1943: The Sleeping Peacock (dir. Severin Unck) released
June 1944: Moscow Worlds’ Fair / The Clamshell departs for filming of The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew (dir. Severin Unck)
16 November 1944: The Clamshell lands at White Peony Station for Radiant Car principal photography
21 November 1944: Radiant Car film crew sets out from White Peony Station
1 December 1944: Crew arrives in Adonis, Venus, first contact made
2 December 1944: Auditory phenomena commences
3 December 1944: Severin disappears
1946: Erasmo St. John debriefed by Oxblood Films
10 October 1947: Severin’s funeral in absentia
1951: Severin’s funeral
1959: Production begins on The Deep Blue Devil (dir. Percival Unck)
Spring 1959: Posthumous publication of Erasmo St. John’s book The Sound of a Voice That Is Still
1960: Major rewrite on The Deep Blue Devil, retitled The Man in the Malachite Mask (dir. Percival Unck)
Winter 1961: Major rewrite on The Man in the Malachite Mask, retitled Doctor Callow’s Dream (dir. Percival Unck)
Summer 1961: Major rewrite on Doctor Callow’s Dream, retitled And if She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still (dir. Percival Unck)
December 1961–October 1962: The action of The Deep Blue Devil The Man in the Malachite Mask Doctor Callow’s Dream And If She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still takes place
Locations
The Moon
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
Being unable to retrace our steps in Time, we decided to move forward in Space. Shall we never be able to glide back up the stream of Time, and peep into the old home, and gaze on the old faces? Perhaps when the phonograph and the kinesigraph are perfected, and some future worker has solved the problem of colour photography, our descendants will be able to deceive themselves with something very like it: but it will be but a barren husk, a soulless phantasm and nothing more. “Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!”
—Wordsworth Donisthorpe,
inventor of the kinesigraph camera