Dark Adapted Eye

Dark Adapted Eye is a compilation album by Danielle Dax, an English experimental musician, formerly of The Lemon Kittens. Released in 1988 on Sire Records on LP, cassette and CD, it consisted of material from albums and singles released on her own label, Awesome Records, and was the first release of her material in North America. After being out of print for years, the CD was reissued in the U.S. by the Noble Rot label in 2008. All tracks were produced by Dax and co-written by David Knight.

This compilation album could be considered an expanded international edition of her third album, Inky Bloaters, except that it only has 10 of the 11 tracks from that album. "Born To Be Bad" is missing, and only appears on the Inky Bloaters album, and nowhere else.

Cover artwork is by Holly Warburton.

Track listing

Text in (parentheses) indicates what releases the songs were originally on. Tracks 13-19 were only released on the CD and cassette versions of the album.

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE (née Grasemann; 17 February 1930 – 2 May 2015) was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.

Rendell's best-known creation, Chief Inspector Wexford, was the hero of many popular police stories, some of them successfully adapted for TV. But Rendell also generated a separate brand of crime fiction that deeply explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims, many of them mentally afflicted or otherwise socially isolated. This theme was developed further in a third series of novels, written under her pseudonym Barbara Vine.

Life

Rendell was born Ruth Barbara Grasemann in 1930, in South Woodford, London. Her parents were teachers. Her mother, Ebba Kruse, was born in Sweden and brought up in Denmark; her father, Arthur Grasemann, was English. As a result of spending Christmas and other holidays in Scandinavia, Rendell learned Swedish and Danish. Rendell was educated at the County High School for Girls in Loughton, Essex, the town to which the family moved during her childhood.

The Ruth Rendell Mysteries

The Ruth Rendell Mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Broadcasting (in association with Blue Heaven productions) for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000.

Description

The series comprises adaptations of the works of Ruth Rendell, many of which are based on her extensive range of short stories. In some cases, the stories were expanded from Rendell's original material or elements from a number of stories were woven together into one episode. A smaller number of episodes were based on Rendell's full-length novels, such as Going Wrong, starring James Callis and Front Seat, starring Janet Suzman.

There were a total of 55 episodes centring on the Detective Inspector Wexford stories, starring George Baker, Louie Ramsay and Christopher Ravenscroft, and an additional 29 episodes did not feature Wexford.

Inspector Wexford episodes

Non-Wexford episodes

Media releases

On 9 April 2007, Network in the UK released 17 mysteries on DVD in a 9-disc box set called The Best Of Ruth Rendell Mysteries, including three of Inspector Wexford's most acclaimed mysteries. Two 3-disc DVD sets are available in the US, with the third set being released on 24 June 2008.

Darkness

Darkness, the polar opposite to brightness, is understood to be an absence of visible light. It is also the appearance of black in a colored space.

Humans are unable to distinguish color when either light or darkness predominate. In conditions of insufficient light, perception is achromatic and ultimately, black.

The emotional response to darkness has generated metaphorical usages of the term in many cultures.

Scientific

Perception

The perception of darkness differs from the mere absence of light due to the effects of after images on perception. In perceiving, the eye is active, and that part of the retina that is unstimulated produces a complementary afterimage.

Physics

In terms of physics, an object is said to be dark when it absorbs photons, causing it to appear dim compared to other objects. For example, a matte black paint does not reflect much visible light and appears dark, whereas white paint reflects much light and appears bright. For more information see color.

Light cannot be absorbed without limit. According to the principle of the conservation of Energy, energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one type to another. Consequently, most objects that absorb visible light reemit it as heat. So, although an object may appear dark, it is likely bright at a frequency that humans cannot perceive. For more information see thermodynamics.

A Dark-Adapted Eye

A Dark-Adapted Eye (1986) is a psychological thriller novel by Ruth Rendell, written under the nom-de-plume Barbara Vine. The novel won the American Edgar Award. It was adapted as a television film of the same name in 1994 by the BBC.

Plot summary

Largely set during World War II, the story is told by Faith Severn, who at the prompting of a true-crime writer recounts her memories of her aunt, the prim, fastidious, and snobbish Vera Hillyard. Vera's life is initially centred on her beautiful younger sister, Eden, even to the exclusion of her own son, Francis, with whom she has a poor relationship. Later, Vera has a second son, Jamie, to whom she is intensely devoted, while Eden marries the scion of a wealthy family.

When Eden is unable to have children with her husband, she begins to demand custody of Jamie, who she claims is being poorly raised by Vera. To the bewilderment and shock of the rest of the family, the custody battle escalates to violent levels, leading to tragedy and a series of disturbing revelations.