1977:
The trivia:
- On 15th August 1977, an Ohio State university radio telescope known as "Big Ear" heard a 72 second long radio transmission from deep space near the Sagittarius constellation, on a frequency that many scientists believe intelligent races might use. It has not been heard since.
- At 5.10 pm on 26th November, the audio signal for a UK 'Southern Television' news broadcast was hijacked for 6 minutes. The voice claimed to be "Vrillon" ("Asteron" in some transcripts) from the "Ashtar Galactic Command," with a warning to the people of Earth that we should remove all our "weapons of evil".
- A Filipino couple accidently received one million dollars into their account in Manila due to a clerical error, which they promptly spent on property, medical expenses and gifts for friends and family. Although the Mellon Bank tried to recover the funds and even instigated a law suit, it is still unresolved and the cash has never been paid back.
The memory:
"Hang on a minute" you might think. "Surely 2000 AD should be obvious choice for 1977 ? This is where 'Thrill Power' began isn't it?". Well you'd be right - the writers and artists and stories within it's pages shaped my love for comics. The fact that it's the only thing from forty years ago that I still collect today and still have every single issue of is testament to its undeniable influence on my life. The spirit of 2000 AD is embedded deep in the DNA of the person I am today and this blog.
The thing is, I could never do justice to the everlasting energy of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic in just one post of a few hundred words, or limit myself to the stories of one year (as good as they are). 2000 AD is too big and important. I've already written about Dan Dare and M.AC.H. 1, plus it's been mentioned in numerous other posts across the last couple of years. There's going to be much. much more to come - but in recognition of 2000 AD's debut, here's a montage of some of the covers that came out in that first year (with credit to the excellent retrosmackblog for pulling these together) :
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
So Steven Spielberg takes the top two slots in my favourite films of all time. "Jaws" may have wowed me with its story and excitement, but this, this is on a whole other level. It's not surprising really when you consider how much I was interested in space exploration and aliens, even from an early age - plus UFO interest was at its absolute peak in the late 70s. I think it's also far to say that after this film my love for all things science fiction was rock solid.
The odd thing is, "Close Encounters" is so ingrained in my memories that I'm honestly struggling to remember when I first got to watch it. Did I get taken to the cinema by my late grandfather in early 1978? (the timeline just about fits and there are memory flashes about sitting in a darkened room watching something about UFO's - and no, it wasn't that *other* SF film) Did I get that first feeling of astonishment when I saw it on BBC1 around age 12 or 13? I guess the exact moment doesn't matter, it's the fact that "CE3K" sits there in my personal history like an enormous black hole making a gravitational dent in space-time.
"Close Encounters" is really the story of everyman Roy Neary and single mum Jillian Guiller as they have differing encounters with something not of this world. Both are deeply affected by the experiences. Gillian's three year old son vanishes. Roy gets third degree burns on his face and finds his stable family life torn apart by forces which he can't understand. They both become obsessed with a mysterious mountain in Wyoming. Travelling to the site and avoiding the military, they arrive in time to see dozens of UFOs. As government specialists communicate with the ships via colours and tonal frequencies, a gigantic mothership lands and strange aliens emerge, along with many people long thought lost, having not aged in the intervening decades. Roy is selected to join a group who are to visit the mothership and after a final conversation using simple hand geastures, the aliens ascend to the stars with their new friends.
A paltry few words can't begin to explain the sheer mesmerising power of this film. It's full of iconic moments - images I can picture immediately when I just close my eyes. The lost ship stranded in the Gobi desert. The screws unwinding in the golden light of Jillian's apartment. Roy sculpting a replica of Devil's Tower out of rubbish in his living room. The five notes played to the alien spacecraft are as recognisable now as the theme to James Bond's adventures or "Raider of the Lost Ark" (they were also the first thing I could ever copy on an electronic keyboard). All these things pale behind one of the most astounding, awe-inspiring sequences in science fiction - the mothership appearing above the mountain and then slowly turning over. I sat there with my mouth open I'm sure. Cinema doesn't get much better than this.
