Defenders on a Rampage

 Some fifteen years ago, I blogged about Rampage magazine, and I expect all my readers to remember it vividly - but do go back and refresh your memory if you really must.

I've acquired plenty more old Rampage reprintings of Defenders comics since then, and learned a little more about the strange choice of which ones to reprint (the first two Marvel Feature stories with the Defenders appeared in Mighty World of Marvel magazine, and the third in the first issue of Rampage, before the second issue printed the first issue of the Defenders' own American comic), and I'm still fascinated by the variations in covers between the American and British titles! Some of the Rampage covers were word for word identical to the Defenders originals, rather more of them were rewritten to convey the same idea in slightly different words, and a wonderful few were wildly different in many ways. So here are my favourite, in no particular order, cases of translating Defenders into Rampagers!

Rampage 16 / Defenders 17

The most interesting one, of course - obviously Rampage was using an earlier draft of the American cover, before it was reworked to make the Hulk more prominent. The British dialogue sounds more like Cage's usual speech patterns, too...

Rampage 17 / Defenders 18

I just like how Defenders has 'Rampage' as a subtitle and vice versa. This is also a good demonstration of the way the British team didn't seem to have the coloured covers to hand, but just the line-art. They normally get the characters' colour schemes right, but the Wrecker is very wrong on this one.

Rampage 13 / Defenders 14

Spot the difference? The melodramatic "Alas" in the American cover caption was changed to a much more down-to-Earth "And" in the British version!

Rampage 32 / Defenders 32

But this one goes in the opposite direction - "take a look at" became a much more Death-like "behold" when this one crossed the Atlantic! Nighthawk is twice as horrified by it!

Rampage 28 / Defenders 28

Need we say more? Well, the good people of Rampage obviously thought the cover needed to say much, much more, and added a whole lot of excited-sounding captions! The robot shooting at the Hulk has been pivoted just a little, too, I guess to make the cover fit right on the Rampage page.

Rampage 27 / Defenders 27

With this one, the Rampage version is correcting a problem with the original comic - we're not meant to know these creatures are the Baddoon women until next issue, so it's a very intelligent rewrite! Even more interestingly, they've had to lower Dr Strange slightly to make the picture fit in the different dimensions of the Rampage cover - British comics were physically bigger than the American equivalent, but the cover illustration had to be squashed down a bit, or extended to the sides, to fit on the British covers. In this case, they did both - there's a good chunk of art to the left of the British cover that must have been cropped for the Americans.

Defenders 29 / Rampage 29

This one is a particularly great adaptation of the Defenders original cover. Not so much for the colouring - the aliens are meant to be green, not orange - but again for the subtle repositioning. Nighthawk is lower down, to reduce the height, and that meant someone had to re-draw the viewscreen behind him. Originally at an angle, it's now directly facing the reader. But the British cover also restores some things that must have been edited out of the American version - some kind of piece of wall, still at the angle the original viewscreen was, and also an extra alien soldier on the far left!

Rampage 6 / Defenders 5

With this earlier cover, the illustration stretches out quite a lot further to the right than it does on the Defenders version, but the really fun part is the speech bubbles. I think they must have just stuck them on the Rampage cover in the wrong order - if they'd deliberately decided to change the structure of Yandroth's sentence, they would probably have also fixed the punctuation...

Rampage 4 / Defenders 3

And this one is really great - they've amputated the Undying One's wings!

Rampage was great, though - a complete Defenders story every week, as the covers always boasted, plus backup strips too! I think black-and-white comics have gone sadly out of fashion now, but I'm sure with a bit of good marketing, Marvel UK could get British kids interested in this kind of thing again!

Sweets from a Stranger

 Now this is another favourite from Nicholas Fisk, although one I discovered quite a bit later than the many other books of his I'd read - I can't exactly fix a date on when I read it, but I would think I must have been a teenager. It's a collection of ten short stories, and re-reading it now all these years later is quite fascinating...

The cover has nothing to do with any of the stories in the book. It's credited to Dave Holmes, and it fits the generally creepy-sci-fi theme of the stories, but I assume it wasn't specifically commissioned for this edition. I don't remember the cover of the one I had from the library (Boston library, I think) in the old days. The illustrations inside the book aren't very good, though - by David Barlow, they actually depict the scenes nicely, but the faces are horrible and spoil the whole effect.

Anyway, you don't buy this kind of book for the pictures. What interests me about these ten stories is how familiar or unfamiliar I was with them some thirty years later - does that reflect on how good or bad the stories were, or on my appreciation or understanding of them at the time? Here's a run through the contents:

1. Sweets from a Stranger

I remembered this one almost word for word; it's very good. Eleven-year-old Tina can't help but laugh when a car driver makes an inept attempt to persuade her to get into his car with an offer of sweeties. It turns out he's an alien, doing a terrible job of trying to prepare for an invasion, and Tina has to help him phone home to tell his bosses he just can't do it. Grateful, he offers to show her his home planet, she goes along with him... and finds she actually has been cleverly kidnapped. Brilliant.

