5 November 2017

The second unpublished ( and undrawn ) Hawke story by Duncan Lunan, centres around an interesting and theoretical propulsion system  designed to carry a spacecraft far out into the Solar system. According to Duncan the idea for the story  had a number of origins, but one that was key was  a breakthrough in Adaptive optics made by a reasearch team at Strathclyde university in the early eighties, in which a flexible parabolic mirror would instantly re-focus as it changed shape. A second strand in the development of the story  , namely the exploration of Uranus , resulted from Duncan’s  lecture tour of the U.S. in 1986. While on a visit to the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, he was presented with a set of photographs of the planet Uranus which Voyager2 had transmitted back to Earth earlier that year. As the complex propulsion system  is such an integral part of ICE NEEDLE, it might be worth explaining  how such a system would work before embarking on the story itself.

Duncan himself explains the concept  ” The launch site is a deep pit dug on the Spaceport island, with the actual ship suspended by gantries over the centre of the pit at sea level (see Fig. 1). After the pit has been filled with water, the refrigeration unit builds up a column of ice below the ship, and then the water is pumped out again.

The interior of the pit is lined with flexible mirrors like searchlights; (this would be much cheaper than a similar number of glass mirrors, and it’s known that the Japanese have put a lot of money into studying applications of the Strathclyde University patents.) These are fed by banks of‘mirrors outside the pit (Fig. 2). On1y three of the units inside the pit, equidistantly spaced round it, are active at any one time, focussing on to the tip of the Ice-Needle: violent evaporation forces the Needle upwards at high acceleration.   As the blast destroys the foil of one trio of mirrors, protective covers are removed from three more and the feed banks of mirrors outside swivel to focus on them. (NB This means the feed mirrors also have to be flexible.) The whole system has to be
computer-controlled to keep all the gathered sunlight concentrated on the tip of the Needle as it rises. Ideal launch time would be the afternoon of one of the Equinoxes, presumably the spring equinox since the story will be running during March. Time of launch would be as late as possible without losing power as the Sun gets lower; aim-off from the vertical would be towards the East (see Fig. 3). The effect of this, as the Needle passes escape velocity, is that it’s now making a retrofire with respect to the Earth’s orbital motion, and also boosting itself towards the Sun. Once the thrust phase stops, the Needle pivots so that its tip is pointed towards the Sun, and a robot puts a protective shield over the tip to stop evaporation meantime.”

continued next week. Skipper Prossitt

22 October 2017

As outlined in part one of this synopsis last month, the Florida Vikings had taken McLane ( Hawke) prisoner and have returned with him( by the  captured airship) to their settlement  in the New world where they are beset by genetically bred Dire Wolves. Duncan Lunan, the original writer, takes up the story:

“It’s winter time, however, and the wolves have the upper hand.   The Vikings have had to retreat to their fortified farmhouses and travel between them is no longer possible.   People are running out of food, medical supplies etc; but still McLane is unable to persuade them to let him communicate with the Space Force.   Finally the airship is ambushed by Dire Wolves at an outlying farm where they’ve managed to overrun the stockade and hide in the outbuildings.   At last McLane ( Hawke) persuades the suvivors to let him call for help, and they create a diversion to let him get to the transmitter in the wreckage of the gondola.

In the meantime Fortuna has been heading for Earth, bringing a set of Dik-Diks which she intends to use in the search for McLane ( Hawke).   She arrives in time to take part in the dramatic rescue of the task force and turn her powers to the question of whether any accommodation can be reached with the Dire Wolves – but the answer is no, their hostility is implacable. Even Fortuna’s powers stop short of changing the mind-set of an entire species. Whether or not the Vikings evacuate to Cornwall, this isn’t a long-term solution because the Wolves will simply find other targets, and will be able to threaten higher-technology groups like the Base-builder settlement as their numbers grow.   Nor does the Space Force have the resources to seach the whole of North America to make sure all the Wolves are found and killed – especially when they’re in winter coats and very hard to spot.

 

The answer is to programme the Dik-Diks to protect settlements – all settlements – against the Wolves.   The same sensors they used to home in on heat sources on Mars will be adequate to find such large creatures in the snow, but without reacting to human beings, with the approriate programmng.   The Base-builder settlement has high enough technology to turn over part of its facility to build Dik-Diks. Even if the Vikings don’t want a high-technology ‘fix’, there has to be one for the sake of other communities, so they may as well accept it.   If they do establish a settlement in Cornwall, maybe they’ll start talking to the Bordeaux Vikings eventually…”
It is interesting to note that there has been a resurgence of interest in the Dire wolf, due to their recent  appearance in the hugely popular “Game of thrones” TV series, but Duncan got there first in the eighties!  Skipper Prossitt

 

Come and visit the Jeff Hawke display at the Cartoon arts festival in Kendal this coming weekend ( 14th and 15th October). You can meet Sydney Jordan , the strip’s creator and writer, and also  William Rudling who founded the club and who edits the Jeff Hawke books.

