Vector 226 Butler 2002-11 BSFA

The Critical Journal of the BSFA BSFA Officials • Chair(s): Paul and Elizabeth Billinger - 1 Long Row Close, Everedon, Daventry NN11 3BE Email: [email protected] Vector 6 • Membership Secretary: Estelle Roberts - 97 Sharp Street, Newland Avenue, Hull, HU5 2AE The Critical Journal of the BFSA Email: [email protected] • Treasurer: Paul Hood - 112 Meadowside, Eltham, London Contents SE9 6BB Email: [email protected] • Publications Manager: Kathy Taylor - Email: [email protected] 3 Editorial - The View from Plomer Hill • Orbiters: Carol Ann Kerry-Green - 278 Victoria Avenue, by Andrew M. Butler Hull, HU5 3DZ 4 TO Letters to Vector Email: [email protected] • Awards: Tanya Brown - Flat 8, Century House, Armoury 5 Old, Mean and Misanthropic Road, London, SE8 4LH Mark Bould interviews M. John Harrison Email: [email protected] 10 The Limits of Visionaries • Publicity/Promotions: China Mieville on M. John Harrison Email: [email protected] • London Meeting Coordinator: Paul Hood -112 13 On not being a science-fiction writer by Simon Ings Meadowside, Eltham, London SE9 6BB 15 Salvador Dali - Theatre of Memory Email: [email protected] JeffGardiner visits the DallMuseum • Webmistress: Tanya Brown - Flat 8, Century House, Armoury Road, London, SE8 4LH 17 First Impressions Book Reviews edited by Steve Jeffery Email: [email protected] BSFA Membership COVER UK Residents: £21 or £14 (unwaged) per year. Please Detail from a photo of M. John Harrison ® fireandwater.com enquire, or see the BSFA web page for overseas rates. Editorial Team RENEWALSAND NEW MEMBERS - Estelle Roberts - 97 Sharp Street, Newland Avenue, Hull, HU5 2AE • Production and General Editing: Tony Cullen - 16 Email: [email protected] Weaver's Way, Camden, London NW1 OXE Email: [email protected] USA Enquiries - Cy Chauvin, 14248 Wilfred Street, Detroit, • Features, Editorial and Letters: Andrew M. Butler - MI48213 USA c/o Department of Arts and Media, D28 - ASSH Faculty, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, Printed by High Wycombe, HP11 2JZ Email: [email protected] PDC Copyprint (Guildford), Middle Unit, 77-83 • Book Reviews: Steve Jeffery - 44 White Way, Walnut Tree Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 4UH Kidlington, Oxon, 0X5 2XA Email: [email protected] • Associate Editor: Tanya Brown - Flat 8, Century Other BSFA Publications House, Armoury Road, London SE8 4LH Email FOCUS: Simon Morden - 13 Egremont Drive, Sherriff Hill, amaranth® amaranth.aviators.net Gateshead, NE9 5SE Email [email protected] Vector Matrix Commissioning Editor: Mark Greener - 16 Orchard End, Published by the BSFA ®2002 ISSN 0505 0448 Bluntisham PE28 3XF Email: [email protected] Production Editor: Martin McGrath - 91 Bentley Drive, All opinions are those of the individual contributors Harlow, Essex CM17 9QT and should not necessarily be taken as the views ofthe Email: [email protected] editors or the BSFA Web/lnternet News: Martin Sketchley - 232 Alvechurch Road, West Heath, Birmingham B31 3PS Email [email protected] The British Science Fiction Association, Ltd. BSFA Web Limited by guarantee. Company No. 921500 Registered address: 1 Long Row Close, Everdon, BSFA Web page: Daventry, NN11 3BE. The BSFA is a non-profitmaking http://www.bsfa.co.uk organisation, staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers. November/December 2002 • Vector 226 Editorial • The View from Plomer Hill 've never been a diligent astronomer, although it's which prevent me seeing a horizon at anything like sea always been something that interested me. In another level. I've not measured it, but I'd say that anything life I was a birder, and so have binoculars rather than a between 20% and 45% of the sky is obscured. Itelescope, but even so both could be used for either. At Fortunately there are some lesser hills nearby that I some point I drifted out of birding, and can no longer tell could climb to get more of a vantage point, and the vista all those brown dots apart. One evening over this last East is not quite so bad. But that still involves you being summer, the seven o'clock news before The Archers able to see the sky and on a night like this you suddenly announced that that night's Perseid showers would be become aware of how much light pollution is caused by particularly impressive because of the new moon that night, street-lighting - partly it spilling into the sky, but mostly and if we stood outside after 10.30 and looked east we from the lamp itself dazzling you as you look into the sky. would be in for a spectacular show. Still, there