What is Going on with Betelguese? I hope it's not Boring!

Betelgeuse, Alpha Orionis, the blazing orange star that marks the shoulder of Orion, the celestial hunter, well it's been going through a weird time lately.

First of all it faded so much it went from one of the ten brightest stars in the sky to being one outside the top thirty and nearly outshone by Bellatrix and its other less famed constellation-mates.

"Was it going to go Supernova?" wondered more click hungry astronomical sources and even I looked at it with excitement, wondering if at any second it would suddenly flare up and blaze brighter than the full moon and cast us all in starlight the likes of which no pair of eyes on this earth has ever seen.

Of course, it didn't, and I can see with my own eyes that it has started to brighten noticeably again. probably some dust built up in its atmosphere and then was blown away to free the light again. Boo, mundane, boring, dull.

Could it be more exciting? Perhaps it was a giant signal, a giant curtain of star-proof material, held before the star and then let go to signal the start of a giant space race, a race of super powerful spacecraft looking to see who could be the fastest to Rigel and back. Perhaps we will soon see (from 600 years ago obviously) their hge glowing ion trails shining through the spaces in the stars as they rip space time to pieces as they compete for the universe equivalent of the Indy 500?

Maybe a Dyson Sphere was being constructed, and someone fucked it up and broke the whole thing, a sleepy multi tentacled crane operator the size of the moon drunk on the fucking job fucking typical.

Maybe they were just repainting Betelgeuse and ran out of paint.

or perhaps, just perhaps, perchance, perhaps, a massive solar sail was being unfurled on a generational ship designed to sail space to the Earth and render us slaves, or worse still food?

The sail has now stopped blocking the starlight, and the ship to end civilisation is on the way.

Copyright BloodyMulberry 17.03.20

The Planting

The Planting

How I came into possession of the sapling that I dug out a whole for near my fruitful orchards is a
mystery. Well not a mystery, I was given it by a friend, but its provenance, who knows.

I knew it was unusual, and I joked to my friend that it was probably “other-worldly” to which he
laughed and got into his car and drove off.

He said that just growing fruit was boring and I needed something else to do. Something different. 

And different it certainly was. It’s bark was purple and shiny, its leaves blue green and succulent,
and as I was to find out after I let it settle in for a few days with some eco frienly (of course)
peat substitute and a minor watering, it grew quickly.

For a year, unbothered by sun, rain, frost or snow, it made its way upwards, overlooked initially
by the pear and apple boughs but gradually growing to surpass their height by the end of year two.

In its third summer, some of the leaves gradually turned blue, then purple, and then boughs
drooped towards the ground, opening up like elongated lilypads, curling invitingly inwards
and waving in the breeze. They ended up with their pointed tips just touching the grass of the orchard.

Alas after that, the tree began to sicken, the bark grow cankers, the leaves yellowing at the
edges. I had no idea what to do.

My friend came to visit me, and berated me mildly saying that I had not looked after his gift properly.
Ok fine. 

But then he said it was no wonder my wife had left me for a younger man. This I could not
tolerate. You know I hadn’t thought about it in so long, and where she was, and where he was, I
had almost succeded in forgetting about it. They were out here, somewhere, buried and buried in
my memories, in this orchard, the orchard I had put my life into, the trees and fruit I had concentrated
on to the exclusion of all else, the apple tree where she was, the pear tree where he was, and
this, this fucker, was trying to bring it all back and make me think of people again, horrible, idiotic
love sucking people, ugh, well, I knew what I had to do, there and then, to make me well, to
make the tree well, to make everything well.

I punched his cunt face in the face, and shoved him into the vulva count of a leaf that was
beckoningly so invitingly for him, with all of my might. 

The leaf, more substantial than we could imagine, enfolded him like a lover, before crushing his
cunt body like a fist around a ping pong ball and absorbing all he was with great thirst.

Then the leaf rose from the ground, dripping, and as fast as a bird flies across the disc of the sun,
the tree began to heal.

And me with it. 

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 28.02.20

Who Will do the First Striptease in Space?

We live in a world now where such things as lap dances have becom regarded as a common, low brow, peasanty-footballer viewing pursuit, and burlesque, although still an exotic pursuit, is something that can safely be discussed on 7pm chat shows and other mass media.

Nudity for pleasure on Earth is just sooooo over.

Other frontiers are of course available. Despite the recent Spaceship 2 accident, the race for leisure trips into space goes on unabated. Soon it won't just be the preserve of serious types with degrees in aeronautics, “The Man in the Street” - as a Tory councillor type patronised me the other day – will be up there too.

And where there is leisure, there is pleasure.

Up until now, as far as is known, being naked in space has been a purely practical exercise for the purpose of showering in a pretty unromatic bag of water droplets. To live permanently in space, one would think there must be breeding in space and there have been rumours that on one military shuttle missions, experiments into the practicalities of weightless sex were carried out. Results unknown.

Newton's third law will be a real headache for sex “up there”.

One would think however that shameless exhibition would be a lot easier, and I reckon it will happen a lot sooner that you think. I'm surprised that no-one was hired a so called “vomit comet” for adult movie production purposes, but I guarantee you that pretty early on in the space tourism industry, one of the major adult production houses will hire an entire flight of Virgin Galactic or their equivalent, and even if “fluidic exchanges” may be banned on grounds of risk of short circuit, stripping off should be no problem for folk of any sex.

