Angels

 

It's nearly Christmas, so I was thinking about a Christmas post. Not that you'd find the Angels I'm thinking of on a Christmas tree...

Female pilots in fiction are rare, but by no means unknown. The first TV female pilots I knew about were the Angels, flying the most advanced jet fighters to protect the Earth from the Mysterons.

Captain Scarlet was one of the Gerry Anderson puppet series, following on from Thunderbirds and Joe 90.

It was the darkest of his puppet series, with a hideous threat to the world from alien beings on Mars. 

Spectrum fought against the Mysterons, and one arm of Spectrum were the Angels. 

The five Angels were codenamed Symphony, Rhapsody, Melody, Harmony, and the Squadron Leader was Destiny, who was obviously the only one of the five with no ear for music.

Why all five female? There is no explanation (aside from ensuring they are a uniform group) – perhaps the cockpit of the Angel Interceptors was too small for a male pilot.

 

 Airfix made a kit of the aeroplane, which is relatively accurate to the models seen on screen... except that the pilot was a standard Airfix jet pilot figure, and clearly not the more curvaceous form of any of the Angels. The figure was swiftly labelled Cacophony Angel, and sacked. Fortunately, when Airfix re-issued the kit last year (still with Cacophony in the package) a resin replacement materialised from RetroSF, so that the model could have the proper pilot to fly the fighter.

 

 

In 2005, Gerry Anderson launched a new version of Captain Scarlet, with computer-generated animation.

 

 It looked spectacular, and incidentally included an updated Angel Interceptor and lovingly created new Angels.

 

 

It should have been very successful. Unfortunately, ITV management, who organised the broadcasts of the show, had been Mysteronized. They included the show in two chunks during their dire Saturday morning show, with no fixed time during the morning and with it hacked about to fit in with their scheduling.

 Anyone wanting to watch the show would be frustrated – anyone who was watching the enveloping show was not going to be impressed.

 

The show did not survive for long, despite excellent graphics and well-written scripts (Phil Ford, who wrote most of it, went on to write for the new Doctor Who). I suspect the show's failure was a result of an evil scheme by Captain Black...

Whatever the cause, the Angels were another source that fed into my own female pilot, Sorrel - who I suspect would kill to get her hands on a jet fighter...

SFFSat 14/12/13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Moustachio just turned a pressure hose at our heroine, but missed, and the foul stuff hit his friend...

Beardy screamed, a high-pitched wail of agony – his uniform steamed and the side of his face against which the stream had spattered blistered in an instant, horrible pustules bursting out on his cheek and the side of his neck. 

 

Moustachio, realising what he had done, jerked the pipe back, swinging the jet wildly so it tore into the bushes to the side of me. He was still snarling – his eyes were on me, not the damage he had done to his friend. I saw his muscles tense under the threadbare uniform as he began to swing the jet back towards me. I didn't pause to temper my response. My anger flared inside me at his murderous effort, and I dived into the magerealm, grabbed the fireflow and flung it onto the psychopath.

It was his turn to scream. The flames were bright enough to illuminate the entire area. My stomach had twisted in sympathy for what Beardy was going through – it rebelled more at the sight of Moustachio's brief, incandescent agony, and I struggled to retain what little it contained. It was a hideous way to kill a man, even scum like this one. 

 Comments welcomed!

Airfix

We didn't have the internet when I was young. Information was harder to come by. Much of what I knew of aeroplanes came not from books or television, but from that indispensable source of cherished information, the Airfix Catalogue. We got this magnificent publication every year, and I would spend hours poring over it and dreaming about the extraordinary hardware within.








The Airfix box-art was some of the best artwork I had seen, and it brought the planes and trains and cars and ships to life. I bought dozens of kits.

 My favourites were always the aircraft. Not the WW2 spitfires and messerschmitts my friends raved about – my delights were helicopters, science fiction models (a rarity then and now)... and biplanes.

I was never a desperately good modeller. My kits would never have won prizes. But I really enjoyed making the detailed models, painting them and putting on the decals (transfers, as I called them then).

