Do You Want To Live Forever?

I Know, Unusually Philosophical -

For a blog that more typically goes on about tanks and zombies.  And, once, about zombies in tanks.  That was a Mister Monster reprint of a biz

     ANYWAY just to let you know that, no, we are not going on about "Starship Troopers" today, even if today's title is close to a meme from said film.  Art!

     I think that's what they call a rhetorical question.  

     Also, here an aside.  As was pointed out on the film's release, we have better infantry small-arms today than this culture has a couple of centuries into the future.  Don't forget that military fort out in the middle of nowhere was defended by a couple of Dshka 38 heavy-machine guns, the '38' in their title meaning they first went into service in 1938.  Art!

     ANYWAY enough of ordnance.  Yesterday's also somewhat philosophical title was getting what you wished for and the possible consequences of trying to cheat life.  There is a film franchise based on this - "Wishmaster" - where a djinn will grant you three wishes.  The catch is that djinns are inherently evil and will twist the wish to backfire spectacularly.  Art!

Especially not if the prequel turned a profit

     ANYWAY let us now approach today's title via one of Conrad's favouritest sci-fi series: James Blish's 'Okie' quadrology, especially "Earthman, Come Home" which has a fantastic Chris Foss cover painting.  Art!

     This is exactly what it looks like, a city in space.  The central conceit is that Earth has become a bucolic backwater, with many of it's cities going 'Okie', that is to say becoming space-faring entities carrying out work across the Milky Way galaxy for the teeming human cultures that span it.  This works courtesy of two McGuffins: the Dillon-Waggoner Graviton Polarity Generator, dubbed a 'spindizzy' because of what it does to electrons.  This is effectively an anti-gravity device that can accelerate anything - even and especially a city - beyond the speed of light and provide a shield against anything in the vacuum.  Art!

     The second McGuffin are the anti-agathic drugs developed on Earth, because interstellar travel even at multiples of the speed of light, takes years if not decades, so long that a normal human would die before making planetfall.  Enter these drugs, that will extend a human life indefinitely, and which prevent any of the major illnesses ever affecting the taker.  The Okie populations of the flying cities are divided into two classes: the Passengers, who get nil access to these drugs, and the Crew, who do.

     Why this distinction?  Because anti-agathics are rare and literally priceless; any Okie crewman selling his stock of these could live like a king on the proceeds, for a normal lifespan.  Or they can cruise the Galaxy for centuries, on minimum wage, because budgets aboard flying cities are tight - they never know when or where their next contract might come up, and there might be competition to bid against.

     Blish himself, as narrator, also points out that if these drugs were widely available, the Galaxy would rapidly become over-run with Hom. Sap.  Imagine if the Earth's population doubled every thirty years.  In less than two centuries there would be over HALF A TRILLION people and in three-hundred and thirty years 18 TRILLION Hom. Sap.

     So - do you still want to live forever?

A Pithy Tale

More manglement at play.  From Quora, and a reason why nepotism and favouritism in a business is bad for business, because stupid decisions that affect the bottom line are being made.

     Original Poster worked in a lab that supported a Biotech Research company.  OP's boss was demoted and the whole lab transferred to a different business unit that knew nothing of lab work.  Art!

     OP's new boss, probably as a power move intended to show the newbies who was The Boss, sent his minions to work in the lab.  One of these hapless inepts decided to re-program a large and expensive bit of lab kit, which she then destroyed to the cost of $250,000.  Art!

     She suffered no consequences but OP was fired, or, as they like to euphemise in South Canada, 'let go.'

     Well, no immediate consequences, because the business went out of business.

Fiction

Don't get on the wrong side of Jean Shepherd.  He was doing his gig as a radio host and got miffed at the way books were classed as best-sellers; one metric was demands placed with bookshop staff.

     So, being an inventive chap, he encouraged his listeners to ask for "I, Libertine", a novel supposedly based around the life of a social climber, Lance Courtenay set in the eighteenth century, written by Frederick R. Ewing.

     The narrative took on a life of it's own and the non-existent novel ended up on the New York Times list of best-sellers, thanks to Shepherd's fans asking about it.

     Shepherd and publisher Ian Ballantine got together with sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon and decided Theo was going to write the novel, which he did.  Art!

     I'm sure this is a tautology of sorts.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor has cobbled together a crude fission bomb using radium, which is quite an achievement as radium is not remotely fissile.  Deus ex machina, gentle reader, deus ex machina.

‘We have a bit of a problem with that “Lance Fiamme”, Doctor,’ said Dominione.

          The Doctor closed his eyes, feeling tired.  He needed to wash his hands thoroughly, to get rid of any radium particles picked up during  construction of the bomb.

          Dominione carried on.  The weapon was actually for mounting in a tankette, was five feet long, muzzle-heavy, needed to be electrically operated and worked from a 120 litre drum.  Impossible for a single person to carry.

          ‘Put it in one of the Saharianas,’ said Sarah.  ‘In the passenger seat.  Stick it over the bonnet, rivet it there, Bob’s your uncle.’

          ‘No he isn’t,’ replied Dominione, puzzled.

          ‘I meant - ’ began Sarah. 

          ‘If you’ll give me a minute or two to rest, I’ll wire up the flame-thrower to the ignition system of your car,’ offered the Doctor, yawning massively.

          Roger hushed the others and they left the sleeping Time Lord for an hour before rousing him.

 

Lord Excellency Sur, pressured by his fellow aristocrats, was going to travel to Target World Seventeen himself.  Not alone, of course.  He would be accompanied by a thousand Warriors, going into the trans-mat in relays.

          Originally he’d only petitioned for four hundred Warriors to be awoken from hibernation.  His peers, unhappy at the escape of an alien and heretic from custody in Sur’s own castle, ordered twice that many to be sent.  Then they added another two hundred, just in case.  No mercy for any alien fodder at the other end of the trans-mat was their implicit message, and no room for blunder on the part of Sur

     Yeah, your neck's on the line, matey.

Doctor Death

Just to follow up on a passing comment by Sherlock Holmes, about murderous doctors.  We've already looked at Doctor Palmer, and now for Doctor Edward Pritchard.  He had been a surgeon in the Royal Navy before leaving the service and going into private practice, where he ran up debts in his Yorkshire practice and left for Glasgow.  Art!

The hairy horror

     Whilst there a fire in his maid's sleeping quarters resulted in her death, which the Procurator Fiscal found distinctly fishy, as she'd made no attempt to get off her bed.

     Then he fatally poisoned both his mother-in-law and wife.  This, too, was seen as suspicious and an anonymous letter was sent to the police, who exhumed both women's bodies and discovered antimony in their remains.

     Doctor Pritchard was found guilty of both murders and hung on 28/07/1865.  His motive for the murders seems to have been to get rid of Wifey after she found him canoodling with an under-age  serving girl, and MIL might have been informed, too.  His was the last public hanging in Glasgow, watched by a crowd estimated at 80,000.

Finally -

Wonder Wifey is doing a Tik Tok (whatever that is) this afternoon, so I have the unalloyed pleasure of being Edna's last resort.