This novel was edited together from two novelettes (one with the same title, the other entitled The Airlords of Han) which appeared in 1928—29. The first part, in fact, was published in the same issue of Amazing Stories as the first part of The Skylark of Space. And that’s why I’ve chosen to read it now, rather than later.
There is also a 1978 version available, “specially revised and updated for the modern reader” (or rather, heavily rewritten) by of all people “noted science fiction critic and Hugo Award winning author Spider Robinson”. I missed my chance to ask him about this at the Kansas City Worldcon, where he was Guest of Honor.
I’ve been gone a few weeks, family stuff, birthday parties and other obligations, but I’m back, although after this week I may go back to just one hour, to leave a spot open for a new DJ.
Adding Links Later
Small batch Mafia – Now or Never Baby
Schaffer The Darklord – Monsters of Rock (feat. Mc Lars)
Bonecage – Cyborg 101
Joe J. Thomas – Living With Fast Food
Mega Ran – Go Save the World
Steve Goodie – Walk of Shame
Devo Spice – Inner Voice
TV’s Kyle – I Don’t Know Why There’s a Bug in Here (feat. Lindsay Smith)
Dino-Mike – Urban Dictionary
Klly Dwyer/KILL THE BAND – Floss Boss (The Official Hardcore Rap Song About Flossing)
MC Frontalot – Secrets from the Future
MC Frontalot – Zero Day
MC Lars – The Roommate from Hell (feat. mc chris)
Jonathan Coulton – Skullcrusher Mountain
Cirque du So What – Let’s Do Improv
The great Luke Ski – Q*Bert
Insane Ian – Doctor Who
Power Salad – Corned Beef and Cabbage (Flaccid Beats Dubstep Remix)
Possible Oscar – Get Our Geek On
Steve Goodie – Weird_Al_Country_Medley
Beatallica – Ktulu (He’s So Heavy)
Mega Ran – O.P. (feat. Richie Branson & Storyville)
Clearly Guilty – Bad Nerd
Marc Gunn -The Leprechaun
Smashy Claw – Deja Vu (Deja Vu)
Todd Chappelle – OCD
Moneyshot Cosmonauts – Could Be Weird Al
Carrie Dahlby – Thor’s Big Silver Hammer
Insane Ian – Bustin Makes Me Feel Good
Devo Spice – My Atari
Worm Quartet Math is Bullshit
Mikey Mason – Big Damn Hero
Background music was Furious Freak by Kevin Macleod of Incompetech.com.
Kevin Mcleod’s music is released under the Creative Commons 3.0: By Attribution license.
Most of Jonathan Coulton’s music is Licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0: Attribution-NonCommercial Unported license.
Some songs on today’s show were courtesy of The Funny Music Project.
All other songs on today’s show, played with permission of the artist or band.
There’s an Old Fan’s Commentary On Space:1999 this week on Tales From SYL Ranch!
Tales From SYL Ranch can be heard live Sundays, 20:00-22:00 UTC on //aNONradio.net//
We hadn’t planned to do this, but we’re using a new rig and providing additional streaming. Rather than risk it falling to pieces during the Old Fan’s Commentary on Star Wars (Sunday, May 7th and 14th), we decided to test it first on a known disaster.
We’ll only be commenting on one Space: 1999 episode: S01E01 – “Breakaway.” It’s a wonderful example of the show getting many things very, very right — while simultaneously being the dumbest premise ever conceived Spoilers.
Space: 1999 is so schizophrenic that it’s unlikely there will be future commentaries. It’s noteworthy for a few reasons, the most obvious being the then-state-of-the-art special effects. Some Space: 1999 model and effects artists later worked on Star Wars and were part of ILM‘s founding team.
Variations on the Eagle’s mission-specific pods. This is something the show did very, very right.
Space: 1999‘s Eagle was extremely detailed and featured a practical, modular design. It’s one of the things Space: 1999 got very, very right. To this day, the Eagle is one of the most revered (and outright coolest) spaceship designs ever imagined. It often appears in the background of other films as an Easter Egg.
The Eagle with a passenger pod on a Moonbase Alpha launchpad. Note the docking mechanism on the left and a parked moonbggy on the right.
A always, the Old Fan’s Commentary will attempt to focus more on what was happening in science fiction fandom at the time rather than interesting tidbits about the film.
As always, we’ll have The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy and topical music sprinkled throughout.
To set the stage:
It’s September of 1975. You’re ten years old. You’re a huge Star Trek fan. That in turn led you to SF literature, in particular Larry Niven. In 1973, Niven adapted one of his short-stories, “The Soft Weapon,” into an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series.
You quickly discovered that “The Soft Weapon” is part of a much larger Known Space universe. Because Niven is a stickler for scientific accuracy, you’ve learned to demand it. In 1975, all science fiction fans demanded it.