It will be filmed, streamed, and sold. I give it seven years, tops, before it happens.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 01.04.15

  

"My Only Wish, to Catch a Fish"

I am a sociapathic criminal, alone in my lair with my devil ponderings.

I have so many enemies. I have a very large pond concealed under a false floor that drops away when I press a button on my megalomaniac console – don't worry, I also have an app on my mobile phone if I'm walking around a bit – but its deep, dark water is empty.

I have no suitable predators to put in it yet.

The agony of choice...

To have a concealed pool full of sharks, well, that jumped the shark years ago. Bloody Blofed and his Selachian cliches. Besides, they are protected, and as a committed environmentalist I cannot use an endangered species to tear my enemies limb from limb. I was a big fan of Steve Irwin, I used to love watcing him getting chased up trees by Komodo Dragons,  so I'm not going to use Stingrays. Horrible things. Frisbees with a toxic prong.

Jeremy Wade teaches us that there are many dangerous fish in the rivers of the world. The beautiful arapaima of South America, the repulsive, slimy wels catfish of Europe and the prehistoric looking giant alligator gars of America. All of these have their merits, but they are difficcult to transport and would struggle with captive living I suspect.

Piranhas schmiranas. All been done before. And as Jeremy Wade has shown, they aren't always that deadly. Sometimes, they are just too docile to strip a human being to the bone to order.

The other problem with most of these species is that they are a bit dull to look at. Electric eels can kill for fun, but they look like the inside of someone's colon. I man, urgh. For an aesthetic villain such as myself, no dice.

So, I made a decision. What fish could be better to keep in a freshwater tank than a neon tetra? The most familiar exotic aquarium specimen of all, beautiful, glowing red and blue ornaments to any fish tank.

Te trouble is, they only grow an inch long. They aren't going to eat many people at that size. But, genetics my friends! Even now my scientists are researching a way to make them grow to three metres long, with teeth like daggers and an irresistible desire for human flesh. No mtter how many men, women and children I throw to them, they will come back for more.

And my flesh eating fish will be as pretty as faeries, and swim amid their plastic pirate ships and treasure trunks. And my fortress of suffering SHALL BE COMPLETE!!!!

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 25.03.15

Inception - How do you Learn to Dream?

My dreams, head full of Tourette medication and restless sleep patterns, often have outbreaks of craziness. Most dreams you barely remember, flickers of images that are burnt out the moment you open you eyes and the sandman drops you back off in the land of consciousness. Others are burnt into the gallery of your memory with a laser.

They come and go. In my super stressed university days, every dream I had was a) lucid and 2) involved flying. I was aware I was dreaming so often, in a REM world little different from ours.

Until I decided to lift off the ground like an airship made of feathers, and drift around like a sky manatee. No propulsion was necessary, no awful flapping. Just ease of movement by the power of thought in a world where no harm could come.

Paradoxical movement. Inception. Niever since have I been able to control my dreams as well as they do in Christopher Nolan's other masterpiece - after The Prestige.

The dream machines in inception are never quite explained to us. We see a suitcase with a metallic case, centred with a large button used to kick the dreams off. The use of sedatives is implied, but none are seen being introduced into the machine, although it looks as if there are places for them to be placed.

The tubes that network the dreamers to the machine don't appear to be IVs, you never see any of the cast introducing them into their veins; they just seem to be strapped around the wrist. Likewise, there seems to be no connection from the brain to the machine, this must be being served by the tube on the arm.

And then, how do they get such control over the environments; the architecture, clothing, and weapons. Eames (how I want to be him) produces a huge gun when the team are trapped in the warehouse, but gives no idea as to where it comes from other than saying, movie stealingly "You should dream a little bigger, darling." - so, do you imagine your own gear coming in, or is their some kind of central dream server you gear up in, akin to The Construct in "The Matrix."

Also, how do they dream with such utter clarity...no fuzziness, changing faces, suddenly changing locales? Is it in the militarily developed software or hardware, or are only certain people good enough at dreaming to work in this alpha waved mindscape?

I wish I was that good. And I wish I was Tom bloody Hardy.

FX and FX2 - The Deadly Y-Fronts of Illusion

I managed to pick up both of these very 80s thrillers - with a loose element of sci-fi - at Oxfam over the weekend for not much money, and was looking forward to watching both of them. Neither of them seem to crop up on UK television much these days.

I was initially stunned to see Lalo Schiffrin's name turnv up in the credits, but the super heavy 1986 analogue synthesizer tunes won't appeal to "Bullit" fans.

The plot of "FX: Murder by Illusion" is actually pretty clever - special effects genius Bryan Brown (THE Australian actor in the 80s, apart from Mel Gibson who wasn't actually Australian) is hired to fake the assasination of mob boss Jerry Orback (Law and Order ahoy!) so he can join the witness protection programme. But the good guys turn out to be not so good, and Bryan finds himself fighting for his life as innocent passers by, and his girlfriend, are iced in the crossfire.

None of this is as alarming as the two standout scenes in the movie; the first when we are treated to a glimpse of Brown in his white Y fronts of a morning, and a second where he descends upon a bad guy like one of those flying squirrels.

Luckily, he overcomes these nightmarish visions to win the day, with the aid of some classic analogue FX tricks and chubby Brian Dennehy, playing the same sort of lumbering cop he played in the Skorpions favourite film, "Gorky Park". Both end up waltzing off into the sunset with 15 million dollars of mob money amid some jarring tourist film of Switzerland.

