A Look At A Book

That's Not Strictly Accurate
We're talking multiple books here; over 770 of them, in fact.
     For yes, your humble scribe got his act together last night and began updating his list of Military History books.  I had a lot to add, since I've been buying them for a couple of months and they do sort of stack up after a while.  Art?

     There's at least 30 books in that shot.  Some I've already read, some you'd only use for reference, some are waiting to be read.  Thus it was with some interest I read the title of a page on the Beeb's website.  Art?

Guilty.  O so very guilty.

     "Bibliomania", it transpires, is obsessively purchasing and collecting books, although it has been downgraded slightly to a passion rather than a problem.  What can I say?  "Good books do furnish a room".*
     Meanwhile, look what else turned up in the post on Friday:

That cover on the left is pure come-on
(There are no zombies)

     Not sure where I saw these first, but I Googled 'Captain Britain' and was interested.  These are volumes 2 & 3 of the trade paperbacks and I presume volume 1 would have explained the background a bit more, but it's only available from South Canada at the moment, and a bit pricey.
     See?  I can't be a bibliomaniac, can I, or I'd have bought it.  Just waiting till a cheaper copy comes up, or payday, whichever is sooner.
     As you can guess from the title, this is set in Britain, and is a somewhat uneasy mix of yer standard superhero stuff and the supernatural.
     And now, time to see if the motley can keep down a gallon of semi-cooked oysters!

Of Atom Bombs And Archaeology
Earlier today I mentioned a sci-fi novel where Atlantean-era cultures destroyed themselves with nuclear weapons, and argued that any such event would have left a profound archaeological footprint.
     Of course, there is nothing so daft that some tin-foil beanie wearing bafoon will not believe it.  Shape-shifting reptilianoids are controlling the weather, gold prices and the availbility of bite-size Mars bars? - someone, somewhere, will buy that.

Suddenly in short supply, it seems ...

     Finland does not exist and is a joint conspiracy between Japan and Russia?**  Adolf Hitler is alive and well and living under the South Pole, exerting influence via mind control lasers?** A flying saucer crashed at Roswell and the South Canadian government covered it up?**
     Then there is the one about Mohenjo-Daro.  You probably won't have heard of this archaeological site, from the Indus Vally Civilisation in what is now India, but it was easily as advanced as the Egyptians or Mesopotamians.  Art?

The excavated city

     The bampots claim that it was destroyed by an atomic explosion, as Atlantis was in "Triplanetary".  Their evidence appears to be 37 bodies, which are claimed to have been left unburied "as if there was nobody left to bury them".
     Take a good look at the picture above, and notice the city spectacularly unaffected by any explosion, nuclear or otherwise.  The radiation count is at background, those bodies were buried, there is no crater, there is no geological record of any fallout - need I go on?
     Bah!

"Selenophobia"
Which, you will not be surprised to know, is "Fear of the Moon".  "Selene" being Greek for "Moon"
     Here an aside.  I wonder how they promoted the 2009 film "Moon" in Greece?  Did they use the Roman alphabet on posters?  Translate it into "Selene"?

Excellent film, by the way

     Anyway, imagine you're a prominent president of a nation armed with nuclear weapons, and you suddenly suffer from Selenophobia.  What's your logical next step?
    Why - ATOM BOMBING THE MOON!

Ha!  Take that, Moon!

     I realise this is a tissue-thin excuse to drag out one of my favourite lines, and I don't care.  Plus, all the selenophobes out there like it.

You Can Never Get Too Much Of A Bad Thing
Bad things, in this case, being giant spiders, and you will argue until your tongue suffers chronic muscle fatigue that spiders are not bad, without convincing me.
     For all their innate horridness, it seems that people enjoy being terrified by giant spiders, and you need look no further than the very low-budget "The Giant Spider Invasion" of 1975.  Art?

Hmmmm.

     For all it's faults, this film was in the top 50 grossing films of the year.  Not bad for a Volkswagen covered in black fur.  Really, you humans!

Plus, I don't think ONE spider counts as an invasion.

