14 May: Yellow Day

Yellow Day is celebrated in South Korea on this date. Couples dress in yellow and give each other Roses. 10 facts about the colour yellow, the one we see when our eyes take in light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 570–590 nm.

1. Yellow is the most visible colour from a distance, which is why it is commonly used for vehicles which need to be seen, such as taxis, road maintenance vehicles, and school Buses. It is also why is it used for road signs signifying a need for caution as opposed to danger. A yellow Traffic Light means slow down and be prepared to stop. This meaning has found its way into the world of sport, as well - a yellow penalty card in a Soccer match means a warning, rather than expulsion.
2. Yellow is a very important colour in China, where it traditionally represents Happiness, glory, and wisdom. In China there are five compass directions - the north, south east and west that we are familiar with, and the middle - which is represented by yellow. It is also a colour associated with Chinese royalty - the legendary first emperor of China was called the Yellow Emperor. The most recent emperor of China wrote in his memoirs that when he was a child, every object surrounding him was yellow. In China, a distinguished guest is welcomed with a yellow carpet rather than a red one.
3. In International maritime signal flags a yellow flag denotes the letter "Q" or a ship communicating that it does not need to be quarantined.
4. The yellow colour of things in nature is more often than not caused by chemicals called carotenoids. Autumn leaves, corn, canaries, Daffodils and other yellow flowers, Lemons, Egg yolks, Buttercups and Bananas. In plants they absorb light energy for use in photosynthesis, and protect the green chlorophyll from light damage. In autumn, the chlorophyll levels fall, and the yellow carotenoids beome more visible. Yellow pigment in animals and birds comes through the plants they eat.
5. Most people know that in the 1930s, the Nazis demanded that Jewish people wore yellow stars. Yellow as a colour of exclusion didn't begin with the Nazis. As far back as the Renaissance non-Christian outsiders were marked with yellow. In 16th century Spain, people accused of heresy had to come before the Spanish Inquisition wearing a yellow cape. Other negative associations with yellow include ambivalence, duplicity, anxiety, cowardice and betrayal (in the early Christian church, yellow was associated with Judas Iscariot). In the west, only six percent of people name yellow as their favourite colour and seven percent say it is their least favourite.
6. On a more positive note, yellow is associated with warmth, because sunlight has a yellow hue, due to the surface temperature of our Sun. It is also associated with cheerfulness, optimism, reason and wisdom. Describing clever people as "brilliant" or "bright" originated from such associations. In some universities, members of the science faculties wear yellow caps and robes because yellow represents reason and research.
7. Ancient Greek and Roman gods were often depicted with yellow Hair, especially sun gods. Since most people in Greece or Italy were naturally dark haired, it became fashionable for women to dye their hair blonde, perhaps because they wanted to look like goddesses, or perhaps because they were fascinated with the exotic yellow hair of slaves from Gaul, Britain, and Germany. Yellow hair is generally referred to as blonde, golden or fair because of the aforementioned negative connotations of the colour.
8. Yellow pigments were among the first used in art. One of the Lascaux cave paintings in France is of a yellow Horse, which is 17,000 years old. The pigment used for that was yellow ochre. The ancient Egyptians and Romans used yellow pigments for skin tones in tombs and murals. The Egyptians may have used orpiment as well, which was highly toxic because it was made from arsenic. Indian yellow, or magnesium euxanthate was commonly used in oil paintings. It was said to be made from the urine of Indian Cows fed only on mango leaves. In food colourings, the most commonly used yellow colouring is Tartrazine, or E number E102. It is found in mustard, jams, jellies, sweets and soft drinks. It is also used for cosmetic products like shampoos.
9. The colour yellow in printing is one of the three primary ink colours along with cyan and Magenta, but yellow on a TV or computer screen is a secondary colour, produced by combining Green and Red light.
10. The third, solar plexus chakra or Manipura is symbolically represented by yellow. Psychics who can see auras say that a person who has a significant amount of yellow in their aura is often in an occupation requiring intellectual acumen, such as a scientist. However, given how cynical scientists usually are about such things, I doubt they see it very often!

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

13 May: Top Gun Day

Top Gun Day Celebrates the Tom Cruise movie. Not sure why since the release date was 16 May. 10 facts about Top Gun.

