Definitely, it would nice to meet a real live blogger!

I could almost have a go at a psychohistorical explanation … I found out that while he was posted to London in 1918, he became engaged to Margot Glyn, the daughter of the novelist Elinor Glyn. I don’t know what happened there, but the engagement was evidently broken off, and in 1920, when posted to Paris he married a Frenchwoman, and lived in France until the late 1920s at least. So I could argue that he became obsessed with the idea of the aerial destruction of the site of his romantic humiliation … but I don’t think I will :)

Well, Brett, let’s look out for each other at the conference… It will be good to meet you there. I’m surprised to see that Erin will be talking about Hawkwind, since I thought he was a convict-era historian. I imagine, too, that a whole paper could be written about Groves’ masculinity and its relationship to the theory of the ‘knock out blow’…

There are elements of ‘you had to be there - but if you were there, then you probably can’t remember it’ in that album.

Compare and contrast: Moorcock’s own individual post-apocalyptic visions, forex _The War Lord of the Air_ . MM’s solo album ‘New World’s Fair’ is explicitly a ‘WW3 will kill us all’ product [’Kiss my lips while I still have them/Take my hand and keep it safe’], but his work with Hawkwind was a lot less warscary.

Thanks! Since he describes it as ‘The greatest album in the world’, if I go down this perilous path I might try Space Ritual …

Actually, this man here seems to know what he’s talking about, although I can’t vouch for any of his opinions about stuff released after about 1988:
http://www.starfarer.net/hwalbums.html

Owing to Hawkwind’s legendary inability to work out record company deals, their back catalogue is available in about 10^4 different combinations, most of them in compilations largely composed of dire out-takes. Start with _Space Ritual_, then _In Search of Space_, Doremi Fasol Latido, _Astounding Sounds_ and perhaps _PXR5_. After that, it all gets a bit the same.

For airmindednessness, cut straight to the late great Bob Calvert’s _Captain Lockheed and the Starfighers_ which will also explain why I have this daft email address.

I’ve never listened to much Hawkwind, so I’ve got nothing to add. Maybe I’ll have to do some research before the conference …

I only know about four Aussie historians: you’re one, and Erin’s another (it’s pronounced ‘Ee-Dee’). Send him my regards.

Thinking about it briefly, I’d say that classic period Hawkwind is more about the _avoidance_ of imagining the apocalypse. Like the way that in Marvel comics and Godzilla movies, exposure to nuclear tests never merely kills you, but instead gives you superpowers. But perhaps this opinion depends on how stoned one was…