I Can't Think Of An Intro Subject
Not only that, I was looking at Quora for silly questions, and not only were there none, there were plenty of interesting ones and OF COURSE I had to read them all and the response Comments.
Not that I am going to chicken out and simply post a list of links, but we might as well have a pulp magazine cover to kick things off. Art!
Quite clever, that one. Also, these magazines only rarely had the year of their publication present. I wonder if it was successful or not? Hang on -
Hmmmmm slim to middling. They published nine issues, and as you can see in the title author credits, Cyril Kornbluth was one contributor, with his novel "The Syndic" being published here first in instalments. It had quite a pedigree, with both Lester Del Ray and Harry Harrison being editors, and authors such as Poul Anderson and Algis Budrys contributing.
ANYWAY what I like about the illustration is that you've got the dual-perspective thing going, with what is undoubtedly a weapon being wielded by the chap, whilst the lady is also holding a weapon, even if it is a bit more discreet. Presumably she is one of the crew aboard the large, phallic-looking spaceship in the background, and is dressed for comfort not protection. Note absence of the dreaded Brass Bra.
Right, that's one of our shortest Intros in ages, let's crack on with the rest of this blog!
More Of MalCom
No, we are not talking about the murdered king in The Scottish Play, it's my hilarious abbreviation for "Malicious Compliance", and here's another from Youtube's Reddit compilations.
The Original Poster worked as a supervisor for a company servicing a Federal contract, for the story is set in South Canada. Art!
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| South Canada. Just so we're clear. |
OP's section was swamped with work because his incompetent boss refused to bother regulating the flow, thus creating a backlog that cost the company money and OP's section doing lots of unpaid overtime.
Enter Covid. The spectre of lay-offs was in the air, even though OP was told by Idiot Boss that his job was safe.
Surprise! It wasn't. He and most of his team were fired. For the last two weeks OP sabotaged the company, within the rules (barely), by ensuring everyone in his section was 'off with Covid' for the last two weeks, so they could look for work elsewhere. IB got to do the work of 14 people over that period and since they were salaried - no overtime. Art!
OP was immediately hired by another contractor and took their No.1 employee with them. She and he between them poached another dozen employees away from the old company, to the point where they were threatened with legal action if they didn't stop.
Too late. The old company lost so many of it's good employees that it's already failing and will be shuttering any week now.
Manglement. What is it good for?
Dr. S's Solid Sci-Fi Spaceships
He actually refers to himself as Mike Siegel. I'm giving him the title because he's too modest.
Next up in his list of ships that his Twitter feed recommended is the 'Star Fury' from "Babylon 5". This is a class of ship rather than an individual name as we've seen so far. Art!
They are small, fast and very manoeuvrable one-man (or person I bet there were female fighter-jockeys) fighters, either carried aboard a mothership or based in space stations. Whilst they might not pack that big a punch individually, they are used en masse, in swarms. Art!
They were so well-designed that NASA came sniffing around out of interest, wanting to know if they could 'borrow' the design? They were told yes, fine, no problem - except if you make them their name HAS to be 'Star Fury'. This one gets a well-deserved Enjoy The Ride status.
His next ship is the 'Enterprise' from "Starry Trek", which has been covered by BOOJUM! before and is so iconic and well-known that I'm only going to put up a picture and his assessment of status of Enjoy the ride. Art!
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| Groundbreaking in 1966 |
"The Sea Of Sand"
The Doctor is being questioned by a bio-vore aristocrat and regional dictator, who is curious about concepts he's overheard.
Sur felt that the alien was mocking him. In answering one question he had created others. What was the liquid fuel that rockets used? Nuclear-engines? Aircraft? What might they be? Any connection with the long-extinct 'air gliders', those creatures now deemed almost mythical?
The Doctor cocked his head to one side, having surely sown the seeds of doubt in the alien's mind.
"Lord Sur, allow me to clarify matters. You don't have fossil fuels on Homeworld?"
Sur considered having the alien punished for temerity, then decided to wait.
"What are these fuels you speak of?"
"The remnants of prehistoric forests, geologically compressed over millions of years into flammable material, retained in the mantle of the planet. The solid form is coal, the liquid is petroleum, the vapouous one is gas. They can be refined for better quality, or to create plastic compounds."
This was novel indeed, considered the alien aristocrat.
"We have no such geological heritage. What of the nuclear engines you mentioned?"
Playing for time, the Doctor responded with a question of his own.
"Do you have a periodic table? A table of the basic chemical elements? My answer won't make sense without one."
We are talking about the bio-vore equivalent of this - Art!
The Club Of Hercules
Not literally. No, I refer to possibly Doctor Johnson or Alexander Pope, who compared what we would call 'Over-the-top' by mentioning the aforesaid weapon, which was a mighty bludgeon indeed, to brain a gnat.
Here's the Lapland Bee:
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| Make all the puns you want |
It hadn't been filmed before, and in order to do so the BBC managed thus:
I know, I know, it's a bee not a gnat. Same principle. At least they're not wasting my licence money on a ballfoot game. That would create trouble.
"The War Illustrated"
More from Issue 165 (I think). Don't forget, as a combination of Operational Security and delays in communication back in pre-internet days, the pictures they print are at least two weeks out of date. Art!
A montage of pictures here. That first item is a Japanese light-machine gun, a weapon which has absolutely no business mounting a bayonet, because it should be providing a base of fire for the rest of the infantry platoon to manoeuvre close enough to deliver an assault. It does, however, illustrate how aggressive the Imperial Japanese Army was.
Below that is a South Canadian bazooka team in action. This was a revolutionary anti-tank weapon which fired a rocket carrying a shaped-charge warhead. It gave infantry the ability to destroy tanks at close range, which capability simply had not existed up until then.
The two remaining pictures show a Teuton "Nebelwerfer", one captured, the other having a battery in action. The British were not terribly impressed by them, considering them noisy but ineffective in the desert. This is not how infantry under fire from them felt! They were an unusual weapon in that the launcher was a relatively simple affair but the rockets were very complicated. You can also see that they gave their position away the instant they were fired, so a canny crew had foxholes nearby that they occupied once firing was over. Art!
And now it's time for tea for me.
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