Penelope Pitstop and the Monkees: Will's Books

Hi Woodsy,

A bit of nostalgia I picked up from the Coventry toy fair today.

Will O.

Anyone remember these?

Telly Talk

Some recent telly I've seen.

Sphere: an underwater sci-fi flick from donkeys years ago, I saw it back then and I'm pretty sure I read the novel on holiday. The film was produced by Michael Crichton, so I assume he wrote the novel. It's not one of his theme parks but it is a destination. 

The film reminds me a lot of ALIEN. I don't know if that was intentional. The crew mess scenes where they sit around drinking coffee could be from Ridley's Nostromo. 

I like the central conceit, that whatever the main protagonist dreams actually happens. It's made clear that the dreams are heavily influenced by his reading of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, including a giant squid attack no less!

There's echoes of Event Horizon too, but I guess any film about first contact with an alien intelligence will touch on gradual human madness. 

Arrow: my personal quest to watch all 180 episodes of this DC series about the Green Arrow goes on unabated. I'm about half-way. Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) has just become Ra's Al Gul, after being handed the title by the Green Arrow himself. You'll recall that in the Dark Knight films Liam Neeson played Ra's, a curiously compelling character with a passion for levelling cities.

The Flash has made another appearance and it's all building up to a DC Arrow/ Flash crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths I think it's called, which itself spawns an adjacent 180 episodes of the Flash! I'm unsure yet if I can keep up with the Speedster. I'll stick with the Bowman for now. 

Anyone else seen Arrow?

What are you watching or have you watched of late?

Duncton Wood: A Good Read?

 It's December so that means the Missus and me browsing second hand bookshops and charity book shops to buy each other books for Christmas and my birthday.

Today we had a ball in the Saltaire charity bookstore and found lots we each liked and to wrap up for each other.

Trashy 1970's and 80's horror paperbacks for me and local history and children's illustrated vintage books for the Missus.

One book I was eyeing up as well was a large vintage hardback edition of Duncton Wood, the mole epic by William Horwood.

The first of a saga of Duncton tales, it's not a book I read as a teenager, which is odd as it would have sat well with the other similar animal novels I read at the time: The Plague Dogs, Watership Down and The Stonor Eagles.

These stories captured something of the folk wildlife and animal rights Zeitgeist during the late 1970's and early 1980's, which I really enjoyed.

I seem to recall the Watership Down film being a Christmas staple on TV for a while.

Have you read Duncton Wood readers? Is it a good read or was it just right at the time?

Sometimes a Great Lotion

 After rescuing all my four JR21 books from the waste compacter of Blurb's spring-clean, I was feeling understandably pleased with the prospect of all four files now being saved from corruption or deletion and reformatted to look the same like a fresh minty box set.

Yep, contentment swept over me like a bag of Haribo, but alas the gremlins hadn't quite finished!

Laid up yesterday in my sick bed nursing a bad dose of lurgy and Vick's menthol lotion on my chest,  I kept myself mentally busy writing a short story. Open to innovation I tried a Speech to Text app for the first time and happily warbled away with not a care in the world. Unfortunately after about five hundred words the app simply deleted the content! I should have heeded this obvious bad omen.

Fed up with innovation I switched back to typing on my phone, using draft Gmail as I always do.

Over several hours the story progressed and progressed, paragraphs being regularly saved and before I knew it I had a fully formed tale on my hands of about 5,000 words, about 10 pages and just short of the grand finale.

I was pleased with it and it was at this point I aimed my finger for 'save' once more but for some odd reason, which I can now only attribute to my cold, I pressed the 'discard' tab instead!

Now, if like me, you thought discarding a draft was like deleting onr, you'd be wrong and disastrously so.

Discarding a draft is like instantly shredding it and feeding the strips to the Pit of Sarlac, where they are dissolved forever.

After frantically searching my trash, junk and spam folders, only to find nothing, the terrible realisation began to dawn on me that I had lost my work for good.

Speech to text was just the opening act. The discard button, fatally positioned immediately below save, was the main event and no matter how much I tried the various desperate measures other discarded victims listed online, my story was gone.

With the bittersweet tang of Vicks vapour rub reddening my wide eyes I laid back and submitted completely to the abject misery of technology's wrath. 

Have you lost anything important readers?

☠️

American Friction: Mine and Bill's New Book on Special Offer

I've just taken advantage of Blurb's very limited time offer of 50% off and free shipping (only within the UK I think but it's worth checking), so I thought I'd pass on the offer.

I've bought my own new book, American Friction,  as I currently don't have a copy, my one and only gifted to my older brother.

Normally £24.70 ( which I gain nothing from, just seeing book out there) it's half price and free postage for a couple of days at the print on demand publishers, Blurb. 