2. The Thieves of Galac

This one, though, didn't ring a bell at all. Mala and Tal are among the few remaining humans who stayed behind on Earth after a successful conquest by robots sent from Galac. It's a pretty miserable place, and now the sentinel robots have started stealing pointless junk for their senile masters back home. The short story seems to go through at least three different plots that would fuel a full-length sci-fi novel of the 1950s, and I'm surprised nothing stuck in my brain, but it's not the most compelling one in the book.

3. Space Invaders

I remember this one well, though the ending didn't stick in my brain at all. Jason is addicted to playing video games at the arcade, and he's stolen money from his mum's purse to do it. He wins a lot of money on the games, gets tired, keeps playing, and loses it all. But as he's on his last few coins the arcade games talk to each other in machine-language, and one of the games decides Jason is such a nice player, it will let him win! It's a nice story, even if the only bits that I recall were the bits with the arcade games - this book was published in 1982, and it's a very 1982 idea of the future of video games, which seemed strange even when I first read it. Still fun, though!

4. Mind-Milk

No recollection of this one in the slightest. Alien creatures use their mindprobe to 'milk' the daydreams of children, only for it to turn out that one boy is daydreaming about destroying those same alien creatures. I probably don't remember this one because I just didn't get it... and I still don't really get what Nicholas Fisk was going for here. I suppose there'll always be a dud or two in a collection like this.

5. Perfect Paul

This one, on the other hand, I remember well, just because I remember it being a surprisingly stupid story from a great writer. Young Paul is a perfect child in every way, and when he dies in a bike accident, he's far too perfect to go to the normal good people's afterlife; he gets exclusive VIP treatment and gets sent to Uppermost, where his perfection even annoys the people there. So they give him the ultimate punishment, and have him reincarnated as a schoolteacher. It's a very lame punchline.

6. Oddiputs

From the worst to the best, this is one I remember very vividly, and it's brilliant. Oddiputs is a robot who doesn't quite work properly, and is the victim of constant teasing and mistreatment by evil eight-year-old Sally. Eventually, Oddiputs' flawed thinking process leads him to the conclusion that he must kill her. It's a very creepy battle of wits, with a great ending!

7. Swap-Shop

Again, this is one I remember clearly, though I'd forgotten there's an extra bit at the end. Bogey and Jo discover a hole in the wall that seems to be a portal to some other universe. If you put something in it, the other side will send back a superior alien equivalent, always powered by a little button with a golden worm spinning in it. After a lot of experimentation and attempts to communicate with the other side, Bogey climbs through the hole himself, and comes back... different. Very creepy and cool, but I remembered it as ending with the moment of his return and was surprised to find it goes on a bit beyond that, while still remaining inconclusive. Still fun to read, anyway!

8. Nightmare's Dream

This is why I wanted to write about the stories I remembered and didn't remember, because I don't remember reading this one at all, and I have a worrying feeling that this is because I completely missed what the story's all about. A normal boy has horrible dreams that he's a hideous alien monster chained up in a yard on Earth... or is it the other way around? Very cool, and although I hope my younger self did get it, I rather think he didn't. Oh well, at least I can appreciate it at the age of forty-five!

9. Cutie Pie

Another one where I didn't remember the ending. Is it a weakness with the stories that makes them a little anti-climactic, with the really good ideas earlier in the narrative? Or is it me not being an attentive reader? Maybe a little of both. Anyway, an adorable alien creature is brought to Earth from an inhospitable alien planet, and becomes the latest international sensation. But Cutie Pie doesn't thrive in the perfectly-recreated atmosphere of the planet he came from - and no wonder, because he's not a native of that planet, he'd gone there to endure the conditions as a test of manhood. Nearly killed by his captivity, he escapes, finds Earth's atmosphere much more liveable, and recovers. And then in a bit I don't remember at all, makes friends with a baby and goes back home. I think it IS the endings being anti-climactic, because the really great storytelling in a lot of these ones is already done by the middle of the tale!

10. Teddies Rule, OK?

This one's a complete blank in my memory. Little Mandy is inseparable from her teddy bear, and her father decides to surprise her by giving it artificial intelligence so it can talk back to her. And it all gets a bit creepy from there. But the story is rather vague about everything, and it's a slightly limp ending to a collection that's definitely got more hits than misses.

I really recommend this, and the rest of Nicholas Fisk's oeuvre, as essential reading! Please do find as many of them as you can, and maybe we can re-introduce him to a whole new generation! I'm sure nothing could go wrong with that idea, unless their teddy bears and robots start giving them ideas...

Mind sporting

Here's some advance warning - the British Othello Championship will be in Cambridge on July 23-24. Go here to read more and register! There will also almost certainly be a proper Mind Sports Olympiad in London at the end of August, with all the usual fun and games! Maybe even a memory competition, you never know. In any case, I'll be going to both.

Now this is the kind of thing the internet is made for

 You can get miniature arcade games nowadays, small enough to fit on your desk with a two-inch screen, but playing the arcade classics. You can get a Bubble Bobble, but it's the NES version - decidedly inferior to both the original arcade game and the Sega Master System one - so you probably shouldn't. But I stumbled across a blog belonging to a dedicated game fan, who ripped his miniature Pac-Man apart and discovered that the PCB inside contains six different games, but only one of them is unlocked for each different commercial release! Now that's the kind of money-saving hack the world really needs in these difficult economic times!

