24 September 2016

The Jeff Hawke club held its annual meeting this weekend at the beautiful village of Bosham in Sussex. As well as Sydney Jordan and William Rudling ( the club editor and organiser) twelve members and partners also attended. A club dinner was held at the Swan public house on Friday night and another at the Millstream Hotel on Saturday . The club visited Tangmere air museum on Saturday and also Fishbourne Roman Palace, both only a stone’s throw from the village. A members meeting will take place on Sunday morning to discuss future plans and projects . Skipper Prossitt

18September 2016

Sydney’s Dan Dare story .

Although the Sunday PEOPLE had run a Dan Dare newspaper strip back in 1964, the plan by the PLANET ON SUNDAY to revive the character in a similar way in 1996 was sadly doomed to failure. The prospect had been  an exciting one ; Britain’s most famous sci-fi creation revived by the pen and artwork of Sydney Jordan. Thus the Dan Dare strip appeared in the first issue of the PLANET and started to unfold its story, but  unfortunately  the new paper abruptly ceased publication and the strip was left high and dry  after just beginning to tantalise its readers  with its  mysterious opening  . Sydney had written and drawn the strips for the next two weeks but for the rest only a written outline of the story existed .Looking at the three extant strips we are given some intriguing glimpses of  how things had changed both for Spacefleet and the world.

The story , according to Sydney, is set shortly after Dan’s last Eagle appearance .Peace reigns now between Earthmen and Treens  as shown in the very first panels. The Mekon has made no return after his mysterious disappearance at the end of the MOONSLEEPERS (Eagle vo.16 no.29) and the inner planets are at peace .We see Dan , dishevelled and seemingly a shadow of his former self, visiting the grave of Sir Hubert Guest. He is approached by a strange woman, a government official , whose chauffeur is none other than Digby,  who Dan seems not to recognise. In the third strip we see the car, containing the official, Dan and Digby  careering off the road after being hit by a waiting sniper – and the rest is silence. The strip ceased at that point and we  are left wondering how this strange set of events would have turned out .  I interviewed Sydney about this story and he explained  to me just how it would  have developed and how the mysteries set up in the first three panels would have been resolved . The story involved a threat to the entire Solar system , a threat so great that all the planets would have to put their former differences behind them and unite against  this new menace , before which even the Mekon would be cowed. We will be revealing the full Planet on Sunday story in future posts beginning next month.   Skipper Prossitt

11 September 2016

This week saw the publication of “ The elements of time”, a collection of science fiction stories by writer and Astronomer Duncan Lunan. Duncan will be well known to readers of the JHC for his “Hawke’s notes” , which provide both insight and a scientific viewpoint on each of the HAWKE stories.   He has had an intimate connection with JEFF HAWKE for many years and wrote or collaborated in the writing of ten of the later Hawke stories.

“The elements of time” brings together   seven short stories written over the last thirty years, all of which deal with the theme of time-travel. Some have appeared in such prestigious publications   as ANALOG and the Isaac Asimov Sci-fi magazine. As a bonus each of the stories is accompanied by full page illustrations by Sydney Jordan , as well as the colour cover. The stories themselves, although all very different , all contain a technical and scientific detail which makes the worlds they create, seem credible and believable.   One deals with a sort of futuristic re-run of the ’45 rebellion and another with an air accident investigator who has the perplexing problem of dealing with the wreckage of a plane which has not yet had its maiden flight! My own personal favorite is “ Riding the fire”   which has an Earth colony on a distant volcanically active planet ; their means of transport are a series of hang-glider capsules whose pilots  ride the thermals created by the volcanic vents.

Thought provoking and original the book is well worth the modest £10 price tag at Amazon.  Skipper Prossit

3 September 2016

A pencil thin , but broad winged glider   soars gracefully against the butterscotch sky of the red planet and swoops to land in one of the deep canyons of the Valles Marineris. A simulation created by NASA   perhaps, in anticipation of its forthcoming program to test the viability of making gliders that will fly on Mars ?

No- in fact as Cosmos readers will know, it is the opening sequence from “Home is the sailor” recently published in vol9 no2. in which a newly married couple from Marsbase take a very unusual honeymoon. The story is yet another example of how the JH strip anticipated future space technology , in this case in 1982 when the story was first published.

 

Just a few weeks ago NASA announced that it was beginning a series of tests using specially constructed gliders in Earth’s upper atmosphere , initially at 100,000 feet and later reaching 450,000 in order to simulate the Martian atmosphere and the challenges it will present to constructing an aerodynamically sound machine that could glide across the Martian terrain , and be able to take close-up photos of selected areas of the planet.

If all goes well the glider with be part of the next Rover mission in 2022 and will be ejected from the spacecraft at a selected altitude , open up and glide for about 20 miles before landing on the planetary surface.

Lets hope it doesn’t meet the same sad fate as the “Lovebird” in the JH story!   Skipper Prossit