Alfie

Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow

01. 02. 67

Sketch Sunday

John Brunner - Stand On Zanzibar

Chad C. Mulligan....

MMM: "By The Cosmic Dust!" - Ulysses 34

And so we speed through the first half of the second disc, putting episodes 10 - 13 under the cosmic microscope....

EPISODE 10

A nice sedate, somewhat yearning opening to this episode, Telemachus watching the video memory of his mother. Again, an earth-like planet is detected in the Odyssey's path. It transpires this is a living museum and our heroes are pulled in and shrunk to suit by a magical prism. Landing the Odyssey in the sea, preferring the open water, Ulysses sets out to find the source of the mysterious transmission and is trapped in a giant clam....

The children set out in pursuit, traversing a graveyard of spaceships, in the hope of finding Ulysses. Both are separately swept up by the slaves of The Great Antipotese and end up within the museum itself, Ulysses's ship encrusted and mistaken for a pearl. Can our tiny heroes evade Antipotese (and his wild cat) long enough to use the prism to restore themselves and their ship...?

EPISODE 11

"...even in death you will find no peace."

The Odyssey is passed by a remote control capsule which turns out to be an empty Trident Transporter. Ulysses follows it, hoping it will lead them to the base of the gods and provide clues as to the route back to Earth. Suddenly the Odyssey encounters and unknown energy zone and is sucked into a vortex, crossing into a new dimension, arriving at The Stairway of Olympus....

After continuing in the shuttle for some time, and having defeated the gods' 'Immortal Army' Ulysses, separated from the children is given a choice - will he choose the armchair on the left or right, will he choose the route back to Earth over the children? The choice is an easy one, of course, the episode then ending somewhat abruptly (but not without Shirka mournfully echoing that they are "lost in the universe of Olympus. Lost. Lost....")

EPISODE 12

"The crew. Save the crew."

The Odyssey is drifting in deep space when it comes across a luminous object that is in fact "remnants of an old spaceship" from 2001 Earth. Hoping to find the route back to Earth on the ship's computer our heroes stumble across a crew member in suspended animation. Before falling back into a deep sleep the captain warns Ulysses that the crew can be found on the twin planets of fire and ice.... 

Ulysses speeds to their rescue leaving the children to puzzle over the true identity of the surviving "captain".... The Sign of the Trident reveals that he is, naturally, a tool of the gods and that Ulysses, his shuttle now trapped in a brilliant vortex between fire and ice - "...either way your fate is sealed..." - is in extreme danger. The children speed to his rescue while Nono tackles the creepy, Terminator-esque "captain"....

EPISODE 13

The children are playing hide and seek when Yumi suddenly declares that Zotra, "The White Planet" is coming. It is, in fact, a "meteoric object" that is approaching and Ulysses manages to just avoid it by carefully piloting the Odyssey. Yumi is convinced it is a part of Zotra and persuades Ulysses to follow it to be sure. The meteor leads them to a swamp planet and Ulysses and Umi travel down to the surface to investigate. Unfortunately they come under some sort of attack and static interference means the signal back to the Odyssey (and the anxious Telemachus and Nono) is jammed and eventually lost....

Ulysses and Yumi suddenly return to the Odyssey and order Telemachus to turn the transmitter off and to leave the planet's orbit at full speed. Telemachus has his suspicions and, while his real father battles multiple copies of himself on the planet surface, he must evade this dangerous duplicate, switch on the radio and send a shuttle in time to save them....

Hmm, unlucky 13 for this episode as there seems to be a real dip in quality in terms of both the rendering of the characters and the animation, making for a pretty ropey experience throughout....

My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea

The Beta Band - Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos

BUY>> 20. 07. 1998

Sketch Sunday

Network

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes

Spacemen 3 - The Perfect Prescription

09. 87

Sketch Sunday

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Take Them On, On Your Own

BUY>> 25. 08. 03

Sketch Sunday

A Philip K. Dick In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush....

Clans of the Alphane Moon
(pub. 1964) - Voyager, 1996

Chuck Rittersdorf, a 21st century CIA robot programmer, decides to kill his wife by remote control. He enlists the aid of a telepathic Ganymedean slime mould called Lord Running Clam, an attrective female police officer and various others, witting or unwitting. But when Chuck finds himself in the midst of an interplanetary spy ring on an Alphane moon inhabited entirely by certified maniacs, his personal revenge plans begin to go awry in this brilliantly inventive tale of interstellar madness, murder and violence.