This is why I try to restrict random browsing of internet articles - now I'm feeling compelled to hack into the inner workings of everything I possess and see what transpires...

Madness at Maxy's

 If, like most people, you have friends who only tolerate your presence in order to play your computer games, it's important to buy the right ones - as this classic advert tells us.

Now, think about this. There's no way Maxy had enough money in his pockets to buy the entire range of Atarisoft games. Is he a surprisingly accomplished shoplifter, or do his unfortunate parents not keep a close eye on their wallets? Either way, Maxy's desperate attempt to buy the feigned respect and appreciation of his peers has started him on the road to a life of crime. I worry for his future.

I'm all right, though - I've still got Arcade Smash Hits for the Sega Master System, and I was just playing it yesterday. I could get a girl like that any time I like! Until she gets it for her dad's computer and dumps me, anyway.

Found it at last!

The book with a talking dog called Bob and the hole in the ozone layer was almost certainly "Hole in the Head", by Nicholas Fisk! Now after all that exhaustive internet research, I just need to find a copy...

I may have been posting quite a lot about old books just lately, but I DO have several other fascinating things going on, it's just that I don't want to write about them until they happen, so I can only really think to blog about the books. I've just re-read Annerton Pit by Peter Dickinson, and it's even better than I remembered!

The dangers of memory

 I just noticed a fun letter in Synapsia magazine, summer 1991, about the imminent first World Memory Championships (which had just been moved from Rome to London and dropped all mention of $10,000 prize money). From one Caro Ayre, it says:

I fear that there is a danger that some contestants in these events will devote too much time and effort perfecting a particular feat, to the point where "normal life" ceases. Will they become famous? Probably. But will they live fulfilled and rewarding lives, or will they be stuck with a shallow self promoting existence, which will preclude emotional fulfilment? No doubt there will be some with a well rounded disposition who will use their skills outside the competitive field. But there will be others for whom winning will become of such importance that failure could destroy them.

I hope I'm one of the well-adjusted, emotionally fulfilled ones, but since I make a point of not using my skills outside the competitive field, I think I must be one of the others. So I hope everybody's going to let me win in memory competitions from now on! Failure could destroy me!

Wordle 2 - the sequel

 You see, this is what happens when an evil corporation like the New York Times takes over a thing like Wordle - they start to destroy the competition!

I've been playing the originally-named Wordle2 since quitting while I was ahead with the real Wordle - Wordle2 is exactly the same, but better in every way because it has six-letter words instead of five, and you get to play it twice a day instead of once. But the similarities were obviously too much for the evil New York Times to tolerate, so today Wordle2 has changed its name to Word Hurdle and added an extra little announcement to the top of the page:

This game is not associated with The New York Times. We will soon be moving to www.wordhurdle.in

I'm sure that will help them hide from the evil world-dominating New York Times corporation (who in my only other experience of them wrote that really nice article about the Extreme Memory Tournament). I've played "Word Hurdle" 64 times so far; I'll quit when I get to 72, for the golf-themed reasons I talked about in February, so the evil New York Times can go ahead and destroy it in another four days.

Even more space

 Here's another book I looked up while I'm in the children's sci-fi frame of mind - Space Trap, by Monica Hughes!

I didn't remember the title, or the writer - I thought it might possibly have been another Nicholas FIsk, though it's not entirely his kind of style. Luckily, I remembered that there's a slightly tetchy robot called Mr Isnek Ansnek, so it was easy to google. All books should be so convenient - I'm still drawing a blank with "the one with a talking dog, possibly called Bob, and a plot involving the hole in the ozone layer"...

But Space Trap comes with a description on Open Library saying "When twelve-year-old Valerie and her brother and sister fall through a space trap and are transmitted to an alien planet, they seek ways to return to the thirty-second century." - which isn't exactly what happens. They're still in the thirty-second century, they're just on a different planet. And really, it's all about seeking the one unique way to get back to the planet they started out on, but that's just being pedantic.

Blame it on the weatherman

 Taking a break from reading old Nicholas Fisk books, I decided to branch out into Peter Dickinson, and read The Weathermonger...

I hadn't read this one since I was a teenager, but thanks to that wonderful resource, Open Library, I learned something entirely new - the American edition is strikingly different to the British one! Not just in the usual changes of spelling and understandable adjustments like changing the colloquial "Nigromancer" for "Necromancer", but the whole Merlin plot at the climax of the book was completely rewritten, removing the whole morphine addiction idea and replacing it with, well, something a bit incoherent, really.

There's an interview with Peter Dickinson here, in which he says that the rewrite was an improvement, but then he was talking to Americans there. Having read them both, I think the British original is a lot better - the American version isn't really clear about to what extent Mr Furbelow is still contributing to Merlin's condition, or exactly how Geoffrey and Sally resolve it. Be like Merlin - stick with England and ignore the rest of the world!

(Very) Old Memories

 A few people on Facebook have been enthusiastic about discussing the olden days of memory competitions - some of them even before my time! It's hard to find talk about the memory championships of the 1990s on the internet, but you can still find the Olympiad News from the early days of the MSO if you know where to look (use the Wayback Machine on msoworld.com), to give us the first I will have ever heard about the World Memory Championship - a few articles focusing almost entirely on Dominic O'Brien, mentioning Andi Bell too and not mentioning any of the other 18 competitors in 1997.

