JANUARY 2002 ISSUE 364 Brum Honorary Presidents: BRIAN W ALDISS Group HARRY HARRISON Committee: News Vernon Brown (Chairman) Vicky Cook (Secretary) The Free Monthly Newsletter of the Alan Woodford (Treasurer) Rog Peyton (Newsletter Editor) BIRMINGHAM + Steve Jones & William McCabe SCIENCE FICTION GROUP NOVACON 31 Chairman: Tony Berry

Friday 11th January Annual General Meeting of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group

It’s THAT time of the year again! and be seated in plenty of time. The time that the current committee Non-members are welcome but may stands down after reporting on the not vote or voice opinions during the year’s activities and YOU get the AGM. chance to air your views and possibly stand for election to the new committee. Committee posts that you can stand for The evening will be chaired by our are:- Legal Officer, Tim Stannard. Chairman - needs to be a strong personality to keep the committee The meeting will take place in the meetings in order; has to introduce Lichfield room on the second floor of guest speakers at each meeting, so the Britannia Hotel, New Street should be articulate; has to make sure (entrance in Union Passageway that other members of the committee do opposite the Odeon). It will the jobs asked of them and if they fail to commence at 7.45pm so please arrive do so, ask (with the rest of the early, get your drinks from the bar committee’s approval), for their

FEBRUARY 8TH MEETING - SF artist Fred Gambino will be talking to the Group and showing slides of his award-winning work. This is a rare chance to see his fabulous artwork and listen to the anecdotes surrounding them.

l resignation and appoint a new person to NOVACON 32 to be held in November that post. 2002. The committee have already Secretary - needs to be able to take the approved this post. minutes of all committee meetings and (Note: Anyone wishing to chair type up in a presentable manner, NOVACON 33 in two year’s time sending copies to all other committee should approach the committee before members; write to guest speakers as September 2002). required. In addition - all committee members Treasurer - needs to be good with undertake to do the jobs they’ve figures; be at every meeting to take volunteered for; be able to attend entrance fees; keep check on all committee meetings throughout the members whose membership lapses and year; to assist in ideas for programme write to them asking to renew; organise and be willing to ensure that the Group the monthly raffles and produce the runs smoothly and profitably throughout annual accounts. the year. This may be only a hobby without any Newsletter Editor - has to produce a remuneration but by volunteering YOU newsletter every month (without fail!). are responsible to the whole member­ Ideally should have access to a ship. Failure to do the job you’ve computer, be able to spell (or know how volunteered for is letting down every and when to use a Spell Checker); be single member of the Group. So unless able to find and correlate any pieces of you’re committed to doing the job news; distribute review books and properly, please don’t stand for obtain reviews of those books for election. insertion in the newsletter. Ordinary Committee Members - two Anyone wishing to stand for election to required. These members have no any of the above posts should get a specific duties but are there to help out Group member to propose them and a when necessary. One of the members another member to second that will be responsible for the Group’s proposal. This may be done at the AGM website so needs to have Internet access itself. and a working knowledge of either HTML, a site design / management program, or both. Some skill with It’s Auction Time.... computer graphics and a reference to The formal part of the AGM will be details of future guests would be an followed (time allowing) by an advantage. AUCTION. So bring along any old books, magazines videos, etc., that you Novacon Chairman - this final no longer require. SF/fantasy/horror committee post is NOT one elected at items are preferred but if you’ve got the AGM. This post is approved by the any other items that you think we can ‘current’ committee each year for the have fun with, raise a few smiles (and, following year’s Novacon. This year lawdy, we all need a few more of Martin Tudor has volunteered to chair

