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Billinger - 1 Long Row Close, Everdon, Daventry NN11 3BE 9 Email: [email protected] Vector • Membership Secretary: Estelle Roberts - 97 Sharp Street, Newland Avenue, Hull, HU5 2AE The Critical Journal of the BFSA Email: [email protected] • Treasurer: Martin Potts - 61 Ivy Croft Road, Warton, Nr Contents Tamworth B79 0JJ Email: [email protected] • Publications Manager: Kathy Taylor - 3 Editorial : The View from Erasmus Email: [email protected] by Andrew Butler • Orbiters: Carol Ann Kerry-Green - 278 Victoria Avenue, Hull, HU5 3DZ 4 TO Letters to Vector Email: [email protected] 4Aldiss: The SF Steppenwolf • Awards: Claire Brialey - by Mark Creener Email: [email protected] 8 Addressing The White Goddess • Publicity/Promotions: Mark Creener interviews Adam Roberts Email: [email protected] • London Meeting Coordinator: Farah Mendlesohn - 12 Reading ‘Red’: Portrait of a Fairy Tale 22 Addington Road, Reading, RG1 5PT by Andrew Butler • Webmistress: Tanya Brown - Flat 8, Century House, 18 First Impressions Book Reviews edited by Paul Billinger Armoury Road, London, SE8 4LH Email: [email protected] Cover BSFA Membership Artists concept of Galileo entry probe separation from heatshield (JPL ref. 4S30599); original artwork by C. UK Residents: £21 or £14 (unwaged) per year. Please Kallas; Date: Mar 22, 1989. enquire, or see the BSFA web page for overseas rates. Editorial Team Renewals and 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 0XE Email: [email protected] USA Enquiries - Cy Chauvin, 14248 Wilfred Street, Detroit, • Features, Editorial and Letters: Andrew M. Butler - c/o MI 48213 USA Department of Media and Arts, Canterbury Christ Church University College, North Holmes Road, Canterbury Printed by CT1 1QU Email: [email protected] PDC Copyprint (Guildford), Middle Unit, 77-83 • Book Reviews: Paul N. Billinger - 1 Long Row Close, Walnut Tree Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 4UH Everdon, Daventry NN11 3 BE Email: paul @everdon.enterprise-plc.com Other BSFA Publications • Associate Editor: Tanya Brown - Flat 8, Century House, Armoury Road, London SE8 4LH Focus: Simon Morden - 13 Egremont Drive, Sherriff Hill, Email: amaranth@ amaranth.aviators.net Gateshead, NE9 5SE Email [email protected] Vector Matrix Published by the BSFA ©2004 ISSN 0505 0448 Commissioning Editor: Tom Hunter - All opinions are those of the individual contributors and should not Email: [email protected] necessarily be taken as the views of the editors or the BSFA News & Features Editor: Claire Weaver - Email: [email protected] The British Science Fiction Association, Ltd. Production Editor: Martin McGrath - 91 Bentley Drive, Harlow, Essex CM17 9QT Limited by guarantee. Company No. 921500 Registered address: 1 Email: [email protected] Long Row Close, Everdon, Daventry, NN11 3BE. The BSFA is a non-profitmaking organisation, staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers. BSFA Web BSFA Web page: http://www.bsfa.co.uk January/February 2005 • Vector 239 Editorial The View from Erasmus In the office, which is all my own, there is a very slow computer. So slow that is sprang into life after an hour to Sometimes I think I’m living in the future, sometimes I print out a page of a PowerPoint presentation I wanted a think I’m living in the past. Yesterday (which means two hard copy of. I know the file was big, but not that big. The months ago, or maybe three), I was walking home from second and third pages are yet to emerge. I’m left with the work and noticed a crowd of young youths huddling in the sense that I’ve been sold a lemon. shadows. Smoking dope? Shooting up? Drinking alcopops? The office belonged to someone who went to a better Nope, they were transfixed by an expensive looking place (Birmingham, since you ask), and my memory of the laptop. computer was of a sleek, shining machine, with stereo I’m not entirely sure whether they were in a wireless speakers, top of the range memory, rewritable DVD drive, reception zone - it’s just too far from the Andy and Robert memory stick, enough USB ports to dock a whole flotilla of pub (known to the rest of the world as The Two Sawyers) boaty devices at... Given he was Italian it was beautifully but presumably they were swapping MP3 files, illicit tracks designed and placed on the desk, and came complete with ripped off from dubious sites, or maybe even sharing its own internal espresso machine, which operated via a downloaded porn. As anti-social behaviour goes, it’s not heat sink and gave a choice of three beans