It didn't immediately excite me when I read about this event, but it did eventually penetrate my skull and become a lifelong obsession, so here is how it all began...

Tuesday 19 August 1997

MEMORY MAN

Dominic O'Brien, the current World Memory Champion, is hot favourite to retain his title this year. Here he talks to the Olympiad News production team.

What is your impression of the Mind Sports Olympiad?

It's a big event! It's also rather worrying - I feel as if I am being fattened up for the kill. But I hope to do the killing myself! Of course the Mind Sports Olympiad is an excellent event.

You're competing in the memory championship, any other events?

No. I am just concentrating on trying to retain the memory title (the competition is on Thursday and Friday) and am directing all my efforts in that direction.

In the future do you fancy your chances in other events?

Maybe the IQ or perhaps the speed reading. I am not fast at the moment but when I have some spare time I will devote my attention to it.

What other events interest you?

Mainly the chess and backgammon but I have spent most of my time doing interviews with national newspapers and television.

How long have you been preparing for the memory championships?

Six weeks. I have been dealing out lots of cards and flashing lots of numbers up on my computer screen. I have devised my own program to do this.

What other things have you been doing recently?

I have been writing a memory course, comprising four books and 12 audio tapes, which will be published in the autumn by Linguaphone, the language people. They want to get involved in memory and this should be a good vehicle for them. The series will be called Super Memory Power.

How do you see the future for memory competitions?

It seems to me that they could become very popular as they are completely egalitarian - something everyone can do. Anyone can scribble numbers down and try to remember them. You don't need a chessboard, or Scrabble set, or backgammon board. If you know the right techniques anyone can do it. By getting involved in this publishing work I am, in a sense, digging my own grave. I eventually see myself perhaps devoting all my time to teaching, becoming the David Leadbetter of memory.

What did you do before concentrating on memory?

I used to have a job extracting silver from photographic waste. Unfortunately the price of silver plummeted, so I had to do something else.

And what got you started on memory?

About ten years ago I saw Creighton Carvello on Record Breakers, memorising a pack of cards in 2 minutes 59 seconds. I though this was fascinating and looked into it. It took me three months to beat this time, and it was a further four years before it became a profession for me.

What are the practical applications?

If anything is good for the mind, it is memory training. Memory training develops all cortical skills and trains the whole of the brain, using both hemispheres. The techniques of using association, imagination and location employ all elements of the brain.

Are alternative techniques possible?

This is difficult, because the established methods are the most natural (the Greeks were using them 2,000 years ago). You can tinker with the details but the basic technique remains the same.

How has your memory work helped you in other areas?

I am generally more switched on and more focused and my concentration is much improved. Recently an EEG was taken on my brain, while I was memorising cards, and it reported that my brain went into the alpha state (7hz), which is the perfect learning state. It is also the state achieved when you meditate. I suppose this is logical, because if you are concentrating hard for 38 seconds, you can't afford to start wondering if you've left the cooker on.

The events in the 1997 World Memory Championship are:

1. Memorisation of a 4,000 digit number in one hour.
2. Memorisation of 100 names and faces in 15 minutes.
3. Memorisation of 500 random words in 15 minutes.
4. Memorisation of a 300 digit spoken number, one digit every two seconds. This is scored by sudden death. If you get the second digit wrong, you score 2.
5. Memorisation of as many packs of cards as possible in an hour.
6. Memorisation of a random number, five minutes allowed.
7. Memorisation of images on screen: 40 images are shown and memorised. 80 are then shown again and the previously seen ones then have to be identified.
8. Memorisation of a 1,000 digit binary number in half an hour.
9. Memorisation of a 500 word poem, with punctuation, in 15 minutes.
10. A surprise competition, 20 minutes.
11. Memorisation of one pack of cards, in the fastest time possible. The competition world record is held by Andy Bell (41.37 seconds). Dominic's world record (outside competition) is 38.29 seconds.

Friday 22 August 1997

MEMORY MATTERS

One of the media darlings of the MSO has been reigning World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien. His amazing skills are readily accessible to the public - everyone can understand the magnitude of the feats performed in this event. O'Brien started today's championships with a record-breaking performance. At the same time, rival Andy Bell made it clear that this year's Memoriad will be a vicious battle.

The first of the 12 challenges is the memorisation of a multiple digit number in an hour. This year the test number totalled 4,000 digits since the customary 2,000 was considered too low(!). O'Brien shattered his own world record of 1,392 by raising the mark to 1,512. Incredibly, Bell took an early lead in the competition by toppling Dominic from this list for the first time - the world record is now 1,620 digits!

O'Brien then resumed his customary spot at the head of the leader table by winning the 100 names and faces event, as well as the 500 random words (with another world record). Bell moved closer by winning the 300 spoken numbers - another O'Brien speciality - and another double world record, Andy raising the bar in this competition to 228.

The tension escalated as these titans continued to vault over earlier mental landmarks. In the one hour recall of packs of playing cards another double world record ended in a new theft of an O'Brien speciality. Bell managed an astonishing 1,170, eclipsing Dominic by over 200 cards. Nevertheless, O'Brien managed to extend his slender lead with an unmatched world record in the speed numbers.