Mine was a very reasonable £12.35 today. 

Google Blurb UK, search for American Friction by Paul Woods and at the end of checkout enter and apply the discount code VIP25PREP.

American Friction is my Volume II about the less-well known JR21 toys with fab photographs by our very own Wotan Bill.

Happy JR21 Reading!

Terranova47's Radio Serial Thrillers

Hello Woodsy,

Here is a book that might interest some readers; SERIAL THRILLERS by Charles Norton.

Mostly it covers BBC Radio serials; PAUL TEMPLE, DICK BARTON, JOURNEY INTO SPACE and from Radio Luxembourg, DAN DARE.

Some blog readers will no doubt remember PAUL TEMPLE from BBC TV in the 1960's. The radio stories began before TV service resumed in the UK.

I remember Dick Barton from my earliest childhood as it was broadcast Monday to Friday at 6:45pm and my parents were glued to the radio listening.

It had a theme tune that was extremely memorable and I still have a book published at the time for kids, which it turned out were the main group of listeners. It includes several of the earliest stories that I was too young to follow.

 A couple of movies were made of the characters one of which has Patrick McNee as a trench coated secret service member, pre Steed.

The time slot eventually was turned over to THE ARCHERS which I believe are still on the air. For me THE ARCHERS is best remembered for one of the funniest episodes of TONY HANCOCK that parodied it as THE BOWMANS. 

This can be found to listen to online and probably best listened to by readers that remember the character, Walter Gabriel.

Journey Into Space was also a comic strip long before the Andersons made space dramas. It had the recognizable voices of David Jacobs and Alfie Bass in the cast.

For me the book is invaluable in having the plots of DAN DARE. This was broadcast not on the BBC but at their commercial rivals, Radio Luxembourg.

The problem for me was that I lived in north London near Alexandra Palace and the BBC signal was so strong static made Dan Dare impossible to listen to.

This is the updated version of Serial Thrillers and it's recommended for anyone with memories of any of these shows.

Terranova47

USA

Space Agent from the Lost Planet

 

I'm always intrigued by yellow tracked vehicles in space. I blame the SWORD Moon Ranger I adored as a kid.

So this strange covert art caught my eye. One of a series of Lost Planet books by Angus McVicar published by Burke in the 1960's, this cover has me scratching my head. What is that vehicle and what is it doing?

What do you think?

Anyone read this book?

Ivanhoe's Castle

 Me and the Missus visited Conisbrough Castle on the outskirts of Doncaster today.

It's a massively impressive stone fortress for sure with a huge pentagonal keep rearing up from the hill.

This ancient fastness was the setting for Ivanhoe, the knightly romance by Sir Walter Scott.

When I was nipper my parents had an old copy of Ivanhoe published by Dent. I remember it had tissue-thin pages and already smelled musty, tucked in as it was in a bookcase with Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, Jack Higgins, Alistair McLean, Readers Digests and a French Linguaphone course, rather like this snap I saw on Etsy. 

I think I had a children's version myself, part of the Bancroft series. Trouble is I only really recall Coral Island and the Black Arrow. This is Ivanhoe. Is it one you had?

Or maybe this one?

The lettering on the above really does ring a bell, especially the slanted O.

Whichever the Ivanhoe, like most boys, I loved knights in armour. 

I recall a plastic chromed knight statuette I had and maybe one on horseback, so seeing this similar modern rendition in the castle shop stirred up many happy memories.

They also stocked plastic helmets, swords, spears, wooden cross and longbows, rubber maces and my personal favourite, a large plastic battle axe. 

I was soooo tempted!

Did you read Ivanhoe? Did you have any toy armour and swords?

What's the oldest building near you? Any castles or forts?

Paul's Monte Carlo - or Bust!

Hi Woodsy,

Here is a book I found at a recent Lions Club book fair in Auckland, for just $1.00 NZ (44 New Pence in British money). The price sticker on the cover is for the London Bookshops, a chain which once operated in NZ, but which is now long gone.

This book is based on the film Monte Carlo or Bust (1969), also known as Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies. It was a sequel to Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), but this time set in the 1920s, and with cars rather than aeroplanes.

I had thought this was the same movie as The Great Race (1965), but it seems that is not so. Although Tony Curtiss was the hero in both !

Monte Carlo - or Bust ! Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies, by Jack Davies, Ken Annakin, Allen Andrews, & Ronald Searle, Dobson Books Ltd., 1969. A note on the rear flap of the dust jacket states that a similar volume is available for Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.

The film involves a race to Monte Carlo, including cars from many different nations. Much villainly ensues, as a fleet of vintage cars and their drivers battle it out.

