How Many of Us Would Like One of These?

These flying contraptions look like great fun. Where I live in the Fenlands, our neighbouring little Hamlets are miles away. One could fly just a little way over the hedgerows and travel directly to the neighbouring town. No winding roads no worry about bridge river crossings. Just straight as the crow flies.

Then a dreadful thought. What if they replaced mobility scooters? Oh dear, the sky would be congested with doddering old folk scaring all the cows and sheep as they raced across the meadows at three miles an hour. :D 

John Carter and the Vicious Plant Men of the Valley Dor.

                                                                   

John Carter goes on a further adventure to Barsoom. This time he arrives in the mysterious world of the plant men and the great white apes. He has materialised in the Valley Dor. The place where Barsoom people believe the afterlife live on. It is the land at the end of the River Iss where Barsoom people go to die. A sort of Elephant's graveyard. A place from which no one returns. Land of the dead. A world Barsoom people believe the afterlife continues with renewed splendour. It all sounds wonderful and fine. When the people of Barsoom decide they are too old, the pilgrimage along the River Iss begins. They will never be seen again once entering the Valley Dor.

Except when anyone makes the religious pilgrimage of death, they are unaware of the horrors that face them. John Carter appears on the plain where he observes the herds of plant men. Then he sees a group of green Tharks come upon the land via the river. Old people making the journey to what they believe is, Heaven. The Tharks are set about by the plant men. One of the Tharks is none other than John Carter's old friend, Tars Tarkas. From here on we go on an adventure of fighting

If any of the new arrivals escape the vicious plant men or the white apes, they find themselves in the land of the Therns. The survivors are enslaved and often eaten by the Therns. In this terrible land of the Therns,  we are introduced to the slave girl Thuvia. There are daring escapes and new dangers among the Black Pirates and the vile self-proclaimed Issus Goddess of Barsoom's underworld. Here, John Carter and the Thern Princess Phaildor find new dangers.

There are splendid battles as John Carter dreams of escape to the nation of Helium where his wife and love Dajah Thoris is. Also, his child who was in an unhatched egg prior to his ten-year exile back on Earth. On this note, there are other splendid and delightful surprises. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs novels are pulp fantasy adventure stories. But pulp adventure done right is breathtakingly addictive and wonderful escapism. This second John Carter of Mars story is a real roller coaster adventure of damsels in distress, noble heroes and colourful villains. It is glorious to be John Carter with his black and white simplistic rules of honour. Plus his superhuman strength on Mars. This enables him to be a warrior of distinction. It is all wonderful escapism. 

Have Any of You People Watched...? D

Torchwood – Children of Earth

I have only just discovered Torchwood. It is a science fiction show that I meant to watch and put off due to doing other things. My eldest son said he had enjoyed the show. Obviously, years went by and then I decided to by the first season on eBay. I watched and enjoyed.

Instead of going for the season two next, I decided upon the third season of Children of Earth. It was a continuous story in many episodes. The whole set up grabbed my imagination straight away. The use of children, throughout the entire planet, to alert the powers that be, of alien visitation.

1. The Slow Realisation of Horror that is Revolting

This is done very well as all the children just stop and stare up into the sky. Every child in a trance for a minute or two. In shopping centres, at school, walking along the street. They just stop and stare upwards. It is all very creepy. Then they snap out of their trance and carry on playing as though nothing has happened. When the next communication comes the children stare into the sky again and after a time they all break into a high pitched scream with their mouths wide open. Then they begin to chant, “We are coming, we are coming.” It is all very disturbing and the trepidation of what is coming begins to get very powerful indeed.

The British government seems to have some prior knowledge of the alien coming as this type of thing has happened on a smaller scale many decades back in a remote part of Scotland. All the introductory groundwork is laid out and the audience is drip-fed this potential alien coming. It is something ominous and terrible. As the plot begins to unfold the politics of the dreadful situation begins to take over. The horror of what is coming is outweighed by the horror of what the government must do in secret.

The story is very clever in that we do not need too much of the alien presence. Just to know of the eventual arrival and the diabolical preparations that world governments must undertake to preserve the human race is where the crux of the science fiction story lies. The mere suggestion of our elected politicians collaborating in such a dreadful expectation is what becomes most chilling. The sight of the nauseating alien is almost unnecessary. The visitor’s demands are sheer horror. What it has done before is hideous and very disturbing. The government’s collaboration is even more appalling and sickening. Stomach-turning selfishness begins to take root.

2. The One Bad Point

Then there is the population mass panic part as realisation and the Torchwood team battle to salvage and limit the inexcusable effects of the dreadful situation the planet is in. This part of the story went a little wobbly for me. For a time, this aspect of the story was not so believable or presented that well. The round-up as the armed forces went out trying to gather. It was not credible or convincing.

Then the notion and idea of battling the vicious impasse that the human race was in, brings the story back to some form of credibility. Everything apart from the snippets of mass panic were done well. The population alarm was a little corny in my opinion. It took a little integrity away from this rather good science fiction story.

So much of this tale was carried by the mere suggestion of something inexcusable. Something that would need to happen. Yet something we could never let happen. The whole situation was spine-chilling.

The Horror of Giant Carnivorous Plants.

Giant carnivorous plants have always given me the creeps. Ever since reading John Wyndham's, The Day of The Triffids. Then there were things like Venus flytraps and other incests consuming plants. Even though they were small, I still found them ghastly.

As a child, most of us have overactive imaginations. We are prone to extreme exaggeration when we are in our schoolboy groups talking about such things. I was no exception. I can remember us schoolboys being deep in discussion during the dinner breaks. If a lad told a whopper of a lie, we were all sucked in by it.

I remember being told of Triffid size Venus flytraps living in the remote areas of the Amazon jungle. We all believed the fanciful tale. Someone had seen it in a documentary that the rest of us had missed. We all believed the huge tale because we wanted to.

Of course, when I got home, I would go racing off to my Dad. He was always a fountain of knowledge concerning such things. He would bring me down to Earth with a slight bump and a more honest opinion. I think he may have laughed because he enjoyed the way of kids being sucked in by such stories after watching a science fiction movie.

He would say, "Giant carnivorous plants were for science fiction movies and lad's comics."

Sometimes I would waver and reason that remote jungle areas of the Earth were remote because such plants existed. That is why no one lived there. Who knows, perhaps on other planets - lol. There must be some sort of gluttonous plant somewhere in the universe.

Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Princess of Mars. (John Carter)

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wonderful escapism in this first of the series. John Carter is our hero. A Southern American gentleman from Virginia. He is accidentally passed through an astral porthole in the year of 1865. He awakes naked on the surface of Mars. From here on, we are taken on a magical fantasy adventure. On Mars, John Carter is rather strong due to the planet's weaker gravity. He can jump 100 plus yards into the air when the occasion demands. There is a gorgeous Princess of human appearance, giant green Martian nomadic warrior people who are 15 foot in height. They have four arms and move from one ancient derelict city to another. These places are deserted ruins of a bygone humanoid race. The Redmen are human in appearance and are called human. They have big sky ships etc. It is all fun fantasy stuff. Some would call it pulp. Perhaps it is. But I would say it is very enjoyable.

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