Academic literature on the topic 'Astronautics, biography'

The article dedicated the life and scientific way of George de Bothezat, the first Doctor of Sciences in the field of aviation. Together with Nikolay Zhukovsky, Igor Sikorsky, Stephen Timoshenko, Alexander Fan-der-Flit, and Alexey Lebedev, he was one of the organizers of the Air Fleet of the Russian Empire. He is the author of various inventions: gyroscopic sight and other types of aviation equipment. We analyze works by G. Bothezat on the impulse theory of propellers. In particular, the scientist derived formulas for ensuring the flight stability of airplanes and helicopters. He developed training ballistic tables, which allowed making corrections for the speed of the flight and the direction of the wind. We briefly describe a biography of G. Bothezat, focusing on the student period of his life in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and the reasons for G. Bothezat’s departure to the United States in 1918. It is stated that it was there that his talent as a designer and creator of helicopters of the original system was disclosed in the best way. In 1922, George Bothezat obtained the financial support of the American government to build a workable helicopter model without prototypes and experiments, only based on the results of calculations. The reasons why G.Bothezat did not manage to achieve the launch of the serial production of helicopters are analyzed. We also mention the activities of the company founded by G.Bothezat, which was engaged in the production of fans of a new type for the US Navy. The Bothezat system fans were installed at the Rockefeller Center in New York as well as in American tanks. It is emphasized that I. Sikorsky also used the works by G.Bothezat in his research. It is stated that the flight trajectory calculated by G.Bothezat in air and airless space was used in the development of the American program of a manned landing on the Moon using the “Apollo” system.

Based on the new archival documents and literature in English, the paper presents the biography of Mikhail Sergeevich Smirnov, representative of the Russian diaspora in Yugoslavia and researcher of a new branch of international law, which began to develop in 1957 with the launch of the fi rst artifi cial Earth satellite. He was a secondgeneration Russian refugee, who was forced to leave his homeland as a little boy. He settled in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes / Kingdom of Yugoslavia alongside his family. He graduated from Law School in the state capital, Belgrade, then from Paris Law School, where he obtained his doctorate, and then from Paris Law School’s Institute for Higher International Sciences. After the launch of the fi rst satellite in 1957, Mikhail Smirnov, an aviation law expert, started paying more attention to the new aspects of aviation law associated with space exploration: he spoke at a number of international meetings of specialists in this fi eld of law. His works were published in domestic and international journals and his papers were cited by many authors. The scientist became a member of the International Astronautical Academy, the International Astronautical Federation, and the first president of the International Institute of Space Law. Smirnov was even a Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts corresponding member candidate. Nevertheless, he was almost completely forgotten in Serbia.

Since the last few decades, global warming has threatened the sustainable ecology and environment. Its dominance on climate change is well known and largely discussed agenda at most of the international meets. However, the existing conventional vapor compression based refrigeration technology, which typically uses coolant gas like chlorofluorocarbons, tetrafluoroethane, freon, isobutene, etc., has considerable direct/ passive roles in global warming. Hence, the universal technique involved in refrigerators and air conditioners, an essential part of our daily life, is deteriorating the issues. Furthermore, the traditional vapour compression refrigeration technique has its limitation in energy efficiency with the high capital cost of the compressor and the electricity needed to operate the compressor. Magnetic refrigeration (MR) is an emerging technology using solid, non-volatile, non-toxic magnetic materials as the active components and water or alcohol as the medium for heat transport. It is an efficient technique with great potential because of low energy consumption and environment-friendly cooling at a competitive cost [1-2]. The most promising use of MR is that it can be used ‘in reverse’ as a heat pump. Using environment-friendly materials rather than toxic gases enables this technology to zero carbon emissions. Solid-state nature and more energy efficiency with better adaptability are the significant advantages of MR over other colling techniques. This technology functions based on a thermodynamic property of magnetic materials. This is commonly known as the magnetocaloric effect (MCE), which causes a temperature change if the material is subjected to a magnetic field under adiabatic conditions. It should be mentioned that MCE was discovered in 1881 by E. Warburg; later, the fundamental principle of MCE for practical purpose was interpreted individually by Debye (1926) and Giauque (1927). Figure 1 illustrates the working principle of MR consisting of the following steps. In step 1, a magnetic material is exposed to a sufficiently high magnetic field, and the magnetic moments of the constituent atoms become oriented along the magnetic field direction. If the magnetic field is applied adiabatically, in other way, if the material is suddenly placed inside a magnetic field, its magnetic moments become ordered. As a result, the magnetic entropy decreases due to magnetic ordering. Therefore, the crystalline lattice entropy will increase to compensate for the loss of magnetic entropy to keep the total entropy constant in the adiabatic process. Consequently, the temperature of the material rises. In step 2, this increased heat can then be removed by cooling the material, keeping the magnetic field constant. These two steps can be performed simultaneously by magnetizing the material isothermally. In that case, the magnetic moments will get ordered, but the temperature will not enhance. The