A hugely important character in the latter part of the Hawke series is the android Fortuna . I asked Sydney about her origins and what were his reasons for devising this character. Sydney said that his first motivation was to find a supporting character for Hawke. Unlike Mac and Laura who had emerged almost unbidden from the many”extras”in the strip to be Hawke’s sidekicks in the early days, Fortuna was a consciously crafted character and appeared fully formed at her first appearance. Her physical appearance actually reflects her inner personality in that she has the form of a beautiful and desirable woman, but is actually a silver-blue skinned construct of alien origin. This physical

paradox is reflected in her personality, for she is at one and the same time a super computer with access to a vast memory bank, with mental and psychic abilities far beyond the human,but is also an entity who is intrigued by and indeed who craves human emotion .She has nurtured this characteristic in herself by years of tending the old miner Otto on the asteroid where Hawke eventually finds her in ANGEL OF MERCY. Her aesthetic sensibilities and human empathy evolve as her strong relationship with Hawke develops throughout the strip. Indeed she seems to give paramount importance to emotions. Like the fairy folk of legend she is virtually immortal and for her,like them, nothing is new, and thus she envies humanity for whom the delight of newness and discovery still abounds .

As with many of the themes explored in the strip , Sydney says that the choice of an android was also influenced by the general interest in robotic intelligence in the early seventies when both science fiction and philosophy were asking questions about whether artificially created entities could think and be truly autonomous and if so whether they might deserve respect and rights in human society. A seminal work on this theme was Philip K Dick’s DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP ,published just seven years before Fortuna’s first appearance, a sci-ci classic which dealt with these difficult issues.This in turn spawned a popular interest which was taken up by the movie industry with such movies as WESTWORLD ( 1973) whose androids decided to take their fate into their own hands.

Fortuna has a number of anticidents in the way of female robots but Sydney expresses great admiration for Fritz Lang’s classic METROPOLIS, whose robot was certainly a subliminal influence on Fortuna’s evolution, but in that case involved a disastrous intermixing of a robotic female body with a human soul.

 

The     physical appearance of Fortuna was based on a minor Italian actress of the sixties , of whom Sydney had obtained a   set of portrait photos. He had first used her likeness in the Hawke strip in TIME OUT OF JOINT in 1971 for the character of Leila , the girl from the future who had been captured by the minions of the “All-mind” . Look closely and you will see a distinct likeness to her later incarnation as Fortuna.

In conclusion Fortuna’s complex and paradoxical character places her in the front rank of the dramatis personae of the Hawke universe. Skipper Prossitt

 

Elon Musk’s audacious launch of his Falcon Heavy rocket last week was a huge breakthrough in spaceflight technology and puts his company SpaceX far ahead of his rivals in the commercial space business. The re-useable boosters , two of which landed with balletic precision after the launch, will cut the cost of heavy launches in future from around $1b to more like €100 million.

 

But there was also a touch of whimsy in the launch as the payload on this flight was a Tesla car equipped with a dummy astronaut , a Bowie soundtrack and a nod to “Hitchhiker” with the “don’t panic” sign on the dashboard . There were many comments about the bizzare sight of a car in orbit around the Earth. Nothing like this has ever been seen before………unless of course you were reading the Jeff Hawke strip in 1965. In ANTI- GRAVITY MAN which appeared in the Daily express fifty three years ago, we see a car in orbit around the Earth , in this instance the iconic mini-cooper. In the Hawke story some alien technology has been harnessed to equip the car with anti-grav motors. Its owner , equipped with diving suit and using a school atlas , rescues a stranded astronaut from certain death in his doomed space capsule.

