This is post 6 of 6 today, and will close this afternoon’s virtual MonSFFA meeting. If you’re just now joining us, scroll back to today’s Post 1 of 6 to enjoy the whole meeting, start to finish.
12) ANOTHER CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG
We first ran this Steve Stewart gem in July; it’s a very funny coronavirus-infused version of Escape, the so-called “Pina Colada Song”:
13) APRIL’S TRIVIA CHALLENGE CONTEST WINNERS HAVE BEEN SELECTED!
As most of you know, we launched a trivia challenge online back in April, fully expecting to conclude that contest a couple or three months later when we returned to a meeting hall for a face-to-face get-together following what we thought would be a relatively brief period of COVID-19 lockdown. That scenario, of course, never played out as the virus stubbornly persisted, and does so still, even as authorities have authorized a partial reopening of society while continuing to encourage and enforce coronavirus-safe practises, and the maintaining certain restrictions.
So last month, we announced that we’d be bringing the contest to a close by Labour Day and name our first, second, and third place winners during today’s virtual meeting. This we have done, verbally, just about two hours ago, live, during the mid-meeting break’s Zoom session.
Our two top-players each recorded a score of 54 points, one short of a perfect game. There was also a two-way tie for second place, with each of these folk coming in at 53 points. We decided on the awarding of first prize by random draw, bestowing second prize to the contestant for whom that draw was unsuccessful. And, we drew again between the two 53-point finishers to determine who would be granted third prize. Here, officially listed for the record, are those winners…
First Place: Lindsay Brown, who wins a hand-carved dragon clock crafted by club president Cathy Palmer-Lister.
Second Place: Lynda Pelley, who wins a set of vintage promotional lobby cards for various genre films, donated by MonSFFA treasurer Sylvain St-Pierre.
Third Place: Danny Sichel, who wins a stained-glass Star Trek ornament—the Federation insignia—suitable for hanging in a window or on a Christmas tree, also crafted by Cathy.
Congratulations to our victors, and indeed, to all the entrants who took part, and thanks for playing! Prizes will be mailed by standard post to the winners.
14) ANSWERS TO APRIL’S SCI-FI TRIVIA CHALLENGE
Here are the correct answers to the 19 questions put to MonSFFen and friends in our Sci-Fi Trivia Challenge, launched back in April as part of the club’s very first virtual meeting:
QUESTION 1 (2 points)
“Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable—that is why you are here. And now for the first time, we are bringing to you the full story of what happened on that fateful day!” This introduction opens which sci-fi movie, and is spoken by who?
ANSWER: Ed Wood’s 1959 “classic” Plan 9 From Outer Space; The Amazing Criswell, an ostentatious psychic of the era whose prognostications were, not surprisingly, rather inaccurate.
QUESTION 2 (4 points)
What book won the very first Hugo Award for Best Novel, who wrote it, and in which year was the honour bestowed?
ANSWERS: Hugo Gernsback, editor of Amazing Stories Magazine and a pivotal player in the early history of science fiction; The Demolished Man; Alfred Bester; 1953
QUESTION 3 (1 point)
An unintentional programming glitch caused the so-called “Corrupted Blood” outbreak to sweep through the virtual world of what online massively multiplayer fantasy role-playing game in 2005?
ANSWER: World of Warcraft
QUESTION 4 (1 point)
Who is “The Man of Tomorrow” in Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”
ANSWER: Superman
QUESTION 5 (1 point)
Boxer, Binky, Clover, Mollie—which of these does not belong?
ANSWER: They are all horses but Binky does not belong with the others. Binky is Death’s pale steed in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series while Boxer, Clover, and Mollie are characters in George Orwell’s 1945 novella Animal Farm.
QUESTION 6 (1 point)
In the Andrzej Sapkowski short stories and novels, the subsequent Projekt Red video-game trilogy, and now, the recently launched Netflix series The Witcher, what is the name of long-lived monster-hunter-for-hire Geralt of Rivia’s horse?
ANSWER: Roach, which is the name he gives to all of the horses he employs over the years. We’ll also accept the Polish “Plotka” as correct.
QUESTION 7 (2 points)
Claiming that 1984’s The Terminator was “a rip-off” of an Outer Limits episode he had written in the mid-1960s, this science fiction writer threatened litigation against Orion Pictures and received a sum of money, plus an acknowledgment in the credits of later prints of the film. Who is he, and what was the name of the Outer Limits episode upon which he claims Terminator was based?
ANSWER: Harlan Ellison; “The Soldier”
QUESTION 8 (8 points)
This question asked players to draw a connecting line from each of eight swords listed to their wielders, listed as well but in jumbled order.
ANSWERS: The Atlantean Sword is wielded by the titular character in the films Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. Ice is Eddard Stark’s sword in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Orcrist belongs to Thorin Oakenshield in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The lightsaber-like Sunsword is Thundarr the Barbarian’s weapon in his Saturday-morning animated adventure series. Graywand is a two-hand sword wielded by barbarian Fafhrd in Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser sword and sorcery books. The Sword of Athena is one of Wonder Woman’s weapons in her big screen adventures. Created by the forces of chaos, Stormbringer is the darkly enchanted black blade of Michael Moorcock’s ultimately doomed anti-hero Elric of Melniboné. And in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Rhindon is the sword bestowed upon Peter Pevensie, later to be crowned by Christ parallel Aslan the Lion as His Majesty King Peter the Magnificent, High King of Narnia, Emperor of the Lone Islands, Lord of Cair Paravel, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Lion.
QUESTION 9 (2 points)
Star Trek’s original starship Enterprise’s registry designation is NCC-1701; what does “NCC” stand for, and what is the designation for doomed sister starship Constellation, featured in the classic episode “The Doomsday Machine”?
ANSWERS: Naval Construction Contract (we’ll also accept the sometimes employed “Naval Construction Code”); Constellation’s registry designation was NCC-1017.
QUESTION 10 (3 points)
“Cyberpunk 2020,” a ’90s table-top role-playing game is set in which dystopian future year, has as its default setting which fictional West Coast American city, and was issued by which games publisher?
ANSWER: 2020; Night City; R. Talsorian Games. Note that there are four editions of these Cyberpunk games, with a fifth expected later this year. Cyberpunk 2020 is the second edition, and is set, as the title suggests, in 2020. The overall timeline at play, here, ranges from the first edition’s 2013 to the fourth edition’s 2045. The upcoming fifth edition will be called Cyberpunk 2077, set in—you guessed it!—2077.
QUESTION 11 (3 points)
Who was the first woman to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, for which novel, and in what year?
ANSWERS: Ursula K. Le Guin; The Left Hand of Darkness; 1970
QUESTION 12 (16 points)
Players were here asked to first identify in which film eight listed sci-fi movie characters appeared, then secondly, match each to the actor/actress who played that character.
ANSWERS: Stella Star is the lead character in the Italian space opera Starcrash (1978) and was played by Caroline Munro. Colonel Dan McReady appears in Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) and was portrayed by future Batman Adam West. United Planets Cruiser C-57D’s Commander, John J. Adams, was played by Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen in the classic Forbidden Planet (1956). Cora Peterson was part of the crew aboard miniaturized vessel Proteus in Fantastic Voyage, and was played by Raquel Welch. Sinbad was the leading man in stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen’s trilogy of movies featuring the character. He was portrayed by a different actor with each outing, in this instance, by Patrick Wayne, John Wayne’s son, in the trilogy’s final installment, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). Gene Barry starred as Dr. Clayton Forrester, leader of the fight against H. G. Wells’ invading Martians in producer George Pal’s awarding-winning 1953 film adaption of War of the Worlds. Renate Richter is the daughter of a Nazi scientist who, with other “Fourth Reich” Nazis, are based on the moon in Iron Sky (2012); she was played by German actress Julia Dietze. And Nancy Archer, portrayed by Allison Hayes, was the vengeful 50-foot-tall woman who did all of the attacking in the kitschy B-movie attraction Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (1958).
QUESTION 13 (1 point)
Racially controversial comic book character Ebony White was a sidekick to which of the following? A) The Phantom, B) The Spirit, C) The Spectre, D) Black Panther
ANSWER: B) The Spirit (The accompanying image of Ebony White will tell you all you need to know as to why the character is considered racially controversial.)
QUESTION 14 (1 point)
What does the acronym S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for?
ANSWER: Debuting in Strange Tales No. 135 in August of 1965, this high-tech super-spy organization’s moniker was short for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-Enforcement Division, later changed to Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, and for the MCU, Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. We’ll accept any one of these as the correct answer.
QUESTION 15 (1 point)
Who authored the collected Tales of Known Space?
ANSWER: Larry Niven
QUESTION 16 (1 point)
The Era of Hopeful Monsters, Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, The Gospel from Outer Space, The Smart Bunny—what do the preceding titles have in common?
ANSWER: They are all fictional novels authored by a fictional science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. Kurt Vonnegut created the character of Trout, a prolific but unsuccessful science fiction writer whose name is a play on that of Vonnegut’s friend and fellow genre writer Theodore Sturgeon. Trout is featured or referenced throughout Vonnegut’s oeuvre, but the details of his life and circumstances vary, sometimes wildly, from book to book.
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The Neptune Factor (1973), Starship Invasions (1977), Scanners (1981), Firebird 2015 A.D. (1981), Manborg (2009), Code 8 (2019), Rabid (2019), Manborg (2009), and Sci-Fighters (1996)—what do these diverse sci-fi films spanning some five decades have in common as regards their production?
ANSWER: They are all Canadian productions!
QUESTION 18 (3 points)
Captain America was co-created by who, and first appeared in which comic book, the cover depicting Cap punching out which infamous villain?
ANSWER: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby; Captain America Comics No. 1; Nazi leader Adolph Hitler
QUESTION 19 (3 points)
The critically-acclaimed television series The Expanse is based upon a series of novels and stories by James S. A. Corey; what is the title of the first book in that series, and what are the names of the two authors for whom James S. A. Corey is a shared pen name?
ANSWERS: Leviathan Wakes; Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck
15) A PAIR OF BONUS PARODY SONGS
Here are two more of our favourite coronavirus parody songs: the first, another that we featured in our May meeting, is this amusing ditty from South Africa’s The Kiffness (www.thekiffness.com), about the need, during lockdown, to just get out of the house for a while…
And the second, which, if memory serves, was included as part of a between-meetings post, Five Times August’s droll take on watching TV during quarantine (fivetimesaugust@fivetimesaugust.com):
16) ANSWERS TO “WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?”
You know, of course, who this Kent guy really is, but did you successfully identify to which superhero belong each of our 19 listed alter-egos (Post 1 of 6, uploaded at 1:00PM today)? Compare your answers to these:
1) In the modern era, KENDRA SAUNDERS is Hawkgirl, an immortal reborn many times!
2) High-school teacher JEFFERSON PIERCE is secretly Black Lightning!
3) REMY LEBEAU, a mutant and reformed thief who joined the X-Men is known as Gambit!
4) DINAH DRAKE-LANCE is the Black Canary!
5) ROBERT REYNOLDS is Sentry!
6) Private investigator RALPH DIBNEY is Elongated Man!
7) BRIAN BRADDOCK is Captain Britain!
8) LINNYA WAZZO, a native of the planet Bgztl, is Phantom Girl!
9) IRMA ARDEEN’s alter-ego is Saturn Girl, she of the Saturnian moon Titan, and of the 31th century!
10) WENDELL ELVIS VAUGHN is Quasar, a former S.H.I.E.L.D. field agent and founding member of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Super-Agents!
11) Former NHL hockey superstar BRYCE LAINE is MooseMan, the Antlered Avenger and a MonSFFilms superhero!
12) Russian mutant PIOTR RASPUTIN is the mighty metallic mutant Colossus!
13) Model and TV personality MARI JIWE McCABE is Vixen!
14) ALEC HOLLAND is Swamp Thing!
15) ANGELICA JONES is a heat-generating mutant known as Firestar!
16) She is an aspiring singer and actress, a mutant capable of transmuting sound into light, and a reluctant superhero; ALISON BLAIRE is the alter-ego of Dazzler!
17) Teenager RICHARD RIDER becomes the superhero Nova when granted the cosmic energy of the Nova Force!
18) Businesswoman CAROL FERRIS is, in fact, Star Sapphire!
19) DUKE THOMAS is The Signal, a young protégé of Batman’s!
17) THANK YOU!
We hope you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, and we ask all of you to check in regularly here at www.MonSFFA.ca for additional content during this continuing period of partial lockdown/cautious reopening, and for any news as to when the club expects to return to face-to-face gatherings. Thank you for your interest and attention, and don’t forget to comment on today’s meeting!
We’d also like to thank Sylvain St-Pierre, Danny Sichel, Joe Aspler, Cathy Palmer-Lister, and Keith Braithwaite for putting this September 2020 DIY Virtual MonSFFA Meeting together, with a nod, as well, to our supporting contributors today.
Keep on social distancing, washing your hands often, and following all of the other vital public health guidelines that authorities have issued. And take particular note: Quebec is now imposing stiff fines on those who are out in public without a protective face mask, so remember to wear yours, not just to save a few hundred bucks, but to help save lives and hasten the end of this accursed pandemic!
18) FINAL PARODY SONG
Have you made your way, tentatively, to the barber’s or hair salon yet? We’ll complete today’s selection of tunes with an encore of The Holderness Family’s (www.Instagram@TheHoldernessFamily) take on a Bonnie Tyler classic, originally featured as part of our July meeting:
19) NINETEEN RANDOM BRIEFS TO CLOSE OUT TODAY’S MEETING!
Black Panther Star Chadwick Boseman Dead at 43, leaving many of his castmates and fans shocked and surprised to hear that the actor had been quietly fighting colon cancer since 2016! Early speculation regarding the 2022-scheduled Black Panther sequel has King T’Challa’s sister, Shuri, taking on the mantle.
Also Deceased is Another Avenger, but not one of Marvel’s; rather, actress Diana Rigg, a co-star of the 1960s British “Spy-Fi” series The Avengers. She played the brilliant, fashionable, and formidable martial-arts expert Emma Peel to Patrick Macnee’s secret agent, John Steed. Rigg was also a Bond girl, and the only one to wed the legendary 007, not that she lived to enjoy the honeymoon. Fantasy fans may recognize her most recent Emmy-nominated genre role, that of the Machiavellian Lady Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones. She passed away peacefully at age 82.
Batman has COVID-19, it seems, as reports circulated last week of star Robert Pattinson having contracted the disease just as filming on the latest Batman movie resumed following a six-month hiatus enacted due to the pandemic! The Batman remains slated for an October 2021 release.
Batwoman Star Ruby Rose Elaborates on Her Decision to Exit Hit Series after a truncated first season, cut short by the COVID-19 lockdown. After suffering a serious injury performing a stunt last year, the actress required emergency surgery lest she risk paralysis. Soon back on set post-operation, she was finding the physical demands of fronting an action series more taxing than she had expected. The lockdown afforded her time to re-evaluate her position and she finally opted to take time off to heal before a return to acting, announcing in May that she was leaving the show. Thus will Kate Kane/Batwoman’s disappearance unfold as a key plotline in Season Two and a new character, Ryan Wilder, be introduced to fill her Bat-boots; Javica Leslie has been cast.
Recommended Genre TV, 1: Lovecraft Country (HBO/CraveTV), a deft and timely exposé of America’s racist history in which a black man sets out across country in search of his missing father. For him and the show’s other principals, the demoralizing affronts of the Jim Crow era are on par with those of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft’s weird and terrifying landscape, a certain irony being that the acclaimed and much admired Lovecraft was himself a virulent racist.
Hollywood Stars Recovering from COVID-19 include Walking Dead and Guardians of the Galaxy actor Michael Rooker and the Jumanji franchise’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, whose wife and children had also contracted the disease!
Promise for Russian Vaccine Says Lancet, the prestigious medical journal, which published peer-reviewed results of two early-stage trials in which all 76 participants developed an antibody response to the COVID-19 virus and showed no sign of serious side effects! The Lancet cautioned that further, large-scale trials, “including a placebo comparison,” will be needed “to establish the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.” Russia has authorized domestic use of this so-named “Sputnik V” vaccine.
Recommended Genre TV, 2: The Boys (Amazon Prime), in which those select individuals gifted with fantastic powers are recruited and ultimately corrupted by powerful Vought International, a corporation which manipulates, markets, and manages them as valiant superheroes. But behind their masks, most are vain, ignoble, nasty, abusive, and even murderous characters. By way of comparison, think of the studio system during the heydays of Hollywood under which movie stars were supervised and controlled in order to project a positive public image and gloss over any untoward behaviour. Standing in opposition to Vought and its stable of supers is an underground group of vigilantes determined to bring them down and expose the fraud. Season Two has just dropped.
“Star Trek Day” Featured Cast Members, past and present, in CBS All Access’ celebration of the franchise. Every Trek series to date was represented in a 24-hour session of virtual panels and episode screenings. The event took place just a few days ago, on September 8, anniversary of the premiere of the original series in 1966. Worldwide access to the panels was offered.
LGBTQ+ Actors Join Star Trek: Discovery Cast for third season, Blu del Barrio playing the non-binary Adira, a new series regular, with Ian Alexander appearing as a recurring transgendered character named Gray!
Closest Known Fly-By of Earth by Asteroid occurred on August 16, when the SUV-sized Asteroid 2020 QG passed as near to our planet as 2950 kilometres, or roughly 1830 miles! The asteroid was too small to have posed any kind of threat.
Rogue Planets in Galaxy Could Number in the Trillions according to new research published in the Astronomical Journal, which suggests that the Milky Way may well include more starless, unbound planets than it does stars!
Justice League Actor Ray Fisher Calls Out Josh Whedon for having been “abusive” and “unprofessional” to the cast and crew of the big-screen superhero team-up when Whedon stepped in to replace director Zack Synder, who departed the production early to attend to pressing family matters. Fisher played Cyborg and has been exchanging missives with Warner Bros. over his allegations, the details of which have not yet been fully outlined. Whedon’s version of Justice League was not terribly well received and anticipation is building for the so-called “Synder Cut,” to be released on HBO Max next year and said to re-establish the film’s original vision.
Recommended Genre TV, 3: Raised by Wolves (HBO Max/CraveTV) is a new series which pits science against religion as the remnants of humanity escape an Earth devastated by war and seek to rebuild human civilization on a distant habitable but harsh new world. Guided by science and categorically rejecting prayer and dogma, the atheist faction has tasked a pair of androids with birthing, raising, and caring for human children on this new world. The deeply religious Mithraic arrive some years later aboard their space ark, inviting the possibility of renewed conflict. But the narrative isn’t that simple and, in fact, layers of complexity deep as the story and character relationships develop. Of note is the android, Mother, who is both nurturing and terrifying, memorably interpreted by actress Amanda Collins. Alien and Blade Runner director Ridley Scott is a co-producer of the series and directed the first two episodes. His influence is all over the production.
Adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Classic Foundation Trilogy Scheduled for 2021 Release on Apple TV+ despite a suspension in production ordered by Apple in March as the coronavirus pandemic took hold. The series’ executive producer and showrunner is comic book writer David S. Goyer, who penned the screenplays for Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, as well as the Blade movies, Man of Steel, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Recommended Genre TV, 4: The Umbrella Academy (Netflix), a time-hopping, at times sardonically humorous superhero ensemble harbouring a few surprises, is about seven adopted siblings raised by an eccentric billionaire. All but one sister exhibit a unique extraordinary power and their father trains them from an early age to become a well-oiled teen-aged crime-fighting unit. They operate out of the family mansion, dubbed “The Umbrella Academy.” But too many shocking secrets and growing suspicions fracture the family and the team eventually disbands. Years later, as adults, this dysfunctional dynasty reunites for their father’s funeral, and learn from one of the brothers, who is able to time-travel, of an impending global apocalypse which their outlier sister will precipitate—she has abilities, after all, which their father had suppressed pharmaceutically all these years because her power was simply too dangerous to unleash. When their collective efforts to prevent her from ending the world actually contribute to causing it, the time-travelling brother uses his powers to transport them all into the past to regroup and make another attempt in Season Two, which became available mid-summer.
Queen Elizabeth II’s Sandringham Estate to Host Drive-In Movie Events for commoners beginning September 25, complete with a concession stand—“I’ll have a Duke-of-Pork Hot-Dog, a bucket of Prince Philip’s Popcorn, and a Henry VIII-sized soda, please!” Sandringham is the queen’s private home and, for you of the Millennial, Generation Z, or Generation Alpha cohort, drive-ins are outdoor movie theatres in which people park their cars in a lot facing a giant screen and watch films projected thereon while seated comfortably in their own vehicles.
Thumbs-Up to Nunavut, the only Canadian province or territory to have completely held off the coronavirus, having recorded zero deaths and not a single case of COVID-19 to date!
DC FanDome Best of Digital Conventions to date, say comics devotees, DC’s virtual stand-in for the cancelled-in-2020 San Diego Comic-Con offering many hours of free streamed content, including exclusive behind-the-scenes material, trailers, virtual panels, fan art, cosplay, and more! The first and major part of this event unfolded in August over a 24-hour period and reportedly managed to satisfactorily emulate a real convention. A second installment is scheduled for today, again, only accessible for 24 hours, so now that you’ve finished here with us, skip on over to www.DCFanDome.comto “Explore the Multiverse!”
This is post 1 of 6 related posts which together make up our September 12, 2020, DIY, Virtual MonSFFA Meeting.
1) OPENING CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG
To start us off this afternoon, that was “Stayin’ Inside” by Brent McCollugh (www.facebook.com/brentmccmusic). If you seem to recall having heard it before, you likely have! We first featured the number as part of our April, and very first, online MonSFFA meeting. At the time, the COVID-19 quarantine was just beginning!
This month, we’ll be replaying some of our favourite coronavirus parody songs from among the collection we’ve harvested off of the Internet these past months. Think of this as a “Greatest Hits” compilation!
Many talented and witty songwriters/performers have been providing, throughout this COVID-19 crisis, gentle comic relief to us all, filking well-known rock and pop hits. Whenever given, we’ve credited by name these creators.
2) INTRODUCTION
With Labour Day behind us, the summer holiday period has drawn to a close, not that many of us vacationed this summer as we have in years past. Many of us remain on “pause” at work, or are working reduced hours, and a variety of travel restrictions are still in place, anyway. Few opted to venture far from home, a lot of folk “staycationing” this summer, maybe cautiously visiting the local beach or having a couple of friends over for a backyard barbecue or something along those lines. Pretty much all of the festivals, concerts, sporting events, blockbuster film premieres, genre conventions and other such summertime entertainment choices were either held online, postponed, or cancelled outright. Travel and tourism tentatively lurched ahead this summer, but on Impulse power! The albatross of COVID-19 hung over everything as we deconfined and began a measured return to something approaching normal, yet categorically not so.
Our society will be changed in profound and enduring ways before the anticipated vaccine is deployed. Tens of thousands worldwide have already died—over 9100 in Canada, 5700-plus of those in Quebec, and approaching some 900,000 globally. Many more will have succumbed before the virus is finally vanquished. These are fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, and friends now absent from our lives well before their time.
Customs like shaking hands will almost certainly wane until the practise is but a vestige of a bygone era, and we’ll probably wash our hands rather more often than we did before the virus hit. Online learning could supplant, at least in part, traditional classroom schooling at colleges and universities, and the remote office will undoubtedly grow in popularity as employers and employees alike adapt to a more decentralized workplace. This should see savings for businesses as they scale back on their rented office space in downtown towers, and for employees who no longer need commute to and from work morning and evening. In turn, downtowns will take on a new character no longer centered primarily on the transient daily population of office staffers. Their key clientele of workers and students having largely vacated the city core, then, many downtown restaurants and bars will fold, to be replaced by something that better serves the new paradigm. Everything from the corner coffee shop to public transit will be impacted by these shifting sands. Urban populations could register a falloff in future as post-COVID thinking sees people flee the perceived congestion of city streets in favour of quieter, less crowded suburban neighbourhoods in which to live and work. And as during the April-May lockdown, the environment should benefit as we will surely record a reduction in air pollution because driving back and forth, whether by car, or on a bus or commuter train, will moderate.
The brick-and-mortar retail sector, already facing challenges prior to the coronavirus crisis, may experience an acceleration in decline as consumers shy away from a return to crowded stores in favour of online purchasing. Movie theatres could eventually disappear, too, as folk eschew the multiplex crowds and adopt streaming services as their means of viewing filmed entertainment. Ironically, the nearly extinct drive-ins, relics of the 1950s-’60s that enjoyed a revival this summer, may well experience a more permanent comeback as retro entertainment venues, expanding beyond movies to include screenings of live music concerts, sports tournaments, and other pop culture events. How many of us, even years after the virus has abated, will think twice before putting ourselves in the middle of a jam-packed room at a Comic Con, for example, or some such event?
And yet, we are unequivocally social creatures. On some primal level, we absolutely need that face-to-face contact with our fellow human beings. How we will manage this while at the same time guarding against future contagions similar to the coronavirus remains to be seen. Regardless of how it all plays out, the world we return to when things finally get back to “normal” will be a fundamentally changed one.
As always, it remains vitally important that we continue to follow best recommended safety practises in order to help minimize the spread of the virus. That means frequent and thorough hand-washing, use of a hand-sanitizer, social distancing, mask-wearing in public, the minimizing of contact with others outside of our “bubble” of quarantine fellows, etc. Yes, it has been indisputably difficult to confine ourselves to our homes and neighbourhoods, but we all know that it is absolutely necessary if we are to triumph over the COVID-19 virus.
As always, to those of you deemed “essential workers,” and indeed, to everyone, please take all possible precautions in order to keep yourselves as protected from infection as can be. Now that students are returning to school and fresh outbreaks are inevitable, it is especially important not to let up on those safety protocols. We must not surrender to “COVID fatigue!”
This is our sixth virtual MonSFFA meeting. Today’s get-together will unfold right here on the club’s Web site over the course of the afternoon, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 3:00PM, and 4:00PM, with a concluding post at 4:30PM. All content will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MonSFFA), however, the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.
As we cannot yet safely assemble face-to-face in a meeting hall, this September virtual meeting has been prepared especially for you, MonSFFA’s membership. Sit back, check out each of the afternoon’s posts, scroll down leisurely through the proffered content, and enjoy! And do comment on what we’ve put up. Let us know what you think about specific topics presented or the meeting overall. Your input helps us to tailor these virtual meetings for maximum interest and enjoyment.
3) MEETING AGENDA
In This Afternoon’s Virtual Meeting:
1:00PM, Post 1 of 6
1) Opening Coronavirus Parody Song
2) Introduction
3) Meeting Agenda
4) A Second Parody Song
5) Stand by For Announcement of Trivia Challenge Winners
6) A Third Parody Song
7) Who Was That Masked Man? (A Quick Superhero Trivia Game)
1:30PM, Post 2 of 6
8) Education inSF&F
2:30PM, Post 3 of 6
9) Mid-Meeting Break (Display Table, Raffle, Zoom Get-Together, Including Announce of April’s Trivia Challenge Winners)
3:00PM, Post 4 of 6
10) Shakespeareans in SF&F
4:00PM, Post 5 of 6
11) It Came From The Garden! (Photo Gallery)
4:30PM, Post 6 of 6
12) Another Coronavirus Parody Song
13) Official Listing of April’s Trivia Challenge Contest Winners
14) Answers to April’s Trivia Challenge
15) A Pair of Bonus Parody Songs!
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17) Thank-You!
18) Final Parody Song
19) Nineteen Random Briefs to Close Out Today’s Meeting
4) A Second Parody Song
With this one, originally included with our May meeting’s content, we’re reminded of the importance of washing our hands, courtesy the “Founders Sing” YouTube channel (YouTube.com/FoundersSing). Like Lady Penelope’s car, it’s FAB!:
5) APRIL’S TRIVIA CHALLENGE: WINNERS TO BE NAMED TODAY!
Note that we’ll be announcing the first, second, and third place winners of our April virtual meeting’s trivia challenge during today’s mid-meeting break via our Zoom session! Join us at 2:30PM for that announcement.
Designed as a combination online/in-person contest, we had originally expected to conclude our challenge by mid-summer, at the latest. We had, upon launching this challenge in April, anticipated returning to in-person meetings post-lockdown within two or three months—surely the coronavirus emergency would by then have ended! But of course, we know now that this despicable virus persists, and that the crisis continues with no return to any kind of meeting-hall gathering likely anytime soon.
That being the unfortunate reality of the situation, we’ve decided to drop the in-person component of the contest and wrap things up with today’s online announcement of the winners, based upon the online entries we’ve received.
We’ll also list those winners, for the official record, in our closing post this afternoon at 4:30PM, along with the correct answers to the 19 sci-fi trivia questions posed.
6) A THIRD PARODY SONG
One of local-girl-makes-good Celine Dion’s biggest hits provided the basis for this amusing coronavirus filksong by Five Times August, another which we first showcased in May (fivetimesaugust@fivetimesaugust.com):
7) WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? (QUICK SUPERHERO TRIVIA GAME)
When donning cape and cowl, a superhero assumes the mantle of crime-fighter, valiant defender of the innocent, and crusader for all that is good and moral and proper. But whether it’s a pivotal, character-defining moment that starts them off on a virtuous mission to right wrong, or a bizarre lab accident, exposure to radiation, or strange chemical reaction which bestows upon them extraordinary meta-human powers, a superhero lives a double life! It is a cliché of the genre that the superhero, when not exercising the duties of an awesome champion of justice, hides his or her true identity behind the guise of “ordinary citizen,” often the person they were before occurred the incident that set them on their path to superheroism.
In a nutshell, most every superhero has a secret identity! Everyone knows that Superman’s alias is mild-mannered newspaper reporter Clark Kent, Batman’s, wealthy industrialist Bruce Wayne, and Spider-Man’s, young high-schooler Peter Parker.
But do you know to which comic book superheroes these 19 lesser known alter-egos or secret identities belong? We’ll run the answers this afternoon in our closing Post 6 of 6 at 4:30PM.
This is post 6 of 6 today, and will close this afternoon’s virtual MonSFFA meeting. If you’re just now joining us, scroll back to today’s Post 1 of 6 to enjoy the whole meeting, start to finish.
Last month we announced that we’re looking for summer drink recipes—tasty tropical cocktails, refreshing fruit-flavoured slushes, and thirst-quenching lemonades, mixed with or without alcohol! We’ve received a few and would like to add just a few more to the list, so do send in your submissions. Here, again, are the details:
Confer upon us your enticing recipe and give your commixture a groovy science fiction-ish moniker—Forbidden Pomegranate Lemonade, Krell Cooler, Planet X Holiday Punch, Gallifreyan Gimlet, Buffy the Vodka Slayer, Vulcan Voodoo, Salarian Spritzer, Alabama Hammer’s Slammer, Dosadi Daiquiri, Tran-Ky-Ky Mai Tai, Kessel Rum, you get the idea—then e-mail your recipes to me, your humble club vice-president, Keith Braithwaite (veep@monsffa.ca).
Be certain to list ingredients and clearly specify measures, garnishes, and any special instructions regarding preparation and serving. Include a brief few words on the delectable allure of your particular magical summertime potion and why it intoxicates you so, how you came to discover or create the drink, what was the inspiration for the name you’ve given it, that kind of thing. And if you would, pour your libation into a tall glass and snap a photo to send along with your recipe.
E-mail your recipes to me at veep@monsffa.ca. Looking forward to receiving the mad-science formulas for your breezy-cool thirst-slaking melanges!
13) APRIL’S TRIVIA CHALLENGE CONTEST TO WRAP-UP
We launched a trivia challenge back in April, expecting at that time to be back together in a meeting room by summer, at which point we’d collect the 19-question quiz folk had completed, tally up the scores, and ask a final, winner-determining 20th question. It is because cheapest generic viagra of the lack of ability of a man to accomplish or else keep up an erection tough a sufficient amount for sexual interaction. But nobody hears about them presumably because free generic cialis they are too stressed out then also they avoid having sex. cialis for sale cheap There are a number of natural remedies which you can trust. It is introduced in the two forms: tablets and jelly. http://deeprootsmag.org/page/46/ buy cheap levitra
Well, it looks like we may not be seeing each other in person for some time yet, so we’re going to modify the plan. We’re dispensing with the 20th question and simply accepting by e-mail answers to the 19 question-quiz (ignore the part of the instructions printed at the top of the quiz sheet pertaining to the 20th question, and to bringing in your completed quiz). Our deadline for getting your completed quizzes in to us is August 22, two weeks from today.
Scores will then be tallied from all received entries, a winner determined, and a prize mailed by conventional post to that person. In the case of a tie, the winner will be determined by random draw. Send your quiz answers to veep@monsffa.ca; please include your name and mailing address with your answers, including postal code. Here again is the quiz sheet, for those who may not have downloaded it back in April:
We hope you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, and we ask all of you to check in here at www.MonSFFA.ca regularly for additional content during this continuing period of strangeness, and for any news as to when the club expects to return to face-to-face gatherings. Thank you for your interest and attention, and don’t forget to comment on today’s meeting!
We’d also like to thank Sylvain St-Pierre, Joe Aspler, Cathy Palmer-Lister, and Keith Braithwaite for putting this August 2020 DIY Virtual MonSFFA Meeting together, with a nod, as well, to our contributors today.
Until we meet again, farewell, keep on social distancing and washing your hands often, and when in public, wear a mask!
This is post 1 of 6 related posts which together make up our August 8, 2020, DIY, Virtual MonSFFA Meeting.
1) INTRODUCTION
It has been a decidedly strange summer to date. Without the energetic summer festivals, glut of visitors to our fair city, and teeming weekend crowds, downtown Montreal is spookily empty and quiet. Most of the city’s popular tourist sites are either closed or limiting access. We can’t even enjoy the latest Hollywood sci-fi movie over popcorn and a cola at our local theatre because the summer blockbusters that had been scheduled this season have all been pushed into late-fall, winter, or even into next year!
Pandemic-related constraints imposed at the outset of the coronavirus crisis are still in place locally and nationwide, while at the same time, mitigation measures designed to quell the spread of the virus have been loosened. Recent moves to relax certain restrictions were aimed at safely reopening society and getting us back to normal, or as close to normal as is possible under current circumstances. However, as we have observed these past few weeks, this insidious virus is quick to take advantage of any laxity on our part.
As long-standing retailers and other enterprises, one after another, filed for bankruptcy protection, the pressure on government to allow shuttered businesses teetering on the precipice of financial ruin to reopen has, perhaps, resulted in too hasty an easing of protocols. We had, for the most part, succeeded in flattening the so-called “curve,” but as the quarantine was cautiously lifted, COVID fatigue saw many of us dropping our guard. We were soon witness to a number of localized outbreaks directly linked to larger-than-was-prudent gatherings or instances of heedless social distancing practises, particularly in bars and restaurants, at summer and day camps, beaches, and at house parties.
News promptly came of a ballooning of coronavirus cases elsewhere, notably in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, and India, and of soaring numbers of COVID-19 fatalities! It seemed that in these countries, the proliferation of the virus was completely out of control! Canada fared better than many, here, but we by no means escaped the virus’ resurgence. It’s clear that whenever people gather together in too-large numbers, and especially when social distancing and other mitigation measures are eschewed, a flare-up of infections results. And it’s a younger cohort, the figures show, which are now contracting COVID-19!
Just a few weeks after reopening, many establishments were forced to close their doors once again as governments reinstituted lockdowns. Across the globe, the virus which many had thought finally on the wane is again gaining ground, even in countries that have managed the crisis well. Authorities are now faced with back-to-school uncertainties and the question of how to ensure a safe return to the classroom in but a few weeks for students, teachers, and staff. A second wave of contagion is now considered by doctors and scientists as almost unavoidable!
We are not yet out of the woods. Far from it.
Allow me a brief tangential meander: our family cat, two weeks ago, got hold of a length of thread, something that cats are apt to do, and before we could interrupt her frolicking, she swallowed the thread, which, unfortunately, was attached to a sewing needle! X-rays at a nearby emergency animal hospital revealed that said needle was lodged in her stomach and, long story short, a $2000 procedure later, the needle was safely removed, she’s recovering, and will be just fine. Cats behave as cats behave; they are curious, and playful, and blissfully unaware of the dangers of swallowing a sewing needle!
Like cats, human beings are animals. Social animals. There is no denying that fundamentally, we need the regular, face-to-face interaction with others that we derive from attending sporting events or live concerts, going to the movies with friends, or taking in a play, sharing a meal and drinks with each other at a restaurant or bar, visiting a museum or an art gallery, or getting together with fellow sci-fi fans at a MonSFFA meeting to share our interests.
But we are also (supposedly!) intelligent animals, self-aware and capable of understanding that we find ourselves in a unique and perilous situation right now, and that we dare not swallow our proverbial sewing needle. Each of us must find the fortitude to forestall our usual inclinations, for our own individual, as well as the collective good.
It remains vitally important, therefore, that we continue to follow best recommended safety practices—frequent and thorough hand-washing, use of a hand-sanitizer, social distancing, mask-wearing in public, the minimizing of contact with others outside of our “bubble” of quarantine fellows, etc.—in order to help minimize the spread of the virus. It has certainly been difficult to isolate ourselves, even if partially, but we all know that it is absolutely necessary if we are to triumph over the COVID-19 virus.
On a brighter note, while the WHO cautions that a “silver bullet” cure is unlikely to result, some 160 vaccines are in rapid development worldwide, with a number having recorded very promising results in late-stage trials. Optimistically, if one (or more) of these ultimately proves viable, we could have an operative vaccine by early next year. Of course, it would take two or three more years to manufacture and distribute enough doses to supply global demand, but the creation of a successful vaccine would be a huge leap forward in humanity’s fight against COVID-19. Treatments designed to prevent the virus taking hold in the first place are also showing much potential. All good; fingers crossed!
As always, to those of you deemed “essential workers,” and indeed, to everyone, please take all possible precautions in order to keep yourselves as protected from infection as can be! Don’t let up on those safety protocols prematurely!
This is our fifth virtual MonSFFA meeting. Today’s get-together will unfold right here on the club’s Web site over the course of the afternoon, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 3:00PM, and 4:00PM, with a concluding post at 4:30PM. All content will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MonSFFA), however, the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.
