Meme-Free Zone

In a comment on my last post i_kender pointed out that the British Library has put a shedload of illustrations from books on line for free use, as a huge flickr set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/

For example, one of the first I found was a larger version of this:

an illustration from The Angel of the Revolution - I have larger versions on the FF CD-ROM, but there isn't room on my web site.

At the moment the quantity is vast and tagging is minimal, actually finding anything is difficult. But if enough people take an interest it ought to eventually be a very useful resource.

Following various comments I've re-read Orrin Linday's Plan of Aerial Navigation, made a few changes, and now feel reasonably confident that the text is more or less accurate. I'll be adding a link to it on my site, and posting info on it to the online books page etc.

Please feel free to link to it etc, it'll be permanently on the site now.

http://www.forgottenfutures.co.uk/lindsay/moon.htm

Another walk to the British Library today - The most direct route is three miles, I managed it in an hour and ten minutes which is not exactly breaking the sound barrier, but pretty good for me. I also noticed that I passed work after about 45 minutes, so if I leave home at my usual term-time 8.10ish I can get in at about 9 AM, which is my usual holiday start time. Once I'm back to work I think I'll give it a try.

My goal for today was to take a look at some of the George Griffith books I'd never read, and see if they're possibilities for future Forgotten Futures projects. The answer to that is unfortunately a resounding NO - three of the five I looked at are very much the mixture as before, Griffith's A-Plot, as used in The Angel of the Revolution and several other books, in which a plucky scientist finds true love, develops new technology which eventually ensures that Britain is saved from all enemies and brings about world peace, the others were a collection of stories and a psychic crime novel.

( five old books )

So - which of these would I put on line given the availability of a cheap copy? Probably all of them apart from the last - I don't think I could summon up enough interest in that to want to do the proof reading etc. But I don't think any of them have enough intrinsic interest or merit to make it worthwhile spending a lot of time and money tracking down copies.

I hope to get over there again on Friday and look at some other books and authors that might be suitable for future projects. I'll let you know how I get on.

I just scanned another disaster story, Robert Barr's "Within an Ace of the End of the World," which is an interesting precursor of Doyle's The Poison Belt but written in 1900 and with a less happy ending - sixteen survivors, 8 British men and 8 American women, who are the only ones to take the oncoming crisis seriously and survive in hermetically sealed buildings. The rest of the human race dies rather nastily...

One of its interesting features is that the artist used an illuminated letter at the start of each section, with the illumination actually relevant to the story. Most are T's. If anyone's interested they're below the cut

( letters )

VERY hard to imagine anyone doing that today.

This one will probably go on line sooner or later, since it may be moderately important in the history of SF.