Onto FX2 "The Deadly Art of Illusion", and we find Brown still battling corrupt cops AND District Attorneys in league with the Mafia as an FX stunt to trap a sex killer goes wrong and the father of his girlfriend's child - hello Rachel Ticotin from Total Recall! The money, and moustache having all ran out for Dennehy, he teams up with Brown again to see off the bad guys with the aid of a terrifying movement micking robot clown, and an early sighting of virtual reality in the cinema.

Dan Brown must have written the bit of the script dealing with stolen Vatican gold medallions

 

 

The films are horrifically dated now, although there are less rolled up jacket sleeves and big hair on view than you'd expect. I found them an entertaining afternoon, but I shant be reaching to the back of the DVD shelf to watch them again any time soon.

 

I have no wish to see the robot clown again, let alone those Y-fronts...

 



The Unknown Villain - Boy Number 6 Kazuo Kiriyama

Battle Royale is a movie probably little known outside of fans of Manga and those "Tartan Asia Extreme" DVDs, and hence its chief antagonist does not have the reputation he deserves.

He is Boy Number 6, Kazuo Kiriyama.

Nothing behind the eyes

The Manga apparently gives him a complex backstory, that he is an intellectually superior child that had been rendered essentially sociopathic by an accident in the womb that caused to all intents and purposes a partial lobotomy.

The film just presents him as a blank "transfer student" who's first act one the game the commences - the game being the teens fight to the death until only one remains scenario pinched by The Hunger Games - is to be able to kill a gang of 6 heavily armed opponents with a paper fan.

Throughout the film he kills without mercy, using his movie standard M10 with everlasting magazines to kill boy and girl alike without making a sound. The only utterance he ever makes is when he makes an  inhuman cough into the megaphone used by two girls in a failed attempt to unite the students, before using it to broadcast a dying girl's death rattle to the whole of Battle Royale island.

The face of death

He is a killer far above any campy Bond villain or lumbering Michael Myers, and it is time he was recognised as such.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 08.10.14

Riddick's Adventures on Crematoria

"The Chronicles of Riddick" is a spectacular looking, but hugely flawed film cursed with some awful scriptwriting and dire acting.

Designed to expand the Riddick universe created in "Pitch Black" and expanded upon in video games, it tanked horribly. Vin Diesel, who has invested so much in the character that made him a star, put Riddick in cryo-sleep while he went a-fast-and-furiousing to get the readies together to make Riddick 3.

Which supposedly is even more disappointing.

The beginning of the film has risible dialogue and acting - hello Thandie Newton - scraped from the bottom of the darkest barrel in hell. But the design is amazing, and the "Big Bads", the Necromongers, are wonderfully designed right from their armour, to their flying mausoleum spacecraft detailed with tortured statues made by an astronaut Hieronomymous Bosch.

The ending is perfunctory, and ruined by a final fight scene that doesn't quite work.

It is the middle section, the section where Riddick allows a squad of Mercenaries, wonderfully led by Nick Chinlund as merc leader Toombs, to take him to the prison world of Crematoria, a "no daylight slam", that really works the best.

Crematoria is beyond hell. It is a super-Mercury ravaged by a merciless star sending out searing radiation onto a landscape of tortured lava towers and rolling fireballs. It's temperature ranges from 900 above, to a rather impossible 700 below, and only deep underground can anyone survive.

It is into this subterranean prison that Riddick is deposited while the mercs argue the price on his head with the guards, a grimy bunch of mixed ethnicity with a French boss much given to spitting and a Russian thug with an acute nose.

Below this, of course, Riddick first's job is to fight for his life against the usual slam tough nuts who want to give him a good beating - or worse. Of course he does so, surrounded by the stem rising from the volcanic interior, and scaring my favourite sub character, a goggle wearing mole apparently sexually turned on by male violence back into the hole in the lava he apparently and unwisely seems to live in. The self appointed "Guvnor"welcomes him to the jail, a rusted iron clattering of cells arranged into a cliff face and populated with a mix of rastas and ginger women, apparently. As well as Riddick's former child mentor Jack, calling herself Kira and now mutated into Alexa Davalos instead of Rhianna Griffith.

Some more great scenes follow; Riddick kills a guard with a tea cup to the heart before shitting the other guards that he can do the same with the key from a tin of pilchards, and then the remaining guards decide to rattle the prisoners with their spiny hell hounds - mutant armadillo cats with spines and a habit of turning scarlet when angry.

They eat most of the prisoners they catch, but no the Furyan Riddick, oh no. They love him!

Upstairs the warden gets wise to the fact that the Mercs have stolen their prisoner from under the noses of the Necromongers, and all hell breaks loose in the weird flying saucer on screws that is their HQ. Riddick leads the Guvnor, Kira and some other prisoners up top, to find most of Mercs dead, the Guards fled, and Toombs dangling on a rope. Riddick takes care of him by locking him in with the hell hounds, and then they deliberate how to beat the guards to the hanger and the one serviceable spacecraft before the Necromongers surely arrive.

And so follows a great set piece; while the guards run the 29.1 km in tunnels, the convicts have to run the terminator between freezing night and boiling day, initially freezing, but then sweat starting to drip as the sun approaches the horizon. They go through a snowstorm of thick black ash, through termite looking towers, across semi melted lava fields, and then finally a harsh climb up a cliff face as the suns rays cremate most of the escapees.

The Guards have beaten the prisoners to the hanger, but not the Necromongers, who make short work of the French and the Russians, while Riddick watches on. Alas he and his convicts get no further either, and he is left for dead as Kira is kidnapped for Necro conversion...

