Ethel the Aardvark #197
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February 2019 – March 2019 Number 197 © Mark Ford 2019 Meetings:- St Augustine’s Anglican Chuch Hall, 100 Sydney Rd, Coburg, Vic. Getting there: Tram No 19 North Coburg, from Elizabeth St in the city, or Tram no 8, Moreland Rd from Glenferrie Rd, Toorak, to Stop 132. Upfield train line to Moreland Station. On street parking. Space on the road next to it, which is closed to through driving. Melway Ref 29 H3. Cyclists can use the Upfield bicycle path. Meetings of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club take place on the third Friday Night of the month. Unless it is Good Friday. Since 1952 The MSFC is a place where people who enjoy science fiction and fantasy meet to Most Club Nights – Gold coin for members, $5 for nonmembers. discuss their love of books, TV, film and Some nights may cost an extra fee, such as Trivia Nights. coffee. Premises open at 8pm on the third Friday of the month, events start CONTACTING THE MSFC. at 8.30pm. Lights out at 11pm. General enquiries. Sustenance - Hot food, cold snacks, coffee and hot chocolate and Soft [email protected] Drinks are available. Clubzine. Editor: LynC ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNTS FOR MEMBERS [email protected] Single membership $35 Website Show your MSFC membership card Family or household $45 www.msfc.sf.org.au when asking for these benefits. Interstate Ethel the Aardvark email subscription $25* Our Facebook page: 20% discount with cash or debit card, https://www.facebook.com/Mel and 15% discount with credit cards off bourneSFClub *plus $10 for interstate subscribers all books at: Our open Facebook group: wishing a hardcopy Ethel subscription. Sybers Books https://www.facebook.com/ (Hard copy not available O/S) 38 Chapel St Windsor 3181 groups/4658278007 phone 9530 2222 All denominations are in Australian Postal address dollars. Please send us Australian 668 Glenhuntly Rd MSFC currency or equivalent, able to be banked Caulfield 3161 in Australia. phone 9523 6686 PO Box 110 Our treasurer will thank you. Moonee Vale Vic 3055 5% off books and magazines at: MSFC membership benefits Minotaur 2018/2019 MSFC Committee 121 Elizabeth St President: Melb 3000 A year-long subscription to this Alison Barton www.minotaur.com.au fanzine, Ethel the Aardvark, five/six phone 9670 5414 Financial Secretary/ issues per year. Treasurer: 10% off all SF books at Mark Ford Discounts at selected Melbourne Dymocks bookshops. Southland shop 3067-68, Committee: Westfield Centre Cheltenham James Allen (librarian) Voting rights at the Annual General phone 9584 1245 LynC (Ethel Editor, Meeting! If you are good you can actually Memberships & Outgoing stand for election! MSFC LIFE MEMBERS Communications) Alan Stewart Access to use the MSFC email list via the Bill Wright Webmaster (not committee): Communications Officer Clare McDonald Bruce Gillespie Dick Jenssen aka Ditmar The pleasure of being in a place where Helena Binns people share your enjoyment of science James Allen aka Jocko [Copyright for all artwork fiction and fantasy. Lee Harding (deleted by request) and articles remain with the Merv Binns Artist/Author Race Matthews Robin Johnson Original artwork will only Krin Pender-Gunn be returned on request.] Page 2 Editorial: The Librarian's column. Welcome to the March 2019 edition of Ethel. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise In our February meeting, Mark Ford (our they make as they go by.” Financial Secretary (aka Treasurer)) gave a Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt (Love presentation on the theories abounding his work, trying not to use his work practices, about where Middle Earth is set. This was Jocko) extremely well researched, and presented, I hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a complete with pictures. (Even if the great 2019. Sorry I operating system didn’t understand that 12a missed the deadline for comes after 12!) the last Ethel, but I was in Despite having the T-shirt to prove it, holiday mode, busy Hobbiton is not in New Zealand! reading Adam Hill's book We are extremely fortunate in being able to Best Foot Forward. Good bring you this talk with the pictures in their book, quite enjoyed his intended order. Mark has also provided a stories of his time as a cover illo in the style of Tolkien’s own comedian and MC. drawings. Also the roundup of local events in the next My 2019 is off to a good start - had fun at the two months. There are a lot of items to bring January meeting of the club and then at the to your attention at this time of year. Next February meeting I enjoyed Mark Ford's very issue, being the July issue, should also successful Where is Middle Earth?