 

I had a squadron of aircraft on my shelves in front of my books on my bedroom wall.

The pictures here show just a few
of the kits I had...

...plus the one I wanted, but which was out of production at the time. I wrote to Airfix asking whether the HP 0/400 would be released again. They told me it was unlikely in the near future – and sent me the current Airfix Calendar, which had the HP 0/400 as one of the monthly pictures.

 

Small wonder I thought Airfix were a great company.


And perhaps it was not surprising that the heroine of my novels is a pilot, flying just such a structure of wire and doped canvas...

SFFSat 7/12/13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Moustachio has just told Sorrel he is going to kill her.

  

Moustachio lifted something from a holster on the side of the trike. A straight metal pipe, with a protrusion upon it, and a brown leather tube running back from it to the body of the steamer. Something gushed from the pipe towards me. This was not white steam – it was a blue stream of vapour, and it sprayed out, covering the ten feet between us in an instant.

Every now and again I begin to think that my luck is better than it used to be. The jet hissed like rain on a pavement as it slammed into the road beyond me. It had to be something pretty unpleasant, but Moustachio had not quite got his aim right. If he had, I had no doubt I would be in no shape to do anything - ever. As it was, I had an instant to fling myself sideways, further away from the jet, and incidentally back to where Beardy was. Moustachio turned the jet to try to follow me, and the jet caught Beardy first.

Comments welcomed!

SFFSat 30/11/13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. Two thuggish officials have cornered her, and one points a knife at her. She decides to retaliate - is she going to use lethal magic from the magerealm?

I slid my spindles around a fireflow in the magerealm, and yanked at it.

At the last instant I swung it to one side, hauling through only a fraction of the fire. The sword blade was a sliver of emerald green in the ‘realm. It became a blaze of brilliant light in reality, and Moustachio screamed and jumped back, flinging the remains of the sword hilt away from him as it glowed red hot. Beardy, still holding my arm, pulled away in alarm. I dived into Beardy, throwing him to the ground and kicking him as he tried to get away from the sudden conflagration. I really wanted to kick Moustachio, who I suspected was the worse of the two, but at least he had a burned hand for his pains.

Moustachio stood across from me, anger blazing on his ugly face. ‘Gonna regret that, girl,’ he growled. ‘Now I'm gonna kill you fer sure.’

Comments welcomed!

SFFSat 23/11/13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. Two thuggish officials have cornered her, and one is pointing a knife at her...

I held his eyes for a brief eternity – he had pale blue ones, with a hint of the psychopath about him. I was increasingly sure that he was the kind of thug who enjoyed inflicting violence. 
 

Moustachio slapped the side of his sword against my cheek, hard; I felt the edge of the blade dig in enough to cut me. I’d been right – he did enjoy hurting people. 

‘Shut up and do as you're told,’ he rasped. His pupils had dilated, and he was breathing faster. Anticipation of what he intended, I had no doubt. 

I slid into the magerealm. The easy answer would be a column of fire. Toast them both.

 Which raises the difficult question - is Sorrel any better than the thugs she is facing? Find out next time...

 

Biggles and Worrals

 

I realised when I did my first blog post about Biggles that there was more to say than would fit into one post. I'd forgotten a lot about Biggles which came flooding back when I started checking my facts – and I also learned a lot of new and surprising information.

For instance, “Captain” WE Johns was never of that rank – he was a Flying Officer (about the level of an RFC Lieutenant) - he gave himself the rank as his authorial byline. The first Biggles stories appeared in 1932, and he went on writing until his death in 1968, with the last couple of books appearing posthumously.

  

 

Whilst Biggles was his most popular series, Johns wrote other series – I can dimly remember being aware of Gimlet, a brave British commando, when I was a boy, though I don't think I ever read any of them. 

 

 

I also came across his science fiction tales about “Tiger” Clinton. As an avid SF reader I devoured them... but wasn't desperately impressed. 