...and then it all goes to pot again, as a bizarre looking Linus Roache appears and expedites massively before burning himself to death rather needlessly, summing up all the problems is a literal flash as he incinerates in a wondrous looking way.

End. But its a great section of a not great film - that I still love because like Dune I can sometimes survive awful writing if the design is good. And in Chronicles, it really is.

The Unquiet Mind in the Universe

I'm not right in the head today.

I'm full of tics, twitches and glitches. Feel very uneasy.

I can get down on it sometimes, he thought of heading back into an awful job, and all that stuff. Modern day George Orwell in the workplace of dead souls.

And then you try and "think of the positives" to use an awful cliche. But there are some...the anxious mind, the Tourette's  mind, is one that is closesly tuned to the movement of the universe.

Every twitch, every judder, every flip thought of panicky thought, is the mind picking up a neutrino, or a graviton, or a Higgs boson. A major attack of tics is the intersection of the rippled, uneven edges of two universes within the eleventh dimension, causing all the n-s and p-s and superstrings to vibrate.

A major convulsive Tourette attack with yelling and raging, is a more substantial universe collision, resulting in a big bang somewhere in the multiverse.

Astronomers listen! Put way your expensive detectors and enormous tanks of dry cleaning fluid deep underground. Turn off your LHC. Just use your eyes.

And look at me.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 25/07/14

Jason of Star Command

A memory of this show wormed its way into my brain as I sat writing of something else, or rather trying to write of something else; an unclear mind wandering as light streaks of rain on the window superimposed themselves on the stunning variety of greens the park behind me provides.

I saw Jason of Star Command at a friend’s house during my junior school years. He loved it, which was just as well as he was a huge fan of Doctor Snuggles as well, which even the 8 year old me knew was dippy nonsense.

Jason on the other hand was sci fi, and the opening titles excited me, as it reminded me of the even longer ago Space 1999 – i.e people in cool costumes flying awesome spaceships. How young eyes deceive us eh?

Jason and his rather constipated looking crew

Of the show itself I can remember next to nothing, I didn’t even remember that James “never had beam me up Scotty said to him” Doohan was in it. I just thought it was a random fat space guy with a beard. Jason was a bit chubby too for a space hero, and any peril he was ever in was solved by him getting out a little pocket robot called “Wiki” and using it to laser open cell doors etc.

"Is that my agent? Get me on Buck Rogers NOW!!!"

And presumably look up which Popes were Spanish, or the diameter of Pluto, in his spare moments.

I remember that eventually Jason’s boss became a boring man with a blue face.

Serve you right for stealing Mr Wonka's bubble gum

What perhaps remained in my memory most was the one eyed enemy Dragos, and his asteroid spaceship that looked like it had giant satellite dish arms reaching out towards you. Scary stuff!

Dragos, disguised as Voltan from "Hawk the Slayer"

Copyright Simon Hodgson / Bloody Mulberry 28/12/14

Amy Winehouse plus Nick Cave equals…?

...Kai, the cottage loaf headed dead assassin of the 90s sci fi weirdathon “Lexx”.

Played by Canadian actor Michael McManus, this pale skinned proto -blood needing member of something called “The Brunnen G” was merely one of a cast of oddities populating the living ship Lexx, the others being a platinum haired sex-slave lizard hybrid called Zev Bellringer, the accidental captain Stanley Tweedle, who always wanted to get it on with Zev but was more likely to end up being hung upside down by bondage loving cannibals; and a weird disembodied robot head 790, also much in love with Zev and occasionally inclined to babble poetry to that effect.

Michael McManus as Kai

It used to be on “Sy-Fy” a lot. I used to see it occasionally. I understood it never.

I can’t remember any plot at any point. I can’t remember any guest stars apart from the compulsory appearance in crap of the latter-day Malcolm McDowell. I can’t remember why the original Zev - Eva Habermann - turned into the ferociously be-lipped Xenia Seeberg.  Above all I can’t remember why a series set in a largely CGI universe suddenly found itself in what looked like a Toronto car park.

Eva Habermann as Zev. "If you do this, I will do it with you Stanley." She never did.

 I am not bothered that I can’t remember. I just liked the undemanding madness and imagination of it, which was the best way of coping with the fact it was impossible to follow even if you were a Cray 2 supercomputer on brain pills. You just loved Eva Habermann and Xenia Seeberg even though you had no idea what they were doing. You loved Kai singing the crazed Brunnen G anthem as he crashed his spaceship into whatever he was sacrificing himself to defeat.
And poor Stanely, his creepy sexual failures always brought out a chuckle, as Lexx the big space dragonfly flew ever on. 

Xenia Seeberg as Xev. There's a reason for the "X"

  Copyright Bloody Mulberry 23.06.14

They Make You Communist – The Invaders from Mars

One of the things I like to do when I get the chance, when I'm not studying planetary sciences, journalism or the history of the ancient Roman sewer, is to settle with a huge cup of tea in Starbucks or wherever, and watch a classic film over wi-fi.

It takes two or three visits, but the movie gets watched eventually, as the tea gets colder and the pigeons stare in through the window at me. The latest one I watched was “Invaders from Mars”, a 1953 piece of classic atomic age paranoia with a cast no-one's ever heard of, and an irritating boy as the chief protagonist.