isothermal magnetization process, however, will take a long time to release the heat into the environment without a coolant. In step 3, the applied magnetic field is removed adiabatically, i.e., the material is removed suddenly from the magnetic field. Eventually, the exact opposite phenomena of the first step will occur. The ordered magnetic moments will try to get disorder immediately, and as a result, the temperature of the material will reduce. At the same time, the material is placed in thermal contact with the environment to be refrigerated. As the working material is cooler than the refrigerated environment, heat will be absorbed by the working material. Consequently, the refrigerated substance gets cooled, and the working material will again be in the disordered state, the same as the initial but at less temperature than the initial. Once the Figure 1. Schematic diagram showing the basic principle of the magnetic refrigeration cycle. Step 1: Magnatic field is ON, Step 2: Release heat to the environment, Step 3: Magnetic field is OFF, and Step 4: Absorb heat from the refrigerated substance. This is a cyclic process. refrigerant and refrigerated environments are in thermal equilibrium, the cycle can restart. Repeating the similar cycle of subsequent application and removal of the external magnetic field with transferring heat energy can somewhat decrease the temperature of the refrigerated substance and the working material. A good magnetocaloric material (MCM) can be defined in terms of the change in magnetic entropy of a material as a function of temperature and magnetic field change. In a simpler way, it specifies the ability to decrease the temperature in one cycle for a given magnetic field. Additionally, the most efficient cooling produced by an MCM is restricted to its magnetic ordering temperature. However, for the materials exhibiting first-order magnetic transitions (sharp transitions) with temperature, the change in magnetic entropy value is significant, but the working region is usually narrow. On the other hand, in the case of the materials with second-order magnetic transition (broad in nature), the change in magnetic entropy is small, but the transition regime is wide. Therefore, the proper selection of new MCM and their synthesis are crucial for designing a new cooling system, which will operate with moderate magnetic entropy change and maximum working temperature region. However, there are apparent issues in constructing and manufacturing magnetocaloric parts due to the scarcity of basic MCMs. In view of searching for active magnetic refrigerant materials, rare-earth-based compounds have been extensively studied in the recent past. Some of them have emerged as potential refrigerant materials near room temperature, such as Gd (element), Gd5Si2.3Ge1.7, (La, Ca, Sr)MnO3, etc. [3-5] and Er3Pd2, ErRu2Si2, HoNiAl2, ErNiAl2, etc. at low temperature [6-8]. Despite having cutting-edge technologies, MR is still not a well-established and well-circulated technique for refrigeration due to the unavailability of suitable cheap working materials. Some products have been launched in the market recently but are inaccessible to most consumers due to their high prices. To make it affordable for household appliances, intensive work on MR is being carried out by various laboratories, universities and R&D companies worldwide, including CRADA, Cooltech Applications, Whirlpool, Electrolux, Astronautics, GE Appliances, Samsung, Erasteel, Sanden, Chubu, BASF, VAC, and many more. In India, researchers/ scientists from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre have built a prototype of MR, and they managed to decrease the working temperature to a certain extent. Further research and development of magnetic refrigeration can encourage the manufacturing of a new energy-saving cooling appliance at an affordable cost, and therefore it can be a reliable technology. This results into a cost-effective and readily available technology to the mass population and, thus, extend its effectiveness to promote eco-friendly cooling device by eliminating excess energy consumption at a larger scale. References [1] N. A. Mezaal, K. V. Osintsev, T. B. Zhirgalova, “Review of magnetic refrigeration system as alternative to conventional refrigeration system”, IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2017, vol. 87, pp. 032024. [2] Jaka Tušek, Samo Zupan, Ivan Prebil, Alojz Poredoš, “Magnetic Cooling - Development of Magnetic Refrigerator”, Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2009 , vol. 55, pp. 293-302. [3] S.Y. Dan’kov, A. M. Tishin, V. K. Pecharsky, K. A. Gschneidner Jr., “Magnetic phase transitions and the magnetothermal properties of gadolinium”, Phys. Rev. B, 1998, vol. 57, pp. 3478. [4] LIU Min, YU Bing-feng, “Development of magnetocaloric materials in room temperature magnetic refrigeration application in recent six years”, J. Cent. South Univ. Technol., 2009, vol. 16, pp. 1–12. [5] L. Theil Kuhn, N. Pryds, C. R. H. Bahl and A Smith, “Magnetic refrigeration at room temperature – from magnetocaloric materials to a prototype”, J. Phys.: Conf. Ser., 2011, vol. 303, pp. 012082. [6] B. Maji, M.K. Ray, M. Modak, S. Mondal, K.G. Suresh, S. Banerjee, “Magnetic properties and large reversible magnetocaloric effect in Er3Pd2”, J. Magn. Magn. Mater., 2018, vol. 456, pp. 236–240 . [7] M. Modak, B. Maji, S. Mondal, M.K. Ray, S. Banerjee, “Cr doping mimicking the field induced magnetic transition in ErRu2−xCrxSi2”, Physica B: Condensed Matter, 2019, vol. 572, pp. 195–198. [8] Y. Zhang, D. Guo, Y. Yang, J. Wang, S. Geng, X. Li, Z. Ren, G. Wilde, “Magnetic properties and magnetocaloric effect in the aluminide RENiAl2 (RE = Ho and Er) compounds”, Intermetallics, 2017, vol. 88, pp. 61–64. Author’s biography Dr. Mantu Modak obatined his PhD in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics from Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, India in 2020. Currently, He is working as a Research Associate at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India. His research interest is magnetic, transport and magnetocaloric properties of rare-earth-based alloys; and pressure induced structural transitions in rare-earth-based pyrochlore oxides. He has published many international journal papers and presented his research work in various international conferences.

