Astoundingly like an eye, isn’t it?

I’m reminded of an SF novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

I present both versions for comparison purposes.

Just by the jetty from where the boat trips to Inchcolm island set off there is this sculpture. The plaque mentions there is a large grey seal colony on the island.

South Queensferry is of course dominated by the two Forth Bridges but mainly by the original (rail) Forth Bridge. The trains seem to be every few minutes one way or the other. They look like toys against the Bridge’s sheer size. Here’s one coming off the bridge to the south. The photo captured the reflections in the water quite well.

The local shops etc make great play of the bridge connection. This is the Rail Bridge Bistro and Gift Shop.

I like the way the Rail Bridge motif is maintained on the fencing to the left front and also on the door handles on the entrance.

The sculpture of one of the bridge spans is to commemorate those who built the bridge.

This, I believe, contains the only commemoration to those who died in its construction, who are not enumerated individually anywhere.

A couple more pictures of South Queensferry have been added to my South Queensferry flickr set.

It’s a dark molecular cloud about 500 light years away. It’s dark because the dust and molecular gas it contains absorb nearly all the visible light which would otherwise shine through it.

Using improved infrared technology astronomers can now see through this.

An example of the group’s more tender tendency.

NGC 3239 is 25 million light years away. The bright object in the centre of the frame is a (much closer) star in our galaxy.

NGC 3239 contains the year’s first supernova, designated 2012A, arrowed – > < – in the photo. The light from it is of course 25 million years old.

There is also a lovely galaxy to the bottom right of the frame.

Gary’s aim is to bring back to life some otherwise out of print books never before made available for e-readers.

Most of the projected releases are by authors known to him – and to me, it must be said. I’m particularly glad to see Angus McAllister appear on the list.

I don’t have an e-reader myself (I’m a bit of a Luddite; I prefer reading ink on paper, where it won’t be a calamity if you drop it in the bath) but if I had I would be buying these.

*or whatever the equivalent e-thingy is.

The book is set several generations after the devastating Gene Wars of the late twenty-first century. Varieties exist of humans genetically altered by what Sullivan terms virii (though why “viruses” would not have sufficed is difficult to see.) Unaltered, true humans cannot survive on Earth in the open but are confined to reservations, known as rez. Society is now run by a group of disembodied Heads – known as “the Pickled Brains” – who were found in the ruins of the buildings occupied by Ingenix, the company largely responsible for the Wars.

A series of interplanetary portals has been found at Underkohling, somewhere in the outermost reaches of the Solar System, from some of which no-one returns. The fugitive bosses of Ingenix were thought to have escaped through one of these. When indications show that travel back through this gate may be possible Daire Morales goes to investigate and is drawn through the portal.

On Earth, Jenae Kim, an altermode who has gills and so can breathe underwater – such altermoders can also communicate telepathically with dolphins – is employed by the Heads to help decode the data from the Underkohling gate and is aided by her dolphin pod.

Morales finds a strange world beyond the gate, inhabited by children and adolescents who only have time to reproduce before a “distortion” changes them into something inhuman and inimical. Those who show signs of distorting are driven out before they can inflict damage. The surroundings of this world – the lywyn – are a repository of memory mediated by the “ghosts” of those who have distorted. (Lethe is classical Greek for forgetfulness and was one of the rivers of the underworld.)

Jenae Kim gradually becomes drawn into conflict with the Heads and the threads of the novel draw together with a hijacked expedition to the gate.

This was Sullivan’s first novel and as such it is impressive. The main characters’ motivations are comprehensible and distinct.

There is always a problem in such a scenario with how to depict non-humans in the round. Too often they can be one or two-dimensional at best. Here the altered humans known as One Eyes are not particularly fleshed out – to be fair they are mainly background – but most of the children beyond the gate are merely ciphers while the main agent in this setting, their leader Tsering, has an attribute which is largely due to plot necessity and alters as a due result.

You may recall I had not been overly impressed with Sullivan’s Someone to Watch Over Me. Her last year’s BSFA Award nominee Lightborn was more engaging – and shows an interesting parallel with Lethe as regards motifs – but I still would probably not have bought this but for sighting it in a second hand bookshop (in Haworth.) It is good stuff, though.

The question mark above appears because about two weeks ago – mid-January – we noticed a cherry tree flowering – a sign of the mild winter we’ve been having.

That Sunday, the 15^th, I photographed it.

The same day the park’s pond was partly frozen over.

Further round the park was evidence of the wild storms we endured recently.

Some conifers had fallen in the area around the fountain – a fountain whose winter spectacle I featured in this post two years ago.

Their early hits were mostly rubbish created by the songwriters Chinn and Chapman (who also were responsible for the band Mud and wrote for Suzi Quatro among others) but The Sweet began to hit their stride when they moved away from directly appealing to the young “teenybopper” market in 1973 with the harder edged Blockbuster which started off their biggest run of chart success.

Examination of their B-sides – which they wrote themselves, and leaned toward heavy rock – reveals more than a degree of casual sexism: a feature mostly absent in the bands they aspired to emulate.

Some sources have it that lead singer Brian Connolly was related to the actor who played Taggart, Mark McManus. As Wiki says that Connolly was fostered this would not quite be the case.

The Six Teens was the most lyrically interesting of their big 1973/4 hits, referencing the disturbances of 1968, but it was the start of their popular decline.