Forbidden Planet

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Sorry, we're Forbidden (Planet) To Talk About it

Anyone who itches their science fiction shopping habit in the UK is probably very familiar with the Forbidden Planet bookshop & merchandise chain.

There's Forbidden Planet Scotland, Forbidden Planet Glasgow, Forbidden Planet Croydon and literally dozens of these little retail beauties scattered around the UK.

The first shop was set up by a couple of long-haired fans, Mike Lake and Nick Landau in the 70s (plus some other guy who sodded off to the US to run the shop out there).

But now there appears to be a war in the heavens.

You Brits may not realize this, but there now seem to be two totally different Forbidden Planet chains, one run out of Scotland, one run out of London - each with their own competing chain of shops behind it. We happened across this fact by accident, but the strange vibes we picked up underlying the split seemed to suggest a few tensions still in the air.

We tried to get to the bottom of this, but nobody was very willing to talk to the 'Nest - on or off the record. We rung up six different shops and subtly tried to find out what has happened, and were met with resounding cries of 'err, umm, I'm just a clerk' or 'eerrr uummm, look you better ring our head office.'

At, the London HQ'd chain owned by Nick Landau, the marketing/PR gonk we spoke to pleaded the 'don't know, that was before my time John' argument.

At the Scotland arm, someone admitted that they thought Mike Lake might be a Director of the Scottish Forbidden Planet chain, but then they got nervous, retracted this and said we better speak to the Scottish HQ.

Given there's now at least two Forbidden Planet chains, our best guess would be there's been some kind of falling out and splintering of the business - along North versus South lines.

If anyone can throw some light on this strange mystery, our journalists are always willing to talk off (or on) the record.

More news on this one as we dig it up!

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