I doubt there's a book that is more completely and utterly Philip K. Dick than this one.... Just imagine, a seceded (Terran) moon colony on Alpha III M2 derived from an abandoned hospital area  - over 25 years the clans of the title have separated into groups comprising the several sub-types of mental illness, the 'Heeb', 'Pare' 'Mans', 'Poly', 'Dep' 'Skitz' and 'Ob-Com's. (I'll not delve any deeper into their origins as, as ever, the joy is in PKD's gentle drip drip approach to his terminology and world building.) Meanwhile back on Earth the somewhat directionless Chuck Rittersdorf is programming CIA simulacrums and, as his marriage crumbles - PKD again employs a young temptress in part to help usher our hapless, hopeless, clueless "Joe Blow" on his way - he slowly, via the offer of writing for television, stumbles upon conspiracy within conspiracy. Just who is actually working for who, and quite why, to what ends? There's no pipes connecting the kitchen sink here as for once PKD opts to skip the notion of overlapping or underlying realities, but that doesn't detract in the slightest from what is a highly accessible, imaginative and rewarding read....

... But his eyes. He had an alert yet warm quality; she rose and stood facing him. Over the TV the strength of his gaze did not register. This was not mere intelligence on Bunny's part; this was more, a perception of - she did not know what. And - 
          All about Bunny an aura hung, an aura of suffering. His face, his body, seemed sopped with it. Yes, she thought, that's what shows in his eyes. Memory of pain. Pain that took place long ago, but which he has never forgotten - nor will he. ...


... She smiled, and once again he marvelled at her teeth; they transformed her face, made it beautiful; as long as she smiled and she was delightful to behold, and it seemed to Chuck that this told something about her. The quality of beauty arose from within; inside, she was lovely, and he realized that over the years, as she aged, it would gradually work its way outward, influence the surface. By the time she was thirty or thirty-five she would be radiant. ...

Dr Bloodmoney

(pub. 1965) - Millenium, 2000

Seven years after the day of the bombs, Point Reyes was luckier than most places. Its people were reasonably normal - except for the girl with her twin brother growing inside her, and talking to her. Their barter economy was working. Their resident genius could fix almost anything that broke down. But they didn't know they were harbouring the one who almost everyone left alive wanted killed.

An excellent Philip K. Dick novel (which I first encountered in its truncated form as 'A Terran Odyssey' in the 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale' short story collection). This time we have everything and the kitchen sink in this tale of a post-apocalyptic California. However, the book has quite a gentle pace and a sunny, pastoral feel, the restructured society, though obviously chaotic, is still mostly beholden to the very same personal troubles that inflict us as individuals (but here it's mixed with a whole host of the furthest-out PKD characters and scenarios). Some of PKD's very best ideas reside here, in what is a hugely satisfying read....

          Stuart said , "Now." He knew it was now; he knew that the bombs were going off - he felt them. It seemed to occur inside him. Blam, blam, blam, blam, went the bombs, or perhaps it was the things sent up by the army to help, to stop the bombs; perhaps it was defense. Let me down, Stuart thought. Low as I can be. Let me into the ground. He pressed down, rolled his body to make a depression. People lay now on top of him, choking coats and sleeves, and he was glad; he did not mind - he did not want emptiness around him; he wanted solidness on every side. He did not need to breathe. His eyes were shut; they, and the other openings of his body, his mouth and ears and nose, all had shut; he had walled himself in, waiting.
          Blam, blam, blam.

 

         He (Walt Dangerfield) struggled up, disconnected himself from the straps, saw through the port the world below. Clouds, and the ocean, the globe itself. Here and there on it matches were lit; he saw the puffs, the flares. Fright overcame him, as he sailed silently through space, looking down at the pinches of burning scattered about; he knew what they were.

          It's death, he thought. Death lighting up spots, burning up the world's life, second by second. 

          He continued to watch.

Andrew Smith - Moondust: In Search Of The Men Who Fell To Earth

Neil, Buzz, Alan,  Ed, David, Charlie, John, Eugene, Harrison....

One From The Vault - The Campbeltown Bogle

The original character rough loose pencil sketches, contrasted and coloured for The Campbeltown Bogle and the Farmer. Undertaken to give the writer an idea of the general direction of the art (and in doing so helping nudge some of his latent ideas along)....

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

BUY>> 22. 08. 77

Sketch Sunday