O MIGHTY RAY

Based on a true story. Maybe. We don't even know anymore.

NIMOY NO MORE

Missing you already, Leonard. See you on the other side.

STERILE VIRTUE

New Crete is a society far in the future that knows no hunger and no dissatisfaction, where war has become a game played on village greens, where the poets and magicians of a strange occult religion keep all classes of the population happy with their lot. As time traveller Edward Venn-Thomas finds out, however, this utopia has one major flaw: it's really, really fucking boring, so he decides to teach them to live again by reintroducing evil into their lives. 

Can we make that joke about it being based on a true story again? Why not, no-one appears to be looking.  

SHIT BEAST

We couldn't decide whether this unpleasant and hungry looking creature was a cat, a dog, a mutated rabbit, a 'mind spider' or a Taiwanese poster for 'Gremlins' before realising that it was just a rubbish painting and not worth the six and a half hours we'd just spent arguing about it.

A HOLOCAUST IN THE PALM OF HIS HAND

What a load of rubbish. Cool, though. QHE! rules.

FLASH OF RECOGNITION

'Starblazer' never really got the credit it deserved for its innovative artwork. Here it completely updates the 1980 Flash Gordon film poster by merely adding a beret and a couple of spooky looking skulls, thereby making it at least 26,000 times better.

What's the difference between an android and a cyborg? An android is a robot who looks like a man; a cyborg is a man with mechanical parts who, clearly, needs chasing by a 'one many army'. 13p well spent.

MORLOCK AND ROLL

H.G Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ is one of the greatest stories ever told, but, if it has one failing, it’s that it is just not groovy enough, an omission that the 1974 paperback edition seeks to rectify.

The book is fascinating from start to finish but, for us, the most interesting element is provided by the Morlocks, the brutish, blue skinned, light fearing, troglodyte like cave dwelling creatures who are what the working classes have evolved into 802,701 AD.

Despite looking like Boris Johnson, The Morlocks serve the upper classes (in the form of the beautiful but mindless Eloi) but there’s a twist: the masters have become livestock, and The Morlocks keep them fit and fed in order to ensure that they always have something to throw on the barbecue. Now that’s Class War.    

TRIPPY

A glittering galaxy of pure science fiction...

The passions of today in all the possible postures of tomorrow...

Depths we know not how to dream of...

Desires we know not how to imagine...

A cover we cannot hope to understand...

Some bloke in a weird wetsuit carrying a dolly bird whilst simultaneously surfing without any visible means of support...

It has to be 1967... 

It is.

THE FUTURE IS CHANGING

A rare advert for the controversial reboot issue of D.C Thompson's long running sci fi comic 'Starblazer'. Hastily withdrawn after a heated board meeting, a single batch went out by mistake to half a dozen Leicestershire newsagents, all of which later burned down in mysterious circumstances.  

PEOPLE CRINGED

'In a world predating history as we know it, 

the people cringed under an evil rule. 

Black clad warlocks enslaved anybody useful to them, 

and spilled the blood of those that were not'.  

That's the back cover blurb for a remarkably contemporary sounding tale from a 1987 edition of 'Star Blazer' .

Essentially a sci fi companion to publisher D.C Thompson's much more successful 'Commando'* imprint, 'Star Blazer' suffered from poor distribution and the fluctuating fortunes of the fantasy market, but still managed to run from 1984 to 1991, racking up 281 easy-and-cheap-to-find-on-ebay editions.  

* The indomitable 'Commando' started publication in 1961, and is still going strong - with over 4,500 issues to date.  

COMMON PROBLEMS IN THE KIRKPLACE

No, of course not, you just sit your chubby arse down and let us get on with it, Captain. I'll see if I can spare one of our useful crew members for a second to make you a nice milky drink. Perhaps you can continue with your memoirs, I believe you were just about to start the chapter about how you single handedly overcame all the difficulties in crossing through space that has not changed since the dawn of time.  

NUMBER 333

Prolific pulp writer Edgar Rice Burroughs died in 1950, but left behind so many unfinished manuscripts and fragments of writing that 'new' novels of his were published up until 1976, long after changing attitudes and new liberties had rendered many of his viewpoints offensive. See also 'Tarzan & The Hottentot Slut'. 