As we cannot yet meet face-to-face as we usually do, this August virtual meeting has been prepared especially for you, MonSFFA’s membership. Sit back, check out each of the afternoon’s posts, scroll down leisurely through the proffered content, and enjoy! And do comment on what we’ve put up. Let us know what you think about specific topics presented or the meeting overall. Your input helps us to tailor these virtual meetings for maximum interest and enjoyment.
The Internet is home to many very talented, witty songwriters/performers who have been providing throughout this corona crisis gentle comic relief to us all, filking well-known rock and pop hits. Whenever given, we’ve credited by name these creators. This afternoon, we begin with a show tune by Dovelybell (www.facebook.com/dovelybell): Whether you are young or an old adult, all men need sexual stamina and tadalafil 20mg cipla performance in bed. Side effects like headache, stomach upset, and blurred vision are noted by the very few users of the Silagra . buy canadian viagra also shows the side effects but are comparatively less than the branded cialis.10. order generic cialis is to be never taken along with Suhagra. Sometimes these health issues are caused by injuries, genetic levitra shop uk disorder and aging as well. If you are feeling shy or viagra in line embarrassing to consult a doctor before intake of the pills.
4) SF&F’S TOP TEN CATS
As it happens, today is International Cat Day! Terry Pratchett wrote this truism: “In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.” In honour of International Cat Day, and of my family’s own recovering kitty, here are SF&F’s Top Ten Cats:
1) Greebo, a denizen of Pratchett’s Discworld books introduced in Wyrd Sisters, is a filthy, nasty grey tomcat and familiar of Nanny Ogg, one of the witches of Lancre.
2) Jonesy, the mouser aboard deep space mining vessel Nostromo, and with Warrant Officer Ripley’s sacrifice in Alien 3, the sole survivor of that ship’s crew!
3) Pixel is Robert A. Heinlein’s Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and has the uncanny knack of being wherever the narrator happens to be. Pixel, it’s explained, is too young to know that walking through walls is impossible.
4) Larry Niven’s Kzinti are an entire race of felinoid alien warriors appearing in his Tales of Known Space stories!
5) Tweety Bird-chasing Sylvester is a favourite cartoon cat.
6) The cat came back in Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, that cat being young Ellie Creed’s beloved pet, Church.
7) H. P. Lovecraft’s avenging Cats of Ulthar, approved of by the most radical members of PETA.
8) Mr. Bigglesworth is Dr. Evil’s cat in the Austin Powers franchise.
9) Spot is a cat adopted by Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Lieutenant-Commander Data in the android crewmember’s continuing efforts to understand humanity.
10) Mrs. Norris is the mean-spirited pet cat of Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch in the Harry Potter books and films.
5) THIS DATE IN HISTORY
The emergence of the COVID-19 virus and subsequent global lockdown of society will certainly mark 2020 as a noteworthy year in history. Such globally impactful events as the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 don’t come along every other weekend! That particular plague resulted in some 500 million estimated cases and about 50 million deaths worldwide over four successive waves of infection. It erupted in the closing months of World War I, another of history’s big events, as was World War II, which broke out a little over two decades after the Armistice was signed and ended six years later, in the wake of the controversial atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6th and 9th, respectively. But what about this date in history, August 8th?
August 8, 2009: Many MonSFFen, were, on this date, anticipating (pun intended) the evening’s scheduled masquerade at the 67th World Science Fiction Convention—the Worldcon—held at the Palais de Congrès in Montreal August 6-10, the first time our city has hosted a Worldcon, and only the fifth time a Worldcon had come to Canada. Sébastien Mineau, a former MonSFFA vice-president, served as co-MC of the masquerade with SF/F writer Julie Czerneda.
August 8, 1989: Space shuttle Columbia was launched on STS-28, a classified mission for the U.S. military believed to have involved the deployment of a new generation of military communications satellite.
August 8, 1978: The Pioneer-Venus Multiprobe, also called Pioneer-Venus 2, or Pioneer13, was a spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas rocket. Part of NASA’s Pioneer program, the Multiprobe spacecraft, or bus, carried one large and three small atmospheric probes, each equipped with an array of scientific instruments, and deployed these probes a couple of weeks before reaching Venus. The bus was designed to collect and transmit back to Earth data on Venus’ upper atmosphere until it burned up due to atmospheric friction while the probes were built to return data as they fell through the lower Venusian atmosphere and until they crashed into the planet’s surface. All components performed within design parameters, with one of the small probes actually surviving impact and continuing to transmit data from the ground for over an hour. The mission delivered to scientists important information about the composition of the thick Venusian atmosphere, the characteristics of clouds, wind patterns, temperatures, radiation, and ground-level pressure.
August 8, 1929: The German airship Graf Zeppelin departed Lakehurst, New Jersey, on a flight around the world sponsored in substantial part by American newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who assigned two of his journalists and a cameraman to cover the journey, including Grace Marguerite, Lady Hay Drummond-Hay, the only female passenger aboard who, by virtue of this flight, became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air. Also along for the ride was Hearst-sponsored polar explorer Sir George Hubert Wilkins. Airship Captain Hugo Eckener was in command. The 33,234-kilometer trip ended where it began, at Lakehurst, and including stops, took 21 days, five hours, and 31 minutes to complete, the fastest circumnavigation of the globe achieved to that date. Less than a decade later, on May 6, 1937, the Age of Airships would come to a fiery end at Lakehurst when the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg exploded during a docking manoeuver, killing 35 of the 97 passengers and crew aboard, and one linesman on the ground.
August 8, 1986:Transformers: The Movie is released, bringing to the silver screen the animated Autobots of television’s popular children’s cartoon series. Voice actors included Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, and Orson Welles! The film was distributed by producer Dino De Laurentiis’ De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. And speaking of Dino De Laurentiis…
August 8, 1919: Birthdate of movie producer Agostino “Dino” De Laurentiis, whose panoply of films includes comic book adaptations Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik (both 1968), the King Kong remake (1976) and its sequel, King Kong Lives (1986), several Stephen King adaptations, including The Dead Zone (1983) and Silver Bullet (1985), Conan: The Barbarian (1982), David Lynch’s Dune (1984), and cult favourite Flash Gordon (1980). And speaking of Flash Gordon…
August 8, 1900: Birthdate of actor James Pierce, immortalized as Prince Thun in the 1936 sci-fi adventure serial Flash Gordon, starring Buster Crabbe. Prince Thun was a Lion Man of Mongo and one Flash’s most trusted friends. Pierce had earlier played Tarzan in the 1927 silent film Tarzan and the Golden Lion, based the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, the ninth in his series of Tarzan books. Pierce wed Burroughs’ daughter, Joan, on August 8, 1928. The two voiced Tarzan and Jane on the “Tarzan of the Apes” radio program from 1932-1934. She died in 1972, he in 1983; their tombstones bear the inscriptions “Tarzan” and “Jane.”
August 8, 1946: The giant Convair B36 strategic bomber made its first flight on this date. Capable of intercontinental flight without refueling, the “Peacemaker” was the largest piston engine-powered production aircraft ever manufactured, sporting a 230-foot wingspan, exceeding that of any other combat aircraft of the day. Until the introduction of the jet-powered B-52 Stratofortress in 1955, the B36 was Strategic Air Command’s only vehicle capable of delivering an atomic bomb to the U.S.S.R. from a base in North America. Convair later retrofitted the aircraft with an additional four underwing-mounted jet engines, in addition to the six pusher-prop motors of the original design, leading to the idiom “six turnin’ and four burnin’!”
August 8, 1955: The United Nations-hosted International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy opened on this date in Geneva, Switzerland.
August 8, 1988: Scientists announced on this date the discovery of Galaxy 4C41.17, a cluster of stars they had determined to lie 15 billion light years distant from Earth. 4C41.17 is a powerful radio galaxy, emitting a signal a billion times greater than that of our sun. Vastly older than the Earth or sun, and perhaps even than our own Milky Way, it was, at the time, the most distant galaxy in the known universe. Today, at 32 billion light years away, Galaxy GN-z11 holds the title, more than doubling 4C41.17’s distance calculation.
August 8, 1948: Born on this date in Moscow, Svetlana Savitskaya was an aviator, aerospace engineer, and cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7/T-5 in 1982 as the second woman in space, almost two decades after pioneering cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova made history. Savitskaya went into space a second time as part of the crew of Soyuz T-12 in 1984, becoming, on that mission to the Salyut 7 space station, the first woman to spacewalk.
August 8, 1930: Birthdate of British screenwriter Terry Nation, known to genre fans for his contributions to Doctor Who in the 1960s and 1970s. Nation originated enduring villains the Daleks and their creator, Davros. He also penned episodes of The Avengers (1961-1969), The Champions (1968-1969), science fiction anthology series Out of This World (1962), and envisioned both the science fiction series Blake’s 7 (1978-1981), and the post-apocalyptic drama Survivors (1975-1977), about a group of people who endure through a plague that quickly spreads across the globe by way of air travel after its accidental release by a Chinese scientist! Pure science fiction; could never actually happen, right?
August 8, 1973: Canadian academic and marine ecologist Archibald Gowanlock Huntsman died on this date. He was a pioneering oceanographer who is known for his research on Atlantic Salmon, and as inventor of the process for fast-freezing fish fillets in 1929. He helped to found the North American Council on Fisheries Research in 1921, encouraging American, Canadian, French (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon), and British (Newfoundland, a British dominion prior to joining Canada as a province in 1949) collaboration on commercial fisheries and oceanographic study. Huntsman was a key figure in establishing and developing an international community of marine scientists. Trained as a medical doctor, he never practised, instead becoming captivated by Canada’s fisheries and conducting research out of St-Andrews, New Brunswick, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Nanaimo, British Columbia. Asked why the keen interest in the fisheries, he replied, “I thought I’d give it a try, just for the halibut!”
August 8, 1977: “Bye, Bye Bennie,” the final episode of the short-lived and appallingly bad sci-fi/comedy series Holmes & Yoyo (1976-1977), about an accident-prone police detective and his new android partner, airs on ABC. Android cop Yoyo was possessed of superhuman strength, could speed-read lightning-quick, and was able to swiftly analyse clues at a crime scene. He was also equipped with a built-in Polaroid camera that would snap a picture of whatever he was looking at, the shutter activated by pressing his nose, with the resulting photograph exiting from his shirt pocket. High-concept stuff!
August 8, 2003: Also bowing out on this date, but 26 years later, was the Tremors TV series, an offshoot of the like-named film franchise. The cast included Michael Gross, reprising his popular character, gun-loving survivalist Burt Gummer. The Sci-Fi Channel broadcast this series but the hour-long episodes were shown out of their intended sequence, with what should have been the second episode airing in the 13th and, as fate would have it, final slot. The show had put up excellent ratings numbers initially, but declining viewership as the storyline progressed ultimately led to its cancellation after only a half-season.
August 8, 1576: On Hven, an island in the strait between Denmark and Sweden, the cornerstone was laid for astronomer Tycho Brahe’s observatory/laboratory, Uraniborg, or the Castle of Urania, which he named for Greek mythology’s muse of astronomy. While travelling abroad, distinguished nobleman and scientist Brahe had also served as an agent for Danish monarch Frederick II, and as reward, the king granted him lordship of Hven and provided the funding to build Uraniborg. The most advanced research facility in the world at that time, Uraniborg was the first custom-built observatory in modern Europe, and an institute for the study of not only astronomy, but of meteorology, alchemy, and astrology. An expansion, Stjerneborg, or Castle of the Stars, was added in 1581 on an adjacent site and improved celestial observation by minimizing the interference of the winds on Brahe’s instruments, many of which he had developed during his time at Uraniborg . Over the lifespan of the institute, upwards of 30 assistants aided Brahe, and the facility was visited by royalty as well as other notable researchers, like fellow astronomer Johannes Kepler. Brahe abandoned Hven when he fell out of favour with Frederick II’s successor, Christian IV, who withdrew funding. Both Uraniborg and Stjerneborg were demolished shortly after Brahe’s death in 1601.
August 8, 1876: Thomas Edison received a U.S. patent for his “electric pen,” key component of a complete duplicating kit. The patent covered the pen, duplicating press, and accessories. A battery-powered hand-held motorized pen drove a reciprocating needle capable of making 50 perforations per second. Users would simple write or draw with this pen on a stencil, their scribblings reproduced as tiny holes in the template. The completed stencil was then placed atop a piece of paper resting on a flatbed press, and a roller used to squeeze ink through it onto the paper, thus duplicating what had been originally written or drawn. Edison claimed that up to 5000 copies could be made from one stencil. The process was a simple, inexpensive means of reproducing business, legal, financial, and other documents in small print runs. Edison marketed his duplicating system with advertisements in a circular that was produced using his very system! The “Electro-Autographic Press” was touted as “the only process yet invented whereby an unlimited number of impressions can be taken with rapidity from ordinary manuscript.” Another ad showing a couple embracing compared the process to a kiss. “Every succeeding impression is as good as the first,” read the ad copy. “Endorsed by everyone who has tried it—only a gentle pressure used.” Early on, Edison sold the rights to manufacture and market his system and eventually, the A. B. Dick Company acquired the patent and refined the invention, creating the mimeograph, which was marketed, with his permission, as “Edison’s Mimeograph.” This apparatus, along with spirit duplicators, or Ditto machines, and the gel-based Hectograph were used extensively in the early years of science fiction fandom to publish “fan magazines,” or “fanzines.” Photocopying technology largely supplanted these seminal home-printing methods by the 1970s.
August 8, 1991: Until its collapse on this date, The Warsaw Radio Mast, a telecommunications tower situated near the village of Konstantynów in central Poland, had been the tallest structure in the world, standing at over 2100 feet in height!
August 8, 2017: Disney announced that it will launch a new direct-to-consumer streaming service offering content from its extensive library after the conclusion in 2019 of the distribution deal the company had with Netflix. This new service will be called Disney+.
This is post 6 of 6, which will close today’s online gathering. If you’re just now joining us, scroll back to the earlier Post 1 of 6 to enjoy the whole meeting, start to finish.
12) ANOTHER CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG
Direct from his YouTube channel, here’s Steve Stewart singing a satirical coronavirus version of a Jimmy Buffet classic:
13) WANTED! SCI-FI SUMMER DRINKS
Fellow Parrotheads (fans of “Gulf + Western” singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffet) will appreciate our call for cool, colourful, summer drink recipes, which we hope to highlight in the next issue of Warp. We’re looking for tasty tropical cocktails, refreshing fruit-flavoured slushes, and thirst-quenching lemonades, mixed with or without alcohol! Confer upon your enticing commixture a groovy science fiction-ish moniker—Forbidden Pomegranate Lemonade, Krell Cooler, Planet X Summer Holiday Punch, Gallifreyan Gimlet, Buffy the Vodka Slayer, Vulcan Voodoo, Salarian Spritzer, Alabama Hammer’s Slammer, Dosadi Daiquiri, Tran-Ky-Ky Mai Tai, Kessel Rum; you get the idea—and e-mail your recipes to me, your humble club vice-president, Keith Braithwaite, at: veep@monsffa.ca
Be certain to list ingredients and clearly specify measures, garnishes, and any special instructions regarding preparation and serving. Include a brief few words on the delectable allure of your particular magical summertime potion and why it intoxicates you so, how you came to discover or create the drink, what was the inspiration for the name you’ve given it, that kind of thing. And if you would, pour your libation into a tall glass and snap a photo to send along with your recipe, maybe against a cool, themed backdrop.
I’ll get us started. On a sweltering hot summer’s day, I’ve always enjoyed over ice the variety of fruit-juice mixtures sold under the Oasis brand name. With labels like Tropical Passion and Bananorange, this line of flavourful blends combines mango, orange, banana, pineapple, and other fruit juices in various amalgams. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, my dad added Canada Dry ginger ale to these Oasis products to create a simple, sweet, effervescent punch. I later spiked his punch with white rum and dubbed the result “Shore Leave,” after the classic Star Trek episode. A flavoured rum can also be employed, as can vodka.
Ingredients:
Oasis brand fruit juice blends
Canada Dry ginger ale
Maraschino cherries
Recipe:
Mix equal portions of your favourite fruit juice blend and ginger ale. Pour into a glass, drop in a cherry or two, add several ice cubes, and serve. To enhance, include 1-2 ounces white rum per serving (a flavoured rum or vodka can be substituted).
We received an early submission from Lindsay Brown, whose father also introduced her to a concoction that has “summer written all over it,” and that she calls “Sumerian Sass,” bringing to mind Gilgamesh. This mythological, Mesopotamian hero-king and adventurer’s exploits are the subject of the ancient Sumerian poem “Epic of Gilgamesh,” considered by some historians to be a work of proto-science fiction.
Lindsay writes:
It’s a warm summer night and the water in your backyard pool is shimmering under the moon’s full light. Several wee lanterns are hanging from a big old apple tree, lending their soft glow to the magic all around you.
You’re sitting on a lounger, still dripping from a midnight dip. You hear some ice crackle nearby. You look over and there, sitting on a nearby patio table, you see a tall drink, wet from condensation sliding down the outside of the glass. It twinkles like it was made from star dust.
You swear you hear it whisper your name, beckoning you to sip its cool, refreshing contents. You stare at it, wondering who put it there, thinking it a mirage. You shake your head in disbelief. Yet, you are thirsty. Very thirsty. You look over at the tantalizing drink again. Did it just wink at you?
I will leave the rest to your imagination…
Her ingredients and recipe:
3 litres pineapple juice, unsweetened
4 cans frozen lemonade
2 cans frozen orange juice, unsweetened
4 cups strong tea
750 millilitres vodka Treatment for chronic instances might viagra sans prescription http://deeprootsmag.org/2013/07/23/a-royal-sport/ be issued in the form of prescription treatments including Avanafil and Vardenafil tablets. Here are some impotence remedies for you to consider: Zinc: Men’s level of sexual activity is closely involved with zinc. generic cialis Michael had been scheduled to perform 50 sold out concerts to more than a million folks at 02 Stadium from July 13 and was designed to make a dramatic comeback. viagra without prescription This cipla cialis click address solution even helps to better the body inability by providing the lifeless tissue structures to avail energy by enhancing the blood flow to them.
Mix the first four ingredients together, add vodka, and freeze overnight. Scoop into a glass, add your choice of clear soft drink—ginger ale, 7-Up, Sprite, or spruce beer. Serve!
So that should provide you a hint of what we’re looking for; again, send your recipes my way via e-mail: veep@monsffa.ca. Looking forward to receiving the mad-science formulas for your breezy-cool thirst-slaking melanges!
14) YET ANOTHER PARODY SONG
Which brings us to the so-called “Piña-Colada Song,” or rather, Steve Stewart’s coronavirus version of it:
15) MORE SCI-FI CORONAVIRUS MASKS
We return, now, to our showcase of chic sci-fi COVID face masks, focusing, here, on superhero patterns.
Classic comic book stars like Batman warrant numerous designs:
Batman is joined by other DC superheroes…
…as well as the Dark Knight’s villainous clown-faced nemesis and his unhinged girlfriend.
Shown here amongst a selection of commercial Wonder Woman examples is a mask one devotee has decorated with fan-art depicting actress Gal Gadot as the Amazon princess. Any fancrafter with an artistic hand, a talent for needlework, and an assortment of colourful fabric is capable of producing their own custom-made mask.
