Chocks away and God save the Queen!

[sawyl]

I've been reading the Glorious Leader's latest and, thanks to the wonder of hyper-caffeination, there now follows a party political rant on behalf of Space Cadets everywhere...

Ministry of Spaces recounts the history of a Britain that never was; a country that got it's hands on the Nazi's top rocket scientists; a place where the Empire is still very much ascendant. Lead by the ruthlessly ambitious John Dashwood and helped by the Teutonic engineers, the Brits are the first into space, the first to the moon and the first to get to Mars.

The story is split into two parts, with the first part recounting the glorious history and the tragic costs of the Ministry's achievements, while the second details Sir John Dashwood's visit to Churchill Space
Station. As the historical narrative progresses through a series of increasingly optimistic and impressive feats, a dark cloud begins to settle over Dashwood's story until, in the very last section, the dark side of this particular moon appears.

The art is totally great, with the early sections set in the 1940s full of the sort of note perfect WWII clobber familiar from a thousand movies to very English space ships in 2001 - a strange mix of Biggles, H.G. Wells and Soyuz technology. Some of the scenes are nothing short of amazing: can you really see every window on the Houses of Parliament? Has Buck House ever really looked that good? Will the the actual colonisation of Mars look half as realistic? All in all, superb.