After the seventh event, the recall of screen images, the first day of competition ended, and the warriors could retire to tend to their aching brains. O'Brien took another first, and must still be the overall favourite. Nevertheless, with Bell scoring remarkable successes in some of O'Brien's favourite events, tomorrow should provide further drama. As O'Brien remarked somewhat shakily early today: 'I'm a good each-way bet, but I wouldn't put any money on the nose.'

'I memorise ten packs of cards a day. When it's over, I usually have a headache.' - Dominic O'Brien,

Saturday 23 August 1997

THE £1 MILLION BRAIN

'Yes, I was worried - I was worried before the event and I was worried after the first round. But when I went home after the first day, after Andy (Bell) had crashed out, I knew I was safe. Andy knew he couldn't win then. You just can't crash out and still win.' - Dominic O'Brien

Dominic O'Brien retained his title as World Memory Champion yesterday after a tough battle. His win was celebrated in great style when the sponsors, Skandia, presented him with a certificate insuring his brain against accident for a year, to the tune of £1,000,000. Dominic accepted the award in evening dress and a blue crash helmet, demonstrating both elegance and due care for his valuable equipment.

This year O'Brien had to fend off a determined challenge from Andy Bell, who set three new world memory records before stumbling in the sixth event, speed numbers. Until this moment Bell and O'Brien had been neck and neck, but when O'Brien set another record here and Bell crashed out, the duel was effectively over.

Bell explained that he had lost his rhythm in the speed numbers (five minutes to recall as many digits as possible), having accomplished after three minutes what he felt he should have managed in one. Andy refused to post a low score: 'On the spur of the moment I walked out. I was very disappointed.' He added that he felt he would have moved ahead of O'Brien here.

Asked if he had concentrated his training on his rival's specialities, Bell offered a flat 'no'. 'That's just the way the cards fell. I think I could have done even better; there is huge room for improvement. It wouldn't surprise me if someone new came out of the blue next year and won this event at their first attempt. All it takes is a good technique.'

Watching the final event, speed cards (one deck, best of two attempts), it was clear that the rivals were both straining to set a new world record but, sadly for the spectators, both fell short.

This event illustrated a clear contrast in style between these two great memorisers. O'Brien speeds through the deck methodically, rarely pausing. When finished, Dominic sits with his eyes closed as he burns the sequence into his brain. Bell does bursts of several cards at a time, repeating this after a brief delay. He appears to fix his images while staring into space.

'Yes, I do them three at a time, Dominic does two,' Bell explained. 'I form an image like a kangaroo through a pineapple, and then assign a location to it.'

Record-Breakers

Six new records were set at the MSO:

One hour random numbers
A. Bell 1,620 digits; D. O'Brien 1,512 (Old Record: 1,392 D. O'Brien)

500 words
D. O'Brien 155 words

Spoken number
A. Bell 228 digits; D. O'Brien 207 (OR: 200 D. O'Brien)

One hour multiple decks of cards
A. Bell 1,170 cards; D. O'Brien 936 (OR: 780 D. O'Brien)

Speed numbers
D. O'Brien 240 digits (OR: 200 D. O'Brien)

Binary number
D. O'Brien 2,385 digits; A. Bell 2,058 (OR: 1,926 D. O'Brien)

Podcast away

 Check out this interview with me on The Human Podcast - brand new, hot off the presses, recorded last weekend!

I still don't like podcasts, but I can tolerate the ones that come with videos. I don't think anything with ME in it is worth watching, and certainly not this one, but there are other interviews with much more interesting people on his channel, so please remember to like and subscribe, like all YouTube people are very keen for you to do!

A question of chronology

 Here's another Nicholas Fisk I've acquired - Leadfoot!

Like Space Hostages, this wasn't the edition I read when I was young, but unlike Space Hostages, this one is (according to the small print at the start of the book) a "revised edition". Revised in what way?

Leadfoot (another favourite of mine) wasn't one of the earliest Fisk books I read; I can't really fix a date when I did read it, but I'm sure it must have been before 1992. And I would have got it from the library, so it probably wouldn't have been a brand new copy - I really must have read the original 1980 text.

So what's changed? Well, all I can see is that first page, and the line "built in 1926: so it was about six times Rob's age." Rob, as we're told a couple of pages later, is "aged about eleven", and to quote Sherlock Holmes, the calculation is a simple one - the current year is 1992.

This one isn't a futuristic science-fiction story, it's set in the present day and grounded in reality, but there aren't any precise references to what year it is. The plot, a camping trip in the Highlands, could happen in any year in the latter half of the twentieth century. I don't remember the book word for word, obviously, but I remember all the best scenes and cleverest lines, and those are all exactly as I remember them. Does the 'revised edition' really consist of a single change to how many times older than Rob the Alvis is, on the first page? Or have I missed something? I'll have to track down a first edition now...

Space Hostages!

I decided to splash out and buy a pile of old books on Wob (which used to be World of Books, but seems to have decided "wob" sounds somehow cooler). It's mainly the fault of my brother, for buying a complete DVD of the BBC Tripods series, which just reminded me how long it is since I read the books - and having got into the children's science-fiction mindset I just had to do what I've been talking about for many many years, and stock up on Nicholas Fisk books.