/Tolkien incorporate the results of as many of the presentation, even as I struggled to show his awards as I can find out1. images in some sort of the correct order. Unfortunately Ed is still wrestling with his More good things coming for meetings in the software and there will be no more acrostics next few months, although no meeting on for the foreseeable future. He has provided good Friday, April 19th. MSFC does not meet several reviews though some of which will on good Friday. Some of our members will have to held over for the next issue, but be at Swancon 44 in Perth with International some of which do appear. Guests Charlie Jane Anders and Also being held over is the 2nd part our Annalee Newitz, and Australian Guest sewing lesson. Next issue, being the issue Jonathan Strahan. Sadly I won't be, but that before our AGM will also have to incorporate is a matter of money and time off work. some required matter. Should be a great convention. Art, this issue comes from Mark Ford, David L Russell, and Carol Kewley. The Header on the Anyway after I finished cover is provided by Stephen Campbell. the Adam Hills book I Hope you enjoy. went on and read the LynC latest Laundry book, The Labyrinth Index, by Charlie Stross and now I am re-reading The Frood; the authorised and very official history of Douglas Adams & the Hitchhikers Guide to 1 If anyone would like to see their club or the Galaxy by Jem Roberts. I love the event listed here – please drop me a line. Laundry books with their mix of Lovecraftian (Next issue will deal with late May, June, and monsters and bureaucratic British spies early July.) fighting against them. This latest one, Page 3 published in 2018 is about the Laundry it will be safe and accessible to members. fighting a great and terrible horror - Perhaps we need to re-think the library. Privatization. I really enjoy There are books I grew up reading that are Charlie Stross's books forgotten today. I know Bruce Barnes has a and count myself lucky copy of a Simon Black space story by Ivan that I got the first one, Southall, but does anyone else? I would also The Atrocity Archives make the point that many of the SF stories I from the club library, consumed as a child were not in books. They years ago (Published in were TV shows like SPACE PATROL and 2004). I have got most of FIREBALL XL5 and they were movies like the rest of the series DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEKS or IT CAME from Darebin Public FROM OUTER SPACE. I also used my Crystal Library. (They have a set to listen to US space launches like Apollo great SF and F section at both 8. Of course I will never forget the grainy the Northcote and Preston branches, not black and white TV coverage of the Moon sure about Fairfield, and Reservoir is just a landing that I watched live in Pascoe Vale bit odd.) Re-reading South Primary school hall. What a wonderful The Frood is me time to be alive. Anyway our library needs revisiting my early days work and thought and a working bee of Fandom. I began sometime in the future. with Hitchhiker's Guide Till next time to the Galaxy and this Cheerio, Jocko book is reminding me of many of the things I experienced in Hitcher's fandom. It even mentions things like the fanzine Pangalia which 2018 Chandler award winner Edwina Harvey edited in Sydney. Nice. Just did a Google™ search and if you want a Pangalia, eBay™ has #7 from 1986 for sale. You can buy it now for $40.00. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hitchhi kers-Guide-to-the-Galaxy-Fanzine-Pangalia- 7-GEN-/263340104463. Perhaps I should try and sell some of my fanzines! So I am busy reading SF, which I source where I can and am doing fannish things as they come up. But what of our library, frozen in storage since the end of 2013? We have added a few new books, but we still cannot put it all back on shelves somewhere Page 4 So Where on Earth is Middle- that he had plagiarised in the writing of his Earth? fiction. He made the whole thing up and only used A presentation to the MSFC on inspirations from things that he had seen or February 15th 2019 by Mark Ford done himself. But for too many people that is not When Waterstones readers were asked to acceptable and numerous people have tried vote for their favourite book of the twentieth to locate Middle Earth from Tolkien’s life, century, twenty five thousand people interests and the world around him. responded and the most popular book with Tolkien was a professor of English/Anglo one fifth of respondents was Lord of the Saxon who spoke some twenty languages, Rings.