Introduction Based on the profusion of scholarly and populist analysis of the relationship between books and films one could easily be forgiven for thinking that the exchange between the two media was a decidedly one-way affair. Countless words have been expended upon the subject of literary adaptation, in which the process of transforming stories and novels into cinematic or televisual form has been examined in ways both general and particular. A relationship far less well-documented though is that between popular novels and the films that have spawned them. With the notable exception of Randall D. Larson’s valuable Films into Books, which is centred mainly on correspondence with prolific writers of “novelisations”, academic study of this extremely widespread phenomenon has been almost non-existent. Even Linda Hutcheon’s admirable recent publication, A Theory of Adaptation, makes scant mention of novelisations, in spite of her claim that this flourishing industry “cannot be ignored” (38). Retelling film narratives in a written form is nothing new. Indeed, as Larson notes, “novelisations have existed almost as long as movies have” and can be found as far back as the 1920s, although it was not until the advent of mass-market paperbacks that they truly came into their own (3-4). The sixties and seventies were boom years for novelisations as they provided film lovers with a way to re-experience their favourite movies long after they had disappeared from cinema screens. It shouldn’t be forgotten that before the advent of home video and DVD books were, along with television broadcasts, the most widely accessible way in which people could do so. Even today they continue to appear in book shops. At the same time, the Internet age has fuelled the creation and dissemination of a vast array of “fan-fiction” that supplements the output of authorised writers. Despite the vast consumer appetite for novelisations, however, their critical reception has been noticeably cool. Jonathan Coe’s caustic appraisal of novelisations as “that bastard, misshapen offspring of the cinema and the written word” represents the prevailing attitude toward them (45). The fact that many are genre novels—sci-fi, western and crime thrillers—and that the majority are decidedly low-brow has not helped to secure them critical plaudits. Other reasons though lie beyond these prejudices. For one thing, many are simply not very well written according to any conventional measure. When one considers the time constraints under which a lot of these books were produced this is hardly surprising. Based on his extensive correspondence with authors, Larson suggests four to six weeks as around the average writing time, with some adaptations, such as Michael Avallone’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes, spewed out in a single weekend (12). The quality of the writing in many novelisations is certainly hard to defend, and yet one other widely held view of them holds considerably less water. This is the idea of novelisations as pale shadows of the movies deemed to be their source, in which only the most manifest content of characterisation and plot are reproduced. In this denuded form, it is implied, a great deal of value has been lost while only rarely has anything of significant value been added. This point of view is in strong contrast with the now customary acceptance that in the reverse process of adaptation—from book to film—while some elements may be necessarily or wilfully sacrificed, significant gains in emotional impact, characterisation or other dramatic features may often be made as a result of the different techniques available through the film medium. If we think of films as the source of novelisations we slip into a great fallacy however. In the vast majority of cases the books are not based on films at all but on their screenplays. Unlike literary adaptations, film and book do not draw one from the other but instead each produces in a different medium an adaptation of a shared source. It has generally been considered desirable to have a novelisation available for public purchase by the time the movie reaches theatres and, since time must be allowed for printing and distribution, this has generally meant that the book must be completed before the filming wraps (Larson, 12-3). No wonder, then, that novelisations rarely attempt to describe a film’s mise-en-scène. While the industrial process by which the books are produced can help to explain some features of their relationship to the films whose stories they share, the fact that they are seldom adaptations of these actual films is a point that their marketing has tended to suppress. It is normal for book covers to feature one or more images from the film. Names of stars often appear prominently, and a more detailed list of the film’s key cast and credits can generally be found in smaller print on the back of the book. Novelisations are not sold or consumed as alternative adaptations of a screenplay but through the implication of a much closer relationship to the film than many in fact possess. This discordance allows us to consider novelisations as a re-imagining of the film on two temporal levels. On the one hand, the novelisation can be thought of as preceding the film. It is not unusual for such a book to adapt an older version of the script than the one that was actually shot, thus rendering a single definitive script source elusive if not downright illusory. It is fairly common to find whole scenes missing from the book or conversely to read extensive narrative episodes that never made their way into the finished picture. Dialogue is often a mere paraphrase, no matter how diligently the author has replicated the lines of the script. Such largely unintentional differences can provide fascinating insights into the film’s production history, revealing other paths that the film might well have taken. On the other hand, despite its being published simultaneously with (or even before) the film’s release, a novelisation will often be consumed after viewing the film, in order to help its readers re-experience the movie or to develop and augment that experience. Novelisations can thus be seen to give rise to three main areas of interest. As historical documents they can be of use when considering a film’s developmental process. They also provide alternative readings of the film script and may, by extension, help to enrich a viewer’s retrospective relationship with the film itself. Thirdly, they offer an avenue for exploring the differing narrational forms and capabilities of the two media. “Talk of adaptation,” Yvonne Tasker has argued, “often seems to take place in an abstract hierarchical mode—a hierarchy in which literature seems to emerge as almost by default ‘better’, more complex than film” (18). As we shall see, such a position is not always easy to support. In considering these aspects of the novelisation we now turn to two closely related examples. The film Capricorn One, released in the United States in 1978, was directed by Peter Hyams from his own screenplay. For our purposes it is most notable as one of several works that spawned two separate English language novelisations, each by different authors. One by Bernard L. Ross (a youthful pseudonym of the now popular novelist Ken Follett) was