The film is slightly different from the usual “Kid sees something, no-one believes him” plot you get in movies of this type, right up through Jaws in the 70s, in that it takes that standard trope and spins it into “Kid sees something, no-one believes him until a lot earlier in the film than is normally the case.” Late at night, the boy David sees a bright green flying saucer land in the sand pits behind his house – how Horsell Common like! - and in the morning his father, a worker at a secret rocket research plant, goes out to investigate.

He comes back eventually as the family begin to panic...but he isn't quite the same. In fact, his voice is flat, he is agressive, and he hits his son! But far worse than child abuse IS THE FACT HE HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A COMMUNIST! We know this because in 1950s American carport suburbia, only communists would shout at their wives and beat their kids up.

As further confirmation that he is now evil, he is lit predominantly from underneath so his pinko face is now covered in sinister shadows, and he stops shaving, instantaneously going stubbly in the space of 15 minutes.

The wife is of course properly submissive to even her spousal Stalin, but at some point she goes out to the sand pit and comes back acting the same way. David's friend, a neighbourhood Bonnie Langford and daughter of another rocket scientist, goes out to the pit and returns to set fire to her house before dropping dead of a mysterious brain haemmorhage.

Luckily the boy is rescued from his now evil parents by a woman doctor, and a distinctly unsceptical astronomer who belies in UFOs – The Lubbock Lights and George Mantell's death get a mention – and has a magical telescope that can see David's house even when pointing at the sky. And through this scope, they see various soldiers and local people being sucked down into the sand, including a General.

That same General is then caught trying to sabotage the Rocket factory, before he too dies of a Stroke. The army are all too ready now to believe there is something down there, as it transpires the dead have had crystals implanted into their brains, controlling their very actions. COMMUNIST DREAMS OF MIND CONTROL HAVE BEEN MADE REAL.

So everyone troops off to the sand pit, stock footage of tanks shoot at it, and eventually everyone gets sucked down into the sand to meet giant “Mu-tants” - supposedly 8 feet tall Martians with silly masks on and very obvious zippers up the back of their genital free bodysuits. They have turned the tunnels below the sand into explosive condoms (TRUE) that turn into explosive oatmeal (ALSO TRUE) when fired on by a hokey looking laser.

The child and his scientist mentors are eventually led before a head in a goldfish bowl that does sod all apart from fiddle with its pincers and is apparently “Mankind, distilled into its ultimate form”. The woman, of course, is selected for crystal implantation by the disembodied head, before of course rescue happens and the boy blows the aliens up with their own exploding oatmeal contraceptives, before he wakes in his own bed and finds IT WAS ALL A DREAM.

But then he sees the saucer land again...

The film is collosally stupid, and colosally entertaining, particularly the stuff legged lumbering Martians and their all too obvious outfits, but it also stands out as one of the paradigm movies of American “Reds Under the Bed” paranoia. After visiting the pit, the adults come back cold, evil, and with all their individualism erased. They engage in covert attacks on American military might, are clearly godless, and their leader is essentially the embodiment of the US perception of communism – a human with all the humanity distilled out of them, leading a bunch of collectivised drones.

You still have to love it though!

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 12.05.14

The Plague Man that I am

I can't remember when it started, this increasing set of blotches, scales and scabs advancing up my right ankle. I think once upon a time it was some harmless but distinctive dark splotches about ten years ago. Day followed day followed day, and soon, the area began to itch, a firey insistence to dig jagged nails into the flesh and scratch.

The satisfaction lasted barely seconds before that burning came back. I don't know what the cause was, for once, I never thought it was due to infection by scabies, parasites, noro-viruses seeking to reach my intestine through my skin. I knew it was excema or psoriasis or both, but a form so painful perhaps it had afflicted me from the stars, a passing Andromeda Strain as envisaged by Fred Hoyle, freeze dried alien contaminant blown in, on the space breezes, lodging itself into my bones.

It spread up, over the lumpy bone both up and down, onto foot and calf. It bled raw, no matter how much cream, oil, or coal tar found its way onto it, just like my hands, my horror gouged out hands only not just in winter.

Parts of it turned purple. Parts of it turned green, the unttractive green of the mould you find on bread after a few too many days in a hot sun in a sweating bag. Sometimes it would be hard to move the ankle, the scales of flesh were so dry and thick. In better periods, like now, it merely looks inflamed, witth the occasional eruption where it has bled.

This alien plague, et-excema, extra-excema, can only be controlled by steroids, cortisone, betnovate, the war zone moves up and down the botom of the limb like General Haig's front line in World War 1. But take the steroids away and the alien skin toxin is back in a weeping flash.

It is not just in my head that my body is at war.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 30.04.12

Tsar Bomba – How I Met Kuzkina Mat

I was a writer. I was a dissident. A refusenik. An uncooperative.

They sent me away to the East, to mosquito tormented summers, and freezing winters, and there I became a killer as well. I came back from a day's forced labour to find a guard trying to sodmise my friend in our barracks. I stove in the back of his head with a shovel so hard his brains came out of his mouth.

After I was beaten nearly to death in a punishment cell, it took some time for the authorities to debate whether I was to be executed or not. While the maggots set too in my wounds, ironically saving my life as the ate out infected flesh that I had no hot tea spoon to cautheterise, a train was summoned to take me North. No such line was supposed to exist here. No matter, it did.

Further North, all the trees disappeared and the ground was hard permaforst. I was thrown down onto this concrete grass, and rifle butted onto a boat of low quality, yet full of important looking officials. They removed my shirt, at fingertips to avoid any lice. They then took readings, ran a strange clicking instrument on me, then attached monitors to my chest and head. They never looked in my eyes, with their red starred caps and epaulettes.

