What A Hunt!

Posted By Mark on Dec 26, 2014

The Crabonauts Conquer The Stars

Posted By Mark on Dec 25, 2014

January 1970 saw the presentation to the International Marine Biology Symposium in Khartoum of Jacques Cousteau’s groundbreaking work on the growing literacy of sealife so it was no surprise to see book publishers rush to fill the genre void. One of the first novels to print was C.D. Hippocampus’s science fiction adventure The Crabonauts Conquer The Stars. Taking place in the near future the story follows the first group of space crustaceans and their quest to dominate the wild worlds within the crab nebula. Critics were generally kind to the book and its author although concern was raised that it might give the undersea creatures megalomaniacal ideas. Ultimately, though, Cousteau admitted he’d been drunk during the symposium, the literacy of sealife had been grossly overstated, and crabs overwhelmingly demonstrated a preference for turn-of-the-century romance over sci-fi in the book...

Photos Of Los Angeles

Posted By Mark on Dec 23, 2014

An interesting account of the work involved in hunting down photos of the people and places in Los Angeles’s history with an emphasis on the ethnic diversity of the city and its environs: Shades of L.A.: 20 Years of Illuminating Diversity Through Photography We begin to click through silvery images of weddings and birthday parties, Thanksgivings, first television sets, interiors of pre-Prohibition Era saloons, laughing families hand-churning ice cream. But sometimes amid these happy moments are sobering indicators — placards in the frame that indicate that a couple’s frolicking occurred on a segregated beach, or a caption’s hint at the long wave of Japanese internment and relocation during World War...

The Pearlfish, The Oyster, And The Starfish Anus

Posted By Mark on Dec 22, 2014

At last! An article that finally covers everything you ever wanted to know about the sounds that fish make, making homes in oysters, and burrowing inside the anus of a starfish! Here’s how pearlfish call to each other from inside the bodies of other living animals: Rather famously, pearlfish (family: Carapidae) species from the the genera Carapus and Encheliophis make their homes in the living bodies of invertebrate hosts, including sea cucumbers and starfish. Once inside, some of the creepier species even feed off their host’s genitals. But how, exactly, do they get in? […] “Oh”, I hear you say, “they go in through the mouth?” Well, not quite. They go in through the cloaca, which is in all intents and purposes, an anus, through which sea cucumbers and starfish breathe. Once inside, a pearlfish will hang out in a unique breathing organ called the ‘respiratory tree’ all day, very occasionally poking their own anuses outside to relieve themselves into the open ocean. You know you’re intrigued to learn...

Space Toblerone

Posted By Mark on Dec 20, 2014

A great little find this, Space Toblerone by American author Alan V. Bern. Bern put up all the money to commission the artwork for the science fiction book and self-publish it in 1958, hoping to recoup his investment through support from the Swiss company whose produce he shamelessly promoted in the title. Space Toblerone ended up being his only novel, though, as – soon after publishing – he discovered to both his financial and marital detriment that as a people the Swiss’s famed neutrality in times of war and their workmanship with cuckoo clocks was matched equally by their heartless disdain for books about chocolate starships exploring strange worlds made of pralines and honeycomb in outer space. The book was later printed in the United Kingdom by Puffin Books when Bern removed the controversial visit to the planet of Sodomia and added in the child-friendly co-pilot character of Hornwoggle...