Tag: sleep

A Voyage to Arcturus

UK: In Praise of David Lindsay and his Book “A Voyage to Arcturus! (14.2.2026)

What was written on those 30 missing pages? No one knows because they remain missing. It is interesting to speculate as what is left reads like the music (and lyrics) from “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Considering how bizarre and sexually suggestive the remaining content is – one is left pondering as to the true scale of non-conformity. Anyway, a number of early SciFi writes used the agency of “sleep” as a means to travel long distances or indeed travel through time – I think this idea dates back to the French author “Louis-Sébastien Mercier” (1740-1814) and his 1771 masterpiece entitled “The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One” (L’An 2440, rêve s’il en fut jamais). I think HG Wells also borrowed this concept for his 1898 book entitled “When the Sleeper Wakes”. Lindsay, it must be said, did flesh it out somewhat by suggesting it was possible to “travel on light beams” in “torpedo-shaped metal space craft” (the essence of the modern “Alien” franchise?). Of course, it must be stressed that Arcturus was in fact the “sun” around which the planet Tormance orbited. The protagonists did not travel to the sun – but to the planet Tormance – which is an interesting and unexplained contradicting. Why not the title “A Voyage to Tormance” – as this planet seems far more warmer than earth (the main character Maskull required a blood transfusion just tosurvive – provided wilfully by a Tormance women (an allusion to the power of menstruation – perhaps?)

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Pokemon Go: Technological Brainwashing – You’ve Got to Catch Them All! (19.4.2023)

I have heard cases of people (of all ages and genders) mindlessly following the instructions linked to these entirely ‘virtual’ games and getting into ‘real time’ trouble in the (existing) material world! This includes breaking into people’s homes, walking out into traffic or onto rail-tracks and ‘stepping-off’ bridges and other high platforms! This stupidity comes about as the instructions controlling these games stipulate that if the player follows the instruction in just the right way – then a ‘miraculous’ (computer generated) image will suddenly become visible on the digitalised screen! Players have been so absorbed in the game that when challenged by ‘real’ Police (often ‘armed’) – they carry-on playing – treating the Police as an unnecessary ‘interference’ in their quest to ‘catch them all’! Of course, I must avoid the allegation of being a ‘Luddite’ – but people should take better care of their Mental Health and strive to realise exactly what the Big Tech Companies are doing with your free-will! You are basically conforming to the norms of predatory capitalism by your conscious mind being put to sleep!

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USSR: Valentina Tereshkova (Валентина Терешкова) – First Woman in Space (1963) By Andrey SidorchikAiF (Андрей СидорчикАиФ) (2013)

Tereshkova, contrary to the opinion of experts, was personally chosen by Nikita Khrushchev, who liked the woman’s origin: Valentina’s parents were from a simple family. Her father worked as a tractor driver, he died in the Soviet-Finnish war, her mother worked at a textile factory. In addition, Valentina Tereshkova herself began her career at a weaving mill, where she became the secretary of the Komsomol. In this, she favourably differed from Ponomareva, who came from a family of engineers and had a Ph.D. in mathematics, and Solovieva, a famous athlete, and world champion in parachuting. Tereshkova also parachuted, but Solovieva, for example, had about 700 jumps by that time, whilst Tereshkova had less than a hundred. 

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