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Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: aliens

[Vampire Month] Jonathon Ferguson interview

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Vampire Month

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Tags

aliens, Curator, Dracula, Eiko Ishioka, Gary Oldman, Harry Houdini, Henry VIII, How to Kill a Vampire, Indiana Jones, Jonathan Ferguson, Leeds Armouries, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Nancy A Collins, Royal Armouries Leeds, Sonja Blue, Vampire, Vampires


Today we have an interview with Jonathan Ferguson, Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. He recently gave a talk entitled ‘How to kill a Vampire’ which I was lucky enough to attend and it was this talk which led me to approach him about a slot in Vampire month.

1) When the general public imagine a curator, I think they generally consider someone older and dressed in tweed. Have you ever found people surprised when you tell them your profession?
It happens less as time goes on, possibly because I’ve succumbed to a bit of tweed! But when I was an assistant curator at Edinburgh Castle I got that a lot.mug

2) What led you to study history and when did you decide to make it a career?
As far back as I can remember really. Indiana Jones was definitely involved! Along with a love of ancient Egypt and an interest in arms and armour, this led down the archaeological path rather than that of written history. It’s always been about the tangible, physical objects for me, though a couple of weeks in Somerset mud convinced me that museums were the way to go!

3) Who is your favourite personality from history?
Well, I should probably be referencing a firearms designer like Mikhail Kalashnikov, having been asked to comment on his recent death by the BBC. However, I think I’ll have to go with Harry Houdini, because whilst he ‘wanted to believe’ in the paranormal, but was also a sceptic and tireless exposer of frauds. I actually have a pet snake named after him!

Me pic with Winchester in Store 24) What is the most interesting exhibit you have handled?
I should probably choose something like a gun belonging to Henry VIII himself, our incredible combination axe/gun, or the experimental grenade launcher I’ve been looking at recently. But my inner geek says that it’s an original ‘Pulse Rifle’ from ‘Aliens’. Movie props can certainly be as valuable as antiques, and increasingly are being seen as important pieces of material culture in their own right. The vampire kit sits somewhere between the two, and certainly ‘up there’ in terms of interesting exhibits!

5) Curator of firearms handling a Vampire Hunting kit – how did that come about?
I began my research on vampire killing kits in my own time back in 2007, before I began to specialise in firearms. But they actually originate within my field, from the antique firearms world. I would categorise them with ‘firearms curiosa’, one of many weird and wonderful things like belt-buckle guns and flintlock rocket launchers (yes, those exist). But of course they are much more than that; a physical way to access the ephemeral world of superstition and the supernatural.IMG_6068

6) You’ve studied both the real world folklore and the fictional tales of Vampires – is truth stranger than fiction?
In terms of defying our 21st century, western logic, definitely. In western fiction, vampires are created by other vampires, or through some deliberate evil or magical act. Yet in folklore, you might be ‘turned’ simply by a cat walking over your dead body! Fiction tends to be a bit more consistent with its lore, even if it’s consciously trying to subvert it

What do you think is the attraction for Vampires? Why are they such a popular topic?
It’s probably the sheer number of themes that the subject lends itself to; threat, death, rebirth, consumption, power, and sex. All but the last are shared with other monsters that prowl our imagination, but only the vampire, particularly the fictional variety, gets to look good doing it!

Share your favourite Vampire story
I have lots, but my all-time favourite has to be the ‘Sonja Blue’ series of books by Nancy Collins, partly because it was the first present my now-wife ever gave me, in the form of the ‘Midnight Blue’ book of collected stories. Though never mainstream, I think it’s been very influential. Dark, gritty, and ultra-violent; the antithesis of ‘Twilight’!

In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?
I like to think Sonja would be up there, but I’ve a feeling Dracula would still come out on top somehow. After all, he always comes back!

What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?
Well, if we’re talking style, I think it’s Dracula again, as played by Gary Oldman. That’s thanks to those wonderful Eiko Ishioka costumes, from the fantastic red muscled wolf armour to the smart victorian suit and top hat..

