It’s COMING. It’s BRILLIANT. In the meantime, have some Vampirella.
Jusko
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Frazetta
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Not the cover. (“I’m afraid so, Janet. But isn’t it NICE?!”) The real shebang will be coming later today or perhaps Monday, and it will be worth the wait. Who’s your favorite vampire? And more.
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Lifted entirely from Don Pettit of NASA, because every inch is beautiful:
Twice a year, near the winter and summer solstices, the orbit of space station nearly parallels the terminator—the fuzzy line separating day from night on the surface below. For a period of about a week, we live in what seems like perpetual twilight, being in neither full daylight nor full night. Our orbit follows the terminator, so that space station is constantly sunlit. From this vantage I can see both day and night simply by swiveling my head from left to right. But the night is not really dark, and the day is lit by low-angle rays from the Sun.
Geographic relief casts long shadows, and imparts stark contrast to features that are typically overlooked. Small ripples in sand dunes make high contrast striations across the bright desert landscape that look like Nature’s way of drawing with pen and ink. Geographic relief plays tricks on you. First you see the Grand Canyon as this deep scar.Blink your eyes and it is now a rippling bump. Thunderstorms cast shadows that look like they come from some new type of ray beam weapon. Airliners, their path defined by contrails, leave glimmering lines like snail trails in the morning dew. The gardens of Earth appear to have quite an infestation of snails.
The Moon sets in a counterintuitive way. From this vantage it moves nearly parallel to the horizon. Once I saw it slowly set, only to reappear in a few minutes. The Moon was visible for nearly the whole orbit.
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The night side is equally fascinating. The atmosphere on edge glows with a vibrant electric blue. Did van Gogh paint this scene? I can see at least five, maybe six distinct layers of blue—perhaps a visual display of the classic atmospheric strata. Just past the terminator, rays of sunlight can be seen projected above the darkened limb of the Earth.
The most striking aspect of our atmosphere is not the palette of electric blue colors but the thinness of it all. Our atmosphere is a diaphanous veil; thin, fragile, transparent, and the only thing that protects us from the harsh vacuum of space. Too much atmosphere, and the planet is choked and suffocated. Too little, and it is exposed to the harshness of cosmic space. My vantage on the station gives me a deep appreciation of this fact.
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John Coulthart informs us that Night of Pan is ”42 seconds of occult freakery by Bill Butler featuring Vincent Gallo, Twiggy Ramirez plus (blink and you miss him) Kenneth Anger.”
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Don’t blame the band. I chose the picture.
Evergreen Mostly Autumn
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Keep on rocking in the free world, kids.
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Harlan Ellison in 1977
Via DANGEROUS MINDS
Last November, Cinefamily held an event called “The Glass Teat” with writer/raconteur Harlan Ellison. The evening was such a success that they’re doing a second installment this Thursday:
One of America’s most prolific and dangerous writers, Harlan Ellison radicalized science fiction from the 1960s onwards with swirling, shouting, freaky, psychedelic and sexual visions realized across over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays and essays. That would be enough for most — but Ellison is also one of the great TV writers, responsible for iconic episodes of The Outer Limits and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, to penning the most popular episode of the original Star Trek, and much, much more. And, somewhere in there, he even found the time to write “The Glass Teat”, a seminal work still considered one of the most important and scathing books ever written on the nature of television. Join guest moderator Josh Olson (Oscar-nominated screenwriter of A History of Violence) for a very special evening, as Harlan makes a very rare and highly spirited personal appearance at Cinefamily to discuss his love/hate relationship with TV, followed by a screening of several of his best episodes!
Get tickets here.
Cinefamily, 611 N Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles, 90036
If you aren’t in Los Angeles, fret not, for you can tune it to a live webscast of the entire event on the Cinefamily blog at 8PM (PST) on Thursday, January 19th.
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THE OTHER FASCINATING BITS
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The Ghoul Next Door just released a new mix, STRANGE DAYS
Track List:
Alone in Kyoto, Air | Heaven, Lamb | Ooh La La, Goldfrapp | Heat Miser, Massive Attack | The Time Is Now, Moloko | Blood Like Lemonade, Morcheeba | Never The Same, Supreme Beings of Leisure | Until The Morning, Thievery Corporation | Blue Monday, Flunk | The Strange Effect, Hooverphonic | Insensible, Mandalay | Roads, Portishead
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There is a killer KEN KELLY / REH Gallery @ Golden Age Comic Book Stories
And the always-cool crew of Star Ship Sofa offers TALES TO TERRIFY (audio)
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An airship returns to its squadron. Unaware of the looming danger, two young men dream of their future. One of them, a talented inventor, has perfected an astonishing flying machine, which he is about to try out. Suddenly, an invincible and inaccessible army of airships attacks with bombs and homing missiles.
The creativity of the special effects turns this short film into a real gem of science fiction cinema.
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Nothing to Nobody new issue – OUT NOW!!!
Cost: $2.00 (Subscribe to 6 issues for only $10!)
Buy Now at:
www.zinio.com/nothingtonobody
That’s right fiends and gentlebeans! Issue 7 of Nothing to Nobody is nearly here and will be available very soon. This issue is packed to the gazungas with awesome! Meggs, Makatron, JC Rivera, Martin Wittfooth, Twoone, Steve Cross, Aida Sabic, Emma Geary aka Anarkitty, Carisa Swenson – and loads more. Subscribe now to get issue 7 delivered to your email auto-ma-matically!
COOL SHIT LIKE THIS INSIDE:
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Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo writes:
Her name is Lana Sator and she snuck into one of NPO Energomash factories outside of Moscow. Her photos are amazing, like sets straight out of Star Wars or Alien. Now the Russian government is harassing her.
It was easy to get in. She just went there, jumped over the fence and got right into the heart of the complex through a series of tunnels and pipes, which was very surprising. After all, this is an active industrial installation that belongs to one of the top manufacturers of liquid-fuel rockets in the world. Their engines power the modern Soyuz, the Zenit 3SL, and the Angara and Baikal launch vehicles. Heck, their RD-180 engine powers the first stage of the Atlas V, an American rocket. More importantly, they have specially strong ties to the Russian military.
And yet, she found nobody. No guards, no security. Nothing. Just a few CCTV cameras here and there in rooms packed with huge machinery.
While some of these zones look decrepit and abandoned, the factory is active. In fact, the government is really pissed off about Lana’s adventure. The authorities have sent her letters saying that her situation will get “much worse” if she keeps posting photos from the factory.
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