Another example of how Messrs Patterson and Jordan got there first. Skipper Prossitt

Whenever I see an image of Tallid, I am reminded of a line in Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas, which says “ to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler”, for this is precisely what the “Reasonable fish” appears to do. He has the ability to float about in what are presumably Earth-like atmospheres as though he were moving in a liquid. He bears some relation to Kolvorok, physiologically, in that they both appear to have some inbuilt buoyancy , as Kolvorok also appears to have little weight and to be born up by some internal lighter-than-air gas, though in his case he has a neutral buoyancy and needs contact with the ground . Tallid however is of a species that can   free themselves entirely from the ground and float about like a self-controlled helium-balloon. If not of the same species, then they are probably of the same Genus or Family. This interesting villain make two appearances in the Hawke series, first in OVERLORD where he is part of Chalcedon’s coterie of villians and secondly in OVERLAND. In OVERLORD he

displays an aptitude for subtle persuasion, flattery and clear-thinking, essential skills when dealing with hotheads like Chalcedon and Doghead. He is the logical member of the gang who keeps the plans on track, but nonetheless he suffers as many insults from Chalcedon as Kolvorok gets from His excellency. Their plans finally thwarted, Tallid and Chalcedon   are led before the Executioner , who , for lack of evidence cannot execute them, but sends them to trail at the Galactic court.

Sadly , after OVERLORD we have to wait quite a while for Tallid’s next appearance, as for the next few times that we encounter Chalcedon he has a new sidekick , namely the Hood, who certainly doesn’t possess Tallid’s incisiveness and quick-thinking . We finally encounter “The reasonable fish” once more in OVERLAND. His previously whispered words to his co-conspirator at the end of OVERLORD that he had friends in high places , seemed to have had some truth in them as he now appears second-in-command of the Galactic police, Kolvorok’s old job! Even more bizarrely Chalcedon has inveigled his own way to the very top of that organization ( largely, on his own admission, by assassination of rivals).

By the end of the story , after the judge has stepped in , Kolvorok has been re-instated . Surprisingly , Chalcedon retains his own post and Tallid only suffers the mild punishment of having to take extended leave. Skipper Prossitt

 

Below is the concluding part of the last ( and unpublished) Jeff Hawke story, written by science writer Duncan Lunan. We heard in the last part how Fortuna learned the history of the aliens’ presence around Uranus and how the renegade alien leader , in suspension for aeons has now grown to fill much of the hub.  Duncan takes up the final part of the story:

“To keep him alive for so long and supply his growth, the robot processing units have extensively mined out the ground below the hub. Unwanted ice has been processed to fill up the lower part of the hub: with the energies of the electrostatic weapon directed inwards on to the base of this ice core, a propulsion system analagous to the Ice-Needle will be operational. This was all planned by the followers before the end.

So our alien villain now has the means to blast off from Umbriel and go sunwards, and a very powerful weapon to use when he gets to Earth, ‘to put its eye out’ as Mclane has partly done to his.   Afterwards, no doubt he has the means – cloning or whatever – to propagate his species when he gets there.   The only thing holding him back hitherto has been that the Japanese captives, who didn’t know about C-Day, told him before they died that there’s a very powerflul high-technology civilization to resist him. But in the process of the mental battle to let the Task Force get away, Fortuna and Lance have given away the fact that this is no longer the case: Earth is vulnerable.
So he reconfigures the electrostatic system for propulsion, and takes off.   However, he still has his mental link to the old scientist on the Ice-Needle, and as the latter comes around in orbit, he fires the rocket motors and rams the habitat hub amidships, piercing the giant alien with the remaining spike of the ice. The whole thing cartwheels and crashes back on to Umbriel. I leave it to you
whether the scientist dies a glorious Kamikaze death, to assuage the shame of having brought this threat upon mankind (and death to his colleagues), or whether Fortuna persuades him to bail out and be rescued.   As orbital velocity around Umbriel will be low, that could happen after the ramming.

(NB) The alien can’t use the electrostatic weapon to stop the Ice-Needle from ramming him because he’s reconfigfired the system for propulsion.)”

My thanks to Duncan for  generously providing the above story , which otherwise would probably never have seen the light of day. Skipper Prossitt

 

 

14 January 2018

Some thoughts and observations by Sydney’s wife Jan  on their recent trip to the Reggio Emilia comic book show where Sydney was guest of honour.

