Back in 2010 I did an index of all the BOYS' LIFE SPACE CONQUERORS! comic strips from 1952-1972, now archived online in Google Books.

Everything I needed to know in life I learned from SPACE CONQUERORS! For example, aliens with advanced technology indistinguishable from magic? Throw a wrench at it!

Professor H's Wayback Machine blog has now done an improved index, organized by year:
1952. First voyage to Mars!
1953. Same crew goes to an asteroid. Which they manage to destroy. Then a series of one-shots.
1954. Mainly one-shots, though some interconnect about a space station. Until November, Dr. Cosmos's trip to Alpha Centauri!
1955. Dr. Cosmo's trip to Proxima Centauri!
1956. Dr. Cosmos's trip to Alpha Centauri wraps up rather abruptly, then some one-shots.
1957. One-shots, until a July reboot about the first trip to the Moon!
1958. Same Moon crew is sent to Mars!
1959. Same crew heads out of the solar system, and then back to Saturn!
1960. Same crew heads to Mercury!
1961. Same crew back to the Moon, last we see of them in March, then some one-shots.
1962. Sept. 1962 begins another reboot, the final 10-year story arc, of the Galaxy One spaceship.
1963. Galaxy One time-travels 50,000 years ago. Then back to their time. Then to Mars. Then out of the solar system again!
1964. A series of mishaps that cause our crew to discover then destroy a planet. Then on to a planet of insect-humanoids!
1965. Insect-humanoids wrapup, then onto a huge spaceship, then a new planet with a vegetable-monster!
1966. Our heroes overthrow an alien tyrant...unfortunately wiping out the indigenous natives and pretty much destroying the planet as well!
1967. Hyperspace, then Earth 50,000 years ago (Again! But no timeline-changing worries this time). Primo the caveman joins crew.
1968. Ant-men from Alpha Centauri on Titan! Earthmen go to their home planet --- except it's now in Proxima Centauri.
1969. They meet the space-empress, and rescue her from the ant-men.
1970. Either Alpha Centauri A or B goes supernova, destroying the planet!
1971. In the constellation of Lyra, a planet of half-animals.
1972. Defeating the energy creatures from a comet that have been possessing the Ohms. The End!

So, I've got these two Batman posters from 1966. They're 14x11 inches. Click to embiggen.





They're from 1966, the year I was born, coinciding with the Adam West BATMAN TV series. They're printed on light cardboard, sturdier than an ordinary poster. I think they were for a birthday party for my older brother, probably 1967 when he was turning 7. He doesn't remember a Batman party though; there was a pirate-themed birthday party around age 8. It's possible my mom got these planning a Batman-themed party and then changed to a pirate-themed party and they were never used.

They've been between two pieces of cardboard for the last 45 years or so. Well, except that at some part of my childhood we had 'em hanging on the wall in the basement.

One of the Edvard Munch Screams sold at a Sotheby's auction in New York yesterday for nearly $120 million! (BBC).

Quite frankly, reading through articles on the web, I was having trouble keeping track of the 4 versions Munch did (5, if you count the 1895 lithographs, of which there are approximately 45 copies).

So I made this animated GIF to sum up the history:

Sources: Toronto Sun, wikipedia.

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Out today in oversized paperback, MAN-KZIN WARS XIII (Amazon). It feels like we've been at war with the Kzinti forever! And I guess we have; Larry Niven's "The Warriors" story came out in 1966, the year I was born, and the first volume of THE MAN-KZIN WARS came out in 1988, volume 12 came out in 2009, and now we're up to volume 13.

I note a change in publishing strategies; volumes 1-8 came out in paperback, then volumes 9-12 came out in hardback first (Plus a 2006 novel, DESTINY'S FORGE), and this volume 13 appears to be premiering as an oversized paperback.



The Kzinti (Plural, singular Kzin) are cat-like aliens. They're really kind of like STAR TREK Klingons. Bad guys or noble warriors, depending on how hungry they are. They're denizens of Larry Niven's "Known Space" stories (RINGWORLD, et al), which is a somewhat STAR TREKian universe, where faster-than-light drive has enabled Earthlings to explore a small part of our surrounding galaxy.

In 1973, Known Space and STAR TREK had a bit of a crossover; Niven adapted his story "The Soft Weapon" (1967) into the STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES episode "Slaver Weapon." And so Kzinti were introduced to the STAR TREK universe. And haven't been seen since.

Here's a STAR TREK Kzin in his fetching pink spacesuit (wikipedia).


You can watch the episode online at CBS.COM.

Also in Known Space news, coming out August 21st in hardback, the 5th in the Edward Lerner/Larry Niven Puppeteer novels, FATE OF WORLDS: RETURN FROM THE RINGWORLD (Amazon).

