Hello Hello!

I'm From A Town Called Royton

No vertigo involved, unless you find yourself atop the clock tower on the Library.  Since I am able to compose and create this scrivel at home, the restrictions in place during the working week don't apply.  That is, since Blogger appears to have had a mental brain-fart and removed or disabled the 'Clipboard' function, I've had to wait until late afternoon or early evening to post the new blog.  Mind you, posting at work at least had the bonus of not seeing Edna out of the corner of your eye every time she thinks there's food around.  Art!

There is a reason we have a sea monster here

     Okay, Your Humble Scribe has now finished reading the last volume in The Expanse nonology (that is the right word for a series of nine books, right?), "Leviathan Falls".  Conrad doesn't think it's much of a spoiler to report that not everyone makes it out alive at the end.  Art!

The guilty party.
I shall have to go back and read them all in sequence.

     Conrad was actually introduced to The Expanse (I'm not going to embolden and fuschia the name in case you were wondering) by a clip on Youtube, which someone had put up and dubbed a title along the lines of "Most realistic space battle ever".  Art!

     There was no anti-gravity, force-fields, super-lasers or teleportation devices; what you saw was a battle between spaceships using acceleration, manoeuvring thrusters and inertia.  In other words, real qualities of the real universe.  They used missiles, which in TE parlance are always called 'Torpedoes' - it takes a while but you get used to it - that are nuclear-tipped and which manoeuvre according to the laws of physics.  Those glittery things you can see are explosive cannon rounds, fired from "Point Defence Cannon" whose major function is to destroy incoming torpedoes.  Again, they arc and sway as in the real world.  If you imagine a Phalanx or Goalkeeper mounted on a spaceship, bingo!  Art!

Phalanx

Phalanx at night

     Intrigued by what was a clip of only a few minutes, I asked Degsy if he knew aught of this series.  He hadn't seen it, but "Hard sci-fi" was his concise description.  For those unaware, this is sci-fi that adheres to the laws of physics and the real world.

     Thus it was that Conrad, ever the cheap-bottom, got the first TE volume in paperback, that being - Art!

     Now you know why we had a sea monster.  

     If you want a quick gloss of TE and it's universe, the only thing that the authors ("James Corey" is a pseudonym) invent that we don't have today is nuclear fusion as a power source.  This has put the planets and moons of the Solar System within reach of Hom. Sap. and, just like "Babylon 5", you we take all our vices and failings along for the ride.  Thus you have a three-way power split: Earth, where you can walk around in the open air; Mars, the aggressive younger colony armed to the teeth and beyond; and the Belters, who swarm over the asteroids and risk death on a weekly basis (daily if it's bad).  Tensions are high, to put it mildly.

     Then comes the world-shattering discovery of an alien protomolecule that arrived in the Solar System over a billion years ago ...

     Then you get space opera.  And then some.  Art!

Just To Rub It In A Bit More

You remember Conrad being rather mockingly dismissive of Peter The Average's so-called "Victory Parade" as of May 9th, which featured a single T-34 tank.  Art!

Russia stronk!

     The crew are probably sitting in dread, awaiting conscription notices about driving their T-34 to Ukraine.  After all, it's only 10 years older than the T-54s being sent there.

     ANYWAY I wasn't sure about the duration of said event, until Jake Broe confirmed it - the whole thing was over and done in 30 minutes, when it usually drags on for 3 hours.  Perhaps The Pest In The Bulletproof Vest would have prolonged it if there had been an actual, you know, victory to celebrate.  I don't think capturing two chicken coops and a pig-sty in Bakhmut counts towards that.

How Do You Define 'Europe', Exactly?

Conrad, as you ought to know by now, HATES ALL MUSICALS, and is quite willing to extend this hatred to the Eurovision Song Contest.  Back in the day the whole thing only had one positive value: it was over and done in an evening.  Now they seem to be trying to portray it as a Cultural Event sans pareil <shudders>.  I have managed to avoid hearing any of the sonic sewage generated so far, but am mystified about how the show-runners define who is European and who's not.  Art!

     You could fudge it for Armenia, even if it is in the Caucasus.  But the Ockers?  NO!  A THOUSAND TIMES NO!

     Bah!

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor is worried that the alien bio-vores may succeed in their last-gasp attempt to access enough life-energy to threaten Hom. Sap.

Sub-Technician Tecwalata lowered his dart-gun and padded across the beaten track, to where the human had been firing his weapon.

          Yes, the human was dead.  Finally!  The human equivalent of a Detachment Leader.  Shock-haired, short and hit in half-a-dozen places by darts, the human had nevertheless managed to kill five bio-vores with that peculiarly noisy weapon-mechanism fed-by-belt.  Wretched creature.  In the last moments it had seemed to be trying to get across the track, away from the safety of it’s emplacement.  Heading for that human vehicle?

          Tecwalata had only six companions left, six from the hundreds who had come through the trans-mat with him.

          Well, no problem.  A short drive northwards would lead to the bio-morphically blessed waters of the Mediterranean sea.  There, he and his survivors would be able to replicate a thousand-fold, preying on the waterborne lifeforms there.  From seven they would become seven million in a matter of weeks.  That was inevitable, given the amount of bio-morphic energy available.

          ‘Tecwalata!’ called another sub-technician.  ‘Our transport is exhausted.  No more energy remains.’

          As if to prove the point, their massive black Combat Car simply sat on the ground gravel of the encampment’s entrance route.  Dead.  Inert.

          ‘It’s all those metallic additions,’ muttered a technician to Tecwalata.  ‘Increase the weight, decrease the endurance.’

     Yeah, even for evil alien invaders there are always swings and roundabouts.

An Answer To A Question You Never Knew Needed Asking

Yes, back to Ol' Tolky and "Lord Of The Rings", although also to the story before then.

     If you have even the wits of a goldfish about you, you remember the wizards Saruman, Gandalf and Radagast, who had turned up in Middle Earth in the Second Age.  With them came two others, the 'Blue Wizards' Altar and Pallandro, who apparently vanished in the East of ME and were not heard of again.  Art!

     However, it appears that they were actually quite successful in their mission, which seems to have been a lot more subtle and covert than their three brethren.  They were influencing things behind the scenes in the East, so much so that the Easterlings and Haradrim contributed forces only to Mordor, and left the rest of Middle Earth alone during the War Of The Ring.

Finally -

One consequence of being back at work after three months idling is that one appreciates the time off more than before.  Your Humble Scribe was out of bed at 09:00 sharp this morning, which for him on a Saturday morning is unheard of.  Why, I've already composed this blog and it's not even noon yet, and that's in addition to checking out the BBC News website to see if the world's still there (spoiler: it is) and having a quick peruse at Quora.

     And with that we are so very very done!