 

The character I did not know about, though, until I started these blog posts, was Worrals. In the 40s Johns wrote 11 books about plucky WAAF Flight Officer Joan "Worrals" Worralson who flew adventurous missions with her friend Betty “Frecks” Lovell. In the first book she flies a fighter, shoots down an enemy plane, and sabotages a German plot. 

Considering that I criticised Biggles for the total lack of female characters, I am pleasantly surprised at his creation of a strong and capable female role-model. From what i have managed to glean from my trawl across the internet, he was encouraged to create Worrals by the Air Ministry to encourage girls to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.

Apparently the series was very successful, and sold well in the 40s and 50s.

I said in my last post that James Bigglesworth's spectre encouraged the writing of Sorrel in Scarlet – I suspect that the spirit of Joan Worralson was there, too, standing shoulder to shoulder with her more famous colleague. It was a complete coincidence that my heroine and Johns' heroine had similar sounding names... wasn't it?

SFFSat 16/11/13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. 

Two thuggish officials take a grab at our heroine...

Beardy grabbed for my arm, while Moustachio yanked his sword out of its sheath. I had been expecting it. I dived sideways, sliding my knife out of the belt-sheath, but Beardy was a fraction faster. His fingers fastened around my left wrist, dragging me towards him, while Moustachio's sword lifted to point threateningly at my throat. I froze for an instant, realising I was in real trouble. There wasn’t enough room to move – they had boxed me in against the hedge. I had a nasty suspicion this was not the first time they had performed this manoeuvre.

‘Drop the knife, girl,’ Beardy snapped.

I snarled a short answer, then added my views of his parentage and physique. Not complimentary views, needless to say.

 As always, comments welcomed!

Biggles

 

James Bigglesworth was a pilot and adventurer who was the title character of almost a hundred books by Captain WE Johns, published between 1932 and 1970. They were unashamedly boys' own adventure tales, with the hero taking on Germans in World War One, flying as a charter pilot between the wars, fighting Nazis in World War Two, and then becoming an air policeman in the fifties. He flew a wide range of aircraft ranging from Sopwith Camels, to Hawker Hunter jet fighters in one of the last books. By that stage he must have been in his 60s.

 

I encountered Biggles when I was about 8 or 9, and enjoyed the books immensely. I was building Airfix kits of the early biplanes and relished the chance to read stories about them and the brave pilots who flew them. For about three or four years I devoured the Biggles books alongside all the other books I was reading. By the time I was in my teens, though, they lost their appeal and I didn't read another for many years.

 

While on holiday a few years ago I found a couple of ageing paperbacks in the cottage where we were staying, and read them with interest and amusement. They were competently written adventures, but to an adult twenty-first century eye they creaked very badly. Unthinking casual racism, a complete lack of female characters (one of the two I read had no women at all within its pages), and characters who were limited in their complexity. They were a product of their time, and I wasn't surprised at my adult's eye view of them. Some books I enjoyed as a child I happily passed on to my children – Biggles was not in that category.

But the structure of the pilot getting into a range of adventures caught my imagination again. And there is no doubt in my mind that when I started work on Sorrel in Scarlet the spectre of James Bigglesworth was standing at my shoulder, encouraging me.

SFFSat 9/11/13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. 

Two thuggish officials are confronting our heroine...

An unpleasant smile wreathed Moustachio's face - I had a nasty suspicion that he was the type who would enjoy beating up a peasant on principle. Wrack's brave new world clearly hadn't changed the outlook of the militia who served the dragonlords. To them, I was unarmed; neither had bothered to reach for the swords they wore at their belts. It would be the work of seconds to fling fire from the magerealm and barbecue them both. Frankly, seeing Moustachio's leer turn to agony would be rather satisfying. But I wasn't going to kill them just because they were thugs.

I simply shook my head. ‘Get out of my way or you'll both regret it.’

I relied on a stern, level gaze and hoped it would be enough.

Which, of course, it wasn't. 

 Looks like Sorrel is in trouble again... As always, comments welcomed!