1. The film stars Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis and was directed by Tony Scott - but the producers went through any number of possible lead actors and a couple of possible directors before the final choices. John Carpenter and David Cronenberg were both considered as director. Brooke Shields, Debra Winger Tatum O'Neal, Jodie Foster, Daryl Hannah, Diane Lane, Sarah Jessica Parker, Carrie Fisher and Linda Hamilton were all considered for the role of Charlie. As for Maverick, Sean Penn, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Matthew Broderick, Michael J. Fox, Tom Hanks, Matthew Modine, Charlie Sheen, Jim Carrey, Rob Lowe, Kevin Bacon, Eric Stoltz, and Robert Downey, Jr. were all in the running at some point. Modine was offered the role but tunred it down because he disagreed withthe film's politics.
2. Tom Cruise turned the role down several times but reportedly changed his mind after being offered a ride in a fighter jet. Val Kilmer wanted to turn down his role but was under contractual obligation to appear in the film.
3. The flight school in the film is based on a real one called U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School, then located at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, founded in the late 1960s as a way to combat losing the air war in Vietnam. The school has since moved to Nevada. Any student at the school who quotes from or refers to the film is fined $5.
4. The film is dedicated to Art Scholl, a stunt pilot who was killed during production. He was attempting the flat spin that kills Goose when his plane went into a tailspin and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Neither the wreckage or his body were ever found. Scholl was a highly experienced stunt pilot, flying a plane engineered specifically to complete difficult maneuvers such as that one. To this day, nobody knows what went wrong.
5. The soundtrack is one of the best selling film sound tracks ever, with over nine million copies sold. Like the cast list, though, it could have been very different. It could have included Only The Strong Survive by Bryan Adams, but Adams refused as he felt the film glorified war. Toto and REO Speedwagon were offered the chance to record Danger Zone. Toto couldn't do it for legal reasons. Judas Priest refused to allow their song Reckless to be used because they thought the film would be a flop. They also wanted Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA but failed to acquire it.
6. The character of Charlie is based on a real person. Her name is Christine Fox, who is blonde, likes to wear high heels and her call sign was "Legs". When the production team met her, they changed the role to emulate her instead of Charlie being a gymnast or a groupie as in the first draft of the script. From December 2013 to February 2014, Fox served as the acting U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, making her the Defense Department's highest-ranking female officer ever.
7. There were problems with the two lead actors, because Kelly McGillis is three inches taller than Tom Cruise. She had to film scenes in stockinged feet while Cruise wore boots with lifts in them. In one scene where she has to walk towards him, she is actually walking in a trench.
8. The film makers needed to work with the US Navy to make the film. The Navy charged Paramount $1.8 million for the use of planes and aircraft carriers. Which was actually a lot less than it should have been - this price was at a discount subsidised by the taxpayer, which meant the US Navy could demand that they see the script first and edit out anything which showed the military in a bad light. Tony Scott spent a few days on board USS Enterprise to shoot aircraft landing and taking off from an aircraft carrier. He allegedly asked the captain to change the course of the ship so the aircraft would be backlit by the sun. The captain said it would cost $25,000 to alter course. Scott allegedly wrote out a cheque on the spot. Two actual missile launches were used in the film. The rest of the missile shots were done using models, but were allegedly so realistic that the Navy investigated the possibility the producers had filmed missile launches that they weren't supposed to. Even so, according to military website We Are the Mighty, 79 glaring errors managed to make it through to the final cut.
9. The US Navy were delighted by the success of the film and decided to make use of it by setting up recruitment booths outside cinemas. Recruits for Navy fighter pilots increased 500% and 90% of the new recruits said they'd seen the film. What we don't know is how many of them dropped out when real training turned out not to be as glamorous as the film might have led them to expect!
10. At time of writing, there is a sequel in the works, due for release in June 2020. Top Gun: Maverick will star Tom Cruise as Maverick having become an instructor himself, and be directed by Joseph Kosinski.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

12 May: Goofy

On this date in 1932, Goofy first appeared in the cartoon Mickey's Review by Walt Disney. 10 things you might not know about this Disney character.