published in England, while Ron Goulart’s version was published in the United States. The story of Capricorn One centres on a colossal fraud perpetrated by NASA in an attempt to conceal a catastrophic problem with its manned mission to Mars. Realising that a fault in the shuttle’s life support system means that the astronauts will not survive the journey, but that admission of failure will provide the government with the long-sought excuse to cut the program’s funding, a conspiracy is hatched to fake a successful mission by enacting the landing in a clandestine television studio. When the shuttle breaks up on re-entry, the three astronauts realise that their existence jeopardises this elaborate fraud and that they must go on the run for a chance at survival. Meanwhile, a journalist finds his own life in peril as he doggedly pursues a hunch that all is not as it should be with the Capricorn One mission. Novelisations as Evidence of the Film’s Production History Each book shows, in a range of ways, its fidelity to a shared source: the screenplay (or, at least, to the elements that remained unchanged through various screenplay drafts). That the screenplay comprised not only extensive dialogue but also some descriptive material becomes clear at a very early stage. Goulart opens with the following image: “The sun, an intense orange ball, began to rise over the Atlantic” (5). Several pages into his own book, Ross introduces the same narrative event with these words: “The morning sun rose like a big orange lollipop over the Atlantic Ocean” (10). The comparability of these visually evocative images with the equivalent moment in the finished film might suggest a fairly straightforward transposition of the screenplay into the three marketed texts. However, other sections belie any such assumption. The books’ origin in the screenplay and not in the film itself, and the considerable evolution that has occurred between screenplay and finished film, are expressed in two main ways. The first is the presence of corresponding scenes in both books that do not occur in the film. Where a non-filmed scene occurs in one book only we can assume a high probability that it is an invention of the book’s author which is intended to develop the narrative or characterisation. When found in both books, though, we can only infer that a scene outlined in the screenplay was dropped during either the film’s production or editing phase. For instance, in all three versions of the narrative, an attempt is made on the life of reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould) by tampering with his car. A high-speed action sequence culminates when car and driver plummet into a deep river. Whereas the film moves swiftly to the next scene without ever explaining how Caulfield managed to extricate himself from this perilous situation, each book extends the sequence with a description of how he disentangles his trouser leg from the door handle in order to pull himself through the open window and out of the sinking vehicle (Goulart, 96-7; Ross, 86). Indeed, the retention of this scene in the novelisations fills what is in the film an unsatisfying narrative ellipsis. The second proof of an evolution between screenplay and film is perhaps even more interesting in understanding the production process. This is that narrative events do not all occur in the same order in each book. The differences between the two books, as well as between books and film, suggest that Goulart’s was based on a later version of the screenplay as it corresponds more closely with the film’s chronology of events. The narrational structure of each text consists of a number of alternating segments designed to maintain tension while following simultaneously occurring incidents in the adventures of each of the protagonists. This is especially the case in the last half of the story where the three astronauts—Col. Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Lt. Col. Peter Willis (Sam Waterston) and Cmdr. John Walker (O. J. Simpson)—have escaped into the desert and split up to maximise the chance that one will survive to expose the swindle. Narrational segments follow their individual progress as well as that of Caulfield’s investigation and of NASA director James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook)’s attempts to manage the crisis of the astronauts’ escape. It is evident that during the film’s post-production some reshuffling of these sequences was undertaken in order to maximise suspense. Further evidence that Ross’s book was based on an earlier screenplay than Goulart’s source emerges through its ending which, unlike Goulart’s, differs from the finished film. In every version of the story, Caulfield is able to rescue Brubaker and deliver him to his wife Kay (Brenda Vaccaro) in front of the watching media. Instead of doing so at a memorial service for the “dead” astronauts, however, Ross has this event take place at Bru’s home, after the service occurs without incident some pages earlier. This episode, more that any other in either book, is conspicuous in its variance from the film. Other discrepancies are based on addition, non-inclusion or reordering: different tellings of the same tale. Here, however, consumers of these texts are faced with two mutually exclusive finales that enforce a choice between the “right” and “wrong” version of the story. Enriching Character and Plot through Alternative Readings of the Script Although the examples above highlight some significant variations in the three versions of Capricorn One, none show evidence of intentional narrative difference. In some other respects, though, the authors of the novelisations did employ constituents of their own invention in order to transform the source material into the format expected by the readers of any novel. One key technique is shared by both authors. This is the fleshing-out of characters, a technique used more extensively by Ross than Goulart, and one which is largely responsible for his book’s greater length (an estimated 68,000 words, compared with Goulart’s 37,000). Goulart, for his part, largely confines this technique to the latter section of the story where the astronauts make their individual journeys across the desert. While his book is comprised, for the most part, of reported speech, the protagonists’ solitude in this part of the story leads him to recourse to descriptions of their thoughts in order to stretch out and enliven what would otherwise be an exceptionally brief and potentially dull account. Ross embraces the task of elaborating characterisation with considerably greater fervour. As well as representing their thoughts, he regularly adds passages of back story. During a breakfast scene before the launch (present in both books but absent from the finished film) he describes how each astronaut came to be involved in the mission and their feelings about it. Similarly he describes childhood or youthful incidents in their lives and in those of Kelloway and Caulfield in order to explain and add believability to some of their later actions. Even the biography and thoughts of relatively minor characters, such as the whistleblowing NASA employee Elliot Whitter (Robert Walden), are routinely developed. However, Ross does not stop here in elaborating the blueprint offered