Other than Star Trek: The Animated Series, there’s been no science fiction of note — neither in TV nor film — for over five years. There’s a burgeoning Star Trek fan community in the US that’s just finding its legs.
That fan community constantly butts heads with Old Fans. The Old Fans grew up with nothing but literature. They find filmed science fiction to be banal and insipid by comparison.
This absolutely includes Star Trek. In 1975, there was a clear delineation between “real fans” and “Trekkies.”
Through the grapevine, you hear about a new show, Space:1999. It has known stars in the lead roles. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain had starred in Mission: Impossible. Barry Morse had spent four years chasing Dr. Richard Kimball in The Fugutive.
That all sounds good. Production stills begin appearing in certain magazines, and those look good. The models look good, the sets look good, the space suits all look good.
The premise of the series is patently ludicrous. Even a 10-year-old knew that Spoilers.
Those are the things in your mind as you tune in (on low-def broadcast TV).
We’ll be trying a couple of experiments this time around. In addition to the podcast stream of the commentary, we’ll be making a low-res version of the episode available for streaming — but only during the show! If this works, we’ll do the same to the next two weeks’ Old Fan Commentary On Star Wars.
The YouTube version has so far survived a couple of years without a DMCA notice.
If you want higher definition, find a legal stream (or an illegal one, just don’t tell me about it).
Sunday’s tracklist:
“When Twilight Falls On NGC 891”
Space 1999: “Main Titles”
Space 1999 – War Games: “Armageddon”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Primary Phase – Fit the Sixth (S01E06)
Space 1999: “Breakaway”
Introduction To the Old Fan’s Commentary On Space: 1999
The Old Fan’s Commentary On Space: 1999
Space: 1999: “Theme Montage”
The Star Wars Holiday Special
“Can we air just twenty minutes of Chewie noises??”
– Jack Packard
What were fans doing in 1975 when Space:1999 premiered? Listen to Tales From SYL Ranch find out!
Tales From SYL Ranch can be heard live
Sundays, 20:00-22:00 UTC on
//aNONradio.net//
[Spoilers]
Why Space: 1999 Has the Dumbest Premise Ever Concieved
You can’t blow the Moon out of orbit.
Seriously, that’s it, right there: the basic premise of the show is ludicrously impossible. Science Fiction fans are the most demanding viewers in existence. If you screw up in such a flagrantly stupid fashion, you’ve probably lost your audience and don’t know it.
The Moon is not a billiard ball that can be knocked off its trajectory by something sufficiently massive. You can’t put a rocket engine on it. It’s so large as to be occasionally classified as a dwarf planet.
If you struck the Moon with sufficient force to knock it out of orbit, that’s not what would happen. Instead, you’d start with a very deep hole. It would get deeper until such time as the Moon itself couldn’t withstand the stress. The Moon would then crack like a gigantic egg — the difference being that it would spew white-hot volcanic rocks the size of other planets’ moons.
If you were lucky, you’d wind up with a few big rocks and change. With more luck, the rocks will stay in the Moon’s orbit, meaning we’d suddenly have pieces of Moon orbiting the Earth in roughly the same spot.
If you weren’t lucky, the rocks would be small. You’d then have a nice, new asteroid belt around Earth in former Moon’s orbit.
In either case, risk of extinction by Moonrock becomes very likely. Regardless, there will be Earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, tidal waves, and tectonic/volcanic eruptions. The tilt of the Earth could change.
Worse is the location location of the explosion. The writers keep referring to “the dark side of the Moon” as though that’s meaningful. In fact, the “dark side” of the Moon isn’t dark. It’s just the side of the Moon not facing Earth.
The Moon’s orbit and rotation are such that only one side of it faces Earth. Until the Space Age, astronomers didn’t know what the other side of the Moon looked like. They called it “the dark side” to indicate that it was a big blank spot on the map.
That means is that they were dumping nuclear waste as far from Earth as possible — which is a good idea from a radiation standpoint. It was an idea that had been bounced around in science fiction since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, if you hit the Moon with force sufficient to knock it out of orbit, you’re doing so on the face exactly opposite Earth. The aforementioned massive, white-hot volcanic rock would come spewing straight at Earth.
Earth-bound disasters are hinted-at in the episode, but not enough thought was given to it. People would die by the billions. Civilization might be reduced to the Stone Age or worse.
The idea of the Moon blowing out of orbit is galactically stupid.
That doesn’t even begin to touch the faster-than-light speeds the Moon would require to reach another planet every week.
Space: 1999 is very schizophrenic. On the one hand, there are the many things it gets right. Unfortunately, it’s in the service of a laughable premise; often featuring plots with no internal logic.
