Saturday, July 18, 2009

Life imitating science fiction: Attack of the giant squid edition

In the Guardian today, one of my favourite headlines of recent weeks:

Giant squid terrorise Californian coast


Interesting story, and it made me think immediately of Frank Schätzing's rather good thriller Der Schwarm (which I see has been published in English as The Swarm) in which marine life starts attacking humanity in all kinds of interesting and horrifying ways.

Although recent events in California may not be as exciting as they at first sounded, as noted at the end of the Guardian article.

Roger Uzun, a veteran scuba diver and amateur underwater videographer, swam with a swarm of the creatures for about 20 minutes and said they appeared more curious than aggressive. The animals taste with their tentacles, he said, and seemed to be touching him and his wet suit to determine if he was edible.


Ah, well that's OK then.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The animals taste with their tentacles, he said, and seemed to be touching him and his wet suit to determine if he was edible.

So either he is eaten, which would be painful, or he's rejected as being inedible, which would be wounding to his feelings. He canna win.

JCWood said...

Hi, KB.

Yes, it's kind of a drag either way... Though I'm pretty sure I'd take the pain of rejection over becoming some squid's next tasty morsel.

But there might be those who think otherwise.

mikeovswinton, bit of a geezer said...

Isn't it rather splendid that the Grauniad actually got the right species? I mena they could have made it the Giant Scrod. (Cue the favourite joke of classicists who think they are little whoo, a little whee. I once won a CD for getting it on a radio show. Not know what I am on about? - see wikipedia. Although the version done by Benny Green with accents on Radio 4 circa 1977 was rather better.)