by the screenplay. New characters are added in order to develop a subplot glossed over in the film. These additions relate to an elderly European man, Mr. Julius, who is affiliated with a couple of Kelloway’s corporate accomplices and whose shady employees are responsible for both the attempts to assassinate Caulfield and for piloting the helicopters used to seek and destroy the escaped astronauts. In such ways, Ross succeeds in producing a rendition of the story that (barring its anomalous ending) enhances that of the film without conspicuously competing against what all the marketing points to as the “definitive” version. The Differing Narrational Capabilities of Films and Books While this section is indebted to the methods and findings of existing studies of novel-to-film adaptations, through close attention to the reverse process (or, more accurately, to screenplay-to-novel adaptations) we can observe another less recognised dynamic at work. This is the novelisers’ efforts to assimilate what are more traditionally cinematic devices into their writing. By way of illustration, our case study shows how it has led both Ross and Goulart to employ a writing style that sometimes contrasts with the norms of original mainstream novels. My comments thus far have dwelt mainly on differences in the placement and inclusion of narrative events, although the description of how the novelisers have expanded characters’ back stories suggests one way in which the written word can lend itself more readily to the concise interspersion of such material than can the film medium. This is not to say that film is incapable of rendering such incidents; merely that the representation of back story requires either lengthy spoken exposition or the insertion of flashbacks (some of which would require younger actors doubling for the stars). Either technique is prone to be more disruptive of the narrative flow, and therefore justifiable only in rarer instances where such information proves crucial, rather than merely useful, to the main narrative thrust. There are other ways, though, in which comparison of these three texts highlights the relative strengths of the different media in stimulating the response of their viewers or readers. One of these is the handling of audiovisual spectacle. It perhaps goes without saying that the film elicits a far more visceral response during its action scenes. This is especially true of a climactic sequence in which Caulfield and cropduster pilot Albain (Telly Savalas) do aerial battle with two helicopters as each strives to be the first to reach the fugitive Brubaker. Ross is far more successful than Goulart in conveying the excitement of this scene, although even his version pales in comparison with the movie. A device on which the film regularly draws, both in order to heighten tension and so as to suggest dramatic or ironic parallels between different narrative strands, is that of cross-cutting. This technique is adapted by each of the novelisers, who use it in a diluted form. Each of the books subdivides its chapters into many segments, which are often much shorter than those found in conventional novels. Ross uses ninety such segments and Goulart sixty-seven. The shortest of these, by Ross, is a solitary sentence sitting amidst a sea of white space, in which he signals the cancellation of the plan to reunite the astronauts with their shuttle at the projected splashdown site: “High over the Pacific Ocean, the Falcon jet went into a tight banking turn and began to head back the way it had come” (116). Neither author, however, has the audacity to cut between locations with the speed that the film does. One of the movie’s most effective sequences is that in which rapid edits alternate between Kelloway solemnly announcing the fictive death of the astronauts to the press and the astronauts sitting in their hideaway imagining this very eulogy. Neither one of the novelisations succeeds in creating a sequence quite so biting in its satire. In this case study we are able to observe some of the ways in which films and novelisations can relate to one another, each providing a reading of the film script (or scripts) that, through a mutual interlocking in the mind of the reader versed in these multiple versions of the tale, can contribute to an experience of the narrative that is richer than one text alone can produce. Robert Block, who has written both novelisations and original novels, alleges that “the usual rule seems to be that while films can widely and wildly deviate from previously-published-and-purchased novels, a novelisation cannot supersede a screenplay in terms of content” (Larson, 44). Whereas this assertion describes with reasonable accuracy the approach that Ron Goulart has taken to his version of Capricorn One, the more ambitious and detailed story told by Bernard Ross provides one clear exception to this rule. It thus offers firm evidence that novelisations are not, by their very nature, merely impoverished derivations of the cinema. Instead they constitute a medium capable of original and intrinsic value and which fully deserves more detailed critical appreciation than its current reputation suggests. References Coe, Jonathan. 9th and 13th. London: Penguin Books, 2005. Goulart, Ron. Capricorn One. New York: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1978. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. Larson, Randall D. Films into Books: An Analytical Bibliography of Film Novelizations, Movie, and TV Tie-Ins. London: Scarecrow Press, 1995. Ross, Bernard L. Capricorn One. London: Futura, 1978. Tasker, Yvonne, The Silence of the Lambs. London: BFI, 2002. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Allison, Deborah. "Film/Print: Novelisations and Capricorn One." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/07-allison.php>. APA Style Allison, D. (May 2007) "Film/Print: Novelisations and Capricorn One," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/07-allison.php>.

“We girls can do anything, right, Barbie?” — Barbie advertising slogan, 1985 Introduction Barbie, throughout her sixty-five year history, has both influenced and reflected western ideas of femininity. To quote M.G. Lord: “Barbie has both shaped and responded to the marketplace, it’s possible to study her as a reflection of American popular cultural values and notions of femininity. Her houses, and friends and clothes provide a window onto the often contradictory demands that the culture has placed upon women” (Lord, 7). Not only does Barbie reflect the contradictory demands and ideals placed on women, as Lord points out, but Barbie has also generated contradictory ideas and analyses. This article considers Barbie and her construction of hyper-femininity in relation to feminist debates, utilising Critical Femininities and queer theory to seek out new meanings for Barbie. It is worth noting that this article discusses Barbie as a figure and cultural construct, both in relation to the Barbie doll line as well as the 2023 film Barbie. I’m a Barbie Girl In the throes of 2020’s COVID lockdown I found joy in an unexpected source: Barbie. Like many, Barbie had a pink-tinted presence in my childhood, with her shiny blonde hair, permanently arched feet, and in place of genitals, flesh coloured plastic underwear embossed