 Space Hostages was the first Nicholas Fisk I ever read, and as it turns out it was the earliest of his works that I ever read, first published in 1967. I found it in Horncastle library nearly twenty years later - I must have been around eight years old the first time I read it, which is a bit below the recommended reading age of 10 that this edition comes with, and even if I didn't entirely get the more subtle aspects of the plot it still absolutely hooked me. I think it took a couple of years to develop into a full fixation, but I was soon eagerly searching any library or second-hand book stall for anything with the Fisk name on it, and enjoying every one!

The Fisk name, incidentally, was a cool pen-name. Stephen King once said that the ideal name for a writer of sensational fiction is one with seven or eight letters in the first name and four letters in the surname, allowing the book to print the first name in a smaller font and the surname below it, twice the size. "Nicholas Fisk" follows that rule, and sounds somehow very cool and edgy with it. His real name, David Higginbottom, was obviously completely unsuitable to put on the covers of children's books...

The story of Space Hostages is simple enough - it's a 1967 perception of the near future (a moon base has been established within the last year or so, but everything else feels very contemporary. The Beatles are mentioned in passing as something you'd turn on a radio to hear) and a huge flying saucer lands unexpectedly on the cricket pitch of a small village, population around 170 people. So quite the metropolis compared to the place I grew up, but still the kind of setting I could easily identify with! It turns out not to be aliens, but a British military construction, designed to evacuate the privileged people of the country in the event of a global nuclear war (international tensions are running high, but seem to consist entirely of endless talks that the average people of the world are bored with). The ship is manned by a single Flight Lieutenant, who has found out about it, been outraged and decided to take matters into his own hands. Unfortunately, he exposed himself to the nuclear engines in the process of stealing it, and is rapidly dying of radiation poisoning. He invites a group of village children to come and see inside the ship, and then takes off with them on board as part of an incoherent plan to either hold them hostage and demand world peace, or failing that have them rebuild the human race after its destruction. His mind is essentially gone already, and he dies shortly after, leaving the children adrift in space with no idea how to fly the ship.

That's the set-up for what turns out to be not at all an exciting outer space adventure, but a fascinating character study of the conflict between Brylo (the clever one) and Tony (the self-proclaimed leader). We see things mainly from Brylo's perspective, but it becomes clear that Tony is deeply insecure, and others don't recognise how surprisingly sharp and intelligent he really is precisely because he's so desperate to make everyone think he's the best. He's a wonderful character, and the way the story develops is absolutely gripping - especially if you've never read anything quite like it before! You should all go and read it if you can find a copy (Wob might have another one, maybe? Open Library have a few Fisks, but not that one, sadly - or you could find it in a charity shop, perhaps? It's worth hunting for, anyway!)

I'm well and truly back in the Nicholas Fisk mood, it's great!

The Obelisk has jumped from the ground

 This little comic - one of the many that came free with He-Man toys in the mid-1980s - is, in the considered opinion of at least two people in the world, the best and most influential of them. It's the thrilling story of the Obelisk!

The comic uses its 14 pages to tell a classic story of good versus evil. What distinguishes it from most stories using that theme is that 'good' and 'evil' are the names of two groups who try to achieve exactly the same thing, by exactly the same means. The He-Man cartoon always made a point of hammering home an important moral about the right way to behave towards others, but there's none of that in this comic. I've always said that it's a problem with this kind of toy range - in most of the fiction, the evil villains threaten innocents in some way, and our heroes thwart their dastardly plans. But they don't sell toys of innocent civilians, so when children are creating their own adventures, all they can really do is line the two sides up and have them batter each other senseless!

Writer Karen Sargentich isn't exactly a household name, but there is some information available about her on the internet. She was a senior copywriter for Mattel Toys, but writing the accompanying fiction doesn't seem to have been a major part of her job description. A website about her brother Lewis Sargentich, a noted Harvard professor, describes Karen as the 'author of The Obelisk and "Dad Turned 90 on the 4th of July: Daniel Milo Sargentich"'. The latter was an article published in "Serb World USA" magazine in 1999, so The Obelisk would seem to have been her only published work of fiction.

I'd always assumed from the bizarre and sometimes borderline incomprehensible dialogue in The Obelisk that its writer spoke English as a second language, and it seems the Sargentich kids were born in the USA to a Serbian immigrant father, so that might explain wonderful phrases like "Teela, warn us if Skeletor comes."

Artist Alfredo P. Alcala, meanwhile, originated in the Philippines, but had a lengthy career drawing comics in America in the seventies and eighties. He did a fair few Conan the Barbarian comics for Marvel, and DC's bare-chested hero Arak, Son of Thunder, so he was an obvious choice to draw He-Man comics. He does a fantastic job here, making the toy-based characters recognisable and cool-looking, and as we'll see on page 13, inventing some wonderful monsters!

Does Buzz-Off not know how to read, or does it just not occur to him to fly a little closer?

"Now Tri-Klops will keep you from reading the words on the Obelisk!" is a line that has always stuck with me over the years. It's a slightly strange thing for He-Man to say while hitting Tri-Klops in the face, but I guess it gets the point across.