The Marvel brand is well represented, too…
…with celebrated Avengers and other heroes sometimes meriting more than one design…
…including the drolly irascible Deadpool, who forwards timely advice on a second of his mask designs:
16) THANK YOU!
We hope you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, and we ask all of you to check in here at www.MonSFFA.ca regularly for additional content during this continuing period of semi-quarantine, and for any news as to when the club expects to return to face-to-face gatherings. Thank you for your interest and attention.
We’d also like to thank our principal contributors today, Sylvain St-Pierre, Keith Braithwaite, and Cathy Palmer-Lister for putting all of this together, with a nod, as well, to those who helped out in supporting roles.
Until we meet again, farewell, keep on social distancing and washing your hands often, and when in public, wear a mask! And speaking of masks, here’s one last example upon which we are sure everyone can agree:
17) CLOSING PARODY SONG
We’ll end off today with this capper; here, once again, is the Holderness Family (www.theholdernessfamily.com):
The UFO phenomenon has been and continues to be a rich source of story ideas for sci-fi filmmakers, drawing inspiration from the well-documented experiences of UFO witnesses and contactees. And in something of a chicken-or-the-egg feedback loop, the films and television shows of this sub-genre of science fiction entertainment subconsciously influence the public’s perception of UFOs, for it is not uncommon to find that descriptions of aliens and their mysterious ships proffered by witnesses mirror those of the latest popular on-screen fictions. Further, studies have shown that there is a correlation between popular science fiction releases and UFO sightings, with the former often causing a spike in the latter, with marked similarities in detail noted between the “real” and fictional.
Betty and Barney Hill’s UFO Incident
Consider, for example, the famous Betty and Barney Hill Case of 1961, modern UFOlogy’s first instance of an alien abduction and the introduction of the now-familiar “Greys” to UFO lore. Did the aliens described by the Hills originate not on another world, but in Hollywood?
A late-September evening found the married couple at the center of this extraordinary episode driving along a rural highway, returning home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after a vacation that included a visit to Montreal. It was shortly before midnight when they pulled over to observe a peculiar light in the sky, which Betty thought was a flying saucer, like the one her sister had allegedly seen several years prior. Barney maintained that it was simply an airplane in the night sky.
Betty and Barney Hill’s journey home from vacation was interrupted by a most unusual event!
But according to the narrative that emerged during their later hypnosis, the light came closer and proved to be a large flying disc the shape of which Barney compared to a pancake. Several hours later, they found themselves some 35 miles further down the road with only vague, fragmentary recollections of what had occurred out on that lonely highway. They returned home both feeling a little odd. Their disquiet would persist through the coming months.
Two weeks after the incident, Betty had a series of nightmares about their having been taken aboard the UFO and subjected to bizarre medical experiments. She began writing down what she remembered of her dreams, often revising her notes and sharing these details with Barney. He was sympathetic but wanted to put the matter behind them, despite a lingering anxiety about the experience. Betty became obsessed with their encounter and was arguably predisposed to a belief in UFOs and space aliens because of her sister’s experience, a story that she had often recounted to friends. Barney would have been content to drop the whole thing, finally agreeing to their undergoing hypnosis if only to put to rest what he saw as the “nonsense” about his wife’s dreams.
More than two years after the incident, psychiatrist Benjamin Simon, in separate sessions, put the couple under to get at the particulars of their ordeal, but Barney’s description of grey-skinned aliens with oversized, bald heads and large dark eyes differed considerably from that of the beings Betty’s dreams had revealed to her. Under hypnosis, Betty’s story changed to more closely match her husband’s.
It was years later remarked that Barney’s description of the saucer men was similar to that of an alien character featured in an episode of the science fiction television series Outer Limits that had aired not two weeks prior to his first session with Dr. Simon. Barney had died in 1969 but when presented with this coincidence, Betty asserted that she was unfamiliar the show.
Top row: His own sketches bracket an artist’s rendering of the alien leader Barney described under hypnosis. Bottom row: Skeptics have noted that Barney’s aliens resemble those depicted in episodes of The Outer Limits (left) and Twilight Zone (right). Did he subconsciously describe aliens he might have seen on TV?
Or maybe Barney had caught a Twilight Zone episode broadcast less than a year after their encounter, the alien there featured also resembling those he had detailed under hypnosis. Was Barney unknowingly influenced by the fictional space aliens he might have seen on TV? Perhaps. The 1953 sci-fi movie Invaders From Mars is also cited by those familiar with the case as including certain motifs akin to Barney’s account of the events of that night. Might a distant memory of this film have coloured his story?
Doctor Simon, for his part, concluded that Betty’s copious notes as she tried to reconstruct her nightmares likely contributed significantly to Barney’s fantasy. Skeptics point to these distinct possibilities as muddying the evidential waters. But Betty’s belief that she and her husband had been abducted by aliens remained unwavering, despite the detractors who lined up against her, some even from within the ranks of UFO aficionados.
The Hills with a copy of their book Interrupted Journey, an account of their experience.
The UFO Incident, a TV-movie starring Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones as Betty and Barney aired on NBC in 1975, bringing to a national audience the Hills’ story.
Travis Walton’s Fire in the Sky
Over the years, Hollywood has adapted for the screen a number of UFOlogy’s greatest hits, if you will, dramatizing headline-making or particularly intriguing close encounters. Among the best and most popular of these is the feature film Fire in the Sky (1993), relating, with some embellishments for dramatic purposes, the alien abduction tale of lumberjack Travis Walton.
Travis Walton, circa mid-1970s
While working in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona’s White Mountains, near the town of Snowflake, Walton and six of his fellow loggers contend that on November 5, 1975, they came across a UFO in the woods, and that he stepped out of their truck to get a closer look at the flying saucer hovering above them. Suddenly, Walton was hit by a brilliant beam of light that shot out of the craft, knocking him unconscious. Terrified and thinking Walton had been killed by the blast, his companions drove off in a panic.
Travis Walton’s abduction as rendered by artist Claudio Bergamin.“Get back in the truck, Travis!” Hollywood’s version of events is presented in the film Fire in the Sky.
Walton’s recollection of his experience was spotty, but he did remember waking up in a hospital-like room—presumably aboard the UFO—under the observation of three small humanoid creatures, and that he attempted to fight them off. He could barely lift his arms, however, under what seemed to him some sort of heavy gravitational force. He was then taken into another room by a helmeted figure, where a plastic mask was placed over his face, and he blacked out. He remembered nothing more until he came to walking aimlessly along a highway, the UFO retreating skywards above him.
Two takes on the same moment in Walton’s unbelievable story; artist Bergamin’s (left) and Hollywood’s (right).
Five days had passed since he’d been taken, but Walton felt that maybe only the overnight period, or at most a day, had transpired. His companions, in the interim, were suspected of having murdered him and disposed of his body, but his return, of course, put an end to such talk. Polygraph tests supposedly confirmed that Walton and the others had, in actual fact, seen a flying saucer. Tabloid The National Inquirer soon after awarded them a $5000 prize for “Best UFO Case of the Year.”
Skeptics disputed the results of the polygraphs, which were administered by the Inquirer and the UFO group APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. They also pointed to the similarities between Walton’s description of his extraterrestrial kidnappers and the aliens depicted in the TV movie The UFO Incident, which, as it happened, had aired only just a couple weeks before Walton was supposedly abducted! Had he watched the story of Betty and Barney Hill’s experience on TV and taken from it inspiration? Walton and his co-workers were soon denounced for perpetrating a hoax in a bid for money and notoriety.
Phoenix Lights Inspires Several Films
Several lesser films in this category purposely blur the line between “fact” and fiction in building their plots around the Phoenix Lights Incident of March 13, 1997, a mass UFO sighting, meaning it was witnessed by a large number of people, in this instance across the skies of Nevada and Arizona in the U.S., and Sonora in Mexico.
The Phoenix Lights are classified a mass UFO sighting, meaning many people witnessed the event.
Night Skies (2007) is a direct-to-DVD sci-fi/horror movie about a group of friends travelling the desert back-roads on their way to Las Vegas who witness rather more than otherworldly lights in the night sky. Shot documentary-style, The Phoenix Incident (2015) pits Air Force jets against UFOs in a dogfight, and speculates on the fate of a group of hikers who did, in reality, go missing that night in the Phoenix area. And found-footage flick Phoenix Forgotten (2017) focuses on three students who, on the 20th anniversary of the event, set out to uncover the mystery of the Phoenix Lights, and are never seen again!
Roswell
The Showtime Network’s Roswell (1994), also known as Roswell: The U.F.O. Cover-Up, details the U.S. military’s purported recovery of a wrecked flying saucer that had crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, in early-July of 1947, and the misinformation campaign that followed. Roswell is the most famous of all UFO cases, well-known even outside of the UFO community.
At first, public interest in the Roswell Incident quickly waned once the episode was chalked up to nothing more than a fallen weather balloon. But the re-examination of the event by UFOlogists in the late-1970s rekindled interest, catapulting Roswell from a forgotten footnote in the early history of flying saucer flaps to the most famous UFO incident of all time, and the ultimate example of a government-orchestrated smokescreen designed to hide the existence of extraterrestrials, and deny any official knowledge of same. Conspiracy-minded UFOlogists are convinced that the authorities know far more about UFOs than they let on, and that advanced extraterrestrial technology was gleaned from the Roswell wreckage by the military, studied, and subsequently applied to the development of today’s sophisticated stealth aircraft and other weapons systems.
Sometime between mid-June and July—date uncertain—ranch foreman William “Mac” Brazel came upon clusters of debris scattered about a pasture. Some accounts have Brazel and others hearing a loud crash during the night of July 2 near the small town of Corona, in the vicinity of Roswell. Brazel paid no mind to the debris he’d found, but returned to the spot on July 4 with his wife, son, and daughter to gather some of the fragments of whatever had crashed. The next day, he heard radio reports telling of flying discs seen in the area, and of a reward being offered to anyone who found a piece of one. He wondered if the debris he’d found might be that of such a craft. On July 6 or 7—again, date uncertain—he mentioned to local sheriff George Wilcox that he just may have found the wreckage of a flying saucer.
The sheriff contacted Major Jesse Marcel, chief intelligence officer at Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF), and Marcel and a plainclothesman accompanied Brazel back to the ranch to examine the debris. They gathered more of the pieces of what they presumed was a disabled balloon and its “kite.” A kite is a radar reflector, tethered to a balloon and used to track it from the ground.
Click to play a radio news report on the recovery of a flying disc near Roswell.
On July 8, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release announcing that a flying disc had been recovered by base personnel. The Roswell Daily Record ran the story the next day. But Eighth Air Force Commanding General Roger M. Ramey quickly dampened all the excitement by declaring that the debris was from a weather balloon, the beginnings of a cover-up, according to many UFOlogists, who believe that the subterfuge remains in place to this day.
A press conference was held at the time to provide the newspapers with the weather balloon narrative, and had the desired effect of killing the story by the next day. Major Marcel was photographed at that press conference posing with supposed pieces of the wrecked balloon.
Jesse Marcel poses with recovered debris. Were these the pieces of a crashed flying saucer?
In the mid-1990s, the Air Force offered insight into the incident, explaining that the wreckage found those many decades ago was, indeed, that of a balloon, specifically, a top-secret Project Mogul balloon. In 1947, Mogul was a classified surveillance operation that employed high-altitude balloons to monitor Russian nuclear tests. So a cover-up had taken place, but not of anything flying saucer-related. It was the true purpose of the Roswell balloon that the military had wanted to keep under wraps.
Nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman, of Fredericton, New Brunswick, and other civilian UFO investigators revisited the case beginning in 1978, interviewing hundreds of witnesses. Most of them, however, were only peripherally connected to the events in Roswell all those years ago, although Friedman’s research did include an interview with a now-retired Jesse Marcel. While differing, sometimes vociferously, on details, Friedman and many of his fellow Roswell researchers concluded that at least one extraterrestrial spaceship had crashed on that ranch in 1947, and that the military had recovered the wreckage, and the lifeless bodies of the craft’s occupants, or possibly, the injured but still breathing aliens! Further, the government had hushed up the whole affair in order to hide the truth about flying saucers from the general public so as not to create a panic, and, in a burgeoning Cold-War climate, to take advantage of any advanced technology the saucer might yield.
Some theorists take another tact, going so far as to submit that government conspirators enlisted Hollywood’s help in carrying out a wide-reaching and continuing disinformation campaign. Fanciful fairy tales about space aliens in movie theatres and on TV were designed to steer the public afar of the facts concerning UFOs—that they’re all fake, a manufactured decoy to divert attention away from the military’s super-secret advanced-weapons development programs.
It gets so that it’s hard to keep track of all the conspiracies on top of conspiracies!
The Roswell Incident has been called the world’s most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim. The story has been seized upon by a public only too willing to believe, and has become something of a modern myth.
Teen drama Roswell (1999-2002), based on a YA (young adult) book series, imagined the extraterrestrials who crashed-landed near Roswell as refugee alien/human hybrids, this genetic tampering having been effected so that they might better fit in with the locals as high-school students. The show was remodelled in 2019 under the title Roswell, New Mexico.
The Birth of UFOlogy and Hollywood’s Early Flying Saucer Films
Interestingly, the first feature film about a flying saucer, an independent production released in 1950, was more Cold War spy thriller than science fiction. The Flying Saucer told the tale of Russian agents attempting to steal the top-secret invention of a brilliant American scientist—the titular craft. The screenplay’s notion of the saucer being, conceivably, an interplanetary vehicle was merely a red herring.
But Hollywood was quick to capitalize on the spaceships-from-another-world angle of the flying saucer craze set off by the first UAP incident of the Modern Age of UFOs, in which the witness hypothesized that what he had seen could well have been a formation of alien vessels from outer space!
Kenneth Arnold Sighting Begets Term “Flying Saucer”
Kenneth Arnold next to his plane; unfortunately, he did not have his movie camera with him when he spotted the formation of flying saucers over Mount Rainier, the incident which inaugurated the Modern Age of UFOs.
On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold was piloting his monoplane from Chehalis to Yakima, Washington, on a business trip and spotted nine “silvery and shiny” objects flying in formation just north of Mount Rainier. He later described them as “shaped like saucers” and “something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear.” Their zigzagging, chain-like formation resembled to him “the tail of a Chinese kite.” He spoke of their movements as erratic, weaving, “like a fish flipping in the sun” or “a saucer if you skip it across the water.”
It was Arnold’s colourful metaphors that inspired a sensationalizing press to coin the terms “flying saucer” and “flying disc” as shorthand for these and other such mysterious airborne vehicles observed by everyone from airline pilots to potato farmers in the weeks and months following his sighting.
Arnold’s drawings for Army investigators of the UFOs he saw.
Explanations offered for what it was that Arnold had seen included wisps of snow blowing from the mountain peaks, an unusual cloud formation, a flock of pelicans, a meteor shower, light reflecting through drops of water on his aircraft’s windows, and a mirage. In a later interview, Arnold mused on the nature of the objects, stating “if it’s not made by our science or our Army Air Force, I am inclined to believe it’s of an extraterrestrial origin,” adding that everyone should be concerned, but that “I don’t think it’s anything for people to get hysterical about.”
The Arnold sighting received national coverage in the U.S., and indeed, made headlines around the world. The press’ use of the descriptive “flying saucer” cemented in the public consciousness the shape of these inexplicable, supersonic and purportedly extraterrestrial craft increasingly observed in skies across America, even though the sketch Arnold produced of the objects he had seen for the Army Air Force showed a half-moon shaped fuselage with a tapered, triangular rear section. UFOs reported in the weeks and months following, and over the ensuing years, have been variously perceived to be spherical, egg-shaped, cylindrical, triangular and boomerang- or bat-like.
Yet the image of a perfectly round saucer is what stuck in the public imagination. Hoaxers (of which there were many) and Hollywood alike reinforced this perception, as, for example, in a scene from the 1951 movie The Thing From Another World, in which a group of scientists and airmen based in the Arctic find a crashed aircraft encased beneath the ice. With only a dark, indistinct form visible under the frozen surface of the crash site, the men spread out along its edges to determine the size and exact shape of the thing. They find themselves standing in a perfect circle as the realization dawns that they’ve found a flying saucer!
One of the most memorable of the early flying saucer films is The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), in which alien emissary Klaatu and his robot enforcer, Gort, land in Washington, D. C. in a sleek, shiny flying saucer to convey an ultimatum to the nations of the world. It is, today, considered a classic of the genre and remains one of the smartest science fiction films ever produced.
The opening sequence quite realistically depicts the military’s response to, and the global press coverage of, the arrival of Klaatu’s spaceship, which circles the planet before alighting in a public park in the American capital.
Concerned that men will soon launch their atom-fuelled belligerence into space, Klaatu comes offering a mutually beneficial accord. But his intentions are misconstrued by nervous army types and the spaceman is soon a fugitive seeking an understanding ear, as well as a means to get across his peaceful if uncompromising message, finally delivered in a dramatic monologue at the conclusion of the picture. It is gripping, impactful stuff that has dated well, losing little of its relevance over the decades since it premiered.
Harryhausen, Keyhoe, Adamski, Reich and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Perhaps the quintessential flying saucer flick of the 1950s was Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), a shallow but enjoyable yarn of middling calibre uplifted only by the superior special effects of talented stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen.
Quickly developed to cash in on the growing public interest in UFOs, the low-budget black-and-white film was loosely based on Major Donald Keyhoe’s book Flying Saucers From Outer Space (1953), which documented the many reports of saucer sightings making news in the wake of the Arnold sighting.
A retired Marine aviator, Keyhoe was the foremost UFO researcher/writer of the 1950s. A couple of decades earlier, he had penned aviation adventure stories, as well as science fiction and weird fantasy tales for the pulps. He approached the subject of UFOs skeptically at first, however, eventually came around to believing that there was something to these flying discs and argued for a serious investigation of the matter. He ultimately became convinced that the Air Force knew that UFOs were extraterrestrial in origin but was withholding that information to avoid panicking the public.
Keyhoe cooperated with the producers of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, expecting a documentary-like approach to be employed, in keeping with the tone of his book. He was disappointed with the final cut, which he classed merely a kitschy sci-fi B-movie.
Flying saucers in the skies above Washington, D.C., in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.
Harryhausen drew extensively from the eye-witness descriptions of UFO encounters collated in Keyhoe’s book, and in designing the film’s now-classic spinning saucers, was influenced by the descriptions and photos of both George Adamski, the most infamous UFO “abductee” of the 1950s, and Oregon farmer Paul Trent.
Adamski claimed to have seen well over a hundred UFOs, beginning with an alleged October 9, 1946, sighting at the Palomar Gardens camp ground in California, near the famous Palomar Observatory located between Los Angeles and San Diego.
Artist’s depiction of Adamski’s cigar-shaped “Mothership” discharging smaller scout ships.
During a meteor shower, Adamski and a few friends reportedly saw a large, cigar-shaped “Mothership” and in early 1947, Adamski pronounced that he had photographed this same Mothership crossing in front of the moon.
Adamski’s photograph of the Mothership.Adamski authored several books on flying saucers.