Tell us about your latest work.
On the vampire front, I’m preparing for the ‘Seriously Staked’ vampire conference at Goldsmiths on March 8. In my day job, I am lead curator on the Armouries First World War project at Leeds. We’ll be providing more context and a more personal focus to the arms and armour of a conflict that defined modern warfare. There will be a physical exhibition and an online feature, both due to open in time for the August 4 centenary of the invasion of Belgium in 1914.

Jonathan Ferguson is Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. His research interests include their use, effect, and depiction in popular culture. His sceptical interest in the paranormal is more of a hobby, stemming from the gift of a Ladybird version of ‘Dracula’ at a young age. However, he is especially enthusiastic when the two things overlap! He has made several television and radio appearances, including National Geographic’s ‘How Sherlock Changed the World’, and BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Lifecycle of a Bullet’.

The Royal Armouries holds in trust for the public one of the finest collections of arms and armour in the world, from exquisite pieces of the gunmaker’s art, to the most functional military weapons, and from the medieval period to the present day.

Find them on Twitter and Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Royal-Armouries/215812575369
https://twitter.com/royal_Armouries

The truth is out there?

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

alien civilisations, aliens, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Douglas Adams, Dyson sphere, E.T the Extra-Terrestrial, Eukaryotes, Europa, images of aliens, Independence Day, Io, NSA, Prokaryotes, Pulsars, Science, SETI, Spring-Heeled Jack, Star Trek, Terry Pratchett, UK SETI, Vulcans


I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because even primitive, prokaryotic parasites should display good grammar.

My trawlings of the internet brought this article to my attention:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/new-hunt-for-aliens-who-%E2%80%9Cmove-stars%E2%80%9D-150112482.html

It seems that the British version of the SETI project (UK SETI research network) is focusing its efforts on finding evidence of aliens capable of moving stars or building giant structures in space. This being in addition to SETI’s usual activities of eavesdropping on potential alien communications like some interstellar version of the NSA*.

This sort of research is great for reporters. It makes good copy and impresses the readers with lots of imaginative images of alien civilisations and the advanced technology their no doubt superior intelligence has created. As a society, modern humanity has been brought up on the Hollywood stories of E.T, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Independence Day. Aliens in these stories are intelligent with highly advanced technology including ships that are capable of achieving the near impossible (according to current human understanding of physics) speeds necessary to travel the vast interstellar distances needed to get here from our nearest neighbour. They also have some form of interest in Earth – whether as a target for conquest, often to mine for our plentiful resources, or as a potential ally (however junior) in some form of galactic federation (for example the Vulcans in Star Trek). They can also be obsessed with capturing and probing helpless humans either for scientific research or, according to Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, as the alien equivalent to Cow Tipping. These are our common held beliefs about alien life, mired in stories of the fantastic that range back even so far as the tales of Spring Heeled Jack.

There are, however, a lot of assumptions in those images of aliens. They assume that not only are they sentient and civilised but that they are infinitely more intelligent and civilised than we are. Why should this be the case? Given that the greatest chance we have of identifying life on other planets might currently be finding bacteria or even just the remnants of bacteria deep in the oceans of Europa or hidden in the rocks of Io, why should we expect any other alien species to be any more than that? These alien bacteria are unlikely to blow up the Whitehouse or give us access to the secrets of eternal life or warp drives. Even if an alien race were more complex than our own earthborne prokaryoates**, to the extent of being multicellular and sentient, then why should they be necessarily more advanced? Could there not be a race of quiet, unassuming aliens out there somewhere in the universe, sitting in caves, drawing on walls and hitting rocks together in the vague hope of one day discovering fire? Given that our entire strategy for finding aliens is predicated on the assumption that they are at least as advanced as we are (to the extent of using EM radiation to communicate and entertain) there is very little chance we’d find any evidence of our extraterrestrial cavemen. Considering that there has been, to date, approximately two hundred thousand years of human existence on earth and we have only been transmitting EM waves from our televisions and radios for just over 100 of these, how likely do you think it is that some other civilisation is going to be producing such waves themselves or picking up on ours? Assuming, of course, that they do utilise EM radiation in the same way we do and don’t communicate using some other method that we have never considered. While the chance of alien life actually existing are a lot higher than previously believed, the universe is so vast in both time and space that the chances of us picking up on each other are very low indeed.