All the Jeff Hawke stories  so far published will be on sale  as well as some of Sydney’s original Hawke artwork. We look forward to seeing you at our stand ( no. 24) in the Clock tower. Skipper Prossitt

8 October 2017

Sydney has always stated that there is no time-line in Jeff Hawke, at least not until after HEIR APPARENT and C-day. He says that he didn’t want to be constrained by   having always to ensure that events in one story   had to be informed by those that had occurred in previous ones. While a timeline can enrich and give a series continuity and an internal realism , it can also provide constraints. Jeff hawke, as Sydney conceived it , was a series of freestanding stories, with little to tie them together except the main characters.

An advantage that this gave was that ,he could introduce technical innovations when as as he thought fit without reference to earlier stories. An example of this is the   evolution of Hawke’s various spacesuits as drawn throughout the series, which represent the spectrum of those depicted in sci-fi   during the fifities and sixties and when science finally caught up with science-fiction in the form of the US space programme , Hawke was accordingly attired in a NASA style suit

 

The earliest spacesuits that we see in the Hawke series are those worn by the Earth

crews who are building the Earth defences against the imminent MARTIAN INVASION. The style is that of a rigid suit with points of articulation at elbows and knees etc, with the ubiquitous bubble helmet so popular among pulp illustrators at the time. The Adventure annual of 1953, for example, has cover art with precisely this type of suit . As the strip reached OPPOSITE POWER , the suit had evolved into the “space armour “ style with fully articulated arms and legs and with a closed-in helmet with visor, a style which Sydney retained through to OVERLORD and beyond, and which became the JH “look” for a number of years. Again, this type of spacesuit was popular among sci-fi artists and was also seen as a realistic possiblity as to how real astronauts might   look in the future. A magasine article form 1956 which speculated on what real suits might be like, mocked up such a suit to demonstrate to its readers what we might wear in space. Chesley Bonastall, who illustrated the groundbreaking “ Conquest of space “ (1949) influenced many later sci-fi artists, Sydney included, and depicts several astronauts wearing suits similar to those of the OVERLORD type

As time went on and space exploration became a reality with the “Space race” of the nineteen sixties, the Hawke strip also took on board these more realistic elements and both ships and equipment started to resemble those actually used by NASA . Thus the spacesuits we see in the strip took on a more realistic look and when the crew descend into the crater Plato in MOONSTRUCK they look much more like   astronaunts from the Gemini programme.

With the beginning of the seventies , when the US moon missions were in full swing , the strip also reflected these new developments and Hawke and Mac, when investigating the alien probe in the environs of Pluto in HERE BE TYGERS   look very much like Apollo astronauts. Skipper prossitt

This is part 1 of the first of the two unpublished Jeff Hawke stories , kindly provided by their author Duncan Lunan. These stories were scripted but never actually drawn and the strip finished before their scheduled publication date. Nonetheless they may be of interest to our readers.

Duncan’s friend and co-collaborator on “ Pharoah’s army” was Jim Campbell who since 1985 had been involved in the creation of a Viking re-enactment society. This interest is reflected in the appearance of the Vikings in the airship over Calais in PHAROAH’S ARMY, who are revealed to be film-set actors who were making a film set in the Dark-ages when C-day occurred.

Duncan and Jim decided to use the Viking theme again in DIRE STRAITS and as Duncan says “ Jim was even more keen for the Viking re-enactment group to be portrayed authentically” in the new story and to this end they decided to create a new group of re-enactors . Duncan takes up the story…

“Our Vikings are not from Bordeaux but from Florida, where there is a Viking re-enactment group even now.   At the time of C-Day thls group was taking part in a re-enactment exercise in which they had sailed in longships to an island off the coast of Florida. Since they had their families with them, and were in the middle of setting up a realistic Viking settlement, they had what they needed to survive the disaster and were able to establish a viable settlement.   However for some years they have been facing a threat of increasing severity, and becoming very tough as a result.   They have no inclination to turn to the Space Force for help – unlike the film-set Vikings, who will yell for help when they came up against the ‘reality’.