“It’s sci-fi, anything can happen, so who needs to explain it?” seems to have been the writers’ motto.
An Exclusive Look Inside SYL Ranch Studios
SYL Ranch Studios – 2017-04-28. Always know where your towel is.
Tales From SYL Ranch can be heard Sundays 20:00-22:00 UTC on // aNONradio.net //
We’ll be playing a selection of Murray Gold’s excellent scores from the modern Doctor Who series. However, it will not be an ordinary orchestra performing it — but rather the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra.
Doctor Who Fan Orchestra is a collaborative project by musicians all over the world. They’re sent sheet music for their particular part and record it alone. They never hear the finished work until it’s edited together.
If you want to join the Orchestra, visit https://doctorwhofanorchestra.blogspot.com/ and simply wait for their next call for musicians. They need all kinds, including vocals. If you’re a good musician, go to the site and sign up!
Tales From SYL Ranch can be heard Sundays 20:00-22:00 UTC on // aNONradio.net //
Today’s tracks are:
When Twilight Falls On NGC 891
Doctor Who (Original Theme)
DWFO – About the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra
DWFO -Tuning-
DWFO -1- -I Am The Doctor-
DWFO -2- -Vale Decem-
DWFO -3- -Doomsday-
DWFO -4- -Dalek Suite-
DWFO -5- -The Impossible Astronaut (Suite)-
DWFO -6- -A Christmas Carol (Suite)-
Doctor Who – Creating the Theme Radiophonic Workshop
DWFO -8- -50th Anniversary Suite-
Doctor Who Theme At the Proms 2010 (With Scream)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 1: Primary Phase – Fit the Fifth (S01E01)
This episode of Tales From SYL Ranch is dedicated to William N. Grigg.
“The truth has lost another champion when there are so few left.” – Jay P. Hailey
The libertarian community was saddened by the loss of William N. Grigg on Wednesday.
We thought about changing our programming. It would have been easy to do an entire show of his Greatest Hits.
But we know Bill wouldn’t want that. He’d have told us not to bother on his account.
Rather than altering the songs, we’ve put them in an order we think that Bill would have approved. That’s why it’s Shania Twain week on Tales From SYL Ranch: because that’s what it was always going to be.
A podcast can be many things. Sometimes it needs to remind mourners to celebrate. Not Bill’s death, of course — but rather the man that he was.
If there’s one thing Bill knew about, it was rocking this country. He’d have rocked every country right out of this world, if at humanly possible — libertarian-style.
Shania Twain Farewell Tour, Wells Fargo Arena, Des Moines, Iowa, US
Tracks this week are:
William N. Grigg Dedication (by Jay P. Hailey)
Rock This Country
Party For Two (with Billy Currington)
Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love You)
Love Gets Me Every Time
You Shook Me All Night Long
From This Moment On
Man! I Feel Like A Woman
That Don’t Impress Me Much
Any Man Of Mine
What A Way To Wanna Be
Honey I’m Home
Thank You Baby!
Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under
Nah!
Ka-Ching
In My Car
I’m Gonna Getcha Good
Come On Over
Forever and For Always
Up! Live In Chicago
Shania Twain fans with phone flashes on, Wells Fargo Arena, Des Moines, Iowa, US
Things to watch for this week, in addition to the dedication:
Program IDs change to be somewhat topical.
There’s the usual Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy BBC Radio series episode. We’re only on S01E04, so it’s a good time to dive in.
There’s a faux-Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy entry by TTS voice “SYL Mike.” It’s already been posted to YouTube, but we though it’s one of the better ones so far. You be the judge.
Sunday on Tales From SYL Ranch: the conclusion of the Old Fan’s Commentary on Star Trek – The Motion Picture (the Director’s Edition).
Tales From SYL Ranch can be heard Sundays from 20:00-22:00 UTC at http://anonradio.net.
This week, we’ll be talking about what it was like as a teenaged Star Trek fan to see the film for the first time in 1979. We’ll also talk about fandom of that period and what it was like to live through it.
We’ll also have the usual episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy. After all, you can’t listen to Bill talk for an hour without wanting to slit your wrists.
Tales From SYL Ranch can be heard Sundays from 20:00-22:00 UTC at http://anonradio.net. The station is listed on iTunes, TuneIn, and other streaming services.
Listen to Bill discuss the first Star Trek movie (the one people usually like to forget).
Tales From SYL Ranch can be heard Sundays from 20:00-22:00 UTC at http://anonradio.net.
There is a sense in which Skylark is the science fiction novel. Its influence on the whole genre cannot be overstated. It launched the writing career of “Doc” Smith, and pioneered any number of things which became cliche later. As a result, I’m really pleased to have read it for you — and not at all pleased by the technical problems which left the recording sounding as though I was at the bottom of a well the whole time!
