All Will Become Clear
Or, it won't. One or the other.
Imagine how fantastic it would be if you could, indeed, smell the delicious and enticing scent of lignite via teh Interwebz! A technological breakthrough that would add a new dimension to adverts about food, sewage processing and nappies. Perhaps not that last. Harley-Davidson's 'Eau De Toilette' might never have failed if it had been smelt by potential buyers. Art!
Sorry to rain on your parade. You see, we are still detailing that list of 68 mind-melting books as listed by 'Sci-Fi Odyssey'.
No. 29 Coalescent by Stephen Baxter (2003). Nope, never heard of it. In case you were wondering, and even if you weren't, 'Coalescent' means 'To unite or come together in one body or mass.' Yes, it has Latin roots, which is apt, since the plot concerns a female hive-mind based in Rome, which the protagonist accidentally stumbles across. They are, of course - obviously! - a threat to Hom. Sap. because if all they wanted to do was hug and hand out flowers the story would be over by Page 15. I dunno if it's quite my cup of tea, though I have read and been entertained by other SB novels.
No. 28: The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula Le Guin (1972). It is? Funny, I always thought the word for world was 'world'. This one sounds very much like a product of it's time, with echoes of the Vietnam Unpleasantness. You have Hom. Sap. who have arrived on the planet Athshe, which is an anagram of 'Sheath', in order to violently and brutally oppress the natives, the pacific Athsheans. O and exploit the planet's natural resources. Did I mention violently and brutally oppress the natives? Who later on rebel in a highly aggressive manner, because of the violently and brutally oppress the natives attitude of Hom. Sap. Nuance laid on with a shovel. Art!
No. 27:A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (1960). Art!
The story of a Catholic monastery that acts as a repository of scientific knowledge in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a global nuclear war.
That makes is sound far more exciting than it is, because Conrad found it wretchedly boring and will never pick it up and waste a day of my life reading it.
No. 26: The Man In The Maze by Robert Silverberg (1969). Nope, no idea. Let me check. Ah, one of those social commentary sci-fi novels Silverberg wrote, that stand apart from the entertaining ones. This one is about a solitary exile who cannot stand to be near people, just as they cannot stand to be near him. thanks to the mental repulsion field he emits. What a peach! Art!
He is sent as sole envoy to an alien species invading the Milky Way. From the blurb we don't find out if he was successful or not or whether Hom. Sap. is doomed. COP OUT! How to say 'I built up a plot that I couldn't resolve' without saying 'I built up a plot that I couldn't resolve'.
No. 25: Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg (1972). Ah, now, this one sounds interesting. I am aware of it, just never read it. In a clever inversion, Ol' Bob explores what it means to a telepath when they begin to lose their powers, rather than repeat another variant of 'And Then I Got ESP'. There's also a strikingly horrid cover, which I will try to find. Art!
Nothing to do with the plot, yet striking. It concerns David Selig, a man who has used his telepathic powers for selfish gain - who can blame him? - and now has to redefine himself as those powers fade and become unreliable. Ironically, it may be this loss that makes him a better person. A work very well-regarded in the field.
No. 24: Vornan-19 by Robert Silverberg (1968). Also known as 'The Masks Of Time'. I have read this one, and remember the ending. Art!
The edition I had
Vornan-19 mysteriously arrives from nowhere in Rome 1998, floating to a landing on the Spanish Stairs. He claims to be from the year 2999, from a verrrry different civilisation, where neither capitalism nor money exist any longer. People can tell he's human as he arrives naked.
The protagonist, whom I think is Leo, is sceptical about Vornan's claims and wonders if he's just out to cause chaos for shizzles and giggles; then again, he might be from the future, but is he telling the truth about it?
SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER Wildly adulated and idolated by your average Hom. Sap. Vornan is touring Rio De Janeiro, using a personal energy shield to prevent him being crushed or mobbed. The sheild fails, the hysterical crowd fall on him and his body is never recovered. Leo ponders about the shield's failure; if Vornan was a genuine time-traveller, might another time-traveller be sent back to stop him mucking up the timelines? Art!
I think that's enough for Saturday's first Intro, even as I type this on Thursday night. Sooner-sooner, that's me.
I Think I Know The Appropriate Meme For This
First of all, we need the artwork, so if that semi-sentient scrofulous sack of sago, Art, will put down his bowl of coal -
Elong Tusk may have to busk
Because people have short memories, that's over six years since the Coronavirues made it's unwelcome appearance. Art!
No wonder he has that 'Licking Marmite off a nettle was a mistake' face.
Food And Drink
Because we all need them, despite those bampots who insist they live on sunlight.
ANYWAY I am cribbing a lot of statistics from Janet Macdonald's minor opus 'Supplying The British Army In The First World War'. When the BEF had assembled in France, by the end of 1914 it had 324,000 men to feed and water. By the Armistice in November of 1918 it was 2,973,690. Daily consumption rates were:
Bread: 20 ounces per man. Or, 180 tons daily for the whole 1914 BEF. By 1918 this came to 1,690 tons per diem.
Meat: 17 ounces per man. Or, 153 tons daily in 1914, and 1,436 in 1918.
Vegetables: 10 ounces per man. Or, 90 tons per day in 1914, and 885 tons in 1918.
Sugar: 3 ounces per man. Or, 27 tons in 1914 and 250 tons in 1918.
Jam: 3 ounces per man. Or, 27 tons in 1914 and 250 tons in 1918. Art!
Also issued daily were: Condensed Milk: 1 ounce; Tea, 1/2 ounce; Mustard 1/20 ounce; Pepper 1/36 ounce. No I am not going to work out the totals, do it yourself if you're so bothered.
By these totals ye shall know how important logistics are.
Ol' Jan doesn't go into water supply for humans until the last chapter, but Conrad did a bit of number crunching, using the guesstimate total of 5 pints of water per man per day. This may seem on the high side but remember this is the whole BEF we're talking about, including forces in Salonika, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Mesopotamia, which balances things out. That means 723 tons in 1914 and 6,758 tons in 1918. PER DAY!
More Gentle Shoeing
Or, 'Making Mordorvia More Miserable'. Whilst Barad-Dur has been hit by the worst winter snowstorms in 200 years, the Kamchatka peninsula in far eastern Siberia has had them just as bad, the worst in over 130 years.
HOWEVER! there are a plethora of AI slop videos circulating on Twitter, which I'm not going to bother with. One shows orcs sliding down a snow slope from the top of their apartment block. In reality they'd be more likely to plunge straight from the top to street level and smother. Art!
The cars in this clip were buried and dug out three times. The road in Petropavlovsk is cleared by snow ploughs only twice - the city cannot afford to maintain civilian infrastructure and has been completely paralysed, with bread and milk running out at logistics fail.
Blimey. Even nature hates the orcs.
Finally -
Let's end it with a definition from Ambrose G. Bierce.
"Abatis,n: Rubbish placed in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside."
Art!
Abatis
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