There are, of course, several reasons why we have these assumptions about alien life. The main practical ones revolve around the fact that we basically have no hope of finding any form of life more primitive than 20th century humans. Until we ourselves get to the point of being able to travel to other planets to look for ourselves, we are somewhat limited by our ability to detect things like EM waves and interpret them in some way. Sometimes we can’t even do that right and mistake something like a pulsar for evidence of alien life. There are potentially hundreds of thousands of years worth of alien development that lack such obvious signs but we cannot detect them unless there is a major shift in our technology. So we are limited to what we can detect and that assumes aliens with technology at least as advanced as our own. Also, any alien civilisation that came to visit us would be definitely more advanced because they would have to have developed the appropriate methods of interstellar travel.

However, these prosaic reasons pale in comparison to those based on human nature and wish fulfilment. We have always looked to the

An artists idea of what a Dyson sphere may look like. For scale consider that the yellow thing in the middle is a star like our sun.

stars and wondered about them. In the past we made them the home of the gods, now we consider them the home of aliens. Some theories even conflate the two by stating that the aliens came to earth and became our gods. A number of science fiction franchises are even based on this theory including both the original and more recent Battlestar Galactica series. Psychologically, humanity appears to feel the need to have something bigger than it out there to look up to. Having risen to the top of the foodchain on earth, we offset our responsibility for the planet and all who live on it by deferring it ‘upstairs’ – to superior beings be they gods, aliens or even abstract ideals such as the Fates.

Also, aliens with vastly superior technology and intelligence make for far better stories than quiet ones who just want to get on with discovering fire or inventing the printing press. When we defeat the former we look like epic heroes valiantly battling against impossible odds and a superior foe***. Defeat the latter and we are colonialist dicks imposing our ‘superior’ ideals and technology on the poor defenceless natives and frankly we have done enough of that in our time. In the absence of any other concrete evidence at all about aliens, we will naturally tend to default to an assumption where they are bigger and better than we are. All in all, it is far better for our psychological well-being for aliens to be more advanced than we are.

So, while scientists are busy out there trying to eavesdrop on alien telephone conversations or looking for Dyson spheres, spare a thought for the simple prokaryoates potentially clinging to a semblance of organic life on some volcanic vent deep on an extrasolar planet or the spear wielding, eight armed, crocodile headed people of Arachnia who have not yet heard of Marconi or Alexander Graham Bell and wouldn’t even know how to build a Dyson vacuum cleaner never mind a Dyson Sphere.

* All this talk of the NSA eavesdropping on the internet and not one person thinks to stand up for the rights of aliens to their privacy. Typical humanocentric attitude. Someone should seek to regulate SETI’s privacy invading practises.

** Prokaryotes, for those without knowledge of A level Biology, is a posh science word for the group of organism that include bacteria. It refers to a Kingdom of living organisms that lack a nuclear membrane among other features I won’t go into here. Eukaryoates, which is what we are, do have a nuclear membrane. It is generally considered that Prokaryotes are a more primitive form of life in evolutionary terms. Certainly all the multicellular creatures on earth have nuclear membranes, though as this grouping includes several humans who believe in some very silly political ideas it may seem a little disingenuous to call them ‘advanced’.

*** Or at least having superior pathogens, as in the case of War of Worlds. We humans may not have interstellar travel or heat rays but we sure know how to cultivate a deadly cold virus.