The classic lines keep coming. "Then we'll use the power of the Obelisk to do him in!" "Gadzooks. It says OOOGLE GALUMP GALEE. What's that?"

Skeletor and his gang are sitting outside an accurate representation of the Snake Mountain toy - it must be a nice sunny day, so they don't want to go indoors.

Perhaps the greatest moment in this comic is the Sorceress telling He-Man "Do not let him learn about the words," which is followed immediately by the caption "Skeletor has heard everything..."

And really, is it any wonder Skeletor has heard everything? The Sorceress is flying up in the sky, about half a mile away from He-Man, and shouting this confidential secret message down to him!

He-Man and Mekaneck grab photon rays thrown from the Obelisk. These seem to make He-Man's hands glow for one further panel, but otherwise do nothing. Drat, he says, to make clear his horror at the idea of an evil power being released.

And then we get these wonderful creations! "I can escape horrid situations" is a wonderful way to introduce yourself, isn't it? And "I search and destroy" from the 'good' one makes it pretty clear that there's no moral distinction between 'good' and 'evil' in this world.

But no sooner are these new monsters released than the Obelisk falls apart, and that's the end. The Obelisk never does come again.

And the back page shows the toys you can buy - although strangely this one still shows the previous year's line-up, instead of giving us pictures of Mekaneck, Buzz-Off and the other most recently released figures. I wonder if Karen Sargentich was also responsible for such snappy phrases as "Evil & sees everything"? If only she'd written more adventures like this for the toy-buying kids of the 1980s to enjoy!

Not as cool as Dr Crippen

 If you do get lost looking for me and end up in Australia, as detailed yesterday, then I suppose you could do worse than checking out the black sheep of the Pridmore family, as seen here on the "Twisted History" website. I don't know if they actually do 'murder tours' to see the site of what seems to be a fairly unexceptional murder - they seem to mainly focus on ghost tours and the like - but you never know.

It's not a particularly pleasant or even exciting story, is it? Still, he's a relative, and one in a much more exotic location than you'll normally find for my family tree. Moving from Bourne to Sheffield was the biggest relocation for my branch until I came along...

There are quite a lot of branches of the Pridmore family that come from my fertile great-great-great-great-grandfather, James Pridmore (1777-1848). He had around sixteen children with his two wives - the four most notable from the second marriage are:

Jane (born 1816), my great-great-great-grandmother, who kept the Pridmore name intact by having an illegitimate daughter who in turn had an illegitimate son;

Thomas (born 1820), the great-great-great-grandfather of Robert Craig, who has a really great website full of family tree detail and is a very nice person all round;

James (born 1821), the patriarch of the other family of Pridmores who moved to Sheffield, who really make family tree research more confusing than it needs to be;

And the youngest of the big family, Henry (born 1830), who emigrated to Australia with his baby son John, future author of the Brunswick Tragedy.

It would be nice if I had relatives who'd done really cool things that made them famous, but you take what you can get when you're researching family trees.

What three words?

 If you want to get to my house (or at least to a convenient parking space near to my house) and for some reason you don't want to use the postcode like normal people, then you can use the what3words thing that advertises on TV and seems to think it's really great. When my new washing machine was delivered, they asked for that, and I gave them the key words 'barn-packet-mass'.

But you've got to be careful if you're using that system - 'barn-packets-mass' takes you to eastern Bucharest. 'bran-packet-mass' puts you on the east coast of Australia. 'bran-packets-mass' sticks with Australia but dumps you absolutely in the middle of nowhere in the Northern Territory. It's inherently dangerous, and I'm surprised the washing machine got here at all!

Lost media

Here's something I did last year - recovered something that was thought lost forever! Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, a wonderful cartoon that I've talked about many times before, had a redubbed version broadcast by Nick Jr in the UK, using British voices (it's generally agreed among TV people that very young children should be protected from hearing what foreigners sound like; from about the age of seven it becomes acceptable to hear the sound of Americans, Canadians and other undesirables).

These UK versions are immeasurably better than the originals, so it's a shame that they disappeared from our screens a while ago. The DVD release in this country for some reason used the original voices. So when I looked on YouTube to see if the few episodes missing from my taped-from-the-TV VHS collection were on there, I was pleased to see that they were - and it turned out there were some missing ones that nobody else had a copy of!

So I uploaded the missing ones, and now you can see a complete playlist of the entire series! Go and watch it, it's really great!

There was a page on Lost Media Wiki and everything, you know, and now it's been officially marked as Found!

A pitch to Dragon's Den

Bright sunshine, and summer by the pool. A man on a sun lounger, wearing swimming trunks and sunglasses, fans himself with an ornate peacock-feather fan. A second man enters, carrying a tray with two glasses of drink and a tray of ice cubes.

 

FIRST MAN: Gosh, it’s hot today!

 

SECOND MAN: You know what’s nice in hot weather? A nice cold glass of dandelion and burdock!

 

He hands a glass to the first man, who takes it and drinks.

 

FIRST MAN: Mmm, that’s nice, but it would be nicer if it was just a little colder…

 

SECOND MAN: No problem! I made a tray of ice cubes! Say when!