“Getting through customs at Bologna air port was easy compared to the carry on at Gatwick and Sydney and I were relieved to see two cheery faces waiting to greet us and take us in a warm car to our destination and hotel in Reggio Emilia. Our driver Silvio did not speak too much English but Giovanni his companion thankfully did. After a wash and brush up in our very modern hotel room with the biggest bed I have ever seen We met for dinner .Giovanni, and Silvio, and were introduced to Paola (the president of Anafi) there were around a dozen other people that we shook hands with some of them were publishers and also a few other artists.I have to say these were among the most friendly and helpful people I have ever met and nothing was too much trouble for them. We found out that the people who had invited us to the convention were all volunteers and passionate about comics. after a tasty supper we retired to bed.
The next morning we were whisked off to the convention and were amazed at the size of the buildings and the huge variety of comic books, paintings, models, and inevitably a food hall with every kind of delicacy on sale particularly the parmigiano reggiano cheese for which the area is famed The group had fifeteen years previously published a coloured book of Jeff Hawke stories based on the work modified for the American market. Sydney signed the remainder of the books to sell on their behalf. Almost immediately and before we could properly set up the stand we were inundated with fans of Sydney’s art. some had books to sign that they had kept for years others wanted to buy some original art or copies thereof and some just wanted their photo taken with Sydney. I am never ceased to be amazed at the adoration that is bestowed on him in Italy, Paola said “Sydney is a myth… well I had never heard that before. As the day progressed the interest shown in the Jeff Hawke artwork remained high. I was heartened to meet again many of the fans that had been in Lucca the previous year some of whom had travelled a significant distance to be at the convention. On one of the breaks Sydney and I were able to go and look at the other stands and it is clear that in Italy the home grown product is holding its own against the influx of American style super heroes. We travelled out for lunch where we met among other fascinating people,a literary critic from Venice whose grasp of life and letters gave the strongest clue as to how the comic reading public in this remarkable country has formed their appreciation of the Jeff Hawke saga. Back at the conference the stand continued to attract a steady stream of fans and we were kept busy answering the many questions levelled at us. Again the day ended with a splendid dinner at which the talk and the wine flowed!
Sunday it was a beautiful sunny day and we had to give it our best shot as we were leaving that afternoon to go back to our cottage and two dogs. Sydney was taken to an interview room where he was prompted to talk about past projects and future ones as well. We were taken again out to lunch and a journalist turned up and proceeded to ask Sydney questions; they ended up on the road outside and Sydneys lunch got cold.
Back for the last stint on the stand before we were escorted to our waiting car and transported back to Bologna airport under a glorious Tuscan moon.
The friends we made and the people we met confirm yet again that in Italy Jeff Hawke has found his spiritual home.”

Jan Jordan

1 January 2018

Herewith ,part 3 of the ICE NEEDLE, the last unpublished Hawke /McLane story. The Hope crew have made  contact with  the  expedition leader in the Ice needle   but Fortuna can sense that he is being monitored by the alien presence on the Uranian moon. Her telepathic powers also allow her to learn something of the Aliens. Duncan Lunan, the writer of ICE NEEDLE takes up the story:    ”

Fortuna learns the full story of the artefact and its occupants.   The mission of the wheel was to establish the ET’s form of life in the Solar System, but if they found a life-bearing planet, their ethic was to colonise only the outer planets and leave the inner system alone.   If intelligence did in due course arise in the inner system, and develop space travel, no doubt by the vast timescales of the Universe the visitors would be then have dispersed or died out, so there would be no undue influence. However, they had one renegade among their leaders, who wanted a return to the sort of wars of conquest which they used to pursue in the past.and were now ashamed of.