1. However, he wasn't called Goofy back then. He was called Dippy Dawg, and appeared as an older character and more of a redneck. He was subsequently redesigned and renamed Goofy. In the 1950s he was briefly renamed again and became George Geef, an "Everyman" who struggled with everday problems, and finally went back to being Goofy as we know him today.
2. The character of Goofy was created by Frank Webb and Art Babbitt. The latter once said of the character "Think of the Goof as a composite of an everlasting optimist, a gullible Good Samaritan, a half-wit, a shiftless, good-natured colored boy and a hick".
3. Goofy's voice was at first provided by Pinto Colvig, who also provided the voices for Bozo the Clown, Bashful and Grumpy. Colvig fell out with Disney and left Goofy without a voice for a time, but since then, Hal Smith, Will Ryan, Tony Pope, and Bill Farmer have all voiced Goofy.
4. During the period when Goofy had lost his voice, the Disney studios made a series of short cartoons called the How To... series in which Goofy would demonstrate how to do things like Ski or ride a Horse with a narrator providing a commentary. The few utterances Goofy made in these cartoons were recordings of Colvig, or another voice actor imitating him. These cartoons were popular, and are occasionally made even today, the most recent being the How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, released in 2007.
5. Goofy has a son called Max Goof. This makes Goofy the only main Disney character to have a son. It may be that he was made a parent so he would appeal to the adults watching Disney with their children.
6. If he has a son, it follows that he must, at some point, have had a wife. His wife actually appeared in some cartoons in the late 1940s and early 1950s but her face was never shown, only the back of her head. However, the look of her hair and the fact she is shown as having five fingers instead of four like other Disney animal characters, suggests she was human. In one film, called Father’s Day Off, it was implied that when Goofy was away she'd kiss the milkman, the grocery store man, and the laundry man when they called. Hardly good clean Disney behaviour, so she was dropped with no explanation, and by 1955, it was being implied that she had died.
7. Goofy is portrayed as very tall, clumsy and silly. In fact, there is a height requirement for playing Goofy at Disney theme parks - applicants must be over six feet tall.
8. Goofy's shoe size is 18 and a half.
9. He's also known for his trademark "holler" which he utters if he falls or is launced into the air. It can be transcribed as "Yaaaaaaa-hoo-hoo-hoo-hooey!" and was originally recorded by yodeller Hannès Schroll for the 1941 short film The Art of Skiing. The same holler is sometimes used in films which don't have Goofy in them. Listen out for it in Cinderella, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Pete's Dragon, The Rescuers, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Home on the Range, Enchanted, and Moana.
10. There is even a version of Goofy in which he is a superhero, Super Goof, who gets his powers from eating super goobers (Peanuts).

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

11 May: Minnesota

On this date in 1858 Minnesota became the 32nd state of the Union. Here are 10 things you might not know about the US state of Minnesota.

Lake Superior Agates

1. The name of the state comes from a Dakota Sioux Indian word meaning "cloudy water" or "sky water" which refers to local rivers.
2. The state capital is St. Paul and the largest city Minneapolis. These two cities are next to each other and have been dubbed "the Twin Cities". Nearly 60% of the state's population live in the Twin City area. The settlement that became St Paul was originally called "Pig's Eye" after a French-Canadian whiskey trader, Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant, one of the founders. Minneapolis, meanwhile, is, according to Weather.com, the coldest major city in America with 23 to 25 subzero cold days each year.
3. Minnesota is the second northernmost U.S. state (after Alaska) and northernmost contiguous state. One of its nicknames is the Land of 10,000 Lakes, although the actual number is nearer 11,000. Hence Minnesota has 90,000 miles of shoreline, more than California, Florida and Hawaii combined. It also has more cycle trails than any other state.
4. The official state bird is the Common loon. However, Minnesotans often joke that the Mosquito is their unofficial state bird, because there are so many of them (over 50 different species). Other state symbols include State Insect: Monarch butterfly; fish: Walleye; State Flower: Pink and white lady's slipper; State Tree: Norway pine; State Mushroom: Morel; State Gemstone: Lake Superior Agate; State Beverage: Milk and State Muffin: Blueberry.
5. Politics can be a bit wacky in Minnesota. The state itself has two slightly different constitutions because the Republicans and Democrats refused to sign the same document. The town of Dorset chooses its mayor by lottery rather than by election. Every resident's name is placed in a hat. Hence the youngest mayor in history was Robert Tufts, aged 4, whose name was drawn out in 2013. In Cormorant, a Dog named Duke has won the mayoral election three times. Further proof that if there is a silly option, most people will vote for it.
6. Famous people from Minnesota include, in the world of music, Bob Dylan, Prince and Eddie Cochran; in literature, Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald (with Laura Ingalls Wilder and Neil Gaiman making the state their home although both were born elsewhere); in film, Judy Garland, Jane Russell, Kelsey Grammer, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Lange, Chris Pratt, and Winona Ryder (who was named after the town of Winona, Minnesota. Aviator Charles Lindbergh, agony aunt Ann Landers and evangelist Billy Graham also come from Minnesota.
7. Things invented in Minnesota include Masking and Scotch tape, the pop-up toaster, Staplers, the super computer, Spam, rice cakes, water skis and Mars and Snickers bars. It has also seen some medical firsts, including the first open Heart surgery and the first bone marrow transplant, the first heart operation to use the deep freeze technique, and the first Blood transfusion using artificial blood. Finally, Minneapolis Public Library was the first to separate children's books from the rest, forming the first children's department in a library, back in 1889.
8. Minneapolis has more golfers per capita than any other city in the country and the state has more recreational boats than any other state - one for every six people.
9. Minnesota has some things which are the largest of their kind, such as the largest fibreglass half-husked corn cob which is 25 feet tall. The largest statue of Paul Bunyan which is 29 feet tall. He is kneeling. If he'd been standing up he would be 33 feet tall. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is the largest urban sculpture garden in the country. The Guthrie Theater is the largest regional playhouse in the country. The largest statue of a pelican stands 15.5 feet tall. Finally, the world's largest ball of twine, (weighing 17,400-pound) to have been made by one person (Francis A. Johnson) is in Darwin. Every year in August, Darwin holds “Twine Ball Day" to celebrate it. Weird Al mentions Darwin’s twine ball in his 1989 song “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.”
10. In 1914, two guys called Carl Wickman and Andrew "Bus Andy" Anderson began operating a bus service, with just one bus, between the towns of Hibbing and Alice. This company expanded into Greyhound Lines, Inc.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