 

Second man starts putting ice cubes one at a time into the first man’s drink. The first man just smiles at the camera as if the scene is over. This goes on for quite a long time before fading out to a black screen.

 

 

NARRATOR: A common everyday scene. But what happens when the weather is cold, rather than hot?

 

 

Fade into the same summer scene, but the first man, still on the sun lounger, is now wrapped up in thick coats, scarves, hats, mittens and so on. He shivers, as the second man enters again, carrying a tray with two steaming mugs.

 

FIRST MAN: Gosh, it’s cold today!

 

SECOND MAN: You know what’s nice in cold weather? A nice hot mug of camomile tea!

  

He hands a mug to the first man, who takes it and drinks.

 

               FIRST MAN: Mmm, that’s nice, but it would be nicer if it was just a little hotter…

 

               SECOND MAN: Sorry, that’s as hot as it gets.

 

They stand awkwardly, looking at the camera, until the scene eventually fades to black.

 

 

               NARRATOR: Clearly, something needs to be done about this.

 

 

Fade into a school chemistry lab, in which a group of interested twelve-year-olds are watching a teacher demonstrating the workings of a pair of taps on a sink.

 

 NARRATOR: As we all learned in school, there are two kinds of water: “hot” and “cold”.

 

 

Cut to a kitchen, where a woman fills an ice cube tray with water from the cold tap. As the narrator talks, she carefully carries the tray out of the kitchen, through a dining room, through a living room where a family are sitting on a sofa watching darts on TV, through another dining room, and up a small flight of stairs to a freezer on the landing. She opens it and puts the ice cube tray inside.

 

NARRATOR: And most of us have one of these in our household too: an “ice cube making tray”. After we give it a drink of water, we take it to the freezer, put it inside, wait for a little while, and open the freezer to find that the tray has made cold ice, for us to put in our drinks!

 

The woman waits by the freezer, tapping her foot and looking at her watch for a few seconds, then opens the freezer again, takes out a tray of ice cubes and shows it to the camera.

 

 

Cut back to the same kitchen. The woman this time fills the tray from the hot tap, carries it out of an external door, across a lawn and over to an oven, which she opens and puts the tray inside.

 

NARRATOR: But what happens when we try to use the same technology to make hot ice? Well, our housewife is going to be sadly disappointed when she opens the oven…

 

The woman opens the oven door and reacts with disappointment. The camera closes in to find that the oven is entirely empty, with no tray or ice in evidence.

 

 

Cut to a laboratory full of bubbling test tubes and beakers of colourful liquid. The narrator, dressed in scientist clothes and a large false beard, stands behind the table and addresses the camera. She picks up an empty ice cube tray and shows it to the camera, then repeatedly ducks under the table to reappear with a series of other objects – small radio, television, large model vehicles – which she holds up to the camera as she mentions them.

 

NARRATOR: Ice, as we know it, only comes in one variety: “cold”. Technology has not yet reached the point where we can enjoy hot ice in our drinks on a cold winter’s day. The problem, you see, is that the old-fashioned ice cube making tray is like a radio – it can only make sounds, and not pictures. So to get pictures as well as sounds, we invented the television. It’s like a car, that can only go along the ground and not in the air. So to get in the air as well as on the ground, we invented the aeroplane. Or it’s like a boat, which can only go on the water. So to go on the water and also on the ground, we invented the hovercraft.

 

The narrator ducks down underneath the table again and doesn’t reappear, as another narrator dressed as a scientist walks in, holding a collecting tin and jangling the coins in it.

 

SECOND NARRATOR: It is clearly possible for scientists to invent a hot ice cube making tray. It will probably cost about a million pounds, give or take. I mean, it might be less – how hard can it be to invent things, once we’ve already told them what they need to invent? Coming up with the idea is the difficult bit. But if you give us a million quid, and there’s anything left over at the end, we’ll buy you a drink with the change. And put some ice in it, too! Hot or cold!

 

The narrator laughs extensively until the scene finally fades to black.

Mandora the Evil Chaser

The winter of 1987 will forever be associated with two things - the heaviest snow you can ever imagine and the exciting debut of Thundercats on the BBC! The two will always be inextricably linked in my mind, at any rate.

Thirty-five years ago today, Thursday 26 February 1987, the snow was just a fond memory, but Thundercats was launching into its golden age. The first eight episodes (or nine, technically, since the first two were shown as a 40-minute compilation to British audiences) had been the world-building original stories, introducing the characters and settings, and chronicling their early adventures. With those out of the way, the series recruited a team of talented writers to create the main bulk of the episodes, and the first of them was broadcast today - Mandora the Evil Chaser.

It must have been the half-term holidays. We can use the BBC genome website to confirm the date, and for once I can use my own memory to provide the details without needing to ask my brother - we definitely watched this one at our grandma's house. It would have been our mother's birthday the previous day, so we probably all went to Toton for the whole week. I don't really remember anything else about it, but watching Mandora there has definitely stayed with me.

It's a fantastic episode, it really is. You should go and watch it - and watch it as a ten-year-old in 1987, because that's the best way to experience the wonders of Thundercats. I fully intend to celebrate a whole series of 35th anniversary viewings on Saturdays going forwards. It's The Ghost Warrior next week, and that's quite possibly the best one of them all!