We soon arrived at an island, an island filling the horizon, and rising a fair way above it, but devoid of no other features at all. We got closer. It had no trees. No life. Black ground and vulcanised glass for some reason unknown to me.

Then the guard said the only two words that were spoken to me all journey.

“Novyaa Zemlya.”

It was done with a humourless smile.

I was ungracefully clubbed onto a makeshift jetty, and shivering cold struck me as hard as the rifle butts. A vehicle awaited, again unmarked, and drove uphill onto the frozen plateau of the island that a low sun taunted with hollow warmth. After an hour of an ever unchanging scene, a low tower came into view, and beside it a metal pole. Humiliatingly, a metal chain was attached to my neck, and I was led from the vehicle to the pole, where the chain was affixed. Another humourless guard looked me at last in the eye, and spoke as he lit a cigarette then spat on the ground.

“Kuzkina Mat.” - “Now you will meet Mat's mother.”

Whatever could this mean?

A scientist checked me over one last time, and then all got back into the vehicle which then drove back the way it came, emitting harsh sounds and thick pollutants.

Hours passed, the sun circled a horizon it would never set beneath at these latitudes this tim of year. Why I didn't pass from exposure I don't know, the extra coat they gave me was not up to the task. My breath sank to the ground crystallised.

An aeroplane was overhead. I hadn't heard it in the wind shrieking across the barren uplands. From its pregnant belly something dropped, something huge and black, floating gently earthwards on a parachute of mothly silk. It came closer, slow as a first kiss. And then, it became as a second sun.

The world went white, like an endless photographic flash. I was frozen, and I was hotter than could be imagined. The earth shook shortly afterwards, I saw it ripple like waves in the sea I swear, in negative. The air blew itself away, there was nothing to breathe.

And yet I was still alive.

Now flames came, flames of a rich orange beauty I had never seen before. Down they came from the sky, nearer and nearer, yet not nearer. They only got so close.

In the distance, low wood and concrete structures slowly, and then slower, collapsed like a tower of cards made by a sickly child. The blast came lower and lower, but it never reached me. I could all but touch it, taste it. My shadow was burnt away, but I was unaffected.

The buildings stopped collapsing, and just hung there, wreckage suspended in nothing but time. The flames did the same...they came to touching distance and stopped.

Far away, the sea was a lake of lava. Steam arose, things were still happening far away, but here, on this wasteland, all had come to a stop. A seagull was devoid of motion, half incinerated.

And that is how it has remained ever since. Whatever time means now. I have written this tale on the ground, etched in the frost with a stick, that only a sharp eyed god might see. For you to read this, you must be one of the Valhalans, and I salute you Sir.

As you should salute me. For how many have survived the strike of Thor's Hammer?

Kuzkina Mat.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 25.04.14

2010 – The Year We Make Contact

I'm going to commit a few, unforgiveable, burn-me-at-the-stakes heresies here.

This is another of the sequels that is better than the original.

“How can you say that” you ask, as you stack the wood up and soak it in oil. “How can this workmanlike picture starring hammy old scrotum Roy Schneider be better than Kubrick's mindblowing spectacle.”

The truth is, very easily. Everyone likes 2001, because it is Kubrick, because it has got some spectacular visuals, but because IT IS A FILM YOU MUST LIKE IN ORDER TO LOOK INFORMED – AND OF COURSE, COOL.

This is bullshit. Hardly anyone really likes hard sci fi, and this movie is leaden with it. The film essentially boils down to:

Act 1 – Monkey's throw sticks at each other (witness opening of Star Wars Holiday Special for similar Simian grunting fun). For ages.

Act 2 – Endlessly praised match cut leads into hours of boring space ship stuff set to music by proto Nazis. The most noteworthy event here is a man visiting a toilet upside down.

Act 3 – Two very wooden astronauts do very dull things while watching themselves on “BBC12”. Computer eventually gets so fed up it kills everyone until its building block brain is removed.

Act 4 – Man goes down cool space tunnel while eerie Ligeti music plays; eventually he meets an older version of himself with a face covered in plasticene.

The End.

2010 has some cool spaceships, fantastic sequences involving aero braking around Jupiter, a bit of action, some hard sci fi elements that aren't as dry as dust, Helen Mirren, and John Lithgow playing a homosexual space engineer – this element of his character however is excised from the movie, although it is explicit in the book. OK it also has terrible voiceover exposition from Schneider, a horrible hokey cold war plot, and Helen Mirren doing a terrible Russian accent even though she is Russian while other members of the cast opt for Mr Chekov style “Nuklee-ar Wessels” tomfoolery.

But at least things happen!!! It doesn't bore the arse off you. 2001 is the world's most boring film ever, making Solaris look like Toy Story, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

And what other sci fi film can boast having a future Queens of the Stone Age keyboard player in the cast?

The young Natasha Scheider in 2010

And here with QOTSA for "Lullabies to Paralyse"

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 18.04.14

Poets in Space

Is there a use for poetry in space?

Can the language of apogee, perigee, declination, right ascension, thrust vectors, newtonian mechanics and lagrangian points harbour those for whom words are a means to an artistic end? And not a means of requesting more oxygen be let into somewhere from a valve to ensure the survival of pocket humanity against the vast all but emptiness of space.

Space loves capital punishment, and is the harshest of hanging judges. Who can need beautiful wordsmiths where a single mistake of prosaic human or engineering frailty results in certain death.