He began lecturing on the topic of UFOs in 1949. His claims of close encounters in late-1952 with a humanoid flying saucer pilot named Orthon further bolstered Adamski’s budding career as a flying saucer researcher and lecturer. Orthon was described by Adamski as a tall, tanned Venusian having Nordic features and Adamski produced photographs he had taken through his telescope of Orthon’s ship, these among the most well-known in UFOlogy.
Venusian Orthon’s scout ship as photographed by Adamski.Artist’s rendition of Adamski’s meeting with Venusian saucer pilot Orthon.
But the science, even of that day, flew in the face of Adamski’s assertions regarding the other planets in our solar system. His photographs were widely judged to be fakes, in the case of the Venusian Scout Ship, simply shots of a model Adamski had constructed using common hardware-store items. Most UFOlogists regarded his tales of Orthon, and of having been taken aboard an alien spaceship to visit Earth’s neighbouring planets, as serving only to cast ridicule upon the nascent field of, and so deterring any serious study of the flying saucer phenomenon.
Was Orthon’s flying saucer purchased at Sears? Adamski’s fantastical pictures are widely believed hoaxes, even within the UFO community! His famous shot of Orthon’s ship is almost certainly a photograph of a model he had fashioned. Notwithstanding the cut-away drawing shown here, Adamski’s Venusian Scout Ship, ubiquitous in 1950s UFO circles, is as fictional as the Millennium Falcon!
Paul Trent and his wife, Evelyn, who lived near McMinnville, Oregon, avowed that in the early evening of May 11, 1950, they both observed from their backyard a slow-moving flying disc overhead. At first transfixed by the unconventional metallic flying machine, Paul finally thought to fetch his Kodak and ran inside their farmhouse to get the camera, emerging just in time to snap a couple of pictures before the saucer flew off. The Trent’s at first believed what they had seen was a secret military aircraft and were reluctant to share their photographs, lest they invite any unwanted trouble. Eventually, they were persuaded to tell of their experience.
Paul Trent’s snapshot of the UFO he and his wife observed over their farm.A blow-up of the mysterious McMinnville flying disc photographed by Trent.
Skeptics have debunked Trent’s snapshots, remarking that the object was likely a small model hung from the power lines visible at the top of the frame, and that it bears a suspiciously strong resemblance to a side-view mirror from the farmer’s truck.
Was the McMinnville UFO a hoax, simply a truck’s side-view mirror positioned to appear as if it were a flying saucer?
But other experts spoke to the versimilitude of the pictures and added that the Trents were not seeking any kind of fame, and never profited financially from their photographs.
Harryhausen’s look for the Earth vs. the Flying Saucers UFOs seems a cross between Adamski’s Venusian Scout Ship and the Trent flying disc, and came to typify the UFOs associated with those first mid-20th century flying saucer flaps. His design has been imitated many times on both the silver- and small-screen, and in other popular media like comic books.
Shaped by Keyhoe’s collected accounts of UFO encounters, Harryhausen’s saucers have, in turn, almost certainly had an influence on the descriptions given of UFOs by witnesses who have reported sightings since. Harryhausen’s aliens, too, one of which we briefly glimpse in the film when his protective helmet is removed, eerily resemble the renowned Roswell aliens! Coincidence?
The Earth vs. the Flying Saucers aliens resemble those supposedly recovered at Roswell; did Harryhausen know something we didn’t?
Let’s continue examining the definitive 1950s flying saucer film Earth vs. the Flying Saucers:
In one of the film’s scenes, the characters speak of “Foo Lights,” referring to a bona fide phenomenon reported by World War II military pilots, who tagged them “Foo-Fighters.” These were glowing balls of light that seemed to follow their aircraft and manoeuvre wildly. Never reported as hostile, Allied Command at first thought them to be some kind of new enemy weapon, but learned that German and Japanese pilots were also reporting these curious luminous displays outside their cockpits.
Foo-Fighters were thought by experts to be an electrostatic phenomenon similar to St. Elmo’s Fire, or light reflecting through water drops or ice crystals on cockpit windows.
Wilhelm Reich’s “Cloudbuster” set up on a flatbed; this configuration closely resembles that of the truck-mounted sonic weapon used to fell the UFOs in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.
Lastly, in what may be a concurrence too striking to dismiss, the truck-mounted sonic cannon used to knock down the attacking saucers in the film’s exhilarating conclusion very much resembles a fanciful real-life device called a “Cloudbuster,” designed by Austrian doctor and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, and apparently used as a weapon by Reich and his son to fight a “full-scale interplanetary battle” in the Arizona desert! Was this UFOlogical event the direct inspiration for the movie’s finale?
One of psychiatry’s most radical thinkers, Reich espoused controversial ideas about sex and coined the term “sexual revolution.” He held that socio-economic conditions, and in particular a lack of what he termed “orgastic potency” were at the root of neuroses.
Reich moved to America in 1939, in part to escape the Nazis, and soon after claimed to have discovered a biological or cosmic energy he called “Orgone.” He built “Orgone Accumulators” to allow his patients to harness the reputed health benefits of this newfound force. He and Gwyneth Paltrow would have gotten along just swimmingly!
In 1951, Reich claimed to have discovered another form of energy which he labelled Deadly Orgone Radition (DOR). It is at this point that he designed his Cloudbuster, a series of 15-foot aluminium pipes mounted on a mobile platform and connected to cables that were inserted into a water basin. He held that his invention could unblock Orgone energy in the atmosphere and prompt rain, presumably to neutralize the DOR.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Food and Drug Adminstration had taken notice of his Orgone treatments and in 1954 an injunction was issued ordering the destruction of Reich’s accumulators and the withholding of any supporting literature.
This turn of events seems to have triggered in Reich a mental breakdown and he soon became convinced that Earth had come under attack from cigar-shaped UFOs, or “Energy Alphas,” which he reported were flying overhead seeding the atmosphere with Deadly Orgone Radiation in a bid to destroy the planet. He and his son spent their nights searching for these UFOs with binoculars and a telescope, and upon locating one, would deploy their Cloudbuster to suck the energy right out of it! Reich claimed that they’d downed several of the craft in this manner. In 1955 came their “interplanetary battle” with the Energy Alphas, fought from a rented house in Arizona they had set up as their base station.
Ancient Aliens
While the Foo Fighters of World War II mentioned above pre-date by just a few years the Kenneth Arnold sighting, according to some researchers, the UFO phenomenon has been with us for a very long time, centuries undoubtedly, and perhaps eons. This subset of UFOlogical study is explored in the History Channel’s long-running pseudoscientific documentary series Ancient Aliens. But we’re deep into Erich von Däniken territory, here; approach with a cynical mind!
Nonetheless, Hollywood finds in these highly speculative suppositions about “ancient astronauts” fuel for such science fiction fare as the Stargate and Battlestar: Galactica franchises (1994-2018 and 1978-2012, respectively), the Doctor Who serial Pyramids of Mars (1975), the classic Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais” (1967), and the Weird Western films Cowboys and Aliens (2011) and The Aurora Encounter (1986), these latter two kindled by the so-named “Mystery Airships” of the American West. The success rate of the viagra cialis for sale as impotence treatment is more than 95%. Impotence is caused by many factors, which may be related to an underlying biological cause like injury to the penis, but can cause nasal congestion, headache, viagra online generic upset stomach, and vision changes. However, individuals should never utilize the remedy in doses higher than achat viagra pfizer 2550 mg daily. This shows that the great psychology behind the erection. cheapest price for levitra The “Mystery Airships” of the late 1800s were the flying saucers of that era!
Sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the western U.S. of the 19th century included those of the Mystery Airships, or Phantom Airships, of 1896-1897. These were a series of UFO sightings and abductions reported in newspapers of the time, noteworthy among them the Aurora, Texas, UFO Incident, in which a metallic, cigar-shaped UFO crashed into a windmill on a farm near the off-the-beaten-track town of Aurora in north-east Texas. The devastating crash resulted in the death of the craft’s pilot, who the locals determined was “not an inhabitant of this world.” He was nevertheless given a proper Christian burial!
Airship sightings occurred worldwide during the 1880s-1890s, the mysterious dirigible-like craft popularly thought to be the inventions of a Thomas Edison or some such figure not yet prepared to reveal his newest invention to the world.
Other pre-Arnold UAP include:
The Battle of Los Angeles
Also referred to as “The Great Los Angeles Air Raid,” this barrage of anti-aircraft fire directed at what artillerymen took to be Japanese bombers over Los Angeles during the night of February 24-25, 1942, was probably triggered by nervous soldiers in a post-Pearl Harbor environment mistaking meteorological balloons released earlier that day for the enemy. Based on a grainy photograph of multiple search lights trained on an indistinct object in the sky that ran in the L.A. Times a day later, UFOlogists have argued that this incident amounts to an example of an early UFO sighting.
The Battle of Los Angeles, 1942: Searchlights trained on what was thought to have been attacking Japanese aircraft.
For the apocalyptic military sci-fi movie Battle: Los Angeles (2011), the scenario was given a contemporary update that most assuredly featured extraterrestrials, not weather balloons! The film follows the street-to-street engagements of a platoon of marines stationed in L.A. as they do their part to repel a worldwide alien invasion.
Celestial Phenomena Over European Cities
At dawn on April 14, 1561, the residents of Nuremberg, Germany, observed hundreds of spheres and cylinders overhead. From the cylinders emerged smaller, round objects that darted about the sky, battling each other, seeming to exhaust themselves until falling, spent, to Earth to be consumed in a tremendous cloud of smoke. Objects shaped like crosses were also observed, as were two in the shape of a lunar crescent. Finally, a huge, black, triangular shape appeared and there followed a thundering crash outside of the city.
Illustrated news broadsheets and pamphlets described such “sky spectacles” as that of April 14, 1561, witnessed by the residents of Nuremburg, Germany.
A similar event unfolded in the summer skies above Basel, Switzerland, in 1566. Many 15th- and 16th-century pamphlets and illustrated news broadsheets, the forerunners of newspapers, printed accounts of such “sky spectacles” and “miracles” seen across the continent. Modern scientists have suggested that these events were nothing more fantastical than solar eclipses or atmospheric singularities such as sun dogs.
Ezekiel’s Wheel
Did the Bible’s Ezekiel experience a close encounter?
And in the ancient world, sightings of anomalous lights and glowing objects in the sky were interpreted as the actions of deities. The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel’s visions of what he saw as God can be found in the Bible. He describes an approaching windstorm in the form of a “great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal.” Within this aura were four winged “cherubim,” or living creatures, humanoid in form. Beside each of these figures was a bizarre structure Ezekiel likened to a “wheel within a wheel” that sparkled like topaz, with rims “tall and awesome” and “full of eyes all around.” These wheels descended and rose in concert with the four creatures. UFOlogists have interpreted this Biblical event as a close encounter.
THE CHILDREN OF DAVID VINCENT
The Invaders
Architect David Vincent, played by Roy Thinnes, was the lead character in seminal UFO television series The Invaders (1967-1968), ABC’s fearfully paranoia-inducing exercise was informed by the lingering McCarthyism of a decade earlier, and “alien doppelganger” movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958).
Vincent is set in opposition to alien invaders from a dying planet in the process of surreptitiously taking over the Earth, which they intend on making “their world!” According to the show’s opening narration, Vincent’s chronicle began “one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a shortcut that he never found.” The narrator continues melodramatically: “It began with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy. Now David Vincent knows that the Invaders are here, that they have taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun.” Over the course of the short-lived series, Vincent was joined by other believers in thwarting the aliens’ plans.
Captain Scarlet and UFO
Supermarionation star Captain Scarlet fought evil space aliens, albeit with strings attached.
Across the pond in England, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Century 21 Productions were playing in a similar sandbox with, first, the Supermarionation puppet series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-1968), followed in short order by the live-action show UFO (1970-1973), both set in the future and involving secret organizations tasked with defending Earth against a hostile alien threat.
The iconic jumpsuits and purple wigs worn by the ladies staffing Moonbase, first line of defense against invading UFO aliens.
The X-Files
The most popular and successful television series involving UFOs is the unquestionably The X-Files (1993-2002), which ran for nine seasons on the Fox Network, spawned a spin-off, The Lone Gunmen (2001), two feature films, The X-Files; Fight the Future (1998) and The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2011), and a two-season revival (2016-2018).
The series followed the weekly investigations and developing affections of a pair of mismatched FBI agents—he the rogue true believer, she the by-the-book skeptic—as they dealt with all manner of supernatural goings-on, and doggedly sought to uncover the government-sanctioned conspiracy concerning UFO aliens and their sinister plans at the heart of the show’s overarching storyline.
The “Blue Book” and Other UFO Shows
X-Files, NBC’s comparable but lesser-known Dark Skies (1996-1997), and the recent History Channel sci-fi/period drama Project Blue Book (2018-2020) are all progeny of The Invaders in subject matter and tone, and tapped into UFO lore for story elements, often including real-life UFO “celebrities” like Jesse Marcel and Donald Keyhoe as characters in their storylines. Project Blue Book, in point of fact, features as a principal character Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the real-life astrophysicist-cum-UFOlogist who advised the Air Force on flying saucers in the 1950s and ’60s, and later devised the classification system commonly used today to rank UFO sightings.
An earlier TV series about the Air Force’s official probe of UFOs was more police procedural than conspiracy-rich thriller. Referencing in its introductory sequence Ezekiel’s Wheel as the starting point of man’s preoccupation with UFOs, NBC’s Project U.F.O. (1978-1979) followed the efforts of two USAF officers assigned to investigate flying saucer sightings.
Both Project U.F.O. and Project Blue Book loosely based episodes on some of the better-known UFO incidents in Air Force dossiers, but with the details often changed to better suit the dramatic narrative. Nevertheless, the core “true” story remained essentially intact.
These genuine cases included the Washington, D. C. Incident, in which UFOs swarmed the U.S. capital throughout July of 1952; the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter of 1955, in which a family and their friends were besieged in a rural Kentucky farmhouse by luminescent and levitating goblin-like extraterrestrials; the Shag Harbour incident of 1967—labelled “Canada’s ‘Roswell’”—in which a UFO is said to have crashed into the Atlantic offshore of a Nova Scotia fishing village, leaving a strange yellowish foam on the surface of the water; and one of the most credible encounters on record, the Lonnie Zamora incident.
Lonnie Zamora’s Flying Egg
Officer Lonnie Zamora scrambles clear of the UFO he encountered in the New Mexico desert.
On April 24, 1964, Socorro, New Mexico, police officer Lonnie Zamora was alone in his police cruiser in pursuit of a speeding driver on the outskirts of the city when he heard a roar and noticed a flame in the sky some distance away. Thinking a local dynamite shack might have exploded, he broke off pursuit and went to investigate. Upon approaching the scene, he saw what he took to be an overturned car and two people dressed in white coveralls standing beside it. One of them saw him and appeared startled. He maneuvered closer, intending to lend assistance and exited his cruiser just as he again heard a roar, low-pitched at first, growing increasingly louder and shifting to a higher frequency. The object was spewing an orange-blue flame from its underside, and was rising into the air.
Officer Zamora’s UFO rises skyward in this artist’s rendering showing the insignia that the patrolman noted painted on the craft’s hull.
Realizing that the object was not an overturned car, Zamora noted that it had a smooth, shiny surface, like aluminum but not as mirror-like as chrome. It was oval in shape, with four short landing struts and no discernible windows or doors. He made out a red insignia across the middle of the object. While still on site in the immediate aftermath of his encounter, he managed to make a quick sketch of the symbol.
Zamora began running away from the scene, fearing the loud sound or flame might be dangerous. He ducked down behind a rise about 50 feet from his parked cruiser, put his head down and covered it protectively with his hands, but looked up when he no longer heard the din. The object was traveling away from him, hovering about 15 feet off the ground, before it rose rapidly skyward and sped off across country.
Zamora returned to his patrol car and radioed for assistance. Another officer soon joined him and the two inspected the site, finding still-burning brush. The assisting officer pointed out the presence of fresh indentations in the soil. Other policemen arrived soon after and also remarked on the smoldering vegetation. Samples of sand that appeared to have been fused by heat were later collected for analysis at the University of New Mexico, as were two samples of organic material recovered that subsequently could not be identified.
In the wake of his encounter, Officer Zamora examines the imprint left in the soil by a landing pad.
Zamora characterized the two figures he had seen next to the object as nondescript and smallish, like children. He caught only that single, brief glimpse of them. Later reporting that he’d heard a sound like a hatch closing just before the craft began its take-off, he surmised that he had surprised them, and that they quickly scrambled back inside their ship and departed.
Witnesses corroborated Zamora’s account to the extent that they reported having seen an airborne, egg-shaped object, the distinctive flame, and had heard the loud roar in the same vicinity, and at about the same time as Zamora had.
Investigations of the incident by Air Force officials and civilian UFO organizations were unable to satisfactorily explain away what Zamora had seen. The Blue Book report, while discounting an extraterrestrial explanation, reached no conclusions, avowing that “the Air Force was continuing its investigation, and the case is still open.”
Officer Schirmer’s “Flying Serpent”
A few years later, early in December of 1967, 22-year-old Ashland, Nebraska, police officer Herbert Schirmer similarly came upon a flying saucer while on patrol.
Artist Mike Jasorka tells the tale of Officer Schirmer’s strange encounter in comic book form.
The hovering object he later described, not unlike the Zamora UFO, was oval in shape, resembling a football, sheathed in what appeared to be aluminum, displayed landing gear, and emitted an orange flame from its undercarriage as it rose and sped away.
Unlike Zamora, however, Schirmer later revealed while under hypnosis that he’d been taken aboard the craft and met friendly humanoids whose features were vaguely reptilian, and who wore on their uniforms an emblem depicting a winged serpent. He was able to produce sketches of the UFO, the alien commander, and the emblem.
Schirmer had evidently withstood the same idiosyncrasy of missing time that Betty and Barney Hill had experienced, and until undergoing hypnosis, remembered little of the encounter beyond his initial sighting of the craft. But the young policeman’s story is believed by skeptics a fabrication, possibly inspired by Zamora’s, the Hill’s, and other well-publicized UFO incidents.
The reptile-like alien, or Reptiloid, is one of the more, shall we say colourful fixtures of UFO lore. Kenneth Johnson, creator of the V television miniseries which quickly grew into a franchise (1983-2011), appropriated the mythos in developing villainous Diana and her Visitor cohorts, decidedly unfriendly—and carnivorous!—aliens with nasty designs on humanity. The concept of shape-shifting “Serpent Men” infiltrating the corridors of power in order to control human civilization dates back to the days of pulp fiction magazines and the weird fantasy tales of Conan creator Robert E. Howard.
A version of Schirmer’s sketch of the winged serpent emblem made its way onto the set of the ever so cheesy low-budget Canadian UFO flick Starship Invasions (1977) as a costume element. Playing the leader of the story’s evil alien Legion of the Winged Serpent, Hammer Horror icon Christopher Lee sported the emblem on the breast of his goofy looking outfit.
The “winged serpent” emblem sported by the alien commander Officer Schirmer sketched (circled in red) in support of his claim is a detail that made its way fairly intact onto the set of Starship Invasions as a costume element. The tight-fitting “hoodie” seems to have been incorporated, as well.
INTERMISSION…
We’ll pause, now, for a brief musical interlude and continue immediately thereafter, when we examine three significant UFO sightings, all of them having occurred in 1948.