*  So do trashy ones if they've got interesting plots and premises.
**  All real conspiracy theories.

A Cat And A Donkey

Sounds Like A Song Title, Doesn't It?
What's that one by The Human League - "A Crow And A Baby".  Yeah, except it's not.  
     It's nothing to do with songs or bands, or viral Youtube clips, and you'll have to read on to find out what it is about, because - I'm horrid that way.
     Here's another song title for you (and a television series, too, apparently): "Life On Mars" by David Bowie, who was actually quite relevant despite being Oooold.  Art?

You've got summat on yer head, mate

     Yes, this is about the discovery of water on Mars.  Subsurface radar returns give a picture of an under-ice lake some 12 miles across and a yard deep,* under the Southern ice-cap of Mars.  
     This is telling stuff.  We don't yet know what the make-up of this water is, since it could well be a toxic soup of chemicals, but the presence of liquid water is taken as a pre-requisite for the development of life by astro-biologists.  So - Step One has been taken.  It's been known for a long time that there used to be water on the Red Planet, and now we know it's still present.  Art?

Mars, with snowcaps

     That's one thing.  The other is, if the water turns out to be sterile, it can be used by the Manned Mars Mission; filtered and distilled as drinking water, and electrolysed into hydrogen (burnt for power) and oxygen (for, you know, breathing).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44952710

     That there's the link.  What your humble scribe also found interesting was the breakdown of comments in the Have Your Say section.  Quite a few were appreciative and rhapsodic, there were lots of David Bowie jokes, and - as ever - a large number of swivel-eyed loonwaffles who seemed to think that spending money on space exploration was Eeeevil, but who are fine with the sums squandered spent on Premier League football or programmes like 'Love Island',* *neither of which will help Hom. Sap. survive. 

Mind you, nor will this

     Right!  Time to heat up the tank of molten glass and see how fast the motley can sprint across it!

Interesting - But Still WRONG!
I am working my way through E.E. Smith's first novel in the Lensman series, and I'm - what's that?  Oh, right, sorry, you're absolutely right, he does get a bit tetchy if you leave that out - E.E. 'Doc' Smith - not going to bother warning about spoilers because it's been around for 70 years.

Amazing Stories, rubbish artwork

     In this expanded novel, Doc describes how a set of prehistoric civilisations, which include Atlantis, destroy themselves utterly with nuclear warfare, having reached a level of technology circa 1960.  He rather slyly doesn't date these cultures, nor when they fall, but believe me, any trace of nuclear warfare on a global scale would still be detectable in the present day.  After all, the Trinity test site's radioactivity for the first atomic detonation is still ten times higher than the background count, after 70 years.  Not to mention fallout, and blast patterns, etcetera etcetera.
     But, still a good read!

The Gadget that made the colossal crack

Okay, Okay, I Shall Relent
As mentioned earlier this week, I went to have a coffee with the lovely Anna, and let's see if I can trawl up a rather more flattering image than the previous one - Art?  Work hard!
     Sadly none available.  Oh well, imagine someone wonderful inside and outside and you're there.
     As proof of the wonderful-inside bit, whilst she was off in Cyprus attending a wedding, she bought me a pair of bookmarks, as she mentioned "I know you like books".***  Art?

Thus

      Now you see where today's title comes from.  A long journey to get here, yet so very worth it.

Dammit, the rain has stopped and I can see blue skies!  Any moment now that swining sun will put in an appearance <annoyed face>.

Finally -
Because I want to post this and get some lunch - hey even camouflaged alien spies need to eat - I shall end with an entry from Ambrose Bierce's 'Englarged Devil's Dictionary'.  In case you are new here, or don't hail from the shores of South Canada (he came from there), this was originally called 'The Cynic's Word Book', which is accurate if a little dull.  Here we go:

     "Bachelor (n):  A man whom women are still sampling"

Archetypical example

     This will make sense on Facebook.  Honest.

*  None of that metric nonsense here.
**  I've no idea what this is, since I've never watched it and never intend to, but it sounded appropriate.
***  Accurate, and a bit of an understatement.