That encounter takes place in Cornwall, where the film-set Vikings are exploring with the airship.   Seeing the imitation longship under it, and knowing that there were slavers in the area, the ‘real’ Vikings assume that one of their ships has been taken and launch a fierce attack on the airship when it comes to ground.   The airship gets away, but heads back to base with severe casualties, and calling on the Space Force for help.

Hawke comes down with a medical team from the Hope to assist, and is on the ground when the ‘real‘ Vikings attack Bordeaux by sea.   They capture the airship, taking Hawke with them initially as a hostage, but then forcing him to help them avoid searching landers as they take the airship out into the Atlantic under cover of bad weather.   The task force concentrates their search on Europe, not realising that the airship is now making for Florida, hiding in the fog-banks where the Gulf stream is eating away the edge af the ice-pack.

Because of the fall in sea-level caused by the new ice age, the island became joined to Florida by a peninsula, and this was the start of the Vikings’ problems: the historical re-enactment got a bit too serious. Someone, somewhere to the north had been engaging in genetic engineering experiments (there is a genetic engineering lab on Long Island, so we’d better not be too specific!) and had produced a breeding pack of Dire Wolves – as big as tigers, highly intelligent and, unlike tigers, able to work together. The Viking community became their major target because unlike other POC groups they didn‘t have guns.  They’ve held their own for a time with crossbows and catapults (ballistas) but as the wolves’ numbers have gone up, they’ve found themselves literally in Dire Straits – this is why they started sending longships out, to find somewhere to escape to.   Now that they have captured modern weapons, however, and have a flying platform to use them from, their object is to go back and do battle. “

 

Part 2 to follow.     Skipper Prossitt

 

27 August 2017

A piece of artwork has recently been acquired  by the Cartoon arts museum which was passed on to the Jeff Hawke club. It comes from the archive of the Bayly -Souster group  for whom Sydney worked when he first arrived in London in 1952, and is  the first of his original  sci-fi  strips  which he created as a personal project in the early fifties with  the hope of  eventual syndication in a national newspaper. See the post of  20 December 2015 – ” The butterfly effect in Fleet street”  for more about Sydney’s collaboration with Eric Souster and his agency. His original character was named Orion but  the strip contains the same basic elements as the opening scenes in Space Rider into which it eventually evolved;  an unknown craft approaching Earth and Jet fighters sent up to intercept it.  The introductory text at the start of the strip   is also characteristically Jordanesque,  an example of Sydney’s perennially poetic response to the  grandeur and magnificence of the universe, a theme continued  throughout the Hawke stories.  The Express offered syndication , but  wanted the name changed to Jeff Hawke  and more emphasis  placed on the RAF presence in the story. This accomplished , Hawke launched into the stratosphere  on 15th February 1954. Skipper Prossitt

 

 

20 August 2017

In 2014 Fondazione Rosellini , an Italian publisher , printed in book form those last Jeff Hawke stories omitted from the otherwise complete Milano libri collection. Together the two Rosellini volumes covered all the remainig stories up to SONG FOR METHUSELAH and at the back of the last volume  also printed a complete Chronology of the  Hawke corpus. Intriguingly, at the very end of the list, after SONG FOR METHUSELAH, two more  titles  were listed  and both were marked  ” Non Realizata” ( not produced). They were  called ICE NEEDLE  and DIRE STRAITS and Duncan Lunan, Sydney’s collaborator in many of the later Hawke stories , was mentioned as the c0-writer of  both.  I contacted Duncan in the hope that he could shed some light on these and after some searching  he very kindly sent me  a complete  story synopsis for both titles together with concept sketches   and an outline of how he and his co-writer  came to light upon these themes.

The first story, DIRE STRAITS  introduces more Vikings, similar to those seen in PHAROAH’S ARMY  but this time from the New World and the second, ICE NEEDLE  concerns a Japanese expedition to Uranus using  a craft powered by concentrated solar energy. Future posts will unfold both these stories in greater detail. Skipper Prossitt

The second part of Duncan’s book deals with the origin of the green children . The author speculates that a matter transmitter could have been responsible for their accidental arrival on Earth and the unusual number of strange astronomical events recorded by contemporary chroniclers and observers are suggested as possible side-effects of the use of such a transmitter.

Duncan uses the green girl’s description of her home as the starting point for suggesting the kind of planet she has come from. Her sparce  descriptions of a land perpetually in twilight, but with a bright sunlit country visible across a river , seems a tall order to fulfill, but the author , by a dextrous use of his scientific knowledge and an imaginative speculation , presents us with an ingenious solution   to explain these strange facts.