We continue with our look at the reciprocal relationship between the UFO experience and the filmed entertainment industry, each indubitably feeding the other. Following are briefs on three significant UFO sightings reported in the same year, 1948, the dawn of the modern UFO phenomenon. Many of the characteristics of these incidents have been repeated in succeeding encounters, and dramatized in many a flying saucer screen fiction produced in the years and decades since.
1948
In the months following the Kenneth Arnold sighting, three sightings in particular stirred strong interest in flying saucers by both the public and military. These incidents convinced personnel with Project Sign, Blue Book’s predecessor, that flying saucers were real. A top-secret report was drafted for U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg concluding that UFOs were interplanetary craft!
Taking note of the public’s fascination with flying saucers, Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon with aforementioned films like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, as well as Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), Teenagers from Outer Space (1959), the much-derided Plan 9 from Outer Space (also 1959), and numerous others. British filmmakers, too, got in on the trend with such productions as Stranger from Venus and Devil Girl from Mars (both 1954).
The Chiles-Whitted Sighting
In the early morning hours of July 24, 1948, commercial airline pilots Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted were flying an Eastern Airlines DC-3 at an altitude of about 5000 feet in the skies near Montgomery, Alabama. Chiles spotted something in the distance, glowing a dull reddish hue. He pointed it out to his co-pilot, thinking it to be one of the military’s new jet planes.
The object apparently closed on their airliner within seconds and streaked past to the right of them before pulling up and climbing at high speed into the clouds, a tremendous trail of flame shooting out behind it. The whole encounter lasted only some 15 seconds.
UFO buzzes airliner piloted by Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted in 1948.
Both pilots described the object as torpedo- or cigar-shaped, looking “like a wingless aircraft…similar to a B-29 fuselage.” It appeared to have two rows of windows along its length from which glowed a brilliant light, akin to that produced by a magnesium flare. The pilots estimated the object’s length at about 100 feet, its diameter at 25 or 30 feet. Neither heard any particular sound of an unusual nature related to the object. Officers with Project Sign interviewed the two pilots following the incident and found that they differed on but a few of the object’s structural details.
Only one of their passengers, a C. L. McKelvie, said he had seen anything unusual, reporting a bright streak of light flashing past his window.
Some news articles and books later published citing the incident claimed that the airliner had been hit with a wave of turbulence during its brief encounter with the object, but neither pilot, nor passenger McKelvie, had ever mentioned experiencing any such jolt.
UFOlogists investigating this incident were divided on whether or not the two pilots had been surprised by a meteor, possibly a very bright bolide, and misinterpreted what they had seen. Meteor activity was rife on and about the date of the sighting. The Project Sign investigators, however, faced with two very credible witnesses who had seen a UFO up close, believed the pilots’ story as they had related it and rejected the meteor explanation. The Sign report listed the object as “unidentified.”
From the mid-air capture of a small four-seat Stinson 108 light aircraft by the giant Metalunan flying saucer of This Island Earth (1955) to a UFO’s interception of the doomed Flight 549 over upstate New York in the fourth-season X-Files episode “Tempus Fugit” (1997), a nod of acknowledgement is owed the Chiles-Whitted incident. Every film or television show of the last 70-odd years in which a commercial aircraft in flight encounters a UFO stems, at least in part, from this early case, which lent screenplays a certain patina of verity by providing scriptwriters with a based-on-real-events template to follow and build upon.
One of the most arresting such scenes plays out in the first reel of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The taut sequence unfolds entirely from the perspective of air traffic controllers in radio communication with the pilots of commercial airliners during a UFO encounter. The audience is held rapt without ever seeing what the pilots see, or the apprehension on their faces as they react to avoid a collision, or a brightly glowing UFO alarmingly buzzing an airliner in the night skies. The white-knuckle drama is all realized simply but so effectively by the sound and cadence of the pilots’ voices crackling over the radio, and of the group of controllers responding as they monitor the occurrence.
ATC operators listen intently as pilots radio that a UFO is shadowing their jetliner in a dramatic scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
We move from commercial to military aircraft for the other two foremost UFO incidents of 1948. Both instances involve Air National Guard fighter planes engaging bright objects in the sky. The idea of Air Force fighters set against UFOs is a staple of the genre, from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers to Independence Day (1996) and its sequel (2016).
The Gorman Dogfight
The Gorman Dogfight of October 1 saw North Dakota Air National Guard pilot George F. Gorman pursuing what he described as, simply, a blinking “ball of light” in the skies over Fargo. This UFO was apparently no more than 8 inches or so in diameter—the Foo Fighters of World War II are brought to mind. Gorman later added that the light would stop blinking and grow brighter when it accelerated.
An experienced wartime fighter pilot, Gorman was part of a cross-country flight of National Guard aircraft on this day. His flight decided to land at Hector Airport upon arrival over Fargo, but Gorman opted to remain aloft to get in some night-time flying hours. At about 9:00PM, he flew over a nearby football stadium, where a high-school game was underway. He noted the presence of a Piper Cub flying about 500 feet below him, then spotted a bright light in the sky to the west.
He radioed Hector’s control tower and inquired as to local air traffic other than his own plane and the Piper Cub, the pilot and passenger of which also reported seeing the light. The tower responded that they had no other traffic in the area.
Lt. Gorman’s dogfight with a UFO made headlines in 1948.
Gorman flew towards the light to investigate, but found that it was able to outrace and outmanoeuvre him at every turn. He made several attempts to get close to the light, which made an initial close pass of his P-51. At one point, Gorman climbed after the UFO but the steep ascent caused his aircraft to stall. He finally had to abandon chase when the elusive light rocketed away and disappeared from view. His dogfight with the UFO had transpired over about 15 or 20 minutes, and had moved for a time over Hector Airport, where it was observed through binoculars by air traffic controller J. D. Jensen, and the pilot and passenger of the Piper Cub, who had landed and walked over to the control tower to get a better view of the bizarre orb.
Sign’s investigation initially concluded that “something remarkable had happened” in the skies over Fargo, ruling out that the light had been another aircraft or a weather balloon. Readings made of Gorman’s plane registered higher levels of radiation than the other fighters parked on the tarmac, suggesting that maybe Gorman’s plane had been in close proximity to some kind of atomic-powered craft.
Subsequently, upon further investigation, Sign reconsidered their initial findings and concluded that Gorman had, most probably, chased a weather balloon, one of which, equipped with running lights, had been launched by the weather service from Fargo shortly before Gorman engaged his UFO. The evidence of elevated radiation levels was dismissed as invalid because any aircraft flying at high altitudes, where the thinner atmosphere provides less of a shield against incoming cosmic rays, would show a higher degree of contamination than aircraft on the ground. The object’s wild aerobatics, it was postulated, was an illusion created by Gorman’s own manoeuvres relative to the object as he chased and dove towards it. He may have also have caught site of the planet Jupiter after loosing visual contact with the object momentarily during the dogfight, and ended up pursuing the planet, thinking it was the UFO.
Gorman, for his part, held that there was certainly thought behind the UFO’s movements.
The Thomas Mantell Crash
But just a week into the year came the earliest, chronologically, of our three key incidents of 1948, and the most sobering, for here was recorded the first casualty associated with a UFO encounter! The death of a military pilot while engaging a flying saucer moved the idea of interplanetary alien spaceships and the little green men aboard them from the domain of whimsical silliness typical of newspaper coverage at the time, to serious concern. If extraterrestrial in nature, it seemed that flying saucers might also prove hostile and a threat to American skies.
Captain Thomas Mantell was one of four Kentucky Air National Guard pilots directed to investigate a UFO sighted near Fort Knox, Kentucky, on January 7. At about 1:45PM, Godman Army Airfield had received a report from the Kentucky Highway Patrol of a large, circular object flying westbound near Madisonville. Personnel in Godman’s air traffic control tower spotted a white object in the distance, seemingly stationary, the base commander describing it as “very white…about one fourth the size of the full moon.” The UFO was observed for roughly 90 minutes, not only from Godman, but from airfields in neighbouring Ohio, as well, one observer there describing the object as “having the appearance of a flaming red cone trailing a gaseous green mist.”
Incoming after a training exercise, Mantell’s flight was ordered to investigate. One of his pilots, however, was low on fuel and broke off to land. Mantell and the other two pilots rose in a steep climb and gave chase. Only Lieutenant Albert Clements’ plane was equipped with an oxygen mask, but his oxygen was in low supply. At 22,500 feet, he and the other wingman broke off and returned to base. They would later state that they had seen an object, but that it was too small and indistinct to be properly identified.
Captain Thomas Mantell’s death was the first fatality associated with a modern UFO encounter.
Mantell flew on alone in pursuit of the UFO, climbing ever higher. According to the Air Force, once past 25,000 feet, he likely blacked out due to hypoxia and his plane went into a dive, spiralling down to the ground and crashing on a farm south of the town of Franklin, on the Kentucky-Tennessee state border.
Rumours quickly spread that Mantell had been hit by a Soviet missile, that his body was found riddled with bullets, that he’d been shot down by a UFO when he got too close, that his plane had completely disintegrated in the air, that the wreckage was radioactive, and that Mantell’s body was missing from the wreckage! None of these rumours could be substantiated, however. Regardless, in due course they passed into the realm of urban legend and endure even to this day.
Project Sign quickly investigated the incident, anticipating the flood of questions that would surely follow the death of a military pilot who had chased a UFO. They determined that Mantell had probably been mistakenly in pursuit of the planet Venus, as had another pilot flying a similar aircraft a few weeks earlier in another incident that paralleled this one.
Another explanation put forward a few years later when Sign revisited the file was that the UFO was in fact a Skyhook high altitude balloon. Skyhook balloons were large and, at their topmost, spherical, trailing below them a tapering lower portion that made the whole kit appear somewhat cone-like. They were made of a highly reflective material that gave them a metallic sheen. Project Skyhook was a secret Navy research exercise and neither Mantell nor any of the other military personnel involved on that day would have known about this classified operation.
Mantell’s fateful story served as inspiration for the Japanese giant monster film Sora no Daikaijū Radon, known in English as Rodan (1956; U.S. release, 1957). Toho Studio’s first kaiju shot in colour, the film underlines a scene in which a jet fighter, responding to reports of a UFO performing breakneck maneuvers, is downed and the pilot killed by said UFO, eventually revealed to be not a flying saucer, but a giant supersonic-capable pterosaur dubbed Rodan.
Also, the earlier-mentioned Project U.F.O.’s premiere, “The Washington, D.C. Incident,” included a loose interpretation of Mantell’s story. And, Star Trek’s “Tomorrow is Yesterday” cleverly worked a Mantell-like sequence into the episode’s opening teaser, with the Enterprise cast as the UFO!
EPILOGUE
Without any real, hard, irrefutable evidence to back up their extraordinary claims, UFOlogists struggle to gain the respect of the scientific community. To date, UFOlogy has failed to conclusively prove its case. But we also don’t know with anything approaching certainty that there is no intelligent life in the universe other than here on Earth—and we’re not even sure of that!—so it’s possible that extraterrestrials as smart or smarter than us exist somewhere out there, perhaps in a form similar to our own, perhaps in a truly alien configuration with which we are entirely unfamiliar. And maybe they’ve developed the technology to come visit.
This much we do know: Hollywood and like entertainment factories around the world have undoubtedly influenced the UFO phenomenon as much as they’ve been inspired by it.
The people of Earth have opinions on UFOs! Some believe them to be extraterrestrial spacecraft conveying alien visitors to our planet from another star or another dimension. Others consider the whole craze to be either some kind of mass delusion or a hoax perpetrated on society’s most gullible. The rest of us fall somewhere in between those two polar opposites.
Wherever one may land on the matter, I think it fair to say that UFOs have provided in particular science fiction fans with hours upon hours of entertainment. Countless books, comics, games, toys, and the focus of this afternoon’s treatise, film and television productions, have stirred our imaginations, open as we are to what our favourite genre offers, the X-Files’ so-called “extreme possibilities.” So keep watching your screens, fellow sci-fi fans, and enjoying the fictional flying saucers thereon, but by all means, keep watching the skies, as well.
This is number 1 of 6 related posts which together make up our July 11, 2020, DIY, Virtual MonSFFA Meeting.
1) INTRODUCTION
MonSFFA had initially projected posting on its Web site two, maybe three of these virtual club meetings before we expected that things would get back to normal, just in time for our usual summer field trip and barbecue-in-the-park. That turned out to be an overly optimistic assessment.
To date, we have hosted fully three virtual meetings, and with the completion of this fourth, will have held more club meetings online this year than we have live, face to face! Our field trip has officially been cancelled, and we’ve tentatively pushed our barbecue into August, although we are not certain of ultimately being able to hold it at all. We are having doubts, too, about the viability of our November-slated Super Sci-Fi Book Sale.
All of this to say that the club may well be operating uniquely online for the rest of 2020!
The club’s Executive trusts that MonSFFen all enjoyed the quietly unusual St-Jean and Canada Day holidays, and apropos our American club members and friends, a healthy and happy, if understated, July 4th.
We hope this post finds all managing well as the quarantine is prudently lifted and commerce begins, step by careful step, to reopen. It is vitally important to continue following best recommended safety practises in order to help minimize a second wave of infections.
That means continuing the routine of washing your hands thoroughly and often, employing plenty of soap and rinsing with warm water. It means using a hand-sanitizer whenever the opportunity of hand-washing is not available. It means maintaining social distancing outside of your home whenever possible, and minimizing contact with others outside of your “bubble” of quarantine fellows. And it means wearing a face mask covering nose and mouth when out and about in your community, especially on public transit systems, or at the grocery store or other commercial establishments.
Some jurisdictions have recently made the wearing of masks mandatory, including our own province of Quebec, which will require people to don the coverings while travelling on all buses, subways, trains, etc. as of July 13, just a couple of days from now. No mask, no ride!
Very soon, mask-wearing may well be required in this province in all public areas, indoors and out! While the authorities initially thought ordinary non-airtight cloth masks to be of little use in stemming the spread of the coronavirus, that thinking has evolved as more about SARS-CoV-2 became known. Masks are now considered to be a significant impediment to COVID’s proliferation. Contrary to what you may heard from the usual suspects online, masks do not prevent your lungs from inhaling sufficient oxygen, thus causing you to pass out from hypoxia, nor does the wearing of one signify any particular political stance other than in the eyes of the misguided beholder, nor is this whole coronavirus thing a hoax!
As society reopens, we must all mind against letting down our guard. This pandemic is by no means over, and slacking off now will only contribute to its prolongation. We have all seen news reports of sometimes explosive surges in contagions occurring in jurisdictions in which the reopening of society, just weeks prior, was too recklessly executed.
Globally, over 12 million cases have been reported, with more than 550,000 having fallen to the virus. Canada’s share: 106,000-plus infected, over 8700 fatalities, with Quebec accounting for more than half of those respective numbers. Montreal’s situation is improving steadily but our city was one of the hardest hit in the world, so don’t let up on those safety protocols prematurely! Locally, there have been recent instances of outbreaks occurring when mitigation protocols were carelessly relaxed.
As always, to those of you deemed “essential workers,” please take all possible precautions in order to keep yourselves as protected from infection as can be!
This is our fourth virtual MonSFFA meeting. Today’s get-together will unfold right here on the club’s Web site over the course of the afternoon, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 3:00PM, and 4:00PM, with a concluding post at 4:30PM. All content will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MonSFFA), however, the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.
We cannot yet meet face-to-face as we usually do, of course, and so this July virtual meeting has been prepared especially for you, MonSFFA’s membership. Fix yourself some tasty barbecued burgers or sausages, pour yourself a cool drink, then sit back, check out each of the afternoon’s posts, scroll down leisurely through the proffered content, and enjoy!
10) “Real” and Reel: Flying Saucers and UFO Aliens
4:00PM, Post 5 of 6
11) Gallery of Genre Barbecues and Fire Pits
4:30PM, Post 6 of 6
12) Another Coronavirus Parody Song
13) Wanted! Sci-Fi Summer Drinks
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15) More Sci-Fi Coronavirus Masks
16) Thank-You!
17) Closing Parody Song
3) OPENING CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG
The Internet is home to numerous very talented and funny songwriters/performers who have provided a note of gentle comic relief to us all during this lockdown, filking well-known rock and pop hits, à la Weird Al Yankovic. Whenever given, we’ve credited by name these creators. This afternoon, we begin with a tune most will recognize, interpreted by South Africa’s The Kiffness (www.thekiffness.com). This one more properly should have been featured last month, but we only just came across the track, and it was too good to pass up:
4) GENUINE UFO FOOTAGE RELEASED!
The coronavirus crisis has dominated headlines and newscasts for some four months, now, and perhaps for that reason, few seem to have noticed or paid much attention to what one would think an important development with potentially profound ramifications for mankind! Sci-fi fans and the like have always been more open than most to the possible existence of intelligent life beyond Earth and fresh evidence seemingly in support of that conjecture has reignited the conversation surrounding the nature of UFOs.
On April 27 of this year, the American military officially released infrared camera footage of what the Pentagon termed “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” or UAP. These short videos, recently declassified, were recorded by Naval aviators who, on separate occasions in 2004 and 2015, encountered fast-moving objects that executed flight manoeuvers one now-retired pilot says he could not explain. “As I got close,” the pilot recalled, the object he was tracking “rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds. This was extremely abrupt, like a ping-pong ball bouncing off a wall.”
A Pentagon spokesperson stated that the clips were released to “clear up any misconceptions” as to the veracity of the footage and “whether or not there is more to the videos.” The recordings are authentic and considered unexplained phenomena, says the Pentagon, without taking a position on whether the military believes the objects captured on camera to be extraterrestrial in origin.
The videos have actually been in circulation since 2017, when UFO devotee and former Blink-182 singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge obtained and publicized them online through his To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences. DeLonge and several former CIA, Department of Defense, Pentagon, and Lockheed Martin “Skunkworks” employees founded the Academy in 2017. The organization is dedicated to researching collected data and materials related to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. UFOlogists have enthusiastically welcomed the official release of the videos, with DeLonge commenting that the Pentagon’s move was a step in the right direction, toward what he called “the Grand Conversation.”
Ex-Nevada senator Harry Reid, who more than a decade ago successfully pushed for a classified threat-assessment program to study such recordings of UAP, tweeted that he was glad the Pentagon had released the material, and that the “U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this” and evaluate “any potential national security implications.” The program ran from 2007 to 2012 before falling to other funding priorities, and its former director, Luis Elizondo, has said that he personally believes “there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.” Elizondo, now involved with DeLonge’s Academy, further stated of the objects researched that the “aircraft—we’ll call them aircraft—are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the U.S. inventory, nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.”
Skeptical astrophysicists have cautioned that there are often more earthbound explanations for such phenomena, including atmospheric effects, reflections, or possible bugs in the code of a fighter jet’s imaging/display systems. Just because an airborne object cannot be identified, goes the reasoning, doesn’t mean it’s an alien spaceship.
Here is a quick montage of extracts from all three videos:
Be sure to have a look at our essay later this afternoon on sci-fi films and television series that were inspired by, and in turn influenced the UFO phenomenon; check out today’s Post 4 of 6, going up at 3:00PM.