It's not without some minor faults and unanswered questions. Why did the aliens take the people in the first place? Did they lure little Barry away just to get his mother to Devil's Tower? That seems particularly cruel. Doesn't Roy Neary give up on his family and kids to go off in a spaceship just a little too easily? Yet at the time of viewing, you don't even think of these things as you are swept up in the story and visuals. Despite the various tinkering around with the "Special Edition" the original ending is clearly the best - it maintains that sense of wonder and allows your imagination to run free.
I think we all really want our first meeting with intelligent beings from another planet to be as peaceful and magical as that pictured in this film - both sides putting their efforts into communicating and making friends rather than immediate aggressive actions. Sadly the current reality is probably going to be more like the recent "Arrival". As a species we are just not ready for a close encounter...
Watch the skies...
Honourable mentions:
- The Fantastic Journey - Although it only lasted a brief ten episodes, this show is remembered by me at least for the Bermuda Triangle / time-travel / Mysterious Island concept and for the cast of interesting characters, including Roddy "Planet of the Apes" McDowall and Ike "Witch Mountain" Eisenmann. My favourite was Jared Martin as Varian, a "more evolved" man from the 23rd Century with his multi-purpose tuning-fork-like Sonic Energiser - which looked much cooler than the Doctor's screwdriver. Sure, as the group travelled through the various zones the things they encountered were familiar SF plots - a giant pulsating brain controlling the population, Joan Collins as the leader of a group of female revolutionaries who overthrow their male oppressors, a society of androids fighting green-skinned aliens - but it was still thoroughly enjoyable. For some reason it's always stuck in my mind.
- Logan's Run - Not the classic Michael York film (which I adore) but the 14-episode spin off set in the wilds outside the City, as Logan 5 and his friends search for Sanctuary. My over-riding memory is of android companion REM (played by Donald Moffat) and the cool cars than the Runners and Sandmen travelled around in....
- A Spell For Chameleon - Not the first fantasy novel I ever read (I guess that honour goes to Enid Blyton's "The Magic Faraway Tree") nor my favourite published in this year (that's getting a mention in a later post in this strand for a different reason) but the one that informed me that fantasy could be exciting - and funny. The first in Piers Anthony's "Xanth" series (which currently runs to an astonishing forty volumes) it concerns the adventures of "Bink" who is exiled from his homeland because he *doesn't* have a magical talent. It's full of strange creatures, people with amazing abilities and groan worthy puns and I collected, read and re-read all of the Xanth books for many years - although eventually I grew out of them as my tastes changed and the plots became rather repetitive. The first eight or so are probably the best and at the time were a good introduction for youngsters to fantasy. Pratchett is far better though, as I was to discover in just a few short years...
- Space - Magic Fly - A sublime piece of French electronica which reached #2 in the UK charts. It took me years to find the album.
- The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - The first SF reference book I ever bought, from the much loved bookshop in Sudbury, Suffolk. A fascinating trawl through the history of the genre and it's major themes. Nowhere near as exhaustive as the later "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction", but it did have a lot more pictures and I loved picking through it. I still have the same copy on my bookshelf.
- The Man From Atlantis - Included in this list because incredibly it was the series that first made me stop watching my favourite TV show, Doctor Who (see here for a few more details).
- Children Of The Stones - Seven of the scariest half hours of children's television ever transmitted. Some of the scenes in this show (along with "King of the Castle" from later in the same year) terrified me for a long time afterwards.Notable of course for the spine-chilling music, the brain-twisting plot and the appearance of a pre-"Blakes' 7" Gareth Thomas. I also had a thing around this time of being somewhat scared of actor Freddie Jones. He was everywhere during the 1970s and I kept coming across him in a variety of forceful roles. I think it was those extraordinary attack-eyebrows..
- Star Wars - Nah, it'll never take off...
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