and several too bad. But clearly their machine was much faster than the roasts. You could grate Parmesan down the edge of the one I’d been using earlier that day. monitor. I used to have a reasonably fast machine, although The machine I have now is a paperweight. It appears to sometimes it chugged a little, and the screen was always be running Windows NT, and isn’t managing particularly that little bit out of focus. The real bane of my life was the well with that. When I log on it offers me a choice of NT or printer, which would get halfway through printing out a NT, chugs through a blue screen, and asks me if I want to sheet of A4 and decided it had had enough and would download a local profile. Having tried that, it insults me shoot out the paper. That was in a shared office, which about some process having failed, sniggers at my roaming afforded me a rather good view of the back end of the profile, and only then lets me log in. I wouldn’t mind cathedral, particularly when standing on the desk trying to getting the warning about running out of virtual memory reach my bookshelves. The view of the cathedral enabled and having to close applications if I’d been able to open me to slip a gag about getting rid of turbulent priests into an applications in the first place. And I’ve had more abnormal article, although strictly speaking I should change that now terminations than you can shake a long pointy thing made I’ve moved offices. of wood at. I’ve moved from the Powell Building, named in honour I get the feeling that that glorious machine has been of the Canterbury film maker best known for Peeping Tom, taken and swapped with some reconditioned hand-me­ A Matter of Life and Death and A Canterbury Tale. The down. It sits there on my desk and hums, menacingly, latter should not be confused with the poem written by because it doesn’t have enough memory to know the Chaucer which, splendidly bawdy that it is, doesn’t words. It even takes an age to get to the point where you actually get its characters to the cathedral, let alone back to can turn it off - indeed you seem to be able to turn it off at Southwark. Geoffrey himself, according to a leaflet about any point with no ill-effects. It’s probably even being local literary worthies, must have (or didn’t) passed through bullied by the few machines still running 3.1 on the Canterbury on his way to the continent. If he didn’t go via network. somewhere else. If he went. That doesn’t stop us having a On the whole, I’d rather be out on the streets, with the Chaucer Hotel or a Canterbury Tales experience, mind ringtone burners, the seedy CD-ROM swappers, the txt you, and while I’m on the subject, I hardly feel the Church msg psse. I guess as long as they’re playing Grand Theft of England’s reputation is being done any good by having Auto, the car owners of Canterbury are relatively safe. I most of the local halls of residence named after former know your character can be sent to prison as part of the Archbishops. "There’s trouble up’t Runcie...” game, although I’m not sure if you released after three Now I’m in the Erasmus Building, with a view of what months for good behaviour or if you have to play the we proudly describe as the only listed wall surrounding a whole sentence. Perhaps you even sent on safari for some university in Britain. Technically speaking, I think my office virtual rehabilitation. Some of the others, meanwhile, are is actually in a World Heritage Site, and so I ought to be swapping copies of MicroShaft Pusher (enabling them to more careful about filing. Beyond the wall are the remains calculate prices per ounce or gram in an instant, of Augustine’s abbey. I’m disappointed to discover that this recommended cutting levels of heroin, and pills at a is nothing to do with the wonderfully named St Augustine glance) - the software is all pirated of course. You can’t of Hippo, who wrote at great length about masturbation trust the dealers these days. and argued that evil entered into men via their genitals. Instead it’s named for St Augustine of ... Canterbury. He didn’t seem to be trying hard enough, I feel. Andrew M Butler, Canterbury, Christmas 2004. 3 Vector 239 • January/February 2005 Karen Traviss responds: Thank you, sir. That's praise indeed. But what do you mean, 'some of her books'? You can afford all three in MMPB, methinks... From Chaz Brenchley: Merely to note - pedant that I am! - that your definition of a blue moon is based on an error perpetrated in Sky & Telescope magazine in 1946.

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