Spaced Opera

NO!  This Is Not A Plea For A Third Season

I refer, of course - obviously! - to "Spaced", the television series, which we were lucky enough to get two seasons of.  Definitely one of Simon Pegg's finer moments, thanks to a knowing script and an excellent ensemble cast.  Art!

     Conrad's fondest moment was when the team show up driving an Abbot Self-Propelled Gun.  Obsolete at that point, because 150 m.m. was the preferred NATO calibre of choice rather than 105 m.m. as 

     ANYWAY that's not what we're on about here.  Space Opera is.  

     "What is 'Space Opera'?" I hear you query.  Okay, it's science fiction turned up to eleven.  Giant spaceships, enormous weapons NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK, vast battles, galactic empires, lantern-jawed heroes, helpless and shapely heroines*, all that sort of stuff.  One of the best-known authors of such was E.E. 'Doc' Smith, author of the 'Lensman' series of novels.  Art!

     One of the interesting wrinkles about this series was that the ultimate weapon of the preceding novel became the baseline for the next work.

     Well, today we're going to focus on another "World Wrecker", namely Edmond Hamilton.  He's already been mentioned in the pages of BOOJUM! and I forewarned you that we'd be coming back to him, so here we are.   He and Doc basically created the SO genre.  He came late to it, as his writings were originally for "Weird Tales" which featured horror rather than science fiction.  Art!

That.  Is a hat.

     I've mentioned 'hack' writers already, and Ol' Ed became one out of sheer necessity because he needed to eat and pay rent.  Thus he was writing for all kinds of pulp magazines in the Thirties, science-fiction, horror, crime and detective varieties.  His SO work was notable for, as hinted, 'World Wrecking' with entire galaxies destroyed in cosmic conflicts, vast beyond the ken of mortal man.  He later joined DC Comics and was influential in their Batman and Superman lines.

     One story of his that rather sticks in Your Humble Scribe's mind is "What's It Like Out There?" which is about as far from SO as you can get whilst still being science fiction.  It tells the tale of the Second Martian Expedition, where a fleet of rockets go to Mars to mine uranium on the cheap.  The travel there is dangerous, as is the Martian environment, with isolation and fear causing a mutiny before the significantly-reduced expedition returns to Earth.  Art!

     It's bleak and realistic in a way that SO ("The Expanse" aside) never was.  Ol' Ed first wrote it in 1933 but couldn't sell it at the time because of how depressing a story it was.  It wasn't until his wife found it in a pile of old works of his that he considered re-writing and submitting it, so it only saw the light of day in 1952.  His wife, by the way, was fellow author Leigh Brackett, whom we might well come back to, as she's interesting in her own right.

     And that, ladies and gentlemen, as well as the uncouth, is today's Intro over and done.

"Taxi Driver"

The Sork drama series, not the Robert De Niro film, just so we're clear.  

     It has an engagingly daft premise, that of a Sork ex-Special Forces officer moonlighting as a de luxe taxi driver, his boss and three employees all seeking justice for the downtrodden.  They have a secret underground base and a van full of computer equipment and they make villains 'disappear'.  Art!

     Kim Do-Gi, the central character, is played as a truculent and surly individual, who has to don different personalities in order to ensnare the villains, which is amusing to watch.  Also, whilst each episode is self-contained, they constantly refer back to previous episodes as storylines cross over.

     Not sure if a Season Two is in the works, but Conrad is enjoying Season One.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor and a party of bio-vores have arrived back on Homeworld, to the bio-vores considerable surprise.

Between the treelike bodies of his companions, the Doctor could see more aliens, assembled in force around the receiving trans-mat platform.

     "Smaller stature," he noticed.  "Proboscis kept in a pouch.  Well, I suppose fashions have changed over the past five thousand years."

     What surprised him more was that these contemporary aliens didn't seem happy to be visited by their recent ancestors.  The reception guards were armed, with what looked like dart-guns, and all were levelled at the new arrivals.

     "I think I'm not the only spectre at the feast," he blithely told the Detachment Leader, who glared back at him.  The Detachment Leader might well be an alien, with different modes of expression, but the Doctor knew a glare when he saw one.

     A group of the smaller aliens stamped onto the platform, issuing pouches for the new arrivals.  These were punishment versions, locking at the rear of the torso and preventing the proboscis from being used.  One bio-vore tried to protest at this treatment and was instantly shot dead, dying in a silent storm of black glass darts.

   Hmmm yes, somebody's not welcome at the party, are they?

Conrad Is ANGRY!

What happens when I mercifully pause in usage of my Remote Nuclear Detonator?  Why, the Codeword compilers get cocky and think they can push the envelope - hang on a second <loud thumping ensues> there, that's half a dozen converted to radioactive vapour.  Let's see -

"SUBPHYLUM": ARE YOU SERIOUS!  Really?  Conrad thinks that ought to by hyphenated.  Not even "PHYLUM".  Defined as a sub-set of a major taxonomic division of living organisms that contain one or more classes.  Bah!  Art?

Make sense of this

"WHIPSAWS": Hey what say what?  We had hacksaws a few blogs back, and chainsaws yesteryon but this is a new one on me.  Art?

  So.  A giant two-handed saw for cutting large pieces of timber.  Gotcha.

"EXIGIBLE":  As you should surely know by now, Conrad is very widely-read, yet I have not come across this word, either.  Collins Concise do your duty.

     Dog Buns!  Not present.  Okay, teh Interwebz it is.

     Aha.  "Of a tax or other duty that can be charged or levied."

     Well now I know and am STILL ANGRY!

     <loud thumping ensues>

More Of Lord Peter's Crossword

We're not even at the end of the Across clues (ha! what a laughable concept!).  Try this one on for size: "Requests like these, however long they be; Stop just too soon for common courtesy (5)".

    The solution?  "PLEAS".  You can see where Ol' Dot was going with this one as it's an abridgement of "PLEASE", that being a reference to 'common courtesy'.

Close enough

Finally -

We only need a short item to get up to the Adjusted Compositional Ton here, so I was going to stick in a photograph from another BBC photography competition, which item has now vanished from the News pages.  I could search for it but cannot remember what kind of photography it was about.  Wildlife?  Crocodiles?  Weather?

     Putting in the term "Photography Competition" didn't help either, all the results are from years ago.  Still, there was this one - Art!

     This is a petrel off the Galapagos Islands, showing off, frankly.  It won an award in 2017.

     And with that we are done and I'm going to get lunch.

*  Brass bra optional