2 those!) and more importantly, raise March 29 - April 1 2002 HELICON 2 some money for the Group funds. Hotel De France, St.Helier, Jersey, If every member brings at least one Channel Islands. £35 reg. Guests: Harry additional surprise item we can have Turtledove, Brian Stableford, Peter FUN! Weston. Contact: Helicon 2, 33 Meyrick Drive, Wash Common, FORTHCOMING EVENTS Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 6SY. Website is www: helicon.org.uk February 9 - REMENISCON FIFTY at the Hanover Hotel, Schooner Way, All details are correct to the best of our Cardiff. knowledge, we advise contacting organisers before travelling. Always enclose a stamped, Celebrating Lionel Fanthorpe’s 50 years self-addressed envelope when writing to any in print [I think they mean since his first of the above contact addresses. book was published. They certainly haven’t remained in print! - RGP]. Any information about forthcoming SF / 10am to 9.30pm followed by optional Fantasy / Horror events are always welcome - please send to me at dinner. Membership is £15 regular, £35 rog@rogpeyton. fsnet .co.uk, tell me about it with dinner or £60 including lunch, tea, in the shop or phone me at the shop on 0121 etc. Info from:- Fanthorpe Management 643 1999. Consultancy, 48 Claude Road, Roath, Cardiff, CF24 3QA, UK. 2000 WORLD FANTASY AWARDS E-mail [email protected] [Looks like he’s organising this one Life Achievement himself!!! If anyone from the Group Philip Jose Farmer attends this event, will you please send a Frank Frazetta write-up to the Brum Group Newsletter. Best Novel (tie) Thanks -RGP] DECLARE - Tim Powers GALVESTON - Sean Stewart February 15-17 - BOSKONE 39 at the Sheraton Framingham Hotel, Best Novella Framingham, MA, USA. Guests “The Man on the Ceiling” include , Stephen Hickman, & Marv Wolfman and . Info: Best Short Fiction Boskone 39, Box 809, Framingham MA “The Pottawatomie Giant” 01701, USA. Fax (617) 776 3243 email: [email protected] Best Anthology website: www.nesfa.org/boskone DARK MATTER: A CENTURY OF March 8-10 2002 MeCon Y, Queen s SPECULATIVE FICTION FROM University of Belfast. £10 reg. Contact: THE AFRICAN DIASPORA MeCoN V, c/o 30 Bendigo Street, edited by Sheree R Thomas Belfast BT6 8GD Website is www: mecon.org

3 Best Collection MATIC IMMUNITY - has been BELUTHAHATCHIE AND OTHER delivered to Baen. Hardcover should be STORIES - Andy Duncan out in mid-summer.... all you John Best Artist Varley fans will be glad to hear that his Shaun Tan new book - RED THUNDER - is finished and delivered to Ace Special Award (Professional) books.... Tor books are launching a new Tom Shippey series for younger readers called for J R R TOLKIEN: AUTHOR OF ‘Starscape’ - initial releases are Robert THE CENTURY Jordan’s EYE OF THE WORLD split Special Award (Non-professional) into two volumes (guaranteed to confuse Bill Sheehan the unwary) - FROM THE TWO for AT THE FOOT OF THE STORY RIVERS (with a brand-new chapter!) TREE - AN INQUIRY INTO THE and TO THE BLIGHT (with updated FICTION OF glossary); Orson Scott Card’s ENDER’S GAME and Stephen 2001 BRITISH FANTASY AWARDS Gould’s vastly underrated SF novel JUMPER. Books from Jane Yolen and August Derleth Award for Best Novel Patricia Wrede will follow. Nowhere PERDIDO STREET STATION in their advertising does it mention China Mieville whether or not any editing has been done to make it easier for youngster’s to Best Anthology read ....Harry Potter author - J K HIDEOUS PROGENY Rowling - earned $36.2 million in the edited by Brian Willis year ending October 1, 2001, beating Best Collection out Queen Elizabeth II who only WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED earned $22.2 million. Both were beaten Kim Newman by Madonna with $43.8 million....Jack Haldeman (brother of Award-winning Best Short Fiction Joe) has been diagnosed with cancer NAMING OF PARTS and recent news is that he is being Tim Lebbon moved into a hospice and is sadly losing Best Artist his battle. Cards and letters (but no Jim Burns flowers) may be sent to his wife Best Small Press Barbara Haldeman, 205 SE 16th PS Publishing Avenue Apt. 7B, Gainesville Florida 32601, US A.... Douglas Adams’s final Award Hitch-Hiker story, the 40pg “A Salmon Peter Haining of Doubt” will appear from Crown in the USA in May, supplemented with NEWS IN BRIEF ... articles and essays and the screenplay ....a new Miles Vorkosigan novel by for the original HITCH-HIKER’S Lois McMaster Bujold - DIPLO­ GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. A UK