British artist, and creator of the young 'ladies' of St. Trinian's School, Richard Searle provided the artwork for the film. A note on the copyright page states 'The drawings in the first part of the book are taken from the storyboard for the film titles, the drawings in the Rally Chronicle are from Ronald Searle's notebook of sketches made on location'.

A somewhat humorous history of early motoring is followed by the story of the film, from the point of view of each contestant. Throughout the book are black and white or colour illustrations by Ronald Searle.

The cast included a number of major film stars of the day, some of whom had been in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Terry-Thomas plays the son of his original character, but he is still the villain.

Have you anything like this?

Paul Adams from New Zealand

Paul's Lion Book of Speed

Hi Woodsy

Lion was a British weekly comic for boys, published between 1952 and 1974. In addition to the actual comic, and the hardback Annuals, there were a number of other books carrying the Lion name, including this Lion Book of Speed, which has the copyright date 1962.

I found this at a recent Lions Club book sale, for just $1.00 NZ (44 New Pence). The spine has been taped up with brown parcel tape, but the contents are intact.

It measures 10 3/4 by 7 3/4 inches (27 by 19 1/2 cm), and runs to 128 pages including the hardback covers. Black and white text and line drawings, with red on a few pages; and several pages of black and white photographs.

It is rare to find older books like this at the sale, and I was very pleased to snap it up. The contents cover everything that goes fast.

Speed in the Animal Kingdom; cars; motorcycles; bicycles; speed record holders, Father and Son, Malcolm and Donald Campbell; boats and ships; Hovercraft; computers; aircraft; the Schneider Trophy seaplane race; the X-15; trains; snow and ice sports; and finally out in to space...

There are several cut-away drawings of various machines. One of the photos shows a model of the Super Caravelle super-sonic airliner – ancestor of the Concorde.

Anyone got anything like this?

Paul Adams from New Zealand

Glimpses of Machinery

Discussing droids among us earlier in the month I recalled some songs about futuristic machines.

The earliest I remember is the fabulous Memory of a Free Festival by David Bowie. I was enthralled as a 12 year old with it vision of young people communing with Venusians and a Sun Machine:

We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes

And saw machines of every shape and size

We talked with tall Venusians passing through

And Peter tried to climb aboard

But the Captain shook his head and away they soared

Climbing through the ivory vibrant cloud

Someone passed some bliss among the crowd

And We walked back to the road, unchained

The Sun Machine is coming down, and we're gonna have a party.

Similar but darker is Bowie's Saviour Machine and it's terrifying mantra of My logic Says Burn! 

President Joe once had a dream

The world held his hand, gave their pledge

So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine

They called it the Prayer, its answer was law

Its logic stopped war, gave them food

How they adored till it cried in its boredom

Please don't believe in me, please disagree with me

Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now

Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all

Don't let me stay, don't let me stay

My logic says burn so send me away

Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

I need you flying, and I'll show that dying

Is living beyond reason, sacred dimension of time

I perceive every sign, I can steal every mind

Don't let me stay, don't let me stay

My logic says burn so send me away

Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

More recently those guitaring geeksters Radiohead described in stark terms modern mans' banal future sung-spoken in a robot's spooky voice:

Fitter happier

More productive

Comfortable

Not drinking too much

Regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)

Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries

At ease

Eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)

A patient, better driver

A safer car (baby smiling in back seat)

Sleeping well (no bad dreams)

No paranoia

Careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)

Keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)

Will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall)

Favours for favours

Fond but not in love

Charity standing orders

On Sundays ring road supermarket

(No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)

Car wash (also on Sundays)

No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows

Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate

Nothing so childish

At a better pace

Slower and more calculated

No chance of escape

Now self-employed

Concerned (but powerless)

An empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)

Will not cry in public

Less chance of illness

Tyres that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)

A good memory

Still cries at a good film

Still kisses with saliva

No longer empty and frantic

Like a cat

Tied to a stick

That's driven into

Frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness)

Calm

Fitter, healthier and more productive

A pig

In a cage

On antibiotics

On my CD player this month I've been enjoying the cyborg imagery of Turin Brakes' Underdog:

Two black lines streaming out like a guidance line.

Put one foot on the road now where the cyborgs are driving,

With the WD-40 in their veins the screeching little brakes complain.

And their starkly evocative Future boy with lines like:

Why are you pushing info into me,

I have no need for it, I'm from the stars.

Perhaps the earliest futuristic passage that appeared on MC back at the beginning was this brilliant but dark imagery by Damon Knight in his short story Masks. It even references a Moon Prospector! 

The prospector was climbing a crater slope with its handling members retracted and its head tilted up. Behind it the distant ringwall and the horizon, the black sky, the pin-point stars. And he was there, and it was not far enough, not yet, for the Earth hung overhead like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent and alive.

