BOOJUM!: Fire And Flood

I've Got A Double Whammy For You Here

Hmmm no, this Intro won't be about volcanoes, even if they are trying to hog the news of late. Maybe at a later date. No, what I intend to pontificate about here are both the campaign in Palestine in late 1917 during the First Unpleasantness, and hearkening back to "Damnation Alley", because I am going to get every dram of creative juice out of that film, yes by gum Arne Saknussem (going with the Iceland and volcanoes theme there). Art!

Ooops

Ignore that picture! Ignore that picture! Art!

Here you see several pieces of Turkish ordnance in Palestine during the First Unpleasantness, and you can tell they're Turks because of their very distinctive headgear. The first piece is a 105mm Howitzer, the two beneath it being 77 mm field guns, both of them being Teuton pieces purchased from that nation as Turkey got closer to them thanks to being extremely suspicious of the British and French in the Middle East. This constitutes the first 'Fire', as that's what these guns did; they were frequently handled with skill and dash. The amount of artillery in Palestine was a pale reflection of the arsenals in France and Flanders, yet they were deadly enough.

And now to the 'Flood' part. Art!

This is modern Judea, because the British (and Commonwealth not to mention a smattering of French and a smidgeon of Italian) soldiery didn't think to take photographs, the utter cads.

You see, up to November of 1917, one of the most profound problems facing the British et al was keeping their forces supplied with sufficient water. A large part of operational planning was to do with where water sources were located, how to get to them, how to prevent the Turks from destroying them beforehand and how to properly manage them.
Then, when winter arrived in the Judean hills west and south of Jerusalem, O My! did the situation reverse itself. There was torrential rain, low temperatures and problems with moving on hilly tracks rendered treacherous by mud. You might find it difficult to believe but men died from exposure on overnight marches. Hence the images above. Art!

That's the Judean desert nowadays. Imagine trying to move and fight in this terrain, with the added misery of both mud and rain.

Now for a little entertainment that turned up sixty years later. Yes, say hello to our cheesy classic "Damnation Alley". You'd better believe that Conrad could wring yet more from this, but today we'll settle for their purloining of other film stock to boost their own endeavours without having to spend money, which always goes down well with producers. Art!

This is the AFB that our heroes work in, and the concrete buildings above are supposed to imply an even larger structure underground. Things inevitably go butternut squash-shaped (like pear-shaped but worse because bigger) and their Dangerously Inflammable Gas Supply Housed In A Dormitory That Allows Naked Flames - well, what could possibly go wrong? Art!

Step One

Well now, in that series of four stills, only Number Four is actually from DA. The other three have been lifted from the film "Operation Crossbow", from the RAF attack on Peenemunde. You can do that as a studio if you made both films. That's not all, because, whilst the above demonstrate 'Fire' - Art!

These scenes were all lifted from the pluvial irruption in "Earthquake" and serve to not only pad out the running time for DA, but to add in expensive miniature shots for free. Water, you see, does not 'scale' in special effects work, so you need to work with large volumes of it to make the images look realistic. Art!

Or you work with things at 1:1 scale. This carried on wind and tide may explain how the Landmaster travels the 586 miles from Detroit to within 17 miles of Albany in no more than a few minutes. Pretty sure I'm not overthinking that.

Purely Peculiar
As you should surely know by now, one of Conrad's favourite novels is "The Kraken Wakes" by John Wyndham and one of these days I will work up those notes into a screenplay.

ANYWAY one of the characters makes a passing comment about how the Sinisters are always boasting about being the first at doing or achieving anything, because they simply cannot bear the thought of being second or last. This was in 1955 and - it still resonates. Art!

O boy, Vulnavia, where to begin?

First of all, Britain and France were the first with supersonic passenger aircraft, there was this thing called 'Concorde' which you may have heard of.

Secondly, this is the Tu-144, which was nicknamed 'Concordski', and it's not a 'rendering' of a 'future supersonic aircraft'. Art!

This model kit illustration is from 2011. Hardly 'future', is it?

The real thing was a typical Sinister bodge job. It flew a few dozen internal flights in the Sinister Union, never carrying more than 50 passengers, and then crashed at the 1973 Paris Air Show, killing the crew and 9 people on the ground. The reason? One of the wings fell off.

Current Ruffian airliners are getting to be as dangerous as the Tu-144. Watch this space.

Pining From The Fjords

<narrows eyes and poises finger over the Remote Nuclear Detonator> don't you dare mention that sketch!

It is at this time of year that the Norks demonstrate their gratitude to Perfidious Albion for 1) Fighting the Teutons, albeit unsuccessfully, in 1940 and 2) Coming back in 1945, accepting the Teuton's surrender and getting rid of them. BY DEPORTING THEM, not lining them up and gunning them down*. Art!

God Jul!

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor and Alex are both about to experience an adventure, the former kind of expecting it, the latter not at all.

Half a dozen chairs had been set out on the stage, so he lightly vaulted up there and stood behind a hand-carved wooden lectern. Don and Lenny were already in the audience, and joined him. Neither looked happy at his barnstorming performace.

Where was Mike? He and Alex needed to turn up soon or they’d miss relevant facts.

The instant the hotel’s room door swung open, Alex realised his fever dream of the morning had in fact been entirely factual.

Both beds had been viciously chopped about, the woollen blankets and thin linen sheets hacked so deeply that bedsprings could be seen, feathers lying across the wooden floor from split pillows.

The novel feature of the room, which definitely hadn’t been there this morning, was the ghastly, mutilated corpse lying stiff and cold on the boards.

‘Bloody hell!’ gasped Mike. ‘Ben. It’s old Ben – the Wanderer.’

Alex gulped. The pathetic old man of the strange appearance and wobbly eyes had been split horizontally in his thorax, a huge gaping wound inflicted with inhuman strength by the axe that lay alongside him. And clutched in one bony hand was a familiar straw boater.

Mike turned to glare at the young man.

‘I know you’re not responsible – you were at the clinic all afternoon. My God, to think we trusted your pal Doctor John Smith!’

Oo-err, Matron!

I Want The Future Past

An homage to Peter Hamill, in case you were unaware. We've not had any Hazegrayart for months, so here's one they recently came up with. This is the 'Kliper' spaceplane, as collaborated between the European Space Agency and Russia. Or, it did at least in HGA's dreams. Art!

On the launchpad at Alma Ata

The 'Penguin' lofts

Even close up there's no sign of pixellation or blurring or artefacts. HGA is a dab hand with this CGI stuff. Art!

Here we see it still going like stink, most boosters still attached. The Kliper was intended for use as a re-usable spaceplane, very similar in concept to the Space Shuttle. Funding and priority shifts within Ruffia's space agencies led to it being scrapped, but not before generating a lot of interest. Art!