He and his followers had put a lot of effort into modifying the electrostatic defence of the habitat so that it could be used as a weapon. To keep out cosmic rays, you can cut the mass of a torus habitat by a factor of four to ten, depending on the hull material, if you don’t then have to surround it with a five-metre thick layer of rock or build the habitat out of five-metre thick prestressed concrete in the first place. The system was designed as an option for the ‘Stanford Torus’ space habitat project in the mid-1970s.   For it to shield the whole structure electrostatically against cosmic rays, the charge required would be huge – 15 billion electron volts.   For a habitat as big as this, designed to move across interstellar space, the mass saving would be colossal. The system requires the hub of the habitat to be hollowed out as a ‘well’ for high-energy electrons (Fig. 9) and have an emergency discharge system to make the whole structure electrically neutral. (Richard D. Johnson & Charles Holbrow, eds, “Space Settlements, A Design Study”, NASA SP-413, US Government printing Office, 1977.)   If discharged along a beam of gas or plasma, however, it would be.a devastating weapon. (Ben’s comment at this point: “It makes the Annedoti trick look trivia1!”)

At the point when this issue came to a head, a colony had already been established on Miranda, leaving the population on the habitat relatively low – i.e. still several million!   But the warlike faction staged a coup, and turned the weapon on Miranda, to destroy the colony. Unfortunately, unknown to them, Miranda was near breakup due to tidal stresses. (This is what the astronomers
think really happened to it, perhaps several times in its history, because of interactions between the right-angled pulls of the planet and the Sun – though there aren‘t any mathematical models yet.) With this colossal bolt of energy from the habitat sinking deep into Miranda, it was enough.to trigger the break-up.   The effect was to create big broken lumps of Miranda in orbit plus an expanding ring of debris – like the situation in the Earth-Moon system after C-Day, but even worse.
The habitat tried to take shelter on the far side of Umbriel, that being as far as they could get in the time.   But because Umbriel is so small  (750 miles diameter) the trick didn’t  work: chunks of debris came round the curve of Umbriel and broke the rim and the spokes, and
the rim fell. In the process, although its spin rate was very low, it suffered terrible damage because of the momentum it had due to its mass: another big factor was that as it crashed on to the surface, Umbriel’s gravity was at right-angles to the spin-generated artificial gravity, so everything loose plunged to what is now the bottom of the rim.

Factions of survivors ( from Miranda) tried to attack and reclaim the hub, but it was still upright and intact, and even at low power the electrostatic weapon was devastating against individuals in spacesuits. At the end of the conflict the leader of the renegades had himself placed in suspended animation until his surviving followers got organised: but they didn’t, they died out, and he’s been in cold sleep for a million years or more – not completely suspended, but growing in the low gravity so that he now fills a substantial part of the hub. Not to be a repeat of Cthulhu, he’s roughly humanoid in shape, but with one central eye, and two tentacles instead of arms. I see him as grey, but at any rate he shouldn’t be green, not to repeat Cthulhu.”          Part 4 to follow shortly  .  Skipper Prossitt

 

According to Sydney and his wife, he received a wonderfully warm reception at the   Reggio Emilia comic show  where he  had been invited as guest of honour last weekend. Sydney has a large fanbase in Italy where his work has been admired and published for many years, and many collectors of his work  had the opportunity to meet and chat with him.

Skipper Prossitt

 

 

 

Sydney has been invited  as guest of honour to the Mostra Mercato del Fumetto  ( comics fair)  in Reggio Emilia  in Northern Italy this weekend. The show is on for the 2nd and 3rd of December so if any of Sydney’s many Italian fans are in the area, call in and meet  him  during the show.  He will also be giving a talk on his work   during the show which closes on Sunday at 6pm.  La vostra possibilità di incontrarsi il creatore di Jeff Hawke!   Skipper Prossitt

 

 

 

 

 

28 November 2017

Duncan Lunan continues to outline the story of the unpublished Hawke/McLane story THE ICE NEEDLE. The Japanese expedition has launched its experimental manned craft towards Umbriel , a moon of Uranus where previously an unmanned probe has located an alien artifact:

The alien artifact ” is (was) in fact an enormous ring-shaped space habitat (40 miles across), a gigantic version of the ‘Stanford Torus’ space settlement design.   John Varley had already done something similar in his novel “Titan” and sequels, but his was one huge living organism with its own complete interior ecology.