A RIGHT EYEFUL

"Dumarest needed the girl Kalin. Kalin who could visualise the terrors that were to come. A mysterious talent that he utilised to try to ward off the disasters of the future. Thus, together they had managed to survive Bloodtime on Logis, space disaster, the threat of enslavement on desolate Chron.

Now Kalin's images of the future were drawing closer in time; the visions chillingly sharper. Dumarest, ever alert, ever on watch, knew that danger threatened, but alone, could not even guess at its form.

More than ever he needed Kalin. And that massive fucking eye of hers."

THE CROCODILE OF SCIENCE

 

This cover features a rendition of the terrifying sonic apparition from the future that spontaneously appeared out of the musical equipment at the first ever Depeche Mode rehearsal in January,1980.

The Basildon boys immediately made a deal with the ghostly sound reptile and, within a few months, were on Top Of The Pops. The Electric Crocodile's side of the bargain is still yet to be fulfilled thirty four years on, but it is believed to entail the total destruction of the world and everyone on it. Except Depeche Mode*.

* Vince Clarke excluded. 

SKY PLUS

‘Sky’ is such an unsettling, weird, pagan sci fi ghost train ride of a programme that it’s sometimes hard to believe that it ever existed or, incredibly, that it was created for kids. 

Happily, primary historical source ‘Look-In’ recorded the details for posterity, along with the frankly incredible reminder that there used to be 14 regional ITV channels. The past is a foreign country, we watch telly differently there.

Nice to see that The Rollers are providing us with their 'History Of Pop'. Next week, Alvin Stardust begins a new six part series called 'The Rise & Fall of The Byzantine Empire'.

DOWN AND SAFE SEX

TICKETS, PLEASE

This is Unmann-Wittering's favourite book cover of all time, ever. He sees it when he closes his eyes.

The Ticket That Exploded is a messed up sci-fi head squeezer - a novel obsessed with alien criminals, mind control, hanging, excrement and language as a 'virus from outer space'. We'd like to make a film of it or, at least, a series of pictures done in coloured crayons. 

This edition was published in 1987, and the graphics are clearly inspired by Blakes 7 as, I'm sure, was William Burroughs himself.   

PUPPY POWER

It could have already begun...but it hasn't.

Previously published in 1966 as 'Mankind Under The Leash', part of this work is based on a novelette entitled 'White Fang Goes Dingo'. We're not making this up. The book was eventually used as the basis for the French cartoon 'Dogtanian'.

We made that up. 

COSMIC WOOFER

This dog is from outer space. He can do all sorts of stuff that makes The Cat From Outer Space and Digby, The Biggest Dog In The World look like right mugs. We won't give any more away just in case this is on your 'to read' pile, or is the next masterwork under discussion at your Book Club.

The frontispiece carries the dedication -

'In memory of Ching, 

whose spirit now roams the stars' 

Don't mourn for Ching, he or she is with Laika, Pchyolka and Mushka now, probably rooting through an alien's bin.  

...

The cover reminded us of the terrifying climax of the superb 1984 Italian art film 'Rats: Night Of Terror'. 

We accept no responsibility for soiled undergarments. We won't even acknowledge that we have a washing machine, even though it's right there in the corner, and we can all see it. 

SOMETHING THE COMPUTER FORGOT

You're not really alive unless you spend a small amount of time thinking about when you're going to die, and how. 

Whereas you'd like to think you might get taken out by a sniper, or sacrifice yourself saving others, it's more likely that you'll die in a hospital bed - or in the street, like a dog. A small crowd will gather, then disperse because they need to go on shopping and your lifeless body is depressing them. 

If you need cheering up about it, though, watch the above clip from 'Chosen Survivors' and be assured: whatever else happens - you won't be going out like that.

If you're intrigued by the clip, we can reveal that the film it comes from is about a group of people who are sitting out a thermo-nuclear war in a bunker two thousand feet under the ground. Unfortunately, they are sharing the subterranean space with a million pissed off vampire bats. Guy N. Smith would have been proud.

Here's a trailer.

In many ways, it's a pretty stupid film, but TOMTIT think stupid is clever. It's a coping mechanism.