Comments on: Welcome to Mars

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:21:04 +0000

Thanks John. Think I might make that my holiday reading this Christmas.

By: John

John — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:11:16 +0000

Hi Richard. I’m not exactly unbiased with regards to this book since the publisher is a friend and I’m predisposed to the subject matter. Only just started reading it but the parallels he draws are fascinating, for example noting that people moving into the new American suburbs in 1947–built in part to disperse the population away from the nuclear targets of city centres–would be able to listen to Music Out of the Moon, an album of theremin mood music released that year. The book is full of this kind of cross-cultural stuff and the phrase “Absolute Elsewhere” shows that Hollings is aware of the precedent for this approach in Pauwels and Bergier’s The Morning of the Magicians.

Another good parallel aside from P&B would be Adam Curtis’s great TV series, especially The Century of the Self. It’s no surprise that there’s a quote from Curtis on the back.

Re: BB. I’m still surprised myself that a single post generated so much interest. One of the things I’ve tried to do with this blog is spot areas of cultural neglect and it was your post about In Search of Space which made me realise there wasn’t much about Barney’s work on the web. The great thing about these new forms of communication is being able to focus attention then have your own horizons broadened as people gather with information of their own.

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:12:01 +0000

Hi John,

Hope you’re well. I was looking for your post on Barney Bubbles from 2007 and was totally blown away by how that’s developed. Amazing stuff: nearly two year’s of comments. Have to say congratulations, you’ve done us all a massive service there. Although that’s not why I’m commenting here.

Have you got into this book yet? It sounds just the sort of thing I’m looking to read right now so I’d be very interested to hear what you think of it. I’ve been reading vintage Asimov lately and what’s fascinating is how he thought the future might turn out from where he was in the 50s (before the micro-chip!). The older stuff is kind of “quaint” now.

Love the cover – a bit sinister, a bit “Strangelove”.