Its a dark time for sure. Lockdown. Coronavirus. Masks. Staying at home.
Still, it can get young minds thinking. My grandson Moonbase Junior asked me if the virus was on other planets. I said I don't think so as there's no life on other planets in the solar system that we know of.
But then again viruses aren't strictly alive are they. Could they live on other worlds? They need hosts though. Hosts! It very quickly gets you thinking about shake and bake colonists in Aliens! Oh my God!
Then of course there are the giant viruses, which may have even given cells a boot up the nucleus to start complex life as we know it! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/7/140716-giant-viruses-science-life-evolution-origins/
Its all enough to make you go running for your DVD collection and watch War of the Worlds. Wells famously begins his apocalypse with sobering clarity and contains a line which still sends shivers up my spine:
"intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us".
This is countered at the end with the final arresting celebration:
"By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain".
Seems saddeningly apt right now.
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I was reading on the throne room my old copy of Comic Collectables and their Values from 1996 and as usual another pearl of wisdom floated to the surface. A long admirer of the 1984 DC Super Powers range of action figures from Kenner, I was amazed to learn that three of the characters were completely made up: Golden Pharaoh, Cyclotron and Samurai.
I find it strange that Kenner decided to go for custom characters when the house of DC had so many old heroes and villains to choose from. Has anyone got any Super Powers action figures?
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I remember in a previous life driving past an amazing building in Holbeck in Leeds, Temple Works. Looking like an Egyptian temple I always thought what a great facade it would have made for a Hammer Horror.
Alas I never went inside so I can't say if the illusion continued. Looking at it again online it immediately makes me think of that wonderful half column at the rear of the Aurora Mummy kit that I adored as a kid. Is it a kit you had?
Viruses don't do well when subjected to UV radiation, so travelling in space they'd need to be shielded, inside rock maybe, not impossible I suppose. There could be life elsewhere in the solar system. It would be very weird indeed if there wasn't any where life could exist. Physics and Chemistry seem to be the same everywhere, so if life is unique to Earth, something very strange is going on (which is also quite possible).
ReplyDeleteViruses shielding! Good grief Kev. Its like life imitating life!
DeleteSomehow, your notion of dark viruses in deep space got me thinking of Lovecraft, of his ancient alien entities that have lived almost since the beginning of time, and consider us not merely as less than ants, but don't consider us at all! Being a contrary fellow, I've always found Lovecraft's cosmicism comforting, the notion that human beings are of no significance whatsoever in the greater cosmic scheme of things.
ReplyDeleteYes, Lovecraft is ace Zigg. My forst encounter would have been getting a board game called The call of Cthulu, just not sure when it was. It was only later that I started reading his stuff, which I could easily lose myself in!
DeleteTemple Works is amazing, but I suspect the interior was more practical. It's actually a copy of part of the temple of Horus at Edfu, Egypt.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think you're right Andy. I have never been to Egypt but I would love to see its ancient sites. I was fascinated with ancient Egypt and Greece when I was a kid, largely thanks to Collins and Hamlyn books!
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