with tiny raised letter Bs which I would rub my fingers over. I would dress my Barbies up in whatever tiny clothes I could get my hands on, my tape of Aqua’s Barbie Girl on repeat. My mum once bought me a Bratz doll, whose oversized lips and Y2K fashions couldn’t eclipse Barbie. Bratz dolls felt like the girls in school who would bully me, whilst Barbie felt like a woman I could aspire to be, with her dream house, multitude of careers, and parade of pets. In my heart, Barbie was supreme. However, as my childhood Barbies eventually scattered to various charity shops and storage bins in the attic, my adult life became devoid of tiny plastic heels and hairbrushes. That is, until 2020. Stuck indoors, on furlough from a retail job I despised, and considering applying for PhD programs but struggling to string together my proposal, I saw her. Celebrating Barbie’s 60th Birthday: Proudly Pink Barbie™. She appears drenched in pink, her pink hair styled into a high ponytail permanently gelled into a satisfying swoop at the end; attached to her pink peplum top sits a rhinestone broach which reads “Barbie”. The Barbie monogram also appears printed on her hot pink pencil skirt and matching pink quilted bag, which sits in the crook of her pink gloved arms. Whilst modern Barbies’ gaze looks straight forward to look kindly upon their owners, Proudly Pink Barbie™ is based on the sculpt of the original 1959 Barbie. As such, her blue eye-shadowed cat-eyed gaze is cast permanently downwards and to the side, her glossed pink lips pouting instead of smiling. Proudly Pink Barbie™ does not perform happiness for the viewer, instead her sidewards glance reads as ennui. It’s as if she knew that in my lockdown solitude I had grown accustomed to wearing Juicy Couture sweatpants and no make up, and she judged me heavily for it. Proudly Pink Barbie™ will always be a better hyper-femme than me, and I’m at peace with that. Proudly Pink Barbie™ sits perfectly on my living room shelf with her Barbie pals who have joined her over recent years, a cluster of ballgowns, tiny lingerie, striped swimsuits, and a once winking cowgirl whose broken eyes have been fixed. A reminder of the possibilities of hyper-femininity in all its fun, performative, camp, joyous, and powerful forms. My most recent Barbie stands out of her box on the shelf with her new peers, she is Margot Robbie Barbie in her pink cowgirl outfit. The Multiplicities of Barbie and Her Complicated Relationship to Feminism Barbie’s (2023) opening monologue reflects on Barbie’s history and the multiplicity of Barbie: yes, Barbie changed everything. Then, she changed it all again. All of these women are Barbie, and Barbie is all of these women. She might have started out as just a lady in a bathing suit, but she became so much more. She has her own money, her own house, her own car, her own career. Because Barbie can be anything, women can be anything. And this has been reflected back onto the little girls of today in the real world. Girls have grown into women who can achieve everything and anything they set their mind to. Thanks to Barbie all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved, at least that’s what the Barbies think. (Gerwig) Whilst ironic in tone, it does consider how Barbie can act as a conduit for empowerment. The multiplicity of Barbie, with her endless careers and multiple houses, friends, and methods of transport, leads to a cacophony of opportunities for play. However, the boundless opportunities and room for creativity within Barbie’s world do not often extend to Barbie’s idea of femininity. Barbie can be everything, but she is very rarely seen without her plastic heels and pink branding. Barbie’s careers are often in flux, but her gendered identity seemingly fits perfectly within her pink box. Whilst it could be, and has been, argued that Barbie’s construction of femininity is limiting, it could also be simultaneously true that Barbie’s hyper-femininity is in itself a feminist statement. The first Barbie doll debuted a few years before Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, calling attention to “the problem that has no name” (Friedan, 5): the widespread unhappiness of women forced into hegemonic feminine roles with limited opportunities for women in the workforce. Whilst feminine in her appearance, Barbie defied patriarchal roles with her actions. Barbie in her early years allowed young girls and children to dream that they could work any career they wished, even in what was seen as more masculine positions such as astronauts and doctors, could own their own homes without needing to be married, and did not need to sacrifice their femininity in order to succeed. To Barbie, femininity knows no bounds. To many, however, Barbie’s construction of femininity is perceived as limiting and disempowering. Barbie has been a site for feminist discourse since she made her debut. In 1972, NOW (The National Organisation for Women) staged a protest outside a toy fair in New York, handing out leaflets which stated that “'fashion' dolls such as Barbie, Dawn and Chrissy perpetuated sexual stereotypes by encouraging little girls to see themselves solely as mannequins, sex objects or housekeepers” (New York Times). Meanwhile, Natasha Walter links the pink-ification of girls' toys such as Barbie to what she sees as the auto-objectification of women, claiming that women are modelling themselves on the dolls they were brought up with. Walter argues that the limiting ideals of femininity as portrayed in dolls such as Barbie both echo and endorse the western feminine beauty standard of cis-gendered, white, skinny, able-bodied, and blonde. Barbie’s caricature of femininity has had an impact on women, as many strive to attain her almost impossible standard of beauty; according to Walter this should not be viewed as an act of empowerment, but rather as giving in to patriarchal ideals. Whilst many, such as Walter, have argued that Barbie’s construction of femininity has both historically and in recent years been limited in its beauty standards, the notion of Barbie as white, blonde, able-bodied, and thin is not entirely representative of the true diversity of Barbie. Throughout Barbie’s history, Mattel has attempted to diversify both Barbie herself and her line-up of friends; however, these attempts have made a complicated impact, with Mattel at times arguably falling short of truly instilling inclusivity into Barbie. In 1967, Mattel launched Coloured Francie, a darker-complexioned version of their Francie doll. Coloured Francie was Mattel’s first none-white doll in their Barbie line; however, Mattel faced criticism for utilising the same face mold as her caucasian counterpart. A year later Mattel released Christie, their first doll with a face mold based on African American features, whilst in 1980 Mattel released African American and Hispanic Barbie dolls, officially expanding Barbie from being solely white. Since then Barbie has been an array of multiple ethnicities and races. In recent years, Mattel has also expanded her once limiting beauty standard further by introducing dolls such as a ‘curvy’ Barbie in 2016, Barbies with prosthetic limbs and hearing aids in 2018, and a Barbie with Down syndrome in 2023. However, Mattel's forays into introducing dolls of different body types and disabilities have not always succeeded. Seven years after the introduction of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, Mattel realised “Share a Smile Becky”, a friend of Barbie's who came in a hot pink wheelchair. However, Mattel’s first disabled doll was quickly discontinued after consumers realised that Becky was unable to access Barbie’s dream house and accessories. Despite Mattel’s at times arguably apathetic attempts to diversify Barbie, the cultural notion of Barbie has remained that of white, thin, blonde, and able-bodied. We can see this reflected in the casting of the film Barbie itself: despite a diverse cast of Barbies, our protagonist “stereotypical” Barbie is played by white, thin, blonde, and able-bodied actress Margot Robbie, who describes herself to Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie: "I’m Stereotypical Barbie. I’m like the Barbie you think of when someone says, ‘Think of a Barbie.’ That’s me” (Gerwig). As Stereotypical Barbie herself states, despite there now being a cacophony of Barbies available, to many our cultural idea of Barbie remains blonde, white, thin, and able-bodied. If we are to view Barbie as a pink-tinted reflection of western ideas of femininity, it is no surprise then that Barbie’s beauty standards and our cultural idea of Barbie’s standard of feminine beauty mirrors western beauty standards. However, through reanalysing Barbie’s construction of unbridled hyper-femininity through a lens of Critical Femininities perhaps we can also allow space for readings of Barbie as a site for empowerment, subversion, and joy. Hoskin and Blair describe Critical Femininities as “moving beyond femininity as a patriarchal tool” (Hoskin and Blair, 1): challenging assumptions that femininity is inherently subordinate and a source of disempowerment, they argue instead for “alternative readings of femininity that are both intersectional and liberating” (Hoskin and Blair, 5). Viewing Barbie through a lens of Critical Femininities allows us to see her pink-hued hyper-feminine aesthetics as a representation of high-femme joy, in all her tiny plastic high-heeled, exaggeratedly vibrant make-up, and frilly costumed glory. Whilst many feminist critiques of Barbie raise valid concerns, I would argue that simultaneously if we are to view Barbie’s hyper-femininity as a site for joyous gender expression, instead of as a purely patriarchal tool, we can see the true strength in Barbie’s pink-saturated femininity. By acknowledging the complications and multiplicities of Barbie and allowing space for her to be seen outside of the binary of bad/good feminist, for multiple meanings to coexist perhaps we can seek out new possibilities for Barbie. “The Epitome of Stupidity and Glamour”: Queer Co-option of Barbie Another key notion we can utilise in seeking out new possibilities for Barbie is to seek to liberate her from Mattel’s enforced heteronormativity. What is overtly lacking from the Barbie movie as well as many feminist texts on Barbie is her radical ability to act as a conduit for joyous and subversive queer readings. Whilst Barbie as a product manufactured by Mattel has both historically and recently been limited in her construction of femininity, with her largely depicted as skinny, white, and blonde, Barbie as an idea, as a shorthand for the endless possibilities of hyper-femininity and gender play, is so much more. Erica Rand argues that Mattel’s branding and creation of Barbie perpetuates hegemonic ideas of femininity and heterosexuality, and enforces western beauty standards; however, consumers of Barbie can deviate from Mattel’s demands. Rand highlights how Barbie can be used as a tool to subvert the very values and beauty standards she represents, with consumers creating their own queer, butch, cross-dressing, and dyke Barbies who break the hegemonic and heterosexual mold enforced by Mattel. Rand states that consumers often took out much of what Mattel put in. But, equally as often, they took out less and added more themselves than common wisdom would suggest. They gave Barbie queer accessories, and they acted as Barbie’s queer accessories to the crime of abetting her escape from the straight context of meaning that Mattel spent millions of dollars to give her. (Rand, 194) A recent example of the queer co-option of Barbie is drag queen Trixie Mattel. Adopting Mattel as her performance surname, Mattel has utilised Barbie as inspiration for much of her drag persona. Mattel’s exaggerated make up and usage of Barbie fashions as a site of inspiration for her drag looks, such as Golden Dreams Barbie, Winking Western Barbie, and Workin’ Out Barbie, form a queer parody of Barbie which reclaims and subverts Mattel’s (the brand’s) intentions. As well as utilising Barbie as a conduit for drag parody, Mattel is also an avid collector of Barbie and creates YouTube content to present her collection and discuss Barbie history with her audience. Her YouTube series Trixie’s Decades of Dolls sees Mattel discuss key Barbies from the 1960s to 1990s, where Mattel revels in the ridiculous, groundbreaking and consistently high-femme eras of Barbie. Mattel draws attention to moments where Barbie reflects and influences women’s history, as well as calling attention to the impractical, camp, and ridiculous nature of the designs of Barbie over the years. She describes 1990’s Holiday Barbie this way: “I mean nothing is more ridiculous than this gown, and there’s this big floating bang, with blue eye makeup plastered in circles on an orange base. The epitome of stupidity and glamour” (Mattel). It is clear that Mattel utilises Barbie as a site of personal joy. Mattel serves as a – to quote Rand – “queer accessory to Barbie”, utilising drag to parody and reclaim Barbie as well as utilising her YouTube content to publish her queer readings of Barbie. Mattel’s exaggerated performance of Barbie-inspired hyper-femininity both celebrates Barbie’s legacy and destabilises aspects of Barbie that fall more within patriarchal, normative, and heteronormative spheres. Mattel stands as an example for how Barbie and her complicated representations of femininity can be utilised as a source of empowerment and joy. Over the course of my research, I have been thinking about my own relationship to Barbie as a queer femme woman, and the legacy that each Barbie that I once held in my chubby childhood fingers, or now place on my living room shelf, has had. Rediscovering Barbie at the age of 26 reaffirmed and set ablaze a core and unwavering belief of mine: that femininity can be fun. I look at my Barbies lined up on my shelf: a parade of hyper-femininities, they call out to me to be as fun as them, as pink, as bright, as bold, as ridiculous. My Barbies show me that femininity can be subversive. That I can express my gender identity through dress-up. That I can love and embrace the colour pink and saturate my life and myself with pink, as an act of joy and gender expression, not as a sign that I’ve given in to patriarchal demands. Barbie means to me the power of hyper-femininity and the endless room for possibilities and multitudes it holds. Fig. 1: Self-portrait with Barbies, 2023. Conclusion Whilst Barbie may be seen as an unrealistic ideal, her construction of exaggerated hyper-femininity has for many served as a conduit for femme