More Of Warrior Robots

 How Glad Are We That I Picked This Theme?

Even if by accident.  Your Humble Scribe rather missed an obvious tranche about robots at war yesteryon, which I can only explain away as due to gin and old age.  One of the two or both together.

     What am I babbling about? I hear you say.  Art!

     Say hello to one of "2000AD"'s finest creations, the "A.B.C. Warriors", which stands for what they were proof against: Atomic, Bacterial and Chemical weapons.  Obviously.  Don't mention Electro-Magnetic Pulse.  Their leader was Hammerstein, that droid at the top, who had earlier been featured in a strip in "Starlord" called "Ro-Busters", where he was paired with a sewer droid called 'Ro-jaws'.  Get it?  Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein.  It was a strained pun then and is no better now.  Art!

     That's Hammerstein with his original head.  I think it got changed to make him more sympathetic.  Ro-Jaws is the green gobby robot behind matey, and this is during their bid for robot freedom.

     ANYWAY I ought to add in here that Ol' Hammy was designed as a war robot, specifically to take part in the war against the 'Volgs', who were a but thinly-disguised Sinister Union.  Bear in mind that we're talking 1979 here, and the Sinisters were still a going concern.  Also bear in mind that another strip in "2000AD" was "Invasion 1999" which featured blue-collar lorry-driver Bill Savage waging a pretty brutal war of resistance against the Volgs, who had invaded the UK.  The comic had a strong sci-fi bent, but how were we to know that the Volgs couldn't even manage to invade a neighbour successfully, let a

     ANYWAY Art!

     

Annoyed droid

     Clearly the Warriors exist in a universe that never heard of the Three Laws Of Robotics.  If you've seen the original not-very-good "Judge Dredd" of 1995 vintage then Hammerstein has a cameo in that, for no very good reason.  Other than the director thought he was cool.  Art!

     Back to real life.  Which is beginning to feel like living in the future now.  That photograph above is old hat now, since it hails from 2020.  What you see are Estonian soldiers on patrol in Mali, with the inevitable curious youngsters in attendance.  Good luck crossing the language barrier, chaps.  And yes, that's an Unmanned Ground Vehicle bringing up the rear.  It can be used to haul the heavy kit that encumbers all infantry such as ammunition, water and rations.  Unlike a mule it will not bray, get sick or be sulky and doesn't need food or water.  Though a spanner-wielding mechanic with an oil can would go a long way.  Art!

     Inevitably we come to Ukraine, which is trialling Unmanned Ground Vehicles, and theirs are armed and dangerous.  What you see above is a robotic scout of sorts, that can probe enemy positions and shoot back if fired upon.  Given that it runs on wheels, not tracks, it can probably get a right shift on if needed.  Art!

     Yes, it's that creepy robotic dog 'Spot' from Boston Dynamics.  The South Canadian army is looking into using a beefier version of this to carry cargo.  It was only ever a matter of time before someone mated a gun with a robot like this, and indeed a competitor to BD did just that.  Art!

Nice doggy.  Please don't kill me.

I Beg Pardon For Not Explaining

Yesterday I mentioned 'Ruritania' without explaining myself, and I doubt many of you out there knew what I was yarking on about.  Art!

     There was a novel, you see, called "The Prisoner Of Zenda", which was mostly set in the tiny European principality of - you probably worked this out already - Ruritania.  Apparently the author didn't care for any of the existing European principalities and invented his own.  I mean, he could have used Andorra or San Marino and I think the Sanjak Of Novi Pazar was still a going concern when he was writing.

     So, that's where Ruritania comes from, and now we are all better-informed than we were five minutes ago.

Conrad Digs Deeper

I did mention that I was impressed with the design sketches for the starship 'Avalon' in the film "Passengers", which we put up here in connection with shots of the ship itself.  A short dose of Google-fu revealed the following:

The Out-of-This-World Set Designs of Passengers

Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas takes AD behind the scenes of the new movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt

     There is a whole article devoted to this, which I skimmed through, and GHD does go into how to design a starship and make it look believable, realistic and attractive.  Art!

     Mystery solved!  <pats self on back>

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor has now squirreled himself away aboard the Lithoi's baseship, and is preparing to commit mischief.

     ‘Calling Terence Conran,’ joked the Doctor, pleased with his own humour, like any bad comedian.  He caught himself.  ‘Enough procrastination!  “But screw your courage to the sticking place”,’ he continued.  What might be considered “girding oneself for battle” followed, which consisted of donning his jacket, hooking the ever-present umbrella over an elbow, cocking his boater at a jaunty angle and putting his pistol upside down in a pocket. 

     Window-dressing aside, the Doctor realised he was not merely sticking his head in the lion’s jaws, he was inviting it to bite whilst jabbing a finger in each eye: his chances of survival were slim to vanishing, wildly dependent on how well or poorly he improvised in the next few minutes.  Not that he felt much choice remained to him, as twelve and a half thousand people depended on him directly, and the entire remaining population of poor old battered Earth indirectly.

     Before leaving the timeship, he checked on Arc One’s descent:  the monitor showed a crisp, clear image of the giant sphere two hundred kilometres above, dangling below a vast metallic canopy, the supporting cables being too thin to be resolved at this distance.  The sphere’s surface was scorched, pitted and looked stressed to near breaking-point – but hadn’t reached that point yet.  No obvious breaches, and if his advice on flexible panels for sealing leaks or holes had been taken then this gamble might well come off.

      IF there just happens to be a distraction aboard the baseship .....

More About Starships

This is from another Gallery sub-set over at Interstellar Research Centre, and I'm not at all sure what to call it.  Let the pictures speak for themselves.  Art!

     This is the 'Black Hole Evaporator Engine'.  Not sure how that works, but that huge radiation shield implies the use of frightful energies.  Art!

     Doing a little background digging, it seems that this very, very theoretical power source is indeed a black hole.  A miniscule one, which emits energy as it slowly evapourates.  Someone with more technical nous than I stated that a low-output miniature black hole will last you for about 575 trillion years, so quite a sustained power source.  

     HOWEVER - o that word again! - first of all, first catch your rabbit, because creating and manipulating a black hole is going to be almost impossible.  The slightest slip or mis-alignment and - there goes Planet Earth.  For your information, a 'Pion' is defined as a meson with the mass of 270 electrons.  I'm glad we cleared that up.

Finally -

Okay, we're at count, I now have the opportunity to walk into Lesser Sodom in my comfy Lakelands, and no, Wonder Wifey, I care not one whit that they are bright orange.  We all know that fashion is a concept utterly foreign to Conrad.