5) A SECOND PARODY SONG
This one comes via the YouTube channel of one Matt McAtee and will appeal to any Glen Campbell fans on the club’s membership roster:
6) SCI-FI CORONAVIRUS MASKS
As an essential worker delivering needed supplies by truck throughout Quebec and Eastern Ontario, I’ve begun wearing a mask whenever interacting with the folk receiving these goods. That’s me next to my truck in the photo.
A friend made the Star Trek-themed mask I’m wearing. At the peak of lockdown, driving along eerily empty highways and into seemingly near-vacant towns in far-off regions, I sometimes felt like a most-at-risk member of the Enterprise’s landing party, a so-called “red-shirt.” And so, I requested of my friend that she make my mask of red material and affix to it a Starfleet insignia. I had, in a flash of gallows humour, cast myself as a “red-mask!”
Simple, cloth face masks, originally and erroneously thought to be largely ineffective at abating the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, are now strongly recommended by authorities, and have even been designated mandatory in some districts. That being the case, I thought it fitting to showcase some of the many designs available to anyone who’d like to fight the virus while flying their geek flag!
Firstly, a few other examples of Trek-themed masks:
The entertainment conglomerates that own such popular franchises as Star Trek, Star Wars, and others, quickly eyeing profit potential, no doubt, have turned out a number of designs and made them available to eager fans. Here’s a selection of Star Wars motifs, a few of them rather clever gags:
Playing with the title of the retro-’80s Stranger Things TV series, the mask just below offers commentary on the times in which we are all currently living:
This hand-painted Pennywise mask is sure to freak out anyone who suffers from Coulrophobia!
Below are a number of examples crafted on a variety of SF/F properties or characters, from John Carpenter’s They Live to Lord of the Rings to Morticia Addams to Xena to Rick and Morty! A handful here are simply generic genre pieces, like the dragon mask. Cat owners, of course, will appreciate the cartoon depiction of a mischievously sociopathic kitty.
MonSFFA treasurer Sylvain St-Pierre sports this mask, which he claims has the effect of encouraging people to keep a healthy social distance away from him!
This mask is an exquisite work of art!
And this one, not so much. But it’s good for a chuckle.
We’ve saved a selection of cool superhero masks for the afternoon’s closing post; view them at 4:30PM.
7) A THIRD PARODY SONG
This track is by the Holderness Family (www.theholdernessfamily.com), who were dealing with the same tribulations with which pretty much every family under quarantine was dealing, including COVID-associated dishevelment:
This is post 6 of 6 today, and will close this afternoon’s virtual MonSFFA meeting. If you’re just now joining us, scroll back to today’s Post 1 of 6 to enjoy the whole meeting, start to finish.
10) ANOTHER CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG
From the UK, this one’s the Penguinator’s take on a Kinks classic
For more from this guy, type “Penguinator” into your YouTube search engine!
11) ANSWERS TO QUIZ CHALLENGE
Here are the answers to my quiz on pop and rock songs that comprise SF/F-themes and imagery (see today’s earlier Post 1 of 6). Were you able to correctly identify each song, and the affiliated performer(s), from the snippet of lyrics we disclosed?
Check your answers below! The title of each song is given, along with the name(s) of the composer(s), the year of the song’s release, and the vocalist or band commonly linked to the tune. A brief word on each song is also provided, along with related trivia.
1)
In your mind you have abilities you know / To telepath messages through the vast unknown
Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (Terry Draper, John Woloschuk, 1976; original performed by Klaatu, memorably covered by The Carpenters in 1977)
According to co-writer Woloschuk, the idea for this song came from an event described in the book The Flying Saucer Reader, published in 1967. The author recounted the tale of an experiment proposed by the International Flying Saucer Bureau in 1953, in which all of that organization’s members, at a predetermined date and time, would attempt to collectively send out a telepathic message to space aliens that began with the salutation “Calling occupants of interplanetary craft!”
The tune opens this Canadian progressive rock band’s debut album, 3:47 EST. The band was named after Klaatu, the alien emissary portrayed by Michael Rennie in the classic 1951 sci-fi movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. Further, the group drew the title for their first album from a detail mentioned in the film noting that Klaatu’s spaceship landed in Washington, D. C., at 3:47 PM, Eastern Standard Time.
Pop/soft rock duo The Carpenters’ cover of the song closes their Passages album. Star Trek designer/illustrator Andrew Probert provided the sleeve artwork for the single release of The Carpenters’ version of the song.
2)
They got music in their solar system / They’ve rocked around the Milky Way
Space Truckin’ (Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, Ian Paice, 1972; performed by Deep Purple)
Its title sometimes interpreted as a simile for getting high—a habitual reading of so many 1960s and ’70s rock tunes—when taken at face value, this is simply a song about the jubilance experienced by a space-faring rock band that is touring the solar system bringing music to fervent fans. It is the closing track on the band’s Machine Head album, and a concert favourite.
Space Truckin’ is one of several Deep Purple tunes featured in the Starz television series Ash vs Evil Dead. Star Trek’s William “Captain Kirk” Shatner covered the song on his 2011 album Seeking Major Tom.
3)
Crossed through the universe to get where you are / Travel the night riding on a shooting star
Alien (Britney Spears, William Orbit, Daniel Traynor, Ana Diaz Molina, Anthony Preston, 2013; performed by Britney Spears)
To quote Spears, this song “deals with loneliness and how you can be surrounded at all times by friends, family, and adoring fans who you love, and still feel alone.” The lyrics are an expression of how isolating the life of a pop star can be, leaving one feeling “like an alien.” The mid-tempo pop piece opens Spears’ album, Britney Jean, and she rates it as her favourite track on the disc. “We have moments when we feel alienated, shy, or nervous,” she continues. “That’s what the song is about.” Spears says she wrote the tune to remind herself that she is not, in fact, alone.
The pop princess cameos as a “Fembot,” singing a re-mix of her 2001 R&B/hip-hop/funk number, Boys, in the 2002 James Bond spoof Austin Powers in Goldmember. In exchange, comedic actor Mike Myers, portraying his toothy ’60s spy character, appears in Spears’ Boys music video.
4)
Woke up this morning with light in my eyes / And then realized it was still dark outside
Mr. Spaceman (Roger McGuinn as Jim McGuinn, 1966; performed by The Byrds)
“Won’t you please take me along for a ride,” requests the narrator of this jaunty ditty about a series of whimsical and weird but friendly visitations by flying saucer aliens. Mr. Spaceman is an early example of what would come to be known as country-rock. It was the third single taken from of the band’s Fifth Dimension album.
Composer McGuinn and bandmate David Crosby were hopeful that communication might be made with space aliens through the medium of AM radio. “I was interested in astronomy and the possibility of connecting with extraterrestrial life,” McGuinn recollects. “I thought that the song being played on the air might be a way of getting through to them.” He later learned that AM radio waves diffuse much too rapidly to be a viable means of interplanetary communication.
A publicity stunt at the time of the song’s release as a single had it that the band was insured by Lloyds of London against alien abduction! William Shatner covered the tune on his 2011 album Seeking Major Tom.
5) I think your atmosphere is hurting my eyes / And your concrete mountains are blackin’ out the skies
I’m a Stranger Here (Les Emmerson, 1973; performed by the Five Man Electrical Band)
This one is a “message song” commenting on the failings of the modern world—pollution, rampant urban development, war, synthetic food and feel-good drugs—with mankind reproached for foolishly despoiling the “paradise” in which he was living. Ottawa’s Five Man Electrical Band, formerly The Staccatos, sermonized from the point of view of a visiting extraterrestrial sent to evaluate Earth. His people having made the same mistakes as he sees humanity now making, the alien speaks from experience, and with the knowledge that “the gates of Heaven can close.”
“It’s about the environment,” songwriter Emmerson says, “it’s relevant.” He wrote the number in late-1972 after the band had finished recording most of the songs for their album Sweet Paradise. “I don’t know where it came from. I was watching something on TV,” he recalls, “and I just got this idea of, you know, somebody coming from another planet and watching us, how silly we might look.” He showed the song to his producer, who liked it enough to suggest the band record it and include the tune on the album. Sweet Paradise was released on January 1, 1973, with I’m a Stranger Here as the opening track.
Over the course of their career, the Five Man Electrical Band released a number of singles that did quite well in Canada, but in the U.S. and elsewhere, were not nearly as successful. The exception was 1971’s Signs, which became an international hit and is, today, regarded as a rock classic. But I’m a Stranger Here climbed to second spot on the charts here in The Great White North to become the band’s biggest domestic hit, outperforming even Signs!
6)
I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife / It’s lonely out in space
Rocket Man (Elton John, Bernie Taupin, 1972; performed by Elton John)
The titular Rocket Man’s plaint has been taken as a metaphor for one detached from family, or reality, whether by distance, addiction, or maybe the kind of loneliness attendant rock star-like fame. Lyricist Taupin, animated by his sighting of a shooting star or distant aircraft one night, has explained that the notion of astronauts being thought of, one day, as no longer heroes, but merely ordinary people doing an ordinary job was what led to his writing the song’s opening lines: “She packed my bags last night, pre-flight / Zero hour, nine AM / And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then.”
For some, the phrase “high as a kite” clearly denotes drug use and so categorizes Rocket Man accordingly. Another interpretation infers that the lyrics were sparked by Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Rocket Man,” about a conflicted astronaut who yearns for his wife and son while away on long space missions, but when home, feels the equally aching lure of the stars.
In January 1978, William Shatner co-hosted the Fifth Annual Saturn Awards with actress Karen Black, broadcast as the Science Fiction Film Awards. Introduced by lyricist Bernie Taupin at one point during the ceremony, Shatner performed an abominably naff spoken-word rendition of Rocket Man! He again covered the song on his 2011 album Seeking Major Tom.
7)
They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air / And tell you that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care
1984 (David Bowie, 1974; performed by David Bowie)
This song was inspired by George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bowie had hoped to turn the famous book into a musical stage show but was refused the rights by Orwell’s widow, who was vehemently opposed to the idea! 1984 and a few other songs Bowie had written for his proposed production migrated to the Diamond Dogs album, thematically a loose amalgam of Orwell’s dystopian vision and Bowie’s own glam-rock perspective on a post-apocalyptic future.
A decade after Orwell’s widow curtailed Bowie’s ambitions, British motion picture company Virgin Films approached him to compose the music for their adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The reasoning was that rock idol Bowie’s appeal could only increase the film’s market potential, but he wanted more for the job than Virgin was prepared to pay, and eventually, Eurythmics got the gig, and in the bargain, a new wave synth/pop dance hit, Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four). Released as Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984, the film starred John Hurt and, in his swan-song performance, Richard Burton.
In addition to a thriving career in music, Bowie found success, too, as an actor, landing roles in, among other productions, a few genre films. He starred as an alien in 1976’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, was a vampire’s consort in 1983’s The Hunger, and played Jareth, the Goblin King, in 1986’s Labyrinth.
Bowie’s son with first wife Angela is sci-fi film director/screenwriter Duncan Jones. Born in 1971 as Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, his first feature film was 2009’s acclaimed Moon, which won him the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. He also helmed 2011’s Source Code and 2016’s Warcraft.
8)
(All day long we hear him crying so loud) / I just want to be myself, I just want to be myself, I just want to be myself, be myself, be myself
Clones [We’re All] (David Maurice Carron, Adam Jan Narkiewicz, 1980; performed by Alice Cooper)
With his 1980 Flush the Fashion album, shock rocker Alice Cooper moved to a fresh, synthesizer-laced new wave sound and scored a minor hit with this song, a statement of rebellion against forced conformity. The lyrics evoke a future in which dehumanized clones have taken over society and are stamping out individuality. Some consider the song’s “Six,” who is “having problems adjusting to his clone status,” as analogous to the character of Number Six in the British cult sci-fi television series The Prisoner.
The original Alice Cooper Band is said to have conjured up their handle by consulting an Ouija board, the spirit of a long-dead witch purportedly lending her name to the group. But this is urban legend, of course! In truth, the group was just trying to think off a name that belied their weird image and wild on-stage antics. And yet, the name “conjured up an image of a little girl with a lollipop in one hand, and a butcher knife in another,” cites the band’s frontman, who, born Vincent Damon Furnier, would become known as, and in 1974 legally change his name to, Alice Cooper. “There was something axe-murderish about ‘Alice Cooper’. It reminded me of Lizzie Borden. Alice Cooper, Lizzie Borden—that’s got a ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ feeling to it,” he expounds, referring to the 1962 Bette Davis-Joan Crawford horror/thriller. “It had some sort of ring to it, something disturbing.”
For the 1986 slasher film Jason Lives: Friday the 13th, Part VI, Cooper, now a solo artist, was in his wheelhouse when he recorded the film’s theme song, He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask). Also included on the movie’s soundtrack were his tunes Teenage Frankenstein and Hard Rock Summer. The first two were also released on his 1986 album, Constrictor, and all three were collected in the 1999 boxed-set retrospective The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper.
Cooper’s macabre persona and stage theatrics make the legendary entertainer a natural choice for stunt casting in fright flicks. In 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, for example, he portrays the alcoholic and abusive Edward Underwood, adoptive father of horror film icon Freddy Krueger. Cooper has appeared, over the years and often as himself, in a number of movies and television shows. In the 1970s, he guested on the mystery series The Snoop Sisters and played a waiter in Mae West’s final film, Sextette, a horrible, if not horror, film! The ’80s saw him star in Italian horror movie Monster Dog and appear as a possessed “street schizo” in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. In 1992’s Wayne’s World, he gave Wayne and Garth a backstage history lesson on the city of Milwaukee! And in 2012, he appeared in the SyFy TV movie Bigfoot, as well as the big-budget film adaptation of Dark Shadows, which starred Johnny Depp, one of his bandmates in the rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires.
Alice Cooper wrote Man with the Golden Gun for the 1974 James Bond film of the same name, but the band was deemed too controversial by Bond producers, who opted instead for another tune employing that title, written by veteran Bond composers John Barry and Don Black, and sung by Scottish songbird Lulu. Alice Cooper decided to include their rejected song on the band’s Muscle of Love album.
9) Mine’s broke down / And now I’ve no one to love
“Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” (Gary Numan, 1979; performed by Tubeway Army)
The “friend” in this song is a robot prostitute, Numan has clarified, and the song, like all of his work, is about being misunderstood and alone. Numan was a fan of SF writer Philip K. Dick and Beat scribe William S. Burroughs, and as a teen, wrote his own sci-fi stories, envisioning android companions—friends—that would come to the doors of desperately forlorn people in a bleak future and provide sexual services. “It was a futurist version of getting pornography in the post,” Numan outlines. “If the BBC had known what it was about, they would never have played it.”
“Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” and the other songs on Tubeway Army’s Replicas album were essentially musical renderings of Numan’s short stories, each about an aspect of what he imagined London might be like in 20 or 30 years.
Seeming automaton-like, the modern electronic music pioneer has contended that he has Asperger’s Syndrome, a type of Autism Spectrum Disorder that manifests as social awkwardness and obsessive behaviour. He has always found social interaction difficult and people, from his point of view, strange and disaffecting, a disposition reflected in his song lyrics.
Before Gary Anthony James Webb adopted the alias Gary Numan, he briefly called himself Valerian, a name alleged to have been appropriated from the French sci-fi space opera and time-travel comic book adventure Valérian et Laureline. This is not the case, according to Numan himself, who relates that “Valerian” stemmed from a patch of graffiti he’d seen scrawled on a wall while driving to work one day. Nor is the name Numan meant to represent some kind of robotic “new man,” as is occasionally implied by those who read more into it than was ever intended. The name, in fact, was merely lifted from a listing in the London Yellow Pages—Neumann—the spelling of which the singer simplified to arrive at his desired moniker.
10)
Hey mom, there’s something in the back room / Hope it’s not the creatures from above
Aliens Exist (Tom Delonge, Mark Hoppus, 1999; performed by Blink-182)
From their album Enema of the State, punk-pop trio Blink-182 delve into UFOs and conspiracy theories, depicting an alien abduction and, as the song closes, alluding to flying saucer lore’s infamous, super-secret Majestic 12 committee of scientists, military officers, and government officials.
Singer/guitarist and band co-founder Tom Delonge is a true believer, to hear him tell it, entertaining a considerable interest in the subject of UFOs. He has researched the flying saucer phenomenon extensively, launching a Web Site dedicated to exposing the truth about UFOs and combatting the efforts of authorities to keep the public in the dark. Delonge might categorically be styled rock-and-roll’s Fox Mulder! He has camped out near Area 51, claims to have had his phone tapped by the government, and speaks of having experienced the “lost time” peculiarity commonly reported by UFO abductees.
11)
Oh Space Dude in your space suit / Our love, it takes us to the moon
It not only is a life saver but also a pill which helps the person in getting back to their regular cialis canadian prices life. This enzyme is levitra buy online important that works towards the erection process. Given below is some of the common spondylolisthesis buy super cialis treatment. This blood proficiency makes the organ becoming erect and gets true use of buy viagra without prescription. Space Boots (Miley Cyrus, 2015; performed by Miley Cyrus)
From the experimental pop/psychedelia album Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, this song about Cyrus’ missing an emotionally detached lost love offers cosmic allegory almost certainly filtered through a bong.
In 2001, Miley Cyrus was eight years old and living in Toronto with her family while her father filmed the television series Doc, a medical drama. After attending a performance of Mirvish Productions’ jukebox musical Mamma Mia! at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Cyrus went home knowing that she wanted to be an actress. She was enrolled in singing and acting classes at Toronto’s Armstrong Acting Studios, later landing a minor role under her birth name, Destiny Cyrus, in director Tim Burton’s quirky 2003 fantasy/drama Big Fish.
She auditioned opposite Taylor Lautner—later to star in the Twilight movies—for the female lead in the 2005 children’s superhero adventure The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl in 3D, then in pre-production. However, she instead opted for the lead in a new Disney Channel teen sitcom called Hannah Montana. The show ran from 2006 to 2011 and brought Cyrus international stardom, leading to a lucrative pop music career.
12)
Then the stranger spoke, he said, do not fear / I come from a planet a long way from here
A Spaceman Came Travelling (Chris de Burgh, 1975; performed by Chris de Burgh)
Part Erich von Däniken, part William Butler Yeats, British-Irish balladeer Chris de Burgh’s sci-fi spin on the birth of Christ some 2000 years ago casts an extraterrestrial “from a planet a long way from here” as the angel sent to announce the arrival of mankind’s Lord and Saviour. The song was not particularly successful upon its initial release, but has since become a staple of Christmas playlists.
While staying with a friend in 1974, De Burgh read von Däniken’s 1969 book, Chariots of the Gods?, in which the author postulated that space aliens had visited Earth thousands of years ago. “What if the star of Bethlehem was a spacecraft?” De Burgh wondered afterwards, furnishing him the idea for the song. He pictured the vessel hovering over the nativity scene and imagined “shepherds in the fields, and this weird, ethereal music…drifting into the air.”
Von Däniken’s theories were quickly discredited and he was accused of lifting the idea of ancient alien visitations from a French book, Le Matin des magiciens, published in 1960, which in turn is said to have taken almost verbatim the notion of aliens having come to Earth in ancient times from the fictional tales of H. P. Lovecraft, notably The Call of Cthulhu (1928) and At the Mountains of Madness (1931).