Sopwith Triplane

Very early on, when writing Sorrel in Scarlet, I decided that my heroine's primary form of transport was a Great War style aeroplane. A biplane? I wanted something that seemed more unusual but was still believable – and so I chose a triplane. But the classic WW1 triplane is the Fokker DR1, the plane flown by the Red Baron.

  
 




Too corny and obvious. So, when picturing Sorrel's aeroplane (even though it actually crashes before the novel begins!) I had a mental image of a Sopwith Triplane. A well-made airframe, but not an image that was immediately familiar.

 

Revell made a plastic kit of the Sopwith Triplane – I spent a number of happy hours building one.

 

And coincidentally a Poser 3D model, Ace of the Skies, appeared at Renderosity – and it was clearly inspired by the Sopwith airframe. When I finally published Sorrel in Scarlet myself, it provided the wrecked aeroplane upon the cover – and also provided the bright yellow Belkani 3 on the cover of Sorrel Snowbound.

Sorrel's triplane is steam-driven, and a two-seater. The Sopwith Triplane was a single-seat fighter. Less than 150 were ever built. It was powered by a 130 hp Clerget 9B rotary engine. It was apparently very manoeuvrable with an excellent rate of climb, and apparently so impressed the Germans that they rushed a slew of triplane designs into production. It was successful in combat, and over 80 German planes were brought down by Sopwith Triplanes.

Only two real Tripes still exist – one at the RAF Museum Hendon, and one, strangely at the Central Air Force Museum, Monino, Russia. One flying replica exists, at Shuttleworth, and I had the privilege of seeing it fly.

SFFSat 2/11/13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. 

Two thuggish officials are questioning our heroine...

The first officer looked at me suspiciously, eyes running up and down me. ‘You got any valuables?’ he asked sharply, clearly not expecting a positive response. 

 

His companion scrambled down from the trike, and joined his moustachioed friend. ‘Wot's wiv the headgear?’ the newcomer asked before I had had an opportunity to think of a smart answer for his friend. He had grubby fingernails and a beard that was as unkempt as his friend's facial hair. Evidently the militia of Rendmer didn't think much of grooming.

I reached my hand up to my head, realising as I did so what he was talking about. Actually, my hair probably left a considerable amount to be desired in the grooming stakes.

As always, comments welcomed!

SFFSat 26/10/2013

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. 
A steamcar has chugged up the hill towards her, containing two men in uniform.

The man in front scrambled down. His uniform was as smart and clean as a tramp's. That didn't bode well, either. 'All right,’ he grumbled through an unruly moustache. ‘'and over yer papers.’

Papers? Volging squum! I hadn't taken my papers with me on the raid of Wrack's mansion. So I had nothing I could proffer to this thug. 

 

To my surprise, my interrogator didn't instantly tell me I was under arrest. 

 What will the officers do? We will find out next week.

As always, comments gratefully received! 

SFFSat 19/10/2013

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. A steamcar has chugged up the hill towards her...

The two men sitting uncomfortably in the leather chairs were both in some kind of blue-grey uniform. As the chugging monstrosity drew towards me, I stood to one side to let it past.

It didn't, of course. The man in front hauled on a lever, and bellowed something at his colleague. Said colleague also yanked at a lever and twisted a large wheel, and the trike slowed. The high-pitched screech of metal binding on metal that put my teeth on edge confirmed my assumptions about the quality of its engineering. Brakes didn't need to make that sort of noise. It did grind to a halt, though, and engulfed me with foul-smelling smoke and fumes. I watched it, wondering if it would start to roll backwards down the hill again. To my surprise, it didn't.

Next time we will find out what befalls our heroine at the hands of these dubious newcomers...

As always, all comments will be gratefully received!

SFFS 12/10/2013

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound. Sorrel has reached the surface and confidently decided she can cope with whatever she meets. The first such encounter is chugging towards her...

The contraption that chugged up the hill towards me, struggling to achieve the speed a good runner could manage without breaking a sweat, was belching an unpleasant mixture of grey-green smoke and dirty steam. The three wheels were wide and heavily-treaded brass, each five feet across, with no visible suspension. The thing had to be hell to ride. 

