This Might Be A Case Of Conrad Being Too Clever By Whole
Let alone three-quarters or half. Okay, okay, we need to establish a baseline, or the title won't make any sense. Art!
A Penguin paperback pastiche and a platano
Lest ye be unaware, the record's title comes from a pervy Teuton novel of the late 19th century. We will go exactly 0% further to avoid becoming non-SFW, I let you Google at your own peril.
Hopefully BOOJUM! had now focussed your eyes and intent upon Venus, for this is where we are going from this point onwards.
Right! 'Inter-' needs to be explicated. Venus can come later. "To place a body in the earth, to bury, especially with funeral rites," from the Old French 'Enterrer', meaning 'In earth'. Well, now you know. Art!
Shortly to be in the earth
ANYWAY none of this has to do with death and coffins, or at least only peripherally, because we are following a lead that came to Your Humble Scribe after watching a very interesting vlog over on Youtube, dealing with zombies and their origin. Art!
Courtesy of 'Tobatto Vision'
Well, here I am, eating my porridge as heated up and cooked by microwave radiation, and scoffing toast created from bread by the infra-red radiating heating elements of a toaster. Plus, life on Earth would be impossible without Mister Sun and his radiation. So not all radiation is bad. Art!
I suppose Romero is posing the question of 'What do you do now that you've found Venus and explored it a tad?' to which the answer might be 'Import a variety of Mysterious Radiation that brings the dead back to homicidal reanimation'. Lest ye be unaware, the volume above is by arch-miserablist Ballard, and will definitely not feature rayguns and rockets, so perhaps not your cup of sci-fi char. Art!
I know, I know, we're going wildly off-track here, but once again whose blog is it? ANYWAY this one came to me whilst having a quick Thinking Time en route to the shops. There is no such band as 'The Venus Hunters', it was a skit on Eighties bands where hair gel was an important part of their soundscape. Yes, that is Martin Clunes middle back, looking a lot younger as the film is from 1999.
ANYWAY AGAIN Conrad, being an utter buzzkill, needs to pour a little icy liquid on the 'Venus probe radiation' theory. By the time NOTLD came out, the Sinisters had been sending their 'Venera' probes into the Venusian atmosphere, and had soft landed a couple. Art!
They were built out of railway sleepers and granite, because Sinister, and also because of the Venusian atmosphere, which had a pressure of ooooh about 100 atmospheres, and a surface temperature of ooooh about 450ºC. The prospects of finding oceans of water on Venus had vanished by 1964, and a thousand sci-fi stories featuring the 'Oceans Of Venus' were consigned to the rubbish-heap.
In fact the conditions on Venus were so extreme that none of the original Venera probes survived, and even the over-engineered later ones lasted for two hours at most. So, if Uncle Sam despatched a probe to Venus, especially with technology at a late Sixties level, there's no way it's ever coming back. Sorry to ruin your willing suspension of disbelief. Art!
This was published in 1962, on the cusp of Venus' watery nature being disproved, so we will let it stand. In this juvenile novel, a probe from Venus brings back a mould spore, which thrives wildly under Earth's paradisical conditions, even if it crash-landed in an African desert. It spreads in a blanket and kills all it touches, being resistant to feeble human weedkiller - I think, it's about 50 years since I read it. UNEXA puts together a crash program to send a manned* mission to Venus, as there is clearly a rate-limiting factor present that stops the mould taking over the entire planet.
SPOILER the mould is defeated. Or there wouldn't be any more novels in the series.
Conrad thought it an interesting contrast to the NOTLD hypothesis. Someone needs to film a take where a manned mission to Venus tries to find out an antidote to the Mystery Radiation, whilst not becoming zombies themselves.
If that ever gets made, I want royalties.
Of course, I may be overthinking this a bit -
"The War Illustrated Edition 211 22nd July 1945"
We are now into the central-page montage sequence, just so you know, and the editor has concentrated on the Far East, where hostilities were still under way. Don't forget, thanks to censorship and communication times, what they printed is usually two weeks out of date. Art!
Blue skies, a balmy sea and a burning bomber. A Japanese one, in this case. Since there is no anti-aircraft fire visible, Conrad is assuming it was shot down by the naval fleet's fighter escort. The British learned the hard way that sending unescorted capital ships into enemy waters was a quick way to lose said capital ships.
Also of note is that the text mentions the British Pacific Fleet. Since the Teutons were now a conquered nation, the Royal Navy could transfer ships to the Pacific from the Atlantic and really put the pressure on Japan.
This Might Be Of Interest To Some
You'll see. A couple of weeks ago the Kremlin ordered the Ruffian Central Bank to cut interest rates, because Putinpot wanted a bit of good news. Who cares about an inflation rate of possibly 25%! Not he! and his credulous serf nation doesn't count or matter.
So! The interest rate in Mordorvia has been dropped to -
18%. The best you can say about that is that it isn't 21%. Art!
Tee and hee
Read 'em and seep, Ruffians!
Further To My Schedule Ranting
Nothing like a bit of Frothing Nitric Ire to get the blood going. I am typing these lines for Saturday's blog early Friday morning, because the 6 hour schedule starts at 10:00 in order to finish at 16:00. No lunch break, just a 15-minute and 1-minute one and yes, that's legal as that was the first thing I checked. Legal in the Allotment of Eden, I should point out; in South Canada, where managers still bemoan the death of indentured slavery, a 25-minute break is probably wildly excessive.
ANYWAY ANYWAY one of the more entertaining aspects of my work side-gig is coming up with 'On This Day', under the headings of 'Births', 'Deaths', 'Music', 'Sport' (a real tricky one for Conrad The Unsporty), 'Film and TV' and a Quote, ending with a Joke. Three entries for all the headings, and perhaps a quip a la Conrad. One compatriot read a quip and immediately recognised me. So much for anonymity, hmmm?
One thing that occurs is an inability to follow up on events, such as the Scottish boxer who died from malnutrition in 1948. Wait what? Or Simon Cowell breaking his back on an electric exercise bike in 2020. Art!
Conrad did a little digging. The bike was not a static version, as I had thought, but one of those things almost like a motorbike on a crash** diet. He throttled it far too hard, did a wheelie and was thrown off, breaking his spine. Cue six hours surgery to repair his spine, and a medical bill in the hundreds of thousands at a guess.
I'll get back to you on that boxer.
And with that we are done!
* No snivelling nonsense about women in space here!
** Do you see wh - O you do.
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