24 July 2016

In conversation with Sydney recently, I asked him what, if any, were some of the  early influences that inspired his interest in science fiction.  He recalled some space stories from his boyhood and one in particular called “The last rocket to Venus” published in HOTSPUR comic in August 1939 which he remembered making a strong impression on him at the time . His recollection of the story was not detailed but he recalled the general outline ; a space programme is started which will launch a series of rockets to Venus in order to colonise the planet because the Earth is under some threat of imminent destruction.

In fact when I researched the original story , it contained some fascinating portents of what was later to appear in the Jeff Hawke universe. The story is set in the future when due to some celestial catastrophe, the Earth’s rotation has slowed and the Moon, orbiting ever closer is breaking up. A new ice age has the world in its grip and the polar regions have spread across the globe . A British engineer, Gavin Ainsworth has discovered that Venus is habitable. He is building a fleet of spaceships and is planning to send men and women to Earth’s sister planet in order to ensure that humanity survives at least somewhere in the Solar system . The story continues on for several months in HOTSPUR, and tells of the journey to this new world and the fearsome aliens, including man-eating Eagles and faceless men that they encounter when they arrive .

But the aspect which interests us is the setting of the frozen world and the unstable Moon , fragments of which are falling to Earth as the story develops.

It is interesting to note that Sydney had no conscious memory of these details but perhaps filed away the germ of this idea subconsciously, only to retrieve it and fashion it anew almost forty years later, when he set the scene for Jeff Hawke’s new incarnation after Collision Day. In the Hawke story the sun has thrown out a vast plasma bolt which grazes the Moon and alters the Earth’s orbital distance from Sol, only fractionally, but sufficient to trigger a second Ice-age. This, of course is a more sophisticated scenario but one which may owe its origins to   an exciting adventure enjoyed in boyhood.   Skipper Prossitt