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From: FIRTH@TL-20B.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Hobbs, Hawkwind, Hogweed...
Message-ID: <3108@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 07:46:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3108
Posted: Mon Aug  5 07:46:03 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Aug-85 10:19:59 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 49

From: FIRTH@TL-20B.ARPA

The above topics all involve British events of one
kind or another, so here is my information on them ...

(1) The film with 'Hobbs End' was originally called

	Quatermass and the Pit

    the awful title 5 Million Years to Earth was a US atrocity.  The
    film stars Peter Cushing as Prof. Quatermass, and involves the
    discovery, during part of the (seemingly perpetual) construction
    of more London Underground lines (that's "subway" over here) of
    a Martian spaceship and some peculiar humanoid skeletons...

    The film was the subject of one of the better late Goon Show
    satires, called Seagoon and the Pit:

	"Good grief, Seagoon, this skull is two million years old!"

	"Happy Birthday to you
	 Happy Birthday to you
	 Happy Birthday dear sku-ul..."

    Like the two previous Quatermass stories, it was written by Nigel
    Kneale.

(2) Moorcock's "Jerry Cornelius" stories were published in New Worlds
    in 1969-70.  The first, A Cure For Cancer, was published in March
    1969, and so mush have been written no later than 1968, which ties
    in well with 'Hawkwind'

(3) The Giant Hogweed, marching inexorably up the Thames Valley spreading
    chaos in its wake, was about 98% silly-season news reporting and 2%
    genuine plant.  It is indeed large, and about as nasty as, say, poison
    ivy here.

    Where the wild ones came from I don't know, but specimens had been
    kept at the Royal Botanical Gardens, at Kew, for quite a long time.
    I saw them there in the early '70s, carefully cordoned off.  The
    old gardener/attendant said that, as far as he could recall, nobody
    had paid them any attention before the newspaper stories, "though
    that novelist Mr Wells used to come and look at them sometimes".

    They didn't walk, and certainly didn't bite people's heads off
    (but then Wyndham's triffids didn't do the latter)

Robert Firth
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