As an example of a film show for a comics convention, it’s hard to think of one that’s more impressive than that provided by the Electric Cinema Club for August 6th/7th’s Comicon ‘72. In truth, the line-up of movies the ECC provided, and indeed helped to sponsor, would make for a quite brilliant film festival […]
Read More August 3rd 1972 – The Electric Cinema Club & A Film Show For Comicon ‘72, part 1 of 2The London Day By Day column in August 2nd 1972’s The Daily Telegraph carried gossip about a purported plan by Arthur C. Clarke to celebrate, as it were, the end of the Apollo space missions. Clarke, described in the piece as the “doyen of British science fiction writers”, was said to be planning to charter […]
Read More August 2nd 1972 – Arthur C. Clarke & The Party at The End Of ApolloLook In was branded the Junior TV Times. Yet it was more than a listings magazine covering the kids shows shown across the UK’s many independent broadcasting companies. In truth, Look In was a curate’s egg, containing so many different kinds of features that it rarely felt like a satisfying read. There were strip cartoons […]
Read More August 1st 1972 – What The Heck Is On The TV Tonight?Above is an ad from the UK’s Science Fiction Book Club taken from a summer 1972 edition of The Observer. These adverts appeared in the paper, as far as I can see, once or twice a month, were relatively small, and were placed right at the bottom of one of the The Observer’s book review […]
Read More July 31st 1972 – The Science Fiction Book ClubI have no idea why the Smith family took The Observer every Sunday during the 70s. It really wasn’t our typical fare. Our daily paper was the thoroughly reactionary and dumbed-down Daily Express, and I can’t imagine my parents deliberately took a once-a-week break from rightist ranting in the name of balance and palate-cleansing. Whatever […]
Read More July 30th 1972 – The Sunday Observer Magazine: A Haven Of CartoonsReleased in the US on June 14th 1972, Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes was officially shown to metropolitan and (some) local film critics alike at the end of the following month. Later, in August, the movie went on general release into ‘the provinces’. Below are selections from the reviews published in half a […]
Read More 29th July 1972 – The Critics and “Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes”My memories of summer 1972 are, in terms of its fantastical TV and radio, of a dulling drought of anything that was particularly interesting. Yet looking at the terrestrial listings for this current week in 2025 has put my memories into context. Yes, the summer of 1972 was mostly about fantastical repeats, and yes, those […]
Read More July 28th 1972 – The Coming Week’s Fantastical programmes on UK TV and Radio.My memory is that Chris Foss’ sci-fi covers were everywhere in 1972. But I’ve long put that down to the fantastical mono-focus of my then-prepubescent mind. Reading 2011’s excellent Hardware: The Definitive SF Works Of Chris Foss, I’m surprised to find my shockingly fallible memory has actually been telling me the truth. What an amazing […]
Read More July 27th 1972 – The Paperback Covers Of Chris FossRelying on the gig pages of the UK music press can’t be said to be an entirely reliable business. Gigs were often cancelled, dates and venues rearranged, and schedules can prove to be highly misleading. (In Sylvain Sylvain’s fine memoir of his life as a New York Doll – There’s No Bones In Ice Cream […]
Read More July 26th 1972 – The Fantastical Gigs Of The Week: Can, Roxy Music, Stevie Wonder, Arthur Brown, Genesis & Hawkwind.Heaven only knows how many fans were buying UK comics zines in the early 1970s. A few hundred? Somewhere in the (very) low four figures? Whatever the figure was, it was tiny, and the same names would often appear across a number of different fanzines as writers and correspondents. In and around London especially, there […]
Read More July 25th 1972 – The Comic Books We Never Saw
The Almanac Of The Fantastical 