Our one did have a complete interior ecology, but wasn’t itself alive. It entered the Solar System a million or more years ago after a multi-generation interstellar voyage, and is lying broken and wrecked on Umbriel. So when the Japanese scientists are awakened. after the Needle has used its rocket motors, finally, to put itself into polar orbit around Umbriel, there it is.   NB: it has to be polar orbit, to pass over the artefact. Since Umbriel like almost all moons has a trapped rotation, you can’t do your usual trick of calling it ‘synchronous orbit’ no matter the altitude.   Anyway, the ending requires the Needle NOT to be in synchronous orbit.)

 

The    chief scientist is much older than the others, so he is the one to remain in the Needle while the younger ones go down in the lander. (This lets you bring in one or more young women for the delectation of the Daily Record.)   They’ve sent a message to Japan confirming their triumph thus far, but of course there’s been no answer. They don’t know about the disaster – this is still important. Their plan is to land and explore, then return to the Needle and go back into suspended animation until rescued. But for the sake of Japan they’ve been prepared all along for it to be a one-way trip if their plans don’t work out.

The situation is that the ring of the grounded habitat is broken to bits (dramatic images), but the hub is standing upright, and there’s an obvious point of entry through one of the snapped-off spokes. No doubt that’s where the control rooms will be. But as they make their way in along the spoke, suddenly the tunnel seals itself behind them and begins to pressurise – they’re in an airlock, and it’s working. When the inner door opens they press on along the tunnel until they see an end to it ahead, and light beyond – at which point they realise that the whole tunnel is swaying slightly underfoot as they walk along it. Next there’s a slithering sound along the outside of the tunnel; a huge eye appears at the end; and as the tentacle wrapped around the tube is whipped away, it puts the tunnel into a spin, they’re thrown off their feet and the contact with them is broken.

At this point we switch to the Hope, which is now approaching Uranus from ‘out of the ecliptic’. As it swings round the planet, avoiding the rings, it passes close to the inner moon, Miranda (Fig. 7). This is so that we can see the extraordinary surface features, including the huge cliffs (Fig. 8), which indicate that Miranda has been pulled or blown apart and re-assembled. Features like the ‘chevron’ indicate massive distorting forces at work in the past, and all over the surface we see geologically incompatible terrain jammed together – so roughly that Miranda isn’t even properly spherical, and at the site of the cliffs, the level is way out of line where two chunks of the moon have been ground together.

Arriving at Umbriel, the Hope team make contact with.the Japanese leader in the Needle and are told about the loss of contact with the landing team. Fortuna warns, however, that the entity in the habitat core is already monitoring him, and it will be safer to leave him isolated for the moment. A rescue attempt is mounted by the Task Force.   At the point where the trap in the airlock tube is sprung, McLane gets a shot off and hits the eye – allowing the team to stabilise the tube and retreat under cover of Fortuna’s powers.”

to be continued.    Skipper Prossitt

 

12 November 2017

Below is the first part of the unpublished ICE NEEDLE  Hawke/McLane  story . After the description of how the launch system might work  in last week’s post Duncan now takes up the story itself :-

“For the purposes of the story, this project was the brainchild of a group of Japanese scientists who were determined Japan should be first to one of the planets. Uranus was the next target, before the disaster, and they were prepared to make it a one-way trip because they believed there was a major discovery to be made among the moons (see below). At the time of the C-Day [ collision day - the day in the Hawke/McLane universe when part of the Moon hit the Earth - my note –Skipper Prossitt] , they were ready to launch and had already gone into suspended animation in the ship – partly to withstand the very high launch acceleration but also because the ship itself is too small to carry supplies for the trip, in towards the Sun and then out again. Since the disaster the sea level has been too low to reach the intakes, because so much water has been locked up in the temporary ice-caps; but now that the ice is receding the sea-level is rising, and it reaches the intakes and triggers the automatic systems. So the occupants are on their way, not knowing how much things have changed in the meantime: they’re lucky to get away from the Earth without hitting the ring of debris – room here for a spectacular drawing of a near miss.