Everything is checklist, double checklist, instruction manual and zero gravity suction lavatory. The incredible Commander Hadfield took beautiful photographs and sang a little Bowie, but if he had started declaiming Homer while bowing on a lyre, his fellow astronauts would have bundled him out of the airlock faster than you can say “tin can”.

Yet, when humanity does colonise the stars and planets, the arts will have to play a part. A society will surely go mad without them, without an outlet to perform and express. The all encompassing sterility of space must have an antidote; steel domes and plastic furniture won't be enough.

And so, in addition to the square jawed heroes, science nerds, brilliant women, engineers, doctors and folk who's hair looks good in zero gravity, so there will need to stained trouser artists, dusty sculptors, and lank haired writers in tweed jackets with elbow patches. And the poets, space berets and polo necks, astro beatniks, will have to go to.

It seems strange to think of it, but it is true. Mars needs poets.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 05.04.14

Sci Fi music videos - Wild Boys

An occasional series musing over science fiction themed or influenced videos.

“Wild Boys” is very much a product of its time, a big haired 80s ruled over by MTV and the utter neccessity of PROMOTE PROMOTE PROMOTE above all other considerations.

To be fair, compared to modern pre-teen knicker wetter acts, Duran Duran did actually have some sort of musical ability despite the hairspray. But that wasn't really the point here. The point was “Let's spend a million quid on a Mad Max style video and get it on Superheavy Rotation in the States”.

The promo director Russel Mulcahy, an Australian already well known for his three minute epics “Vienna” and the Indiana Jones mining “Love's Great Adventure” he shot for Ultravox, was brought in as the go-to man and the objective was achieved.

And how it was achieved! No mere band playing in a sea of pyro here, Mulcahy took the apocalyptic twaddle of the lyrics and put them in a veritable Thunderdome of Hot Gossip style dance choreographed by Arlene Phillips, bald men who looked like Howard Jones' mental chains dancer on bad amphetamine, oddly intercut clips of Rusty Lee, and a crappy looking animatronic fire-breathing head not even as convincing as Zaphod Beeblebrox's second one in the BBC version of Douglas Adams' classic novel.

Whatever plot seemed to involve the band – a tubby Le Bon with a Glenn Hoddle haircut sadly not being drowned on a windmill, Nick Rhodes in a cage, John Taylor strapped to a car roof being tortured with pictures of himself, and the other two Taylors trapped in some kind of aerial indignaties – as hostages of a group of pretentiously dancing baldies with feathers stuck to their heads. In the meantime, camp men with hair – one of them strutting around like a Ballet Rambert trained chicken – are fomenting rebellion, probably inspired by the Duran folk's nuclear powered Rock and Roll.

The rebellion is eventually triggered by a man flying one of the Ewok gliders from “return of the Jedi” to attack the baldies, as eventually other rebels join in with other curiously Endor based fighting tactics. The Duran chaps are released in the chaos after a couple of meaty thwacks from their guitars across unsuspecting skulls, and eventually take part in a victorious parade of victory aboard their steampunk tank.

Glorious stuff! Enjoy it all!

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 30.03.14

Spaceship Moon

I have to admit, with a really shameful and apologetic face, that I find UFO culture to be endlessly fascinating. I have a number of books on the subject, some of them of the classic “The Unexplained” magazine reports collected in a single volume, another with some wonderful illustrations of Nordic blonde spacemen apparently dressed as fish. And account of the classic sexual encounter between a Brazilian called Vilas-Boas (not the football manager) and a spacewoman with blood red pubic hair.

Another is a rather more sober volume with a black cover illustrated with the so called Washington Invasion photos of definitely-not flying saucers giving the Capitol a buzz in the 50s. Within it, are some rather strange theories about the moon.

Now let me say straightaway that the UFO stuff is all utter rubbish, and most of the reports a four year old with a reasonable sense of scepticism could see through. I find them interesting as a cultural document of their times, and the deep seated sub and supra conscious fears of folk through the various tumults of the nuclear age. And one idea that a few people had on the go was that the moon was some kind of spaceship, expounded upon in the sober black book.

We don't really know how the moon came about – a fissioning of an original larger body into the Earth and Moon, a capture of a straying Moon, separate accretion from proto-planetary matter, or the most supported new theory, that of a Mars sized object striking the proto Earth and splitting the Moon off from it. So I suppose if your mind is out there enough, why shouldn't the Moon be a spaceship (Populated by who???!!!) that has decided to plonk itself in a pseudo-tidally locked orbit around the Earth (Why???!!!).

The evidence? Well the fact that the craters are all the same depth, supposedly, indicates that Spaceship Moon has an outer “Weather Shield” to protect it from extremes of heat and radiation that is easily penetrated by meteorites before they are stopped by the second Space Shield, a far more substantial barrier. Others claim to have spotted glittering bridges, buildings and even giant lettering. Apparently a couple of Russian scientists put this theory together in 1970 – avoiding deportation to the salt mines – saying the lunar seas were the result of molten slag and lava being created and spewed out by the giant machines that powered Spaceship Moon.

So remember this, the next time you to to bed with the moon shining in through the window. The man in the moon may harbour a terrible secret, and who knows, it could be far deadlier than what HG Wells envisaged dropping in on is from Mars.

And it wouldn't have so far to come, either.