4 edition will presumably appear from shorts by the late Tom Godwin Pan/Macmillan but I’ve seen no listing featuring the classic award-winning or news on this yet.... Gollancz are short story “The Cold Equations”.... paying out 6-figure sums - the lucky Reports on the new movie THE LORD recipients are Simon R Green (for two OF THE RINGS Part 1 have been very new Deathstalker novels), Stephen favourable. I haven’t seen it yet but Baxter (for four new books including a intend to despite not liking the book Xeelee book), Alastair Reynolds (for much. I tend to like fantasy in films but three new books, at least one of which not in books - and it’s the other way will be set in the same universe as round with SF. Strange!....I did manage REVELATION SPACE) and Robert to see the first episode of the adventures Rankin (for his next three books of Superboy - SMALLVILLE (though I including a novel titled THE HOLLOW missed the pilot) on TV this week. What CHOCOLATE BUNNIES OF THE are they thinking of? The words boring, APOCALYPSE)... .Virtually unlimited stilted, wooden, come to mind. So poor choice - 4 novellas (by Peter Hamilton, after the excellent 90s series THE NEW Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley and ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN Ian McDonald) were published in starring Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher. limited edition hardcovers and limited Books are planned - 4 adult titles and edition paperbacks by PS Publishing six children’s with the ten authors to be here in the UK. If they were too named soon....more interesting news on expensive for you, then you could wait the media front is that Harlan Ellison’s for the UK trade hardcover with all four “Along the Scenic Route” is being made stories. Don’t like hardcovers? The next into a feature film by Paramount - title stage is the UK paperbacks (coming of the movie will be DRIVE....the new soon) in two back-to-back ‘double’ version of H G Wells’s THE TIME editions. Don’t like doubles? That’s OK MACHINE has been postponed to because in the states, all four appear in rework the ending to remove scenes of a single standard-size paperback titled the moon falling on New York City FUTURES.... Baen books seem to be [don’t remember that bit in the book!!! - reprinting extremely popular books that RGP]...and production of the other H G have passed over by other publishers as Wells remake, WAR OF THE ‘dated’, ‘too old’, ‘not popular enough’, WORLDS will be put back a year while ‘High Street stores will never have the script is rewritten because of the heard of them’. Following their success World Trade Center disaster.... and with old Robert Heinlein titles, they finally - many of you will have noticed have, over the past couple of years or the ‘To Let’ sign outside so, reissued 5 volumes by James H ANDROMEDA. Sadly, it is true. We Schmitz, the first three of which have have to be out of our present premises gone into second printing. Next month by Easter. We’re busy looking for new they’re doing a novel by Christopher premises and will let you know the new Anvil and now comes the news that location shortly after we’ve found they’re putting together a collection of somewhere. BUT we need to get rid of

5 a lot of stock before the move. We’ll be in a way that is really what this book is selling off lots of stuff at discount prices all about: how well does a father know so come to the shop and see what we’re his daughter (and his son in this case, as offering. We’ll consider offers on any it turns out)? of our second-hand books (providing the Danny Innes is 40-something, his offer isn’t derisory!).... wife has left him, his son Phil has ‘found God’ in a big way, and his daughter Charlie has gone missing after a fraught phone-call from London asking for money. So Danny joins the B o o k R e v ie w s local pub’s quiz team, whose other members he doesn’t even like very much, and his life becomes a pretty humdrum routine. He cannot understand (REVIEWERS please note:- in future all how his son, a scientist, can possibly reviews should be emailed direct to me at [email protected]) Deadline for accept the Bible completely, as a each issue is the 1st of the month. Christian Fundamentalist must. He could never understand how his R atin g s y s te m :- daughter could bring home such weird 5 star - excellent. A must to read. and unsuitable boyfriends. But even so 4 star - very good. it comes as a considerable shock when 3 star - good but flawed. his wife telephones to tell him that 2 star - very average. 1 star - read only if there’s nowt on telly. Charlie is in prison in Chiang Mai, 0 stars - Turkey! Turkey! Turkey! facing a possible death sentence for smuggling drugs. Danny gets all the SMOKING POPPY books he can find about opium (including poetry by Keats and by Graham Joyce Coleridge) from his local library, and Gollancz / 227pgs / £12.99 /hardcover arranges to go out to Thailand to try to Reviewed by Dave Hardy rescue his daughter. To his surprise - Rating ***** and horror - his quiz-team companion Mick Williams insists upon accomp­ This is most definitely not a science anying him to Thighland, as he calls it, fiction book. It isn’t even a fantasy in the mistaken belief that they are best novel. Why, then, am I reviewing it? friends, as does his son Phil, clutching you may ask. I’m reviewing it because his pocket Bible. at the last meeting Rog said: “You This is probably the most main­ ought to review this - you’ve got a stream novel that Joyce has written, or daughter, and it’s all about the that has appeared in the pages of this relationship between a father and newsletter for some time. But all the daughter.” Well, Meraylah did once characters turn out to be accompanied smoke, though she gave it up long ago by their own demons, and the strange (thank goodness!), but as far as I know and often horrific events while they live she has never smoked opium. However, with a tribe deep in the jungles of