The central chassis was brass and iron, studded and unnecessarily heavy, with a large tank over the single rear wheel for its liquid coal, and two seats, one above and behind the other, between the front wheels. In the middle of the trike was a vertical boiler like a bottle topped with two black funnels, surrounded by the churning gear wheels of the engine. Strapped onto the side were more cylinders and leather pipes, their purpose not immediately apparent. 

I could recognise a work of fine engineering when I saw one. This wasn't it.

 

As always, comments gratefully welcomed!

SFFS 5-10-13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound (with a slight tweak to add the cue-word for the week). Sorrel survived her short flight on a boulder (see last week's snippet) and has reached the surface. She now has to decide what to do next.

I had to go north, to get moving and find out where I was. With a little luck, I could hitch a lift on a cart or a steamcar. Get into familiar surroundings, and get myself to Werintar, and go from there to the aerodrome. What could possibly go wrong? 

My twisted, evil subconscious instantly came up with a detailed list, complete with graphic illustrations and even some sound effects. Sunstroke, robbers, starvation, dragons, fevers, runaway traction engines, broken bridges, snowdrifts, fires, crashing aeroplanes, earthquakes, lightning strikes, hallucinations... 

I began to chuckle, my mood lifting as my imagination came up with increasingly improbable perils. I had faced everything the Chasm could throw at me. Down there, they had real monsters – ruzdrool, graalur, lloruk, scortuliqs. If I could handle them, I could put the boot to the surface threats, no trouble. 

    Overconfident? Sorrel? Never...

    Comments, as always, are very welcome! 

 

SFFS 28-9-2013

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


I've not taken part in SFFS for some time - blame real life for getting in the way. This week my snippet is from Sorrel Snowbound, which is the recently-released sequel to Sorrel in Scarlet. Sorrel, my pilot heroine, is climbing the edge of the Chasm to reach the surface. 

The climb was going pretty well.

I'd come across a dozen chunks that I decided not to trust my weight to, but the vast majority of the rock-face felt as solid as the stuff between my ears.

Until now. A large outcrop of grey-green granite, a perfect handhold at the top – how was I supposed to know it was only attached to the cliff by a couple of blobs of fungi? I gripped it firmly, hauled myself up... and I felt it lurch, folding out from the cliff and carrying me out into the void, to begin a half-mile fall to destruction.

I was screaming - the rock was perhaps eight feet high, twelve feet wide, and I was clutching it with both hands. Not a chance of grabbing any other piece of the cliff-face. I can fly most things, but boulders aren't in my repertoire. 

 Comments gratefully received!

Who is Wrack?

Wrack is a dragon. No, the picture isn't wrong. Wrack can transform into a human shape – it is by no means clear whether the dragons are humans who can take draconic form or vice versa. Wrack's response is to say that he is a dragon, which means he can be either form.

Wrack is one of the dragonlords who rule Sendaal. There are very few dragons in the land – they breed rarely, despite their efforts – but each one is a powerful figure. Wrack is one of the most significant of their number.

Wrack oversaw Sorrel when she was training to be a sorceress. There is no doubt that he found the young woman very attractive. Her views of the dragonlord were a different matter. When the humans rebelled against draconic rule, Sorrel was a major figure in the human air force, and she blew one dragonlord, Kabal, out of the sky. She had a number of aerial duels with Wrack, and he eventually brought her plane down. He snatched her from the wreckage and enslaved her. Despite eventually escaping his clutches, Sorrel never forgave Wrack for his treatment of her. Which is why, at the beginning of Sorrel in Scarlet, it was Wrack's mansion that Sorrel had raided.

Wrack is a laconic, sometimes grim figure, typically never speaking a full sentence. He is a strong and vigorous figure, and even Sorrel would have to admit that he is attractive in a dark, saturnine way. He also has a dangerously short temper and, like Sorrel, has a tendency to resort to physical action when he grows angry.

He is probably the most important person in the books aside from Sorrel herself – and Sorrel will tell you regularly and frequently how much she hates him.