What's your favourite lyric, line, verse or passage about machines,bots, droids and spaceships readers? 

Harvest Home

Sometimes things come to those that .....

Camp!

We've gone camping again in our cute two-person tent. We like to travel light!

The weather's warm and the site in Hornsea is brilliant. A flock of geese are camping next to us!

Whilst admiring the facilities - pool table, showers, phone chargers - I perused the exchanging bookcase and lo and behold there's a paperback I've been looking for for ten years, one Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon.

Written by US actor and author Tryon, the book, as I've found out online, was a New York Times bestseller in 1973. A folk horror set in rural Connecticut, the plot, centered on a remote community following the old ways, is slightly reminiscent of the Wicker Man. 

Stephen King didn't rate it, a contemporary of his novel Salem's Lot. 

Nevertheless, Harvest Home went on to become a popular spooky US TV film as well back in the mid-Seventies. I've never seen it.

Tryon wrote The Other too, again, an American paperback I've never seen in the wild here in Blighty. 

Have you read or seen Harvest Home readers? 

All My Ducks in a Row

 Imbued with an urge to spring clean the attic, I've stacked my old VHS tapes and sorted them alphabetically (yep, I've too much time on my hands!).

In a similar vein I've uncrated my old horror paperbacks and lined them up neatly in a bookcase.

When I get time (!) I'll sort these alphabetically too.

Always good to have a cold beer to hand when doing stuff like this!

Are you spring cleaning readers?

Worm Wishes

Cleaning up my attic I found my paperback copy of The Worm Ouroborous, which, despite owning for 50 years, I've never read!

My copy is the 1967 edition by American publisher Ballantine. It's a chunky novel.

The fantastic cover art, which made me buy it all those years ago, is by Minnesota-born Barbara Remington, who sadly passed away in 2020.

Barbara Remington also illustrated the covers of the first official (although not the first overall) American paperback publication of The Lord of the Rings on 1965.

Painted in her fabulous style these three books would find a happy home at Moonbase if I found them at a boot sale, although I must say I've never seen them here in Blighty.

Do you like these covers? 

Have you got the books readers?

Paul's Do You Know About 1

At a fair I picked up a paperback book, Do You Know About ? Space Flight, from 1962. A really nice volume, from the dawn of the manned Space Age.

Since I had never heard of the Collins Do You Know About ? series before, I decided to do a little digging. I could not find a lot of information on this series, but it seems there were at least ten titles, published between 1962 and 1964.

The series comprised educational books on natural history, science, and transport, aimed at children. They are very similar to the American How and Why Wonder Books series, some of which I had as a boy.

The Do You Know About ? series was published by Wm. Collins, Sons, and Co., of London and Glasow (the company had started out in Scotland, in 1819). There are not many on-line sales listings for these books, sometimes only one or two for each title.

I do not recall ever seeing these books. They were available in both hardback and paperback, although I do not know if this applies to all the titles.

The length was a standard 48 pages; page size 264 x 206 mm. The illustrations were a mix of colour and black and white artwork, by various illustrators, although one listing I found does mention The Stars having photographs.

All had painted, full-colour covers (some of which are signed), with the cover image repeated on the back. A red panel carries the words Collins Pageant of Knowledge Series.

One oddity is that the two space books (Our Solar System and The Stars) do not list an author on the title page, just the illustrator - Roger Hall. However The Stars does have a small copyright notice on the Contents page, which does name the author.

Given that both books are illustrated by the same artist, might the author of the books also be the same ? If anyone has Our Solar System, and can confirm or refute, that would be great.

I am guessing here, but might Our Solar System and The Stars both be parts of a longer, previously published work, or works ?

Publication Date 1962

Do You Know About ? Birds, by David Stephen, ill by Ralston Gudgeon.

Do You Know About ? Animals, by David Stephen, ill by G.W. Backhouse.

Do You Know About ? Aircraft, by Maurice Allward, ill by T.E. North.

Do You Know About ? Space Flight, by Maurice Allward, ill by I. Teece.

Publication Date 1963

Do You Know About ? Reptiles and Amphibians, by David Stephen, ill by Len Fullerton.

Do You Know About ? Our Solar System, by ?, ill by Roger Hall.

Do You Know About ? The Earth, by Maurice Allward, ill by W.L. Branton.

Do You Know About ? Cars, by Maurice Allward, ill by T.E. North.

Publication Date 1964

Do You Know About ? Railways, by William A. Porter, ill by T.E. North.

Do You Know About ? The Stars, no author is listed on the title page, but at the bottom of the Contents page is 'First published in this edition 1964' and '© 1964 Dr. H.C. King'. Ill by Roger Hall.

The photographs of Space Flight are of my copy; the rest are from Ebay - 14 in total.

Paul Adams from New Zealand