cutting-edge in 1950, if a little dated now.  Art!

     The actors call it "The Flying Wing", which is fair enough as that's what it resembles.  A quick search of teh Interwebz reveals that it was a real aircraft, the Northrop YB49, and let's have a picture of it taking off.  Art!

     Hmmm come to think of it, there is a resemblance to the South Canadian's super stealth bomber.  Aaaaand one longer Google later, that's not accidental, because the all-wing design gave a very small radar signature.  There's a lot of interesting speculation and rumour that focussed around the YB49, how a couple of prototypes were lost and dirty political backstabbing, which we'll not go into here.

       ANYWAY back to the film.  SPOILERY ALERT TYPE THINGY given that it's seventy years old and I bet you've seen it a dozen times already.  The atom bomb they drop is loudly stated to be "ten times bigger" and "the latest thing in nuclear fission" because this is before the South Canadians started blowing up Pacific islands with fusion weapons.  So we can guess at about 200 kilotons.

     Does it work?  It does not!  The Marts put up their forcefield and don't even get a scratch.  "But - gasp! How can they possibly have known!" I hear your incredulous gurgle.  Art!

     Hmmm not a very good picture but you get the drift.  There are cars and trucks and thousands of sandbags and people wearing protective clothing and a forward observation bunker further ahead - how can the Marts NOT know with all this hustle and bustle?  Art!

"Be vewy quiet"

     Conrad's initial idea, to use a nuclear artillery round, is a non-starter; they didn't exist until three years after this picture was made.  Same with tactical nuclear missile.  What they should have done is come in using nap-of-the-earth flying at treetop height and drop the bomb retarded by parachute.  There you go, problem solved.  O and nobody thought to use mines?

Perfidious Albion's chicken-powered atomic landmine**.

Hmmm Thanks Steve

(Responsible for Memory around here) Here I am looking at my notebook for inspiration, and the notes I made for input today (yes yes yes, I know it's a Bank Holiday, you're still only getting one new post) and here we have: "OMBLES".

     What on earth?  What or who is 'Ombles'?  Art!

     
     Still none the wiser.  A species of chocolate cake, one presumes, which I cannot consume and if it is indeed chocolate, wouldn't want to anyway.  Why did I write it down last night?  Or - hang on -

     This is a species of fish known as an "Omble chevalier" in British America.  Well, okay, we all know Conrad thinks with his stomach, so -

     O I dunno.  Thanks for the mystery, Steve.

Aiming For A Darwin

Ah, the current sunny weather brings the idiots out in swarms.  Not only do they clog up the parks, they infest the seaside as well.  Your Humble Scribe notes that the BBC is reporting a pair of these chumps parachuting off Durdle Door in Dorset, you know, the ridiculously high natural arch that seems to be a plank magnet.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

     Any fall from over 30 feet into water risks serious injury, and from 90 feet will be lethal - I think these figures are right, we've covered this before in 2020 when three people were seriously injured jumping from the Door.  From that height, water has all the tender forgiveness of concrete.  Really, some people!

Finally -

Well well Mister Grumpypants Moore.  I refer to Alan Moore, creator of "Watchmen" the graphic novel, who has given up on any of his creations being adequately represented in cinematic form, and who refuses to have his name attached to any of them.  Whilst rolling around in wheelbarrows-ful of cash, no doubt.  The ingenious opening credits do mention the graphic novel, "Co-created by Dave Gibbons" except of course Old Grumpypants has fallen out with Dave as well.  It's a pretty faithful adaptation of the comic, so he's only cutting off his nose to spite his face.

CAUTION! Will cause offence to those of a grumpy and panty disposition

*  We have no money anyway

**  Seriously, every word true.