Of course the launch is seen, and records of the project are uncovered, though Japan itself is only now emerging from the ice. The Faith, which is still attached to the Mercury project, is scrambled to try to intercept the Needle before it goes into the next propulsion phase, but doesn’t quite make
the rendezvous in time. The shield is blown off, the tip of the Needle is exposed to full sunlight as it swings through its closest approach to the Sun, and the Needle accelerates outward – too high an acceleration for the Faith to match. (We worked out before that one-tenth of a g is top acceleration for the starships.)   Another attempt to intercept is made from Earth as the Needle is heading away from the Sun and its acceleration begins to drop; but then the ship deploys its parabolic solar sail (fig. 4) to focus sunlight from a large collecting area on to the tip of the Needle. Because the mass
of the Needle is going down all the time, this means that it will be able to keep up a high acceleration at least until well out past the asteroid belt, giving it a very high transfer velocity to Uranus. The only chance now for the occupants, who are still in suspended animation, is for the Hope to meet them at Uranus on its way back from the 10th planet.

Notice that the Needle is getting shorter all the time, so the parabolic sail has to be able to alter its focus, and has pleated segments to take up the slack. This lets you do another spectacular sequence when the sail opens, frustrating the rescue attempt from Earth: the pattern of pleated and reflecting segments makes a Japanese flag.

One important point is that because Uranus rotates ‘on its side’, and gees round the Sun in 84 years, in 2088 the Sun will be much closer to the plane of the equator and the rings than it was during the Voyager 2 flyby in 1986, when the Sun was almost overhead at the planet’s north pole.   Having the Sun nearer to the ring plane favours the braking method we have in mind for the Ice-Needle ~ which is now down to just a stump, but with a sharp point. (That’s going to be important.)
Ed Buckley’s painting ‘Golgotha Moon’ in “New Worlds for Old” was right about the existence of rings, and right about the material being dark and chunky, but wrong about the rings being very spread out. (“Man and the Planets” p.230.)   The rings are narrow and Voyager 2 found three shepherd satellites, one 50 miles in diameter and the other two a bit smaller. Gordon and I assume that there will be more, smaller still, and the Needle’s guidance system is now looking for one just a mile or two in diameter. It’ll have to use rockets to position itself for a close pass by one such, either above or below the planet’s orbital plane as the Needle comes ‘out of the Sun’ (fig.5).

The Needle now turns itself around so that it’s flying spike-foremost. The sail is braced by super~strength cables on the back, so it doesn’t collapse.   (It needed those in the acceleration phase anyway, to keep it open and in shape.)   These are now paid out, so that the sail is trailing behind the Needle like a parachute, and it snags the dwarf satellite. Since the satellite weighs billions of tons, of course, it acts like an anchor and as the cable pays out it slows the Needle down enough to be captured into orbit around the planet.

(Gordon and I are fudging the numbers here: the Needle is travelling at something over 1000 kilometres per second and it’ll be one hell of a cable that will withstand being paid out at that rate.   I would have it paying out from a coil rather than a drum…)

At the end of the deceleration the Needle is heading for Umbriel, the dark satellite which is the middle one of the five major moons. (Why it’s so dark doesn’t really concern us except that it’s probably carbonaceous material which would be very useful for life-support.)   The reason the Japanese mission is going to Umbriel is because of the orange ring on Umbriel (Fig. 6). (Mind you, I wouldn’t place too much reliance on the colouring here because JPL describes the surface as ‘generally grey and colourless’ and in this photo it looks pink, as does the star or whatever at the bottom of the frame.)   The secret is that back before C-Day, the Japanese sent out an exploratory probe which got a close-up of it and revealed that it’s the wreck of an artefact – and back then we hadn’t contacted any ETs, so that was a big discovery and the Needle scientists were determined to claim it for Japan alone. ”
It is an intriguing and interesting twist in the story that the launch itself, with its crew in suspended animation and its ground crew and scientific support all swept away by the c-day disaster , is triggered solely by the rise in ocean level   and not by any human hand.

Skipper Prossitt