"You never know". Or do you?

I’ll get trip insurance in case Europe collapses before we embark on our cruise. You never know.

- Laurie Smith, February 2011

Now, admittedly, the rioting in England has died down (although there are still incidents of looting on a much smaller, almost personalized scale - boutique looting, if you will); regardless, some kind of recognition is due to Laurie for her prescient comments from February about travel insurance, now that I'm flying to England to start my vacation in less than a week. Hmmm…psychic ability? Time travel? Either way, Laurie, if there's anything else you'd like to mention - alien invasions, giant sea monsters in the Mediterranean, the return of the Mummy, anything - now is the time (no pun intended).

- Sid

P.S. Come to think of it, I might deserve a minor shout-out for my observations about planning riots through social media.  Apparently Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger were key elements in the planning and execution of the violence in London.

THIS is a science fiction shark - see the difference?

Ah, I see that the Space Channel is showing Jaws tonight, look at that!

Sigh...okay...I'm only going to say this once...

HEY!!!!   SPACE CHANNEL!!!  JAWS IS NOT A SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE!!  A MOVIE ABOUT A BIG SHARK THAT EATS PEOPLE IS NOT SCIENCE FICTION!!!! 
  
QUESTIONS?  

NO?  

GOOD!!  DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN!!

- Sid

August 14th update:  goddamnit, it's even in their pre-movie lead-in!  Am I missing something here?  Does Captain Quint suggest that the shark is a mutant, or something?

Illustration by Canadian illustrator Jesse McGibs 


 

Insert clever title here.

There are times when this whole blog thing is more trouble than it's worth.

I was skimming through Michael Moorcock's Stormbringer, the last in his Elric of Melniboné series, looking for quotes for a posting on Chaos, when I noticed a line in the text saying that Elric's sorcerous ancestors had ruled his world for ten thousand years.

Really?  Ten thousand years?  And no one invented gunpowder, light bulbs or computers?  We went from bronze armour to the moon in a little under two thousand, what in the hell were these people doing for all that time?

Okay…well, Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic - maybe there's some kind of flip side to that which would say that sufficiently advanced magic would…eliminate the need for technology? 

Well, there's probably a posting in there someplace, "Discuss!", as Mike Meyers would say.  But how do I illustrate it?  Ooo, I know, there was that Michael Golden drawing in one of the early Epic Illustrated issues*, the one showing the shaman and the cyber-soldier.  Let's see…Google...Epic Illustrated Golden - aha, issue 3.  Okay, Google, Epic Illustrated 3 .cbr…aha, there we are.

Download….download….

And open.  Hold on, where's the drawing?  In fact, where's the article with the drawing?  God damn it, there's about 20 pages missing from this scan!  Bloody people... Okay, Google…Epic Illustrated 3…new link...

Download...download…

And open.  Oh for heaven's sake, it's the same scan.

Google…Epic Illustrated 03…new link….

Download….download....

You're kidding - also missing 20 pages?  Okay, let's try some lateral thinking here.  Google....Michael Golden artwork…aha, Modern Masters Volume 12, Michael Golden.

Download…download…

Nope, not here.  Hmmm.  Okay, as far as I know I own the damn magazine, down to the storage room, let's find that box of Heavy Metal and Epic magazines....aha, there we go.

Shuffle....shuffle...oh look, an Isaac Asimov SF Adventure Magazine, I haven't read this in years, wasn't there a Brunner Man In Black story in here.  Ah, and the special H. P. Lovecraft issue of Heavy Metal, let's keep that out for some scanning, there were some good Cthulhu illustrations if memory serves. Gosh, is it worth my while to pull the issues of Heavy Metal with the serialized version of the Matt Howarth Changes story to do my own scans to replace the all-in-one edition that Tundra published, where he redrew all the frames that contained nudity?

Aha, here it is, in the OTHER box of Epic/Heavy Metal magazines!!!  

You know, now that I look at it, maybe not the ideal image...let's see, what else could I use...wait, wasn't I doing research for a posting on Chaos?

- Sid

*  Yes, I happened to bloody well remember that there was a particular black and white line drawing by Michael Golden in a fantasy magazine that I bought in 1980, do you have a problem with that?