A banger by Billy Nomates

 So good! I played this four times back to back the first time I heard it.

Day 75 of RED January

 Thanks to the support of those who contributed to my RED January running challenge, we managed to raise 180 pounds for the Mind Over Mountains mental health charity. I was feeling pretty good about my running at the end of January, so I decided to push on with the streak. Yesterday was Day 75, but it was actually my 76th day of consecutive running as I ran Nos Galan on December 31st. With the daffodils out, and occasional outbreaks of sunshine, that's starting to feel like a fair while ago.

My total distance over these 75 days is now more than 380km, which places me well into France as the crow flies. I'm not feeling any ill effects, so I'm intending to push on to day 100 and then see how I feel. By then I should be close to exceeding my total running distance in 2024, although at this point in the year I wasn't to know that I was heading for quite a difficult few months with an injury.

Guys & Dolls!

 My friends from Showcase Performing Arts will be staging "Guys & Dolls" over four nights from April 9 to April 12 at the Coliseum Theatre in Aberdare. We've been working very hard on this timeless musical and are looking forward to show week, in just under a month. If you're in the South Wales area, why not come along and see our production? The Coliseum is a beautiful period venue, so much so that the BBC recently used it as a Stratford-on-Avon stand-in for the forthcoming feature film "Mr Burton", where (as mentioned back in July) we provided some extras for a day of shooting.

Inspired by the short stories of Damon Runyan, Guys and Dolls is rollicking tale of sin and virtue on the grubby streets of gangster-era New York. It's got great songs, great characters, and plenty of laughs. Nathan Detroit is a small-time hustler who needs to arrange a venue for a "permanent floating crap game" each night, and needs to keep moving that venue to avoid being busted. Nathan's been stringing along his fiance, Adelaide, for fourteen years:

If only he could get a break! Needing a thousand bucks fast, he enters into a rash bet with the high-rolling gambler Sky Masterson, but needless to say things don't quite go to plan. The last thing Nathan needs is the attention of the lousy Lieutenant Brannigan of the New York police department, which is where I come in:

And here's me getting up close and personal with poor old Nathan:

But fear not, all comes well in the end and there's a suitably upbeat conclusion. Even the lieutenant turns out to have a heart. Brannigan is a relatively small part in the production although the fact of him trying to break up Nathan's fun is a big part of the plot driver, even when he's not on stage. The main players, as well as the gangsters, have got some great songs under their belts and even if you're not familiar with the musical, as I wasn't, you'll probably recognise "Luck be a Lady" and "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat", two big numbers with a lot of choreography! I've fallen in love with this musical over the last few months and know you'll have a good night out if you come along and see us.

Tickets cost 16 pounds, with concessions and family tickets available:

https://www.rct-theatres.co.uk/event/guys-dolls

Chris Moore

 I was sorry to hear of the passing of Chris Moore, the brilliant SF artist whose work lit up so many wonderful book covers, from the middle seventies through to the present.

I'd undoubtedly seen Chris's work on paperback covers as I grew up, but I didn't really connect the art and the artist until I got this book as a Christmas present at the end of 1979:

It's a gorgeously illustrated tour of SF's major themes, loosely justifying the title, but which showcases an enormous and varied amount of art from all the major practitioners of the period, and not merely spaceships. Chris's terrific wraparound cover was the star of the book for me, and I spent many hours goggling at the detail and depth, wondering how it was possible to paint such an amazingly intricate and exciting scene. The book was presumably launched as a cash-in on the tail-end of the Stars Wars boom, but the colourful visuals in that illustration owe very little to the film, or indeed any of the other big contemporary SF spectacles at the time. It's a reminder of a time when SF artwork offered a completely different slant on the future to that seen on screen. Illustrations were made by splodging (or blasting) paint and ink pigments around on canvas or board, whereas film productions were executed with model work and optical effects. They not only didn't look alike, but they probably couldn't have if they tried. When did you ever see a glossy or multicoloured spaceship in 70s cinema, or for that matter an exhaust plume? Now that nearly everything is done by manipulating pixels, there's a visual sameness to the imagery presented on books and in cinema. It's all very technically impressive, but (I confess) it leaves me a bit cold in the way that the work of Chris Moore and his contemporaries never did.