[AW Blog Chain] Thirteen

11 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

Absolute Write, action roleplay, Agatha Christie, aliens, Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, classical cultures, Doctor Who, Farscape, Featherstone Castle, Jane Austen, Joss Whedon, Masquerades and Massacres, Mayan Prophesy, Odyssey LRP, Photography, Predator, Roleplaying games, roman priest, Serenity LRP, Star Trek, Stargate, Steampunk, Strange and Norrell, Temeraire, Thirteen, Victoriana LRP, Waypoint LRP


With the year we are just starting having a ’13’ in it it is probably of no surprise that January’s Blog chain topic would link to this rather maligned number. It occured to me that every single article in the chain will mention Triskaidekaphobia so I thought I would get that out of the way now and not mention it again. There would also likely be many many discussions on bad luck, evil spirits and maybe even a Mayan prophesy or two (apparently, this is also the 13th Baktun which contributed to the recent ‘end of Mayan calandar means end of the world’ debacle). With this in mind, I decided not to go with the obvious topics.

Instead, I would like to celebrate the number 13 by posting here 13 photographs of something I love… Live Action Roleplay. Some of these are photos I have taken, others are taken by other more talented people. Full credit will be given where needed.

dying in the arena

First up is this shot I took at a Mythic Age LRP game called Odyssey in summer 2012. The concept behind that game is that there are a number of classical cultures (Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Persians and Carthiginians initially but there is another one now) who coexist and in order to maintain peace on earth, the gods have restored the sunken city of Atlantis to act as a place where territory disputes can be settled in an arena rather than on the battlefield. Before each contest, the priests of each nation perform a blessing, dedicating the fight to one of their gods. Here we have the wonderful Lizy Townsend as a Roman priest sacrficing herself as she screams out a dying curse on the enemy.

side by side

From the same system, here we have two Romans fighting side by side against some Carthiginians and finally for Odyssey we have a photo that gives you some indication of how large some of the arena battles can be.

roman line up

Another system I played this year was called Masquerades and Massacres or M&M (or, fairly often, Jane Austen and Aliens). This game is set in the Regency period (1820’s to be precise) and incorporates elements of Jane Austen, Strange and Norrell, Naomi Novak’s Temeraire stories, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Alien/Predator universe among others (seriously, there was a character who was an industrialist arms manufacturer by the name of Sir Anthony Stark, recently escaped from a Turkish prison…). It is a bizarre mix but it strangely seems to work and allows a lot of ballgowning… Here are some photographs from several events taken by the inestimable Oliver Facey

RnR-1154

wounded

Waypoint was a LRP game I ran for a good few years, up until 2008 when I stopped because I needed time for other things. It was a Sci Fi system which largely riffed off a lot of things like Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape and similar and also inserted some elements of Doctor Who and Stargate.

DSC00657 Gate 1 assassination

The top photo shows some sci fi post apocalyptic gangsters apeing the Reservoir Dogs walk. The middle one show some techie types trying to repair a hyperspatial gate while defending themselves from attakc and the bottom one shows an assassination attempt on one of the characters…

Another game I am involed in is called Victoriana LRP which is, predictably enough, set in a Steampunk world. Here are two photos from that game:

IMG_4281

This shows the aftermath of a fight with various injured characters being patched up with bandages.

This next one shows a scientist demonstrating a steampunk weapon….

194

The patch of dust on the ground is actually not the remains of someone who has been shot by the big gun. That was there for an entirely different purpose.

The next two photos are from a system based on Joss Whedon’s Firefly universe – Serenity LRP. These are all taken by the talented Ali Hancock, who was able to take them because she was playing a journalist in the game. All done in glorious black and white.

serenity medical

This first one is me helping to perform surgery. The second shows some players stalking through the woods looking for trouble.

serenity soldiers

Finally, a few years ago we went to a 1930’s themed event called An Uncommon Affair. There was intrigue, Egyptian Archeology, an Agatha Christie style murder (which we had to cover up for the good of the crown) and Nazis (who had the audacity to disturb dinner). There was also a photographer with a modern digital camera subtly hidden inside the body of a box brownie. This is their portrait of my character from that game…

doctor benton and dog

Of course, for this game it was possible to take our dog along. He even had a character. He was a dog. It was a bit of a stretch for his thespian talents to play this character. The location, by the way, is a Youth Hostel called Featherstone Castle which is a gorgeous building set in the wonderful wilds of Northumberland.

