August 2013 – Voyage to the Planets

It’s August now. This is a fact which I am having a great deal of trouble comprehending. How can it conceivably be August? Already? Come on, you’re having a laugh! Seriously? August? Already? Fucking hell…

That means that I’ve been snuggled away in my little one bedroom flat for nearly 10 months. It also means I’ve been down in the deepest, darkest and most hideously depraved outlands of southern England for 2 years. Time is relentless in its surging forwards. The future is always rushing straight at us waving a big sign, which in large black capitals reads “LOOK AT ME!” It’s also my little brother’s birthday. A person who in my mind’s eye will always remain about 11 years old, is now edging ever further into his 20s. That’s not even remotely terrifying. But such is life. It is relentless. It is without mercy. It is unfathomable. It is cruel and it is cold.

In those respects it’s just like space (Tenuous segue ahoy!) Space is cool. Space is out future and it is our salvation. Space is absolutely fucking everywhere. So take your protein pills, put your helmet on and prepare for a Voyage to the Planets.

This month’s mouth’s glorious image and all its mouth-watering detail is the work of Daren Horely (the signature was a dead give away wasn’t it?) As far as my research tells me, it was a piece of concept art for the 2004 speculative documentary “Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets” by the good old BBC. I thought it’d been a while since we’d done some proper, straight-up, good old-fashioned, hard sci-fi. The last image which really screamed “I AM SCI-FI! PUT ME IN YOUR FRAGILE JELLY EYES, PUNY HUMAN MEAT-BAG!” was last November. That’s 8 whole months. Just the thought of leaving sci-fi alone for that long is making me feel guilty. On top of this, space is something I feel very passionate about. While at the same time being utterly and irrevocably, pant-shittingly terrified by the awe of its endless majesty. Which in my books just means that I still have some micro-thin shred of sanity left.

Dawn – For the Love of Hydrogen

James Clayton – Pegasus Faces Planet Chimera

Sam – The Planet Business

The Rogue Verbumancer – A Solid Return