There are some equally stirring Chris Moore illustrations within "Space Wars":

The perspective work on this huge space vehicle is really impressive, but note also Chris's skill with background treatments and colour contrast. These elements are in equal play on this other illustration from the book:

These aren't the only Chris Moore pictures in the volume, but they were more than enough to blow my mind as a space-and-SF-obsessed thirteen year old. Obviously, it was a terrific thrill to have Chris Moore illustrate some of my earlier books, and I never stopped pinching myself that things had come full circle (even, though, secretly, I always thought I'd end up being an illustrator rather than a writer). 

I admire all the covers Chris did for me, but I've a particular soft-spot for House of Suns, which I think captures the scale of things quite impressively:

Notice, if you will, the correct orientation of the green and red nav lights (assuming we're looking at the front of the vehicle, which seems plausible). It was this sort of attention to detail that took Chris's work into a different dimension, and made me such a lifelong enthusiast.

I only got to meet him on a handful of brief occasions, always at SF conventions, but we did chat a little and I think I managed to express my delight that he had come to do my covers. Thank you, Chris, for a lifetime of wonderful imagery that will continue to inspire for many years to come.

Incidentally, while writing this piece I discovered that the text of "Space Wars" (by "Steven Eisler") was in fact written by the writer Robert Holdstock, another giant of the field, now much-missed. If you do see a copy of "Space Wars" in a second hand bookshop or charity shop, snap it up, because it's great!

Al R

Every Bloody Emperor (2004-2005)

 

The Moon-tilt illusion

 I think we are all familiar with the illusion of the moon looking much larger than its true angular size when it is near the horizon, but there's a less familiar moon-related illusion that I only really noticed for myself when I was out running a few years ago. It turns out to be well-documented, and well-understood, but no less weird, because even when you "know" the explanation, your brain still won't readily accept it - or at least, mine won't.

Anyway, today was an ideal day to observe the moon-tilt illusion. It was a crisp clear day and the half-illuminated moon was beautifully clear in the eastern sky well into the afternoon. The Sun was also putting on a jolly good show, roughly in the south at the time I made this short video:

The moon is tiny but visible in this clip taken on my phone. It's in the middle and about two thirds of the way up when the video starts, to the left of the tall bare tree. The view then pans around to the Sun. The illumination angle of the moon, dictated by the moon's apparent tilt, strongly suggests that the illuminating source must be way off to the right and higher in the sky than the apparent elevation of the moon:

But that's very much not where the Sun is! The explanation for the moon-tilt illusion is rather involved, but in essence, it arises from the failure of our brains to possess an innate grasp of spherical coordinate systems. Presumably this is because there would have been no survival benefit in such an understanding, and therefore no selection pressure driving our minds to get better at it. You would think that knowing this would make the moon-tilt illusion evaporate but it remains as stubborn to me as when I first encountered it - just as my brain "insists" that the moon is bigger when it's close to the horizon.

You can read more about the moon-tilt illusion here:

https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~amyers/MoonPaperOnline.pdf

Hoping this is of interest.

Al

RED January done

 I completed my last two runs for RED January. I had theatre rehearsals on Thursday night, and since the venue is about half way around my normal 5K route, I decided to split the run into two halves.

I then finished off with a shorter run this afternoon, just as the light was fading. I managed to spot a lovely pair of male and female bullfinches along the canal, which absolutely made my day.

In total in January I ran 163.9 km, or just over 101 miles. I'm feeling fine so will continue with the running streak for a while, but I'll spare you all the documentation. Suffice to say that I'll be setting my alarm nice and early for parkrun tomorrow morning, and looking forward to seeing many friends from the local running and volunteering community.

Thank you all for your support; I'm sure the money raised for Mind over Mountains will make a difference!

RED January

Normal blogging will resume now, until I start gearing up for the Cardiff Half Marathon in October, for which I'm running for cancer research.

Ta,

Al