Copyright Simon Hodgson / Bloody Mulberry 21.03.14

Sexy Sexy Robots

I suppose when most people are asked to think of sexy sci fi robots, they will come up with something drearily conventional, like the Liz Hurley Austin Powers fembot, or perhaps the deadly perfection of the Terminatrix Kristanna Loken;

Nothing wrong with that I guess, as she is an extremely attractive proposition, but it's a bit dreary isn't it? A bit fanboyish sticky stain on mattress to be awkwardly explained to mother? And she's not really very robotic either.

In the same way that Patti Smith said "If you are male, then choose something other than female" on the Old Grey Whistle test while singing "Land" (it's not called Horses you know, that song), why not perhaps look at something that is a little more mechanical. Like the Robot Maria from "Metropolis".

I realise I'm being a little female-centric at the moment, so for those more into cybernetic men, enjoy the practical, utilitarian sexiness of Donald Moffat as Rem from the TV series of "Logan's Run."

Still, it's all rather obviously human. Doctor Who tale "The Five Doctors" featured the Raston Warrior Robot, asexual yet sleekly elegant, and clearly an inspiration for the weird woman who walks around in modern day crap Krypton Factor "The Cube".

In the same way that there is a fetish for attractive amputee Russian ladies - so I've been led to believe - then some folk will be drawn to the stumpish Disney versions of R2D2 that were seen in "The Black Hole"; VinCENT and Old BOB. Note that Old BOB is a bit beat up, and is thus ideal for those with a "Crash" style orthopedic fetish...callipers and the like.

But to me the sexiest robot of all is found in the strange sci-fi vehicle for Kirk Douglas' saggy old bottom, "Saturn 3". Hector is a God Class robot designed to be trained by direct input from someone else's brain. Unfortunately the person concerned is deranged murderer Benson, played by Harvey Keitel, who rocks a pony tail and a hole in his head, and issues forth sensational dialogue at Farrah Fawcett. Dubbed by Roy Dotrice for some reason.

"You have a wonderful body...may I use it?"

But it's no joy for Harvey or Hector, as the robot develops a parallel obsession for Ms Fawcett, and pursues her up and down accompanied by strange bionic man style sound effects, killing dogs and eventually wearing Harvey Keitel's head on top of his own.

Sexual perversions - which weren't his fault - aside, Hector is a magnificent creation. All shiny chrome fashioned in a futuristic version of Michaelangelo musculature, he is a robot of fearsome power with a four foot long brain kept in a jar in his back. Forget the fact he has an angelpoise lamp for a head and walks like an arthritic miner, this is a polished, sophisticated, and terrifying, machine that deserved to be in a far better film than this one.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 18.03.14

The Planet of the Artists

I read now that the Mars One colonization project – a one way trip to found a new society on Mars, essentially – has now found a producer for the reality TV programme that is going to be constructed around it.

While the whole thing smacks of an eccentric rich Dutchman's idea of highly publicised group suicide to some, there is no doubt that sooner or later someone is going to have to try and colonise another world in that very fashion...what kind of people will they be? Will they be scientists, dry, practical yet crackling with mechanical invention? Or oridinary people, drawn by inducements to leave an overcrowded Earth for our real life future “Off-World Colonies” on plasma rockets of shining silver?

Or perhaps, the technology to send people extraterrestrial will become available to artists.

What could a planet settled by artists, and a society begotten by artists be like? Peaceful with an intense co-operation and indeed socialism in the Martian wind? Or competitive, talents of all kinds striving to out-do each other in the new world they created?

Movements will divide up the five continents after the devastating war between the conceptualists and the realists. Sculptures cast their new style idols high above the inconceivable red landscape, organic forms in brass and bronze glinting in the reduced sunlight, so high that across the Straits of Da Da the Island of the Photographers can see them plain. The photographers document themsevles, document themsevles taking pictures of each other, feedback in the lenses choing to eternity.

The photographers forget to feed themsevles, so intent with their documentation and display thereof are they. They rely on food-drops from the poets, who make edible books out of their poetry because on mars paper is not only edible but a delicacy...the future poet of Mars thinks that his words are literally and doubly so food for the soul and so should be distributed free from sub orbital space capsules.

How does a poet know how to build a space capsule? They have made lyrical the instruction manuals and their iambic factory workers can cope with this form of industrialisation.

The land of the architects, which on the southern shore of one of Lowell and Schiaparelli's canals, which are really real but highly misunderstood, is one of holes. For reasons of contrariness, all land above 5 metres in height is levelled with powerful instruments, and vast holes are dug, holes that are in the shape of buildings that aren't there...a Chrysler building made of nothing, a Palace of Knossos in insolid air, Eiffel Tower up not down, girder shapes etched in the rock, into the depths.

Of course, these architectural spaces being sacred, their creators don't dwell in them and live in crude tents in the super-dry terraformed atmosphere, throats coated in sand so they can't speak.

Finally there is the Continent of the Painters, a community engaged in an endless project – to reproduce in entirety the night sky on the ground in utter exactitude. It is a beautiful wonder, and to avoid spoiling it, they live underground, deep enough so their rabbit digging does not fracture the art. They painted the land black, and picked out stars in titanium oxide white, Tio2, tinting them occasionally yellow or red to match in utter exactitude the tints of Capella, Betelgeuse and the rest. The poets don't feed them because they don't like their slavish copying of nature; they have learned and evolved to subsist off their own paint.

The project never finishes, because every new comet, meteor and nova has to be added in, streaking the blackscape in more white and making the painters scream “THIS MASTERPIECE OF CREATION SHALL NEVER BE FINISHED”

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 14.03.04