self-expression. In her biography Doll Parts, transgender model and performer Amanda Lepore describes how her childhood Barbie dolls were “everything I wanted to be, before I even knew what I wanted” (Lepore, 4). For generations of women, queer people, and femmes alike, Barbie has been a friend, a confidant, a muse: a plastic sculpted figure who sparked within us a desire to explore and play with our own relationships with gender and femininity. Through we are arguably yet to see an out queer Barbie on our shelves and our screens – although Mattel has released in recent years a series of Inspiring Women Barbie dolls, some of which depict LGBTQ+ women, including actress Laverne Cox – I would like to end by briefly focussing on the queer subtext in Barbie’s ending. We see Barbie leave Barbieland with her creator, Ruth Handler – played by Rhea Perlman – and decide that she wants to no longer be an idea, but instead to be a human: “ I want to do the imagining, I don’t wanna be the idea” (Gerwig). Barbie’s journey through the conflicting push and pull of patriarchy and feminism has led to her longing for subjecthood. Ultimately, Barbie realises that she does not need permission from her creator to be human, she can simply “discover I am”. Barbie’s self-discovery and leap into humanity, transforming from a thing that is made to a woman, reflects many queer people’s journeys in realising that they do not need permission to live their authentic lives. Barbie’s ending serves as an ode to those who stepped into the unknown and embraced the multitude of possibilities available to them. “Take my hands. Now, close your eyes. Now feel.” References Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. London: Penguin Classics, 1963. Gerwig, Greta, dir. Barbie. Warner Bros Pictures, 2023. Hoskin, Rhea Ashley, and Karen L. Blair. “Critical Femininities: A ‘New’ Approach to Gender Theory.” Psychology & Sexuality 13.1 (2022): 1-8. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19419899.2021.1905052>. Lepore, Amanda. Doll Parts. New York: Regan Arts, 2017. Lord, M.G. Forever Barbie: The Unauthorised Biography of a Real Doll. New York: William Morrow, 1994. Mattel, Trixie. Trixie’s Decades of Dolls: The 90s. 2020. 11 Apr. 2024 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrJh4fF4RE>. Rand, Erica. Barbie’s Queer Accessories. Duke UP, 1995. New York Times. "Feminists Protest 'Sexist' Toys in Fair." 29 Feb. 1972. 11 Apr. 2023 <https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/29/archives/feminists-protest-sexist-toys-in-fair.html>. Walter, Natasha. Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. London: Virago, 2010.

For each of the “Women of the Moon”, a biography and the reason for receiving the honor are described. The women included are Hypatia of Alexandria, Catherine of Alexandria, Nicole-Reine de la Briere Lepaute, Caroline Lucretia Herschel, Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville, Anne Sheepshanks, Catherine Wolfe Bruce, Maria Mitchell, Agnes Mary Clerke, Sofia Vasílyevna Kovalévskaya, Annie Scott Dill Russell Maunder, Williamina Paton Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Mary Adela Blagg, Mary Proctor, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Lise Meitner, Amalie Emmy Noether, Louise Freeland Jenkins, Priscilla Fairfield Bok, Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori, and the astronauts/cosmonauts Judith Arlene Resnik, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, and Valentina Vladímirovna Nikolayeva Tereshkova.

Harold F. Pitcairn, American aviation and Autogiro pioneer, died from a single gunshot wound to the head in the late evening hours of April 23, 1960 at the age of 62 after a gala evening at which he presided over a celebration attended by more than 450 guests for his brother's Raymond's 75th birthday. Initially labelled a suicide by the press, Pitcairn's widow Clara declared that "she never wanted to hear another word about the tragedy", while friends and friendly local authorities made the argument, duly reported by Frank Kingston Smith in Legacy of Wings, his devotional Pitcairn biography (subsidized by the Pitcairn family), that the death was accidental because "there was no note, no indication of depression or unhappiness" and "the police investigation disclosed that two shots had been fired; one had penetrated the ceiling directly over the desk in the first floor study, another had struck Pitcairn in the eye" and that "the next morning it was discovered the semi-automatic pistol was defective: when cocked, it had a supersensitive "hair trigger," and it had a faulty disconnector so that it would fire more than one shot at a time, a condition known as "doubling."" The Pitcairn families, prominent and powerful, prevailed upon the local authorities to declare the death accidental and Kingston Smith's 1981account became the de facto authoritative story of the death of Harold F. Pitcairn. With the perspective, however, of six decades, it appears far more likely that Pitcairn's death was a suicide for reasons that were not readily evident, minimized, unappreciated or deliberately ignored at the time to craft a result that met the needs of Clara Pitcairn and her surviving family. These included the fact that while the claim was made that Pitcairn was making his nightly rounds to check on the estate’s ground-level windows (and had been doing so since the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932), he actually died at his desk; that those in the house only reported a single shot; the 1907 Savage pistol had no reputation for a hair-trigger, and had not evidenced such a flaw in almost three decades of Pitcairn's nightly ritual; that even though Pitcairn had been assured that his almost-decade-long lawsuit against the United States government for Patent infringement of his Autogiro patents was going well, he was concerned about the impact this lawsuit was having on his aged associates who had been called to give depositions and he had voiced the sentiment that "if he had known that he would have to sue the government, he would not have gone into the Autogiro business"; that the lawsuit, itself intended as a vindication of Pitcairn's contribution to aviation was dragging on and would reach its first legal conclusion in 1967, and not finally conclude upon appeal until 1977; and most importantly, those who deny suicide and point to Pitcairn’s state-of-mind, have failed to take into account when the death occurred or ready evidence of his 'state of mind' To fail to see the tragic end of Harold F. Pitcairn is to forget that 29 years and one day earlier, he had been recognized for "the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year." The memory of that day on the White House back lawn with the President was the high point of his life even as Pitcairn prepared to celebrate his older brother's achievements. The evidence, when marshalled and documented, conclusively points to suicide - a death of an American aviation pioneer before his contributions were vindicated in the largest patent infringement judgement against the United States in history. To fail to see the tragic end of Harold F. Pitcairn is to forget that 29 years earlier, he had been recognized for "the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America".