10 May: National Shrimp Day

Today is National Shrimp Day. Here are ten things you might not know about shrimps.

1. Shrimp or prawn? In the UK, a common starter dish is "prawn cocktail". In the USA the same dish is usually called "shrimp cocktail". Are they, in fact, the same thing? According to the Oxford English Dictionary a shrimp is "a small free-swimming crustacean with an elongated body, typically marine and frequently of commercial importance as food" and a prawn is "a marine crustacean which resembles a large shrimp". So it may be down to the size of the creature, but the two words are often used virtually interchangeably. A marine biologist is unlikely to refer to the creatures by either name when studying them in the wild. There are over 2,000 species of shrimp, so they tend to use the biological names, such as Caridea and Dendrobranchiata.
2. Shrimp are found all over the world in a variety of habitats. Some are quite specialised, like the coral shrimp in the Indo-Pacific. As their name suggests, they live in Coral reefs, eating the mucus coral produces while protecting the coral from predators. Other species eat the bloodsucking parasites that live in the mouths of bigger fish. These shrimp will do a dance, waving their antenna to attract the fish, which allow them inside their mouths safely to remove the parasites.
3. It is hard to pinpoint exactly how long humans have been eating shrimp, because the chitinous shells of shrimp degrade rapidly, leaving no fossil remains. However, archaeologists studying ancient cultures in Mexico have speculated that raised paved areas near the coast in Chiapas were used to dry shrimp in the sun. They further speculate that nearby clay hearths were built for drying shrimp when it wasn't sunny.
4. The ancient Romans probably ate them, as clay vessels with shrimp decorations have been found in the ruins of Pompeii. In 3rd century Greece, the author Athenaeus wrote "... of all fish the daintiest is a young shrimp in fig leaves."
5. A couple of sources I found suggested that shrimp can only swim backwards, but most say that they do swim forwards using swimmerets on the underside of their abdomens. They can, however, swim backwards much more quickly by flexing the muscles of their abdomen and tail, which they use as an escape response.
6. A shrimp's body has two main parts - the cephalothorax (the head and thorax fused together) and the abdomen. It's outer shell is called the carapace. The part of the carapace which extends over the head to form a kind of beak is called the rostrum (Latin for beak). The rostrum is used for attack or defence.
7. They have a lot of legs. Typically eight pairs of them. The first three pairs of legs are actually part of their mouths and mostly used to gather food into the shrimp's mouth. These are called maxillipeds, Latin for "jaw feet". The other five are actual legs, used for perching rather than walking. They also have two pairs of antennae on their heads, one short, one long for feeling and also tasting their environment. They have compound eyes on stalks which have panoramic vision and are good at detecting movement.
8. There is a species of shrimp, the pistol shrimp, which can snap its claws extremely loudly - louder than a gunshot or jet engine and loud enough to rupture a human ear drum. The force of the snap can deliver an explosive attack hotter than the surface of the Sun and is used to stun prey. Humans have made use of this. Navy Submarines sometimes hide in beds of snapping shrimp to disguise their location from sonar detection.
9. Female shrimp can lay up to a million eggs at once and some species can store sperm from multiple fathers.
10. It's probably a good job they are so fertile because shrimp are prey to so many other animals - they are eaten by fish, Crabs, sea urchins, starfish, seabirds, Whales, Dolphins, Sharks and of course, humans. One billion pounds of shrimp are eaten every year by Americans alone. Shrimp is high in calcium, iodine and protein but low in energy. Shrimp is also a significant source of cholesterol depending on how it is cooked. On the other hand, they also contain selenium, an antioxidant mineral which can help prevent cancer.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