So, there you have it. Thirteen photographs of Live Action Roleplay to celebrate the thirteen in this year… And at no point did i mention bad luck or the day Friday… Feel free to check out the sites I have showcased above as there are more photographs to be seen on all of them…

The usual rules of the blog chain are in force. So, you have to go check out the other members of the chain or else I will send copies of those photographs we discussed on the phone last week to you know who… you do not want anyone to find out about *that* do you?

Participants and posts:
orion_mk3 – http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to post)
Ralph Pines – http://ralfast.wordpress.com (link to post)
SRHowen – http://srhowen1.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
areteus – https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
bmadsen
– http://hospitaloflife.wordpress.com/ (link to
post)
pyrosama – http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
angyl78 –
http://jelyzabeth.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
gell214 –
http://gelliswriting.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
randi.lee
– http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com/ (link to
post)
ConnieBDowell – http://bookechoes.com/ (link to post)
writingismypassion –
http://charityfaye.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
Araevno –
http://www.simonpclark.com/ (link to post)
Briony-zisaya –
http://fantasywriterwannabe.blogspot.com/ (link to
post)
Kewii – http://kellyneeson.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
katci13 –
http://www.krystalsquared.net/ (link to
post)
MsLaylaCakes: http://www.taraquan.com/ (link to post) [Jan 9-10,
24-]
Amanda R.: http://www.twoamericansinchina.com/ (link to post) [Jan
14-]

[Review] The Chosen: Book one of the Portals of Destiny

08 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

aliens, books, guest blogging, Shay Fabbro, The Chosen


Taking a brief break from Vampire month to tell you about another one of those e-publish a book reviews…

http://www.epublishabook.com/2012/03/08/book-review-the-chosen-by-shay-fabbro/#axzz1oX9kDhcA

Now, back to normal viewing…

Updates! Or finding the time pt2.

13 Thursday Oct 2011

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#amwriting, aliens, productivity, succubi, word counts


About two weeks ago, in this post https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/finding-the-time/, I talked about the pressures of modern life and how it is sometimes difficult to find the time to write when there are loads of other calls on an individual’s time. As a result of this post, I decided to test out a way of improving productivity. The rules were simple:

* 200 words a day minimum

* This included work on any writing project or submissions to guest blogs. It did not include any writing on forums, Facebook, Twitter, this blog or my own personal blog.

* Weekends were exempt from this and I was allowed to take an occasional holiday if there were special circumstances.

*Daily word counts had to be posted on Twitter under the #amwriting hashtag.

Well, today I am reporting that the experiment seems to have been a roaring success. I had two days off due to being in the Lake District without a laptop for the weekend (and so missed Friday and Monday’s counts due to travel) but other than that I have managed to exceed the minimum count on each day. Not only that, yesterday I completed a story that had been lurking on my hard drive for months with no progress and got it sent to a beta reader for assessment.

I think the key here is the low minimum word count. Now, every writer is different and therefore has different ideal working patterns. For some a high target word count may be beneficial – an impetus to strive for greater things. However, from what I have seen, it seems to be full time writers who follow that philosophy – those who not only have a pressing impetus already in the form of ‘do this or you don’t get paid’ but who also have more free time in which to achieve higher targets.* For part timers like myself, I am not so sure this approach is as useful. A too high a target in an environment with lots of other demands on your time might be off putting and lead to you not doing any writing at all in favour of the more important tasks. Psychologically, setting a low target has given me a series of easy wins, each one a boost to the ego and a spur to keep going. On days where the muse has struck or I have lots of free time, I have managed far more words than I even managed when I set higher targets and on my busiest recent days (including one where illness and an interview scuppered most of my free time) I still managed my 200 and therefore felt like I had achieved something.

I am therefore going to carry on with this method, starting with another project tomorrow and maybe some more guest blog entries. I am currently pondering what to write for a guest blog about horror. Succubi and aliens are currently clamouring at my brain’s door for attention.

*And, yes, I appreciate that even full time writers don’t have all the time they would like to spend writing because they also have editing, publicity, research and so on but many part timers have to do all that AND other things as well. 

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