6 Thailand can be interpreted as having a Jason Taverner is a famous and basis in magic or voodoo, or to be ‘all popular TV presenter and singer, with in the mind’, according to the reader’s his own prime-time show. He is also a preference. Ghosts from the past are ‘six’, one of only a few very bright and disinterred, and sometimes exorcised, physically enhanced individuals who and the spirit of the opium poppy hangs resulted from a government experiment heavy over the proceedings, especially forty years earlier. When an ex­ in the latter part of the story. Graham girlfriend with a grievance attacks him has done his research well (I imagine he (with a Callisto cuddle sponge, which must have visited the area - must ask plunges its feeding tubes into his chest), him about that), and, perhaps he is taken to hospital - and wakes up in surprisingly, given the subject, his a seedy hotel room. From that point he writing is often very funny. Not discovers that his identity has been Pratchett or Rankin funny, but more taken from him. No-one remembers perhaps as Bob Shaw’s writing was him, or knows of his TV show, not often subtly but not overtly humorous. even his agent or friends; gone are his Overall, a damn good read, and highly records and all the identity cards that recommended. DH citizens are required to carry in order to avoid being sent to a forced-labour [Yes, I just knew Dave would enjoy this camp. He does, however, have a large novel. It’s certainly in the top 3 books of roll of bank notes, which enables him to 2001, SF or not-SF, depending on your purchase forged ID cards from a girl outlook. But, yes, I agree with Dave, a called Kathy, with whom he goes on to superb read! - RGPJ have a relationship of sorts. Despite the excellent forgeries, he is picked up at a FLOW MY TEARS, THE police checkpoint, and from this POLICEMAN SAID moment, first Inspector McNulty and then a more senior police office, Felix by Philip K. Dick Buckman, start to take an interest in this Gollancz / 204pgs / £6.99 /paperback person who apparently does not exist, Reviewed by Dave Hardy because all of his records have been Rating * * * ‘wiped’ from their files. Eventually he is charged with the murder of This is one of Gollancz’s ‘SF Buckman’s sister, Alys, who has given Masterworks’ series, and turns out to be Taverner a drug - possibly mescaline one of those books I missed when it was (or was it?) first published, back in 1974. Which is On this level it is all quite probably a pity, because I can imagine promising. But much of the book seems that it must have had quite an impact to be taken up with long, philosophical back then. But it covers a period from discussions between Taverner and 1988 to 2047, in what was then a ‘future (usually) various women whom he world’, very different from the world meets, discussing the nature of we now know in 2001. relationships and love and grief and such. Despite the fact that we have this

7 ‘futuristic’ world where cars fly and March - sorry but we’ve now been told there is obviously space travel that has had to (remember the Callisto cuddle sponge?), cut short his trip to the UK and he will where being a student is virtually a not be able talk to the Group after all. crime and America is a police state, This is VERY disappointing as his there are still record players with a publisher (and Stan himself!) had been stylus, and big LP’s. (Well OK, there very positive in earlier correspondence. still are in 2001, but they’re not exactly His signings take priority. the norm, are they?) Much hinges upon the question: did all this really happen, April onwards - watch this space. or was it all a drug-induced illusion? And of course that’s for the reader to decide. Finally, it is all rounded off in a rather hasty three-and-a-half-page Eplilog(ue). Newsletter 364 copyright 2002 for the A note about the cover, by Chris Birmingham Science Fiction Group. Moore. We know, from his visit to the Designed by Rog Peyton. Opinions Brum Group, that this is a favourite of expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the committee or the his, and certainly it is a very nice general membership or, for that matter, painting, especially of the girl in the the person giving their opinion. Some foreground. But overall I feel that the people like being controversial and may whole mood is too bright and sunny, actually believe the opposite to what with its blue sky and fluffy white they say - I think I’ve been accused of clouds. Dick’s world is much more that at various times in the past.. smoggy and squalid. DH Thanks to Steve Green for news and to Dave Hardy for reviews. FUTURE MEETINGS The BRUM GROUP Website address is February 8 - SF artist Fred Gambino www.bsfg.freeservers.com/ will be talking about SF art and showing Contributions, ideas, etc. always slides of the many wonderful covers he welcome. has done.

^ The Birmingham Science Fiction Group meets on the second Friday of each ^ ^ month at the Britannia Hotel, New Street. Membership is £16 per year per ^ ^ person (or £ 2 1 for two members living at the same address). This includes the ^ 1 12 free issues of the Newsletter plus reduced entrance fee at each meeting. ^ ^ Cheques should be made payable to ‘The Birmingham Science Fiction Group” ^ ^ and sent to our Treasurer, Alan Woodford, 2 Old Port Close, Tipton, West ^ Midlands, DY4 7XN (e-mail enquiries [email protected]) ^