Quantum Vibe

An interesting online comic with a variety of important themes: http://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=507

From A Princess of Mars

A wonderfully-written section of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars, which details the appearance of the pseudo-bipedal Martains:

"Five or six had already hatched and the grotesque caricatures which sat blinking in the sunlight were enough to cause me to doubt my sanity. They seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, long necks and six legs, or, as I afterward learned, two legs and two arms, with an intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will either as arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back and also independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity of turning the head.
The ears, which were slightly above the eyes and closer together, were small, cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on these young specimens. Their noses were but longitudinal slits in the center of their faces, midway between their mouths and ears.
There was no hair on their bodies, which were of a very light yellowish-green color. In the adults, as I was to learn quite soon, this color deepens to an olive green and is darker in the male than in the female. Further, the heads of the adults are not so out of proportion to their bodies as in the case of the young.
The iris of the eyes is blood red, as in Albinos, while the pupil is dark. The eyeball itself is very white, as are the teeth. These latter add a most ferocious appearance to an otherwise fearsome and terrible countenance, as the lower tusks curve upward to sharp points which end about where the eyes of earthly human beings are located. The whiteness of the teeth is not that of ivory, but of the snowiest and most gleaming of china. Against the dark background of their olive skins their tusks stand out in a most striking manner, making these weapons present a singularly formidable appearance."

Doctor Who Ketchup

"What respectable man doesn't carry a trowel?"

From the BBC: An unmanned spaceship hurtles towards certain destruction - unless the Doctor can save it, and its impossible cargo... of dinosaurs! By his side a ragtag gang of adventurers; a big game hunter, an Egyptian Queen and a surprised member of the Pond family. But little does the Doctor know there is someone else onboard who will stop at nothing to keep hold of his precious, prehistoric cargo:

I've let the Doctor slip ahead of me a bit, so now I'm having to try to catch up. And what better way to play catch-up?

An unmanned spaceship hurtles towards certain destruction, unless the Doctor can save it, along with its impossible cargo... of dinosaurs! By his side are a ragtag gang of adventurers: a big game hunter, an Egyptian queen and a surprised member of the Pond family. But little does the Doctor know that there is someone else onboard who will stop at nothing to keep hold of his precious, prehistoric cargo.

A Princess of Mars...

I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness. I was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth. You do not question the fact; neither did I.
I found myself lying prone upon a bed of yellowish, mosslike vegetation which stretched around me in all directions for interminable miles. I seemed to be lying in a deep, circular basin, along the outer verge of which I could distinguish the irregularities of low hills.

...from Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic series.

I have found that my desire to read to my children and my desire to read for myself has culminated in reading them a chapter each at their respective bedtimes from a book of my choosing. I have started working on Burroughs' first in the Barsoom series, hoping to instill in them a fusion of their existing adventurist spirits with the amazement of science fiction. With the voluminous size of this collection, I'll have many years of nightly reading before we explore Asimov's Foundation (and the submissions of later authors to the seminal classic in the genre).