Following up on my post last Sunday about my (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) 2008 computer simulation of the sinking of Titanic, revived on the 100th anniversary of the sinking.

I was fascinated with Titanic long before the James Cameron movie.

Probably because Arthur C. Clarke, one of my favorite science fiction authors, was fascinated with Titanic (and the sea in general). In IMPERIAL EARTH (1976), he depicts a future in 2276 where they're raising the Titanic. Of course, at that time, in 1976, the wreck hadn't been found, and the assumption was the wreck would be relatively undisturbed that deep on the ocean floor, that rust and microscopic sea life wouldn't have ravaged it. He revisited this in his novel THE GHOST FROM THE GRAND BANKS (1990). Which was written after Robert Ballard's discovery of the wreck in 1985. It takes place in the 22-years-in-the-future far-off year of 2012 (!), on the centennial of the sinking. Even with Ballard's findings, I think maybe the full extent of the damage to the wreck wasn't realized at the time, or maybe Clarke was just wishful thinking, that there'd still be enough left to raise.

And, as you can see from the cover, apparently fractals and the Mandelbrot Set are very important for raising the Titanic!

Also, one time at my uncle and aunt's house, I read the (also 1976) Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt novel RAISE THE TITANIC! Because, I needed something to read, and it was on their shelf. And a book with an exclamation point in the title is a book to be reckoned with. Dirk Pitt, in case you're unfamiliar with him, is sort of a combination of James Bond and Jacques Costeau. At the time, I didn't know who Dirk Pitt was, but, I did know that Raising The Titanic! seemed like a cool thing to do.

In the book, they're Raising the Titanic! because there's a safe filled with some sort of Unobtanium in the cargo hold.

But it wasn't all work. One of the first things Dirk Pitt does once the Titanic Is Raised! is get the married (but separated) female scientist into one of the staterooms and gets it on with her on the waterlogged mattress. Again, the assumption was that, even after 60+ years on the bottom of the Atlantic, there'd still be something left of the furnishings. It might smell of seawater, but it hadn't all been eaten by microscopic sea life, or filled with eels, or anything icky like that.

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Today is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.



Here's my highly accurate simulation of the events from my 2008 Flash game KILLDOZER (Requires Flash):
Titanic Sinking.

Or you can play the full KILLDOZER game here (Also requires Flash).

When I was a kid, we had the 1976 edition of the Parker Brothers boardgame MASTERPIECE.

It had 24 paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago. The game was probably the first place I saw the Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks, which I've been weirdly fascinated with ever since (As you might guess from my animated icon above).

But one of the other paintings was The Rock, by Peter Blume (wikipedia).

A strange painting, especially when you're viewing it as a kid:


When playing MASTERPIECE, I always made sure I acquired Nighthawks and The Rock at auction. Ten million dollars? No problem! Price is no object!

My niece later had the 1996 version of MASTERPIECE, also with 24 paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago. But not the same 24 paintings. I noticed The Rock was out of the lineup, though Nighthawks was still in there.

(Apparently they're both in the same room at the Art Institute of Chicago).

Turns out, The Rock was commissioned by Kaufmann for his Frank Lloyd Wright house Fallingwater. Finished in 1948.

The construction going on in the left side of the painting is supposed to be Fallingwater (Though Fallingwater had been completed in 1939).

Kaufmann died in 1955, and his son donated the painting to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1956, so I guess it was like, "Get that thing out of here!"

He waited until 1963 to donate Fallingwater to the park system (The family continued to use Fallingwater as a weekend getaway until then).

( Ninja attack on Fallingwater! )

During the 1996 Olympics here in Atlanta, there was this exhibit at the High Museum called RINGS: FIVE PASSIONS IN WORLD ART, with artwork from different countries. One of them was an 1889 painting by Aivazovsky (wikipedia), titled The Wave.

From wikipaintings.org, highest resolution here.

It's in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

Unfortunately, even at the highest resolution, you can't see the level of detail. But here's a YouTube video of it. The painting is huge, maybe 12 feet across. When you looked really closely at the painting, there was a Where's Waldo effect --- you could see that, in the water to the upper right of the lifeboat, there's a bull, swept overboard from the sinking ship, and already slightly underwater. Basically, the folks in the lifeboat are having a bad day, but that bull is having a really bad day.

I'm not a huge fan of FAMILY GUY, but every once in awhile they do something so strange with the non sequitur humor that just resonates like a tuning fork.

In the March 11th episode, "Killer Queen" (Currently viewable on FOX and Hulu), the B-plot involves the baby Stewie finding a crate of Peter's old 1970s record albums in the attic, and being completely terrified by the 1977 QUEEN album cover artwork for NEWS OF THE WORLD.


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Creepy, in GRAND THEFT AUTO IV, there's this Easter Egg inside the Statue of Liberty (Statue of Happiness): A gigantic chained-up beating heart!