are enough street-lights not working in At this point, of course, I should have done some more Wycombe to provide an area of darkness, and after fifteen basic research. It's no problem finding East - West minutes I found a relatively exposed spot where two lamps Wycombe is towards the left of my flat and I'm East of it in a row were out. I stood and waited. (High Wycombe, East of Krakatoa) so if I go down to the So, I discovered that there is an official time to walk pavement and turn right, that's East. What's rather more to dogs, and each of their owners gave me a funnier look than the point is that I probably needed to know the angle of the one before. And far more people there are given lifts elevation that the central point of the shower would be at. home just before eleven than statistically would be Perhaps even more to the point I should have realised expected (kicking out time is twenty minutes' later). And how much this was the triumph of optimism over either we have a lot more police cars than the local force experience. I'd struck lucky with Hale-Bopp, a remarkably admit to ("...fighting the fear of crime...") or I was cruised bright comet which had appeared in the West and led wise three times by the boys in blue. At this point I decided that men (and women) (and other fans) to Liverpool one standing in someone's hedge was a recipe for getting Eastercon. But that was probably an isolated stroke of luck arrested rather than for spotting something astronomical. compared to a series of disasters, aside from the odd lunar I decided to relocate - I knew the brow of my hill to the eclipse. When we had that total eclipse of the sun in 1999, west of my flat had three street-lights out recently, but the I was unable to make plans to go south in an attempt to council has finally fixed these after a year and anyway the witness the world going dark in the day time; in fact I was trees overhang too much. Fryer's Lane offered me a vantage heading north out of the zone to York, where it was 75% or point, and some darkness, and was back from the road. It so. I did get cold, but you would not really have known wasn't perfect, but I could see a lot more stars there. Almost that something was in the way of the sun. (The ducks immediately I was rewarded with what I took to be my first seemed to know, and were roosting, aside from the meteorite - except that my memory of seeing them in the unlucky ones who were being roasted.) So much for a once Outback (did I mention I'd been to Australia?) was that they in a lifetime event. vanished from sight rather more quickly, and didn't curve Then there was that once in a lifetime event - or was it quite like that. twice since it came back round the sun as Earth advanced Okay, so it was an aeroplane. in its orbit - back in about 1987, when Halley's Comet In the next quarter of an hour I decided that meteorites appeared. I can remember going into my parent's back were unlikely to be red, to flash, or fly in formation of garden and watching the fog descend almost immediately. threes. Oh, and make engine noises. There never seemed (Or does fog actually ascend?) The fog, which lasted for an to be less than three planes in the sky at once, and entire six months, earned itself a place in the Guinness Heathrow is clearly doing a roaring trade. Book of Records and I never got to see the comet - or, But still a little worried about how low the event was since I scoured the entire sky one night, I must have seen it supposed to be, and aware that there was a building but not observed it. blocking part of my view, I decided to relocate to one of Then there was an occasion at a BSFA t'Committee my Thotful Spots (that's literary allusion not a typo): the Meeting in Everdon when we all went out into the bridge over the river Wye where oft I stand, looking for Billingers' back garden to watch the space station go over trout and whistling Colonel Bogie. As it's on the edge of the head. After about half an hour Tony Cullen realised that the park, it ought to be pretty dark - although given I was on Guardian listed times in GMT and we were standing my own I decided to take the long way round to the bridge outside in BST and had missed it by an hour. I still think rather than cut through the park. I'd forgotten, however, the that's a metaphor for something, but I'm not clear what. car park's arc lights next to the bridge, and still there was a So it should have been with no great hopes that I left certain amount of light pollution.

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