2112



Whilst pondering Wotan's brilliant Space Station post earlier today and what would be the best SWORD version here's some monumentally cosmic rock to help massage your synapses. Courtesy of You Tube, here's the first bit of 2112 by RUSH, Canadian rockers par excellence who straddled the Seventies rock scene like a long-haired colossus.

2112 is the story of a malconted young man living in a dystopian society a thousand years in the future run by the all-powerful Priests of Syrynx. As befits a 1970's rock concept album, the young hero chances upon a guitar thrown away by someone years ago. Music had been banned for centuries but our young 'guitarist' wants to share his miraculous find with the elder Priests and the people. The Priests have other ideas and destroy the instrument. Trapped by a tyrannical Federation and distraught with grief our hero takes his own life at the very moment an interstellar war breaks out promising the perhaps the changes he so craved. You can read more about the album's roots in objectivist philosophy on Wikepedia. I also like to think that the same space-infused world view from the late Sixties and into Seventies that gave us SWORD also gave us concept rock like 2112. Get that air-geetar out!

The Stars My Destination

Every good space mission needs spaceships and every spaceman needs a base to fly them from. Historically, we havent managed to make a permanent base on the Moon, but we have had a spacestation or two. When I was younger, I always imagined that space stations would be 2001-like Space Wheels just as Von Braun proposed in his imaginings at NASA, but as usual my expectations fell a little short when all we got at the time was Skylab - a retrofitted piece of space junk who's only exciting moment came when it fell back to Earth trailing green sparks.

Every space book i'd read suggested that space stations would be vast wheels or complex cylindrical arrangements being visited by shuttles and tugs. The current International Space Station looks like a vertiginous mass of upscaled Meccano - forever poised to suddenly come apart in a shower of bolts and mass produced pieces.

Among my favourite designs were always the Space Station from the Kellogs Space Age premiums, a design borrowed from McDonnel Douglas or Northrop  a solid looking construction that would have fitted neatly into the SWORD or Spacex fleets.

 Robert McCall always managed to fire my imagination with his stations and designs, all his paintings were always busy hives of activity with astronauts jetting about and rockets and space vehicles soaring through the heavens.

A hot contender for a SWORD space station for me is the model displayed at General Motors Futurama II expo in the sixties, a multi-tiered construction with a very Andersonesque feel to it. I could well imagine a toy version of this, complete with flashing lights and opening hatches, waiting to refuel the Booster Rocket before it blasts off to Mars Base.

As far as i'm aware, there isn't any mention of a space station in SWORD fiction either. Perhaps a space-borne toy was considered to have limited playability, its hard to 'swoosh' a space station around a room the way you can with a rocket!

Space Sherlocks

After I saw Malcom Stokes identified as the SWORD artist, Ive been reminded of another thorn in my side, the identity of the artist who prepared the adverts in comics in 1970 for the Triang Spacex toys. These turned up in kids comics such as Valour, Buster and Lion and featured the new models from the rebranded series. The style looks suspiciously familiar and could be the work of a jobbing artist on a freelance basis or just an in houe illustrator for Triang, but i'd love to know. Anyone any ideas ?

The Heritage by SWORD artist Malcolm Stokes

A few weeks back there were some fascinating comments by Jim and Shaqui on the Moon Bug post as to whether the above Moon Patrol advertisement was illustrated by SWORD artist Malcom Stokes. This remains a mystery I'm afraid but whilst researching the artist I came across this fascinating strip by him in a Piccolo paperback called Tales From the Galaxies dated 1973. I picked this copy up on Amazon. The style is reminiscent of Stokes's' work in the Project SWORD Annual four years earlier with a very attractive spacecraft and space-travelling pair of central characters. I've photographed the book as my scanner is out of action. Hope it's readable.

 

One particular drawing jumped out at me as being very similar to one in the SWORD Annual, in the story Queen of Spades and I have placed them next to each other for comparison below - Annual on top and Heritage below. Shaqui's terrific website GACCH confirmed that the illustrator of Queen of Spades [and therefore the jet in the top pic] is indeed by Malcolm Stokes as well.

 

Pictures: Woodsy Collection

X Marks The Spot: Wow Toyz, Space Explorers and Extreme Machines

Browsing on Amazon I came across these neat modern space toys featuring amongst others the X-33 Lifting Body in both and Blackbird [with piggybacking jet] in the set below. Top one [cheap] can be found here and bottom one [dear] here.

Although it's not pictured you can also still get a small plastic Dyna Soar X-20 in another set of X-Planes here. It's in the description. All of these sets maybe cheaper elsewhere or could even be in discount shops?

JR21 and CORGI MISSILE LAUNCHER'S

Hi Paul,

I managed to unearth my Corgi Corporal die-cast Missile Carrier after some minor excavations in my office.I thought it might be nice to get a couple of shots of the JR21 and Corgi versions together. I suspect the unusual addition of chrome wheels on the JR21 toy was influenced by this variant of the Corgi model.

Ferryman

(all pictures courtesy of Ferryman).

Originally posted on my JR21 blog 2009. Swordtastic! Woodsy

Double Dutch

Pondering Frog, the Philosophic Toad has kindly sent in this excellent pair of scans of old space stamps, which featured in the Dutch comic TV2000 20th May 1967. I was all of 6! Beautiful stuff, thanks!

By Gum It's Stuck!

A mini-gallery of googled space stamps sent in by reader Andy B [thanks Andy!]. The Shuttle images are poignant as today was the final flight of the Shuttle Discovery [Godspeed guys!]. I loved stamps as a kid and one of my favourite books was the Stanley Gibbons guide to stamp collecting. The recent Gerry Anderson lenticular issues would sit great with these and makes me wonder if anyone, unlike me, has managed to keep on collecting space stamps [or stamps in general] since childhood? Pics of readers' stamps welcomed for blogging.