Issue 61


Issue 61 (36 pp) Autumn 2023	Page	Contents - Issue 61
	Front	A frame from Invaders from Time
	2	From the Editor: Contents, and Purchase and subscription information, and Christmas greetings from the team.
	3-6	Dan Dare in The Corium Experiment, After breaking a couple of windows in his fly-through of Sir Huber's office. Digby finally gets shot down (without injury)
	7-10	The Collector's Collectors, Andrew Darlington tells the story of William Oliver, Guillemont Lofts and Derek John Adley, academic researchers of comics and story-papers.. You might remember your fathers talking about The Gem, The Magnet and Hotspur story papers for boys, which were around in the earlier part of the 20th Century. There were may others, so to gain an education in defunct, and obscure but, nevertheless, interesting publications, do read this article.
	11-13	Jeff Hawke, "The Comet's Tale", Part 8. Illustration and story by Sydney Jordan. Having caght up with the amiable Arcturian villain, Chalcedon, Jeff is told something he didn't expect. Chalcedon and Ortzan were co-operating in a subterfuge. In short, Ortzan had gone to considerable lengths to organize his own kidnapping to get a little m-time, away from from his, ah, somewhat possessive wife, the Lady Oriole. Hypertension warning for readers: there are yet more pictures of scantily-clad females in this episode. Can't be avoided, considering the storyline. and, there's another twist in this tale that is best left out of this summary, on the grounds of not giving away too much.
	14-17	Space Review, by Ray Wright. The pace of progress in astronautics and astronomy seems to be increasing all the time, making always harder to make a choice about what to put into this four-monthly review. The things that stood out for me, were the near simultaneous attempts to put a lander down close to the Moon's south pole, by the Indian and Russian national space agencies. One crashed: the other didn't.. A significant sample of gravel from an asteroid has been returned to Earth examination, The JWST found some unexplainable binary planets in the Orion Nebula, a hint of of dark-matter-powered stars, and evidence of a chemical compound in an exo-planet's atmosphere, that, also exists on Earth, and has a biological origin. Other exotic and unexplainable stars of recent discovery are also discussed,
	18-19	The centre-spread: this is an illustration of a ring-shaped, rotating orbital space station, providing artificial gravity for its long-term human occupants. The concept, amongst others, was dreamed up by a futurological team of the great and good in space technology in the early 1950s. See the article on pages 23-29 next entry for more detail, but I'd like to note that in the space station illustration, there is a "mercury boiler", heated by solar rays. This idea also appears in the Topp's Space Cards of the 1950s (No 19), There must have been an idea about using mercury vapour as a working fluid in space-based heat engines, in those days. It's never mentioned, now.
	20-23	Invaders from Time, A Nick Hazard, Interstellar Agent story, Part 8. Script: Phil Harbottle, Art: Ron Turner, based on "Lords of 9016" by John Russell Fearn. Editing. & additional material: John Lawrence.: Nick and his crew set out to attach a bomb to the approaching Tegati space vessel, using the Tegati time-travel craft to avoid detection.
	23-29	The Great 1962 Space Programme that Almost Was! A symposium of space scientists was organised by Collier's magazine. in 1952. Their mission was to use their knowledge to imagine the future of space travel. The team included Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley, and the well-known artist and illustrator of the time, Chesley Bonestell. The results of the deliberations were published in a series of articles, illustrated by Bonestell. Historical note: many of Bonestell's images were used to inspire the above-mentioned Topp's Space Cards.
	30-33	The Web, by Ron Embleton.. An object looking very much like a giant spider-web has appeared in space. An unsuspecting spaceship is reduced to wreckage by it and Bill Merrill, of the Scientific Investigation Bureau is sent out to find out what happened.
	34-35	Space humour: Dan Dare in "Earth's Greatest Menace", Story by Brian Berke, Art by Dave Windett. Dan and Digby are sent to a space station where the crew are being held hostage by (you guessed it) The Mekon. The word "menace" is significant here. Just you wait and see...
	Back	This is a scene, not in the original story, from the Dan Dare story "Trip to Trouble", signed by Don Harley.