De Burgh’s lyrics were also informed by early-20th century Irish poet Yeats’ elucidation of a complex, esoteric system of intersecting major historical cycles, termed “gyres,” each roughly 2000 years in duration. Yeats was a life-long occultist and his young wife, Georgie Hyde-Lee, purportedly brought to light this mysterious system of gyres by means of “automatic writing,” that is, spontaneous writing while in a trance, one’s hand guided by spirits. The poet utilized an image of interlocking, cone-like rotating coils to symbolize these gyres. In 1925, Yeats detailed his system in book form as A Vision, in which he professed to mathematically explain the associated philosophical, historical, astrological, and spiritual facets of no less than life itself! He published a second, revised edition in 1937.
13)
On Mercury, they’re crazy about my stellar rock ’n’ roll / And I always sell out in advance at the Martian Astrobowl
Spaceship Superstar (Jim Vallance, as Rodney Higgs, 1977; performed by PRiSM)
The signature song of Canadian pop/rock band PRiSM, Spaceship Superstar was written by Jim Vallance under the pseudonym Rodney Higgs. The hectic lifestyle of a touring galactic rock star is in the spotlight, here, and while it may be “a giant leap for rock ’n’ roll,” the song’s protagonist grouses that “it’s too much for just one man.” The adulation of fans “crazy about” his “stellar rock ’n’ roll” takes its toll on the Spaceship Superstar, who sings of becoming “so damned tired and uninspired doin’ all these one night stands.”
Vallance did not particularly enjoy the rigours of touring and left PRiSM shortly after the release of the band’s first album, preferring to remain at home writing songs in his makeshift studio. Spaceship Superstar is his science fiction-flavoured lament on the hardships endured by a travelling rock band. He would compose a few more songs for PRiSM before embarking on a long and successful song-writing partnership with Bryan Adams.
Since the days of the Gemini missions in the mid-1960s, NASA has been transmitting to orbiting spacecraft a daily, morning “wake-up song” to rouse astronaut crews. On the final mission of space shuttle Discovery in early 2011, PRiSM’s Spaceship Superstar was chosen as one such tune, selected for the shuttle’s crew by the overnight shift of the mission’s flight controllers and signalling the start of the crew’s last full day aboard the International Space Station. Discovery would undock from the station the following day and begin the return leg of her flight.
Discovery entered service in 1984 and over 27 years of operations, flew 39 missions, more than any other orbiter, circling Earth for just shy of a cumulative 366 days—indeed, a “spaceship superstar!” She deployed 31 satellites, including the Hubble Space Telescope, was the first space shuttle to dock with the ISS, and in 1998, carried Mercury Seven astronaut John Glenn, then 77 years old, into orbit on his second spaceflight.
Discovery was the first orbiter to be retired and is now on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, an annex of the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum.
14)
Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now / Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all
Saviour Machine (David Bowie, 1970; performed by David Bowie)
This early Bowie number, a progressive rock piece about a machine created to solve civilization’s problems, could easily have been a Star Trek episode or an Asimov short story.
When “President Joe” pledges to create a machine that will eliminate hunger, war, and the other ills of society, the public backs the idea. “They called it ‘The Prayer,’ its answer was law,” Bowie intones. The people soon begin to adore the God-like apparatus, but the omniscient super-computer has quickly become bored, and disapproving of mankind. “Your minds are too green,” it cries, “I despise all I’ve seen. / You can’t stake your lives on a Saviour Machine.” Finally pleading “Please don’t believe in me,” the machine contemplates harshly correcting man’s behaviour.
The song has been perceived as a cautionary tale about our placing too much faith in technology, lest it destroy us—a familiar construct of science fiction in the 1960s and ’70s—or, alternately, as a warning against the populace falling under the thrall of fascistic leadership, the machine, here, standing in for Totalitarianism.
Saviour Machine can be found on Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World album, his working title for which was Metrobolist, an odd mixing of the title of Fritz Lang’s seminal 1927 science fiction film, Metropolis, with the word “somnambulist”, more commonly, a sleepwalker.
A Christian heavy metal band formed in 1989 by brothers Jeff and Eric Clayton took its name from the title of this Bowie tune.
15)
He was turned to steel / In the great magnetic field
Iron Man (Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward, 1970; performed by Black Sabbath)
Vocalist Ozzy Osbourne described the song’s guitar riff as sounding “like a big iron bloke walking about,” which suggested the song’s title to lyricist Geezer Butler, who wrote his story of a man who time-travels into the future and beholds a terrible apocalypse. While returning to his own time to alert humanity of the impending danger, his flesh is metalized by a magnetic field and he is rendered mute, unable to convey his warning. When he is ignored and his attempts to communicate are mocked, he finally becomes angry and takes his vengeance on mankind, causing the very apocalypse which he had witnessed in the future.
“I was heavily into science fiction at the time,” Butler recalls. “Remember, this was the era of the space race. A lot of the stuff I was writing about was inspired by those sorts of stories. I was fascinated by what might happen to a man who’s suddenly transformed into a metal being. He still has a human brain, and wants to do the right thing, but eventually his own frustrations at the way humanity treats him drives this creature to…extreme action.”
Black Sabbath’s Iron Man is frequently tied to the American comic book character of the same name, many believing the latter inspired the former, but lyricist Butler sets the record straight. “My parents never let me read American comics when I was growing up,” explains the Birmingham, England-raised musician. “I knew about Batman and Superman, but that’s about it.” When he wrote the song’s lyrics in 1970, Butler was entirely unfamiliar with the Stan Lee/Larry Lieber/Jack Kirby/Don Heck-created comic book superhero, who debuted in 1963 and is, today, central to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, we may note that it’s especially meta to see Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt throughout the better part of 2012’s superhero epic The Avengers!
William Shatner covered Iron Man on his 2011 album Seeking Major Tom.
16)
Tell me, did you sail across the sun? / Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded
Drops of Jupiter [Tell Me] (Pat Monahan, 2001; performed by Train)
Train’s lead singer, Pat Monahan, has stated that this song, awash with astronomical imagery, came about as he dealt with the passing of his mother, who had died of lung cancer, and whose soul he imagined “swimming through the planets” and returning to him with “drops of Jupiter in her hair.” He tells of waking up from a dream with the phrase “back in the atmosphere” stuck in his head, remarking that “it was just her way of saying what it was like.”
With the loss of the most important person in his life topmost in his thoughts, Monahan began composing the song. “The process of creation wasn’t easy,” he remembers. “I just couldn’t figure out what to write.” He asked himself: What if no one ever really leaves? What if she’s here, but different? The phrase that emerged from his dream provided him with the central notion that his mother was again with him, “back in the atmosphere.” He has further intimated that the song is as much about “me being on a voyage and trying to find out who I am,” advancing that the “best thing we can do about loss of love is find ourselves through it.”
But Monahan did not initially reveal the true story behind his lyrics, providing vague responses when asked about the song’s meaning, saying at one point that it was about a strong woman who had “to find out who she was, and the man willing to let her do that.” Open to personal interpretation, the ambiguous lyrics have typically been surmised to be about a young woman, a close friend or, perchance, a former lover who leaves a relationship on a journey of self-discovery.
In “Nelson v. Murdock,” a first-season episode of the Netflix series Daredevil, this song is used to establish the early-2000s time period during a flashback sequence showing Matt “Daredevil” Murdock and his best friend Franklin “Foggy” Nelson in their freshman year at college.
17)
Encounters one and two are not enough for me / What my body needs is close encounter three
I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper (Jeff Calvert, Geraint Hughes, 1978; performed by Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip)
This lightweight disco number was designed to cash in on the popularity of the 1977 blockbuster movies Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, referencing both. It is notable as the debut of then-18-year-old singer Sarah Brightman, who went on to a career as a soprano in musical theatre, and later became a classical crossover artist.
In 2012, Brightman reportedly paid the private American space tourism company Space Adventures some $52 million for a ride to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket, but in 2015, withdrew from training for the flight, citing “personal family reasons.” Founded in 1998, Space Adventures, in cooperation with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has to date launched over a half-dozen space tourists into orbit, including, in 2009, billionaire Canadian entrepreneur Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil.
18)
And with the top down, we’ll cruise around / Land and make love on the moon (Would you like that?)
Spaceship Coupe (Justin Timberlake, Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, Timothy Mosely, James Fauntleroy, 2013; performed by Justin Timberlake)
In this sci-fi update on the old rock and roll trope of cruisin’ around town in your car and making out with your girl, the town is elevated to outer space, the girl becomes an extraterrestrial, and the car, a spaceship!
Pop star Timberlake has also enjoyed success as an actor, garnering largely positive reviews. Among his films are the weird 2006 near future/alternate history comedy/drama Southland Tales, the 2011 dystopian science fiction thriller In Time, and three animated comedy/fantasy hits, 2007’s Shrek the Third, 2010’s Yogi Bear, and 2016’s Trolls.
19)
Now it’s been ten thousand years / Man has cried a billion tears
In the Year 2525 (Rick Evans, 1968; performed by Zager and Evans)
This tune was written by Rick Evans in 1964 and originally released in 1968 by Truth Records, a small regional label. RCA-Victor picked up the song the following year and made of it a number-one hit. Zager and Evans split up two years later after several unsuccessful follow-ups, having only scored this single hit record.
The song preaches on the dangers of allowing technology to advance so much that it overwhelms us to the point of our effectively ceding our lives to our own machines. As the verses lead us through the millennia, we find that life for man is becoming increasingly mechanized, programmed, and sedentary. “Your arms hangin’ limp at your sides” explains the singer, because “Your legs got nothin’ to do / Some machine’s doin’ that for you.” Even people’s very thoughts are provided for them by pills. Marriage becomes obsolete—“You won’t need no husband, won’t need no wife”—as does procreation—“You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too / From the bottom of a long glass tube.” Finally, at the 10,000-year mark, “man’s reign is through,” and the Second Coming sees God render a binary judgement: “He’ll either say ‘I’m pleased where man has been’ / Or tear it down, and start again.”
The song fades out as the cycle begins anew around another star somewhere “So very far away.” Will this new world of men also doom themselves by one day passively conceding control of their lives to their own overbaked technology?
It was a natural that a re-tooled version of this song was used as the theme for the syndicated sci-fi TV series Cleopatra 2525, set, as the title suggests, in the year 2525.
12) YET ANOTHER CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG
Vintage Blue just may have tapped in to the sentiment of a lot of ladies who’ve maybe spent one day too many in quarantine with “him!” (www.vintageblue.co.nz):
13) THANK YOU!
We hope you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, and we ask all of you to check in here at www.MonSFFA.ca regularly for additional content during this continuing period of quarantine, and for any news as to when the club expects to return to face-to-face gatherings. Thank you for your interest and attention.
We’d also like to thank Sylvain St-Pierre, Joe Aspler, Keith Braithwaite, and Cathy Palmer-Lister for putting this June 2020 DIY Virtual MonSFFA Meeting together.
Until we meet again, farewell, keep social distancing and washing your hands often, wear a mask, and keep safe.
14) CLOSING PARODY SONG
Five Times August (fivetimesaugust@fivetimesaugust.com) will take us out with this closing parody song about friends in this time of quarantine:
This is post 1 of 6 related posts which together make up our June 6, 2020, DIY, Virtual MonSFFA Meeting.
1) SYMPATHIES
We begin with a heavy heart, for we have lost one of our own to COVID-19. Our good friend and fellow MonSFFAn Alice Novo passed away just a couple weeks ago. Alice had been dealing with other health issues these past few years, as most of you know, and thus was particularly susceptible to the virus.
We are cognisant of others within our circle, too, who are also dealing with complications brought about by this virus, and at this time, we are respecting their privacy while hoping, praying that their ultimate outcome is a good one. Others of us have lost family members to COVID-19 and we wish them to know that they have our sincere sympathies.
Alice is mourned by her family and friends, including her beloved son, Alex, and brother Fernando (“Fern”), who most of us know through our mutual affiliation with this club.
Alice and Fern joined MonSFFA at about the time we were starting to shoot the club’s fan film, Beavra, in the early 2000s, if memory serves, and I recall their enthusiasm and keen interest as they jumped right in as part of the cast and crew. They were a wonderful addition to our ranks and I have enjoyed their friendship ever since.
When we needed to cast a youngster in one of the roles, Alice suggested her pre-teen son, Alex, who performed marvellously. This family was a friendly and fun bunch, I remember thinking at the time. Over the years of MonSFFA’s meetings and field trips and conventions and the club’s summer barbecues and Christmas parties, I always looked forward to spending a few hours with Alice and Fern.
Fern and I share an appreciation of classic cars and hotrods, and the customized vehicles built for use in sci-fi movies and TV shows. And also of Bigfoot stories! Alice and I shared in particular an appreciation of classic rock, our tastes remarkably in sync in that respect. Some years back, when the club was holding its Christmas parties at a downtown bar that has since closed, I would serve as DJ, and I remember Alice complimenting me on more than one occasion for the music I’d selected. I’m glad she enjoyed the tunes.
One never knows what to say to friends grieving for a lost loved one, only that whatever we say will seem an inadequate salve to the utter sadness and grief that envelopes them at such a time. So I’ll say just this: Alex and Fern, the day will come when the great sorrow that you now feel will slowly begin to give way to fond memories of, respectively, your mom and sister. The day will come when thinking of her will bring not tears, but a smile. Alice, you were one of the friendliest, warmest, kindest, most delightful and good-humoured people that I’ve known in all my years of involvement with SF/F fandom, and I will miss you. A lot. Rest in peace.
2) INTRODUCTION AND MEETING AGENDA
The club’s Executive hopes this post finds everybody managing as well as they can through the current quarantine. As things prudently begin re-opening, remember to continue following best recommended safety practises in order to help minimize an anticipated second wave of infections. Our area remains one the hardest hit in the world, so don’t let down your guard! To those of you who might be deemed “essential workers,” please take extra caution to keep yourselves as protected from infection as possible!
This is our third virtual MonSFFA meeting. It will unfold right here on the club’s Web site over the course of the afternoon, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 3:00PM, and 3:45PM, with a concluding post at 4:45PM. All content will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MonSFFA), however, the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.
We cannot yet meet face-to-face as we usually do, of course, and so this June virtual meeting has been prepared especially for you, MonSFFA’s membership. Sit back, check out each of the afternoon’s posts, scroll down leisurely through the proffered content, and enjoy!
In This Afternoon’s Virtual Meeting:
1:00PM, Post 1 of 6
1) Sympathies
2) Introduction and Meeting Agenda
3) Coronavirus Song Parody
4) Quiz Challenge, Intro
5) Name That Tune!…
1:30PM, Post 2 of 6
6) Journalism in SF&F
2:30PM, Post 3 of 6
7) Mid-Meeting Break (Now With Experimental Zoom Meeting!)
3:00PM, Post 4 of 6
8) COVID-19 Art
3:45PM, Post 5 of 6
9) SF&F Plagues and Diseases, Part III—The Cures
4:45PM, Post 6 of 6
10) Another Coronavirus Song Parody
11) Answers to Quiz Challenge
12) Yet Another Song Parody
13) Thank-You!
14) Closing Song Parody
3) CORONAVIRUS SONG PARODY
It’s summer! Time for a Beach Boys tune. Well, not quite a Beach Boys tune (www.Facebook.com/jonpumper):
Kudos to Jon Pumper for this one, and to the talented creators of the other parody songs we’re showcasing today; whenever given, we’ve credited by name these creators.
4) QUIZ CHALLENGE, INTRO
David Bowie’s popular 1969 tune Space Oddity tells the tale of astronaut Major Tom, who ventures outside of his space capsule, only to become stranded in orbit before drifting off through the heavens, his future undetermined.
At the time, many wedded the song to the Apollo 11 moonshot, and, indeed, Space Oddity was released to coincide with the historic moon landing. Some reviewers took the song as, plainly, the story of an astronaut who finds himself stranded in space, a possible scenario much discussed in 1969 as NASA prepared to land a man on the moon. Others have read more into the composition, taking the song to be a space-age representation of the disillusionment of ’60s youth. Still others saw it as a drug-induced astral trip!
Bowie himself had stated that Space Oddity was influenced by the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the song’s title a play on the movie’s. “I was very stoned when I went to see it, several times,” he disclosed, “and it was really a revelation to me. It got the song flowing.”
A short, promotional film designed to spotlight this new singer/song-writer’s talents included an early version of Space Oddity in which Bowie, as Major Tom, is seen stepping through the hatch of his spaceship, relaying to Ground Control that he is “floating in a most peculiar way,” and that “the stars look very different today.” He encounters two beautiful, enigmatic women—angels, higher spiritual entities, aliens, transcendent human beings, perhaps—who encirclement him. The astronaut requests of Ground Control, “Tell my wife I love her very much,” and suddenly, communication is broken. Fearing that “there’s something wrong,” Ground Control repeatedly calls “Can you hear me, Major Tom?”
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The song, and the astronaut’s fate, remain open to interpretation.
Major Tom reappeared a few times later in Bowie’s career, reworked a little on each occasion.
Space Oddity is probably one of the best known of pop and rock songs that tap into science fiction or fantasy, employing space motifs, sci-fi references, narratives, or SF/F as metaphor.
At a club meeting a few years ago, I hosted a game in which I challenged my fellow MonSFFen to identify, from just a couple lines of lyrics, a number of Genre-themed pop or rock songs. Reproduced, here, is a revised version of that challenge. I offer it in honour of our dear departed friend, Alice.
Can you identify each of the 19 songs from these snippets of lyrics, as well as the singer or group most associated with each of the tunes? The answers will be provided at the conclusion of today’s virtual MonSFFA meeting in Post 6 of 6, at 4:45PM:
5) NAME THAT TUNE!…
1)
In your mind you have abilities you know / To telepath messages through the vast unknown
2)
They got music in their solar system / They’ve rocked around the Milky Way
3)
Crossed through the universe to get where you are / Travel the night riding on a shooting star
4)
Woke up this morning with light in my eyes / And then realized it was still dark outside
5)
I think your atmosphere is hurting my eyes / And your concrete mountains are blackin’ out the skies
6)
I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife / It’s lonely out in space
7)
They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air / And tell you that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care
8)
(All day long, we hear him crying so loud) / I just want to be myself, I just want to be myself, I just want to be myself, be myself, be myself
9)
Mine’s broke down / And now I’ve no one to love
10)
Hey mom, there’s something in the back room / Hope it’s not the creatures from above
11)
Oh Space Dude in your space suit / Our love, it takes us to the moon
12)
Then the stranger spoke, he said, “Do not fear / I come from a planet a long way from here”
13)
On Mercury, they’re crazy about my stellar rock ’n’ roll / And I always sell out in advance at the Martian Astrobowl
14)
Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now / Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all
15)
He was turned to steel / In the great magnetic field
16)
Tell me, did you sail across the sun? / Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded
17)
Encounters one and two are not enough for me / What my body needs is close encounter three
18)
And with the top down, we’ll cruise around / Land and make love on the moon (Would you like that?)
19)
Now it’s been ten thousand years / Man has cried a billion tears
8) LINNYA WAZZO, a native of the planet Bgztl, is Phantom Girl!
14) ALEC HOLLAND is Swamp Thing!
This way, you will end up with