 

He suggests that the planet in question must be one in a locked orbit   ( i.e. one whose rotational period around its   star is the same length as its day, like the Earth-Moon situation, so the same hemisphere always faces its star.

He speculates that an advanced alien intelligence could have created a valley, by means of asteroid impact , which followed the planet’s terminator along all or some of its length. Duncan discusses in great detail the terraforming processes which would be needed to accomplish this and to furnish the valley with a river and breathable atmosphere.

 

For me, the really brilliant touch is his suggestion that the inhabitants are placed on the side of the valley nearest to the sun-side , sheltered by towering clifs behind them and lit only by the reflected sunlight from the opposite valley cliffs, which would always be in direct sunlight. Thus we have a land always in twilight , but with a bright sunlit land always visible across the river .

The book contains a great deal more, including the speculation that mass abductions of people from the Earth took place in the twelfth century . He goes on to present a theory that the authorities in Europe at the time had knowledge of this activity , and that such alien activity was intimately bound up with the crusades and later, the knights Templar. Duncan also goes on to speculate as to what use the aliens might have had for such abductions and works out in detail the ecology and possible technological possibilities of this valley-world.

“ Children from the sky”, although not an easy read is an exhaustive and ingenious speculation  which combines the discipline of science with the imaginative extrapolation of the sci-fi writer.  Skipper prossitt

 

15 July 2017

“Children from the sky “ was published in 2012 by Duncan Lunan, astronomer and science writer. The book is illustrated by Sydney Jordan with whom Duncan has collaborated on several of the later Jeff Hawke stories. It can be best described as an elaborately researched speculation on the truth behind a medieval mystery.   In some ways it reminds me of a typical Hawke story in that it starts off in a quiet sleepy village in 12^th century Suffolk,   and ends up dealing with intersteller travel , alien terraforming and the abduction of humans for experimental purposes.

The medieval tale of the Green children of Woolpit is the starting point for Duncan’s investigations.   Two children appeared , apparently from nowhere, in the village of Woolpit   on an autumn day in 1173. Apprehended by the locals, the children, a boy and a girl, spoke a strange language , were green in colour and wore strange clothes of unknown material. At first they would eat none of the food offered to them and eventually would consume only green beans. The boy died after a short time but the girl thrived   and eventually learned to speak the local language. She told how she and the boy came from a world which was forever in twilight but from which a sunlit land could nonetheless be seen in the distance. Duncan has sifted through the encrustation of legend and myth which has inevitably grown about the story over the centuries and has gone back to the original chroniclers who first mentioned this odd event. The first part of the book deals largely with tracing the characters mentioned by the chroniclers and the historicity of the green girl herself which he has established convincingly. The research is meticulous but I think Duncan’s editors could have served him better by putting some of the genealogical research in a separate appendix which would have made the narrative thread a little easier to follow. Nonetheless the theme is exhaustively researched and key protagonists and places are convincingly identified. Having established the Dramatis personae he then goes on the speculate on what the story might mean.

Duncan’s arguments are subtle and complex and I cannot do them justice in such a short piece. But briefly , he has taken all the evidence of the story , the mysterious appearance , the strange clothing and language , the description of the childrens’ world, together with other significant events from the period and from this has constructed an ingenious hypothesis as to what all it might mean, a theory involving a matter transmitter and the terra-forming and colonization ( by abducted humans) of another planet by alien intelligences .   Duncan himself writes (p.399) “ I’m not saying that this did happen; only that it might have happened, and wouldn’t it be interesting if it did”.

I will briefly summarise these latter ideas in part two.

 

“ Children from the sky” is not an easy read but is well worth the effort. As stated above the research is painstaking and the clever speculation is immensely intriguing . It must be regarded as the definitive work on the subject.

Published by Mutusliber it is available from Amazon and other outlets.

ISBN -13: 978-1-908097.   Skipper Prossitt

 

18 June 2017

Only a small offering this week, namely a model of the Judge’s robot clerk-of-the–court from COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE, made by one of our club members. The Jeff Hawke strip seems to have a fondness for ill-matched pairs, The Demon and the troll, Kolvorok and His Excellencey and the Judge and his clerk to name but three. Visually the latter pair work brilliantly, for they are basically a stick and a circle, a kind of Galactic Laurel and Hardy. Unfortunately the robot clerk only lasts for this single story as he is blasted to pieces as Chalcedon makes good his escape from Galactopolis. Skipper Prossitt