9 May: Richard Adams Quotes

Richard Adams, author of Watership Down was born on this date in 1920. Some words of wisdom from him:

1. We are all human and fall short of where we need to be. We must never stop trying to be the best we can be.
2. All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.
3. You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.
4. We all have to meet our match sometime or other.
5. When the man was disgraced and told to go away, he was allowed to ask all the animals whether any of them would come with him and share his fortunes and his life. There were only two who agreed to come entirely of their own accord, and they were the dog and the cat. And ever since then, those two have been jealous of each other, and each is for ever trying to make man choose which one he likes best. Every man prefers one or the other.
6. If you want to bless me you can bless my bottom, for it is sticking out of the hole.
7. Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.
8. Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.
9. To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse - that cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature.
10. I’d rather succeed in doing what we can than fail to do what we can’t.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

8 May: The Borg

30 years ago, in 1989, The Borg first appeared in Star Trek. They are cybernetic organisms, linked to a hive mind known as "the Collective".

1. For the first series of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there wasn't really a regular antagonist such as the Klingons and the Romulans in the Original Series. The Klingons were now allies of Star Fleet. Originally, the Ferengi were going to fulfill that function, but they were eventually deemed to be too comical and not a convincing threat. The Borg were much more powerful and frightening and so they became the regular enemies instead. The Borg were initially going to be insects but budget restraints led to them being portrayed as humanoids with a hive mind.
2. The Borg do not procreate - their population grows as a result of assimilating other species. The appearance of Borg children and even babies on episodes of Star Trek is due to there being children and babies on the planets or star ships they assimilate. Young children are placed in maturation chambers until they are old enough to be useful.
3. Individual Borg are known as drones. They usually have one eye replaced with a sophisticated ocular implant and one arm replaced with a prosthetic one which will have a number of tools built in, such as weapons or medical scanners.
4. Borg drones don't say much. Typically the only words they might utter come from the hive rather than from the individual and usually are some variation of their catch phrase, "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile". They don't have body hair, and their skin takes on a pale Grey hue. Since they are not seen as individuals, they don't have names, either. If they need to be identified they will have a numerical designation such as "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01." This particular drone was dispatched to Voyager in a rare incidence of the Borg negotiating and co-operating with another species. Seven of Nine became a member of Voyager's crew.
5. They assimilate other species because their ultimate goal is to achieve perfection. They do not refer to other species by name but rather assign each one a number. Humans are 'Species 5618'. They are fussy about which races to assimilate. They regard the Kazon, for example, to be technologically inferior and not worthy of assimilation. There is even a species for which resistance is not futile - Species 8472 is the only race shown to be capable of completely rejecting assimilation attempts. So far.
6. The collective consciousness allows the Borg to adapt quickly to any obstacle they encounter. All drones are linked to it and receive constant supervision and guidance from it. The mental energy of the collective can heal injured drones, fix technology or communicate ways to deal with any tactics used against them.
7. We don't know the origin of the Borg, just that they have been around for thousands of years. Some offshoots of the Star Trek franchise have come up with different stories explaining where they might have come from, but there is no definitive origin story in the main canon. Yet.
8. Most Borg spacecraft are cubes made from titanium alloy. Most are known as Borg Cubes due to their shape, although there are such things as a Borg Sphere and a Borg Diamond as well. Their craft will have warp drives, weapons, tractor beams and transporters. They also have the ability to regernerate. What a Borg spacecraft won't have is a bridge (because the hive mind is controlling it), living quarters (because drones don't need to eat or sleep) or even an engineering section. The temperature on board is a constant 39.1 °C (102.38 °F) with 92% humidity.
9. The creative team behind Star Trek soon realised that a hive mind making collective decisions wasn't the type of villain audiences preferred to relate to. Hence they came up with the idea of the Borg Queen, the embodiment of the hive mind. Whether she is their ruler or simply an avatar is unclear - evidence exists in Star Trek episodes for both. However, she provides a focal point for viewers.
10. In one episode, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is assimilated into the Collective, creating Locutus of Borg (meaning "he who has spoken", in Latin). The Borg used him to communicate that the Borg only want to "raise the quality of life" of the species they "assimilate."

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two