THE MENTOR 83 Australian Science Fiction 30th ANNIVERSARY ISSUE JULY 1994 CONTENTS ARTICLES: DEPARTMENTS 14: AUSTRALIAN FAN HISTORY by Vol Molesworth. 2: THE EDITORIAL SLANT 26: THE R&R DEPT COLUMNISTS: 41: REVIEWS 8: IN DEPTH #10 by Bill Congreve POETRY: 15: ENCYCLOPEDIAS II by James Verran 7 & 10: POETRY by J. C. Hartley 11: I REMEMBER... MERCURY by Andrew Darlington Cecelia Drewer Trent Jamieson FICTION: Julie Vaux 3: STAR RISE OVER HADES by Andrew Sullivan ART: Cover by Steve Fox Backcover by J. Passfield & T. Walden 11. WAVECAVE by Brent Lillie 19, 45: Jozef Szekeres 20: Rod Williams 20: SENTINELS by Pauline Scarf 25: Julie Vaux 40: Tonia Walden THE MENTOR 83, July 1994. ISSN 0727-8462. Edited, printed and published by Ron Clarke, PO Box K940, Haymarket, NSW 2000, Australia. THE MENTOR is published at intervals of roughly three months. It is available for published contribution (Australian fiction [science fiction or fantasy]), poetry, article, or letter of comment on a previous issue. It is now available for subscription: A$12 or US$10 (cash) for 4 issues. A sample issue is available by request. Contributions, if over 3 pages, preferred to be on an IBM 51/4" or 31/2" disc (DD or HD) otherwise typed, single or double spaced, preferably a good photocopy (and if you want it returned, please type your name and address) and include an SSAE! This doesn't refer to LoCs. Contributions are not paid; however they receive a free copy of the issue their contribution is in, and any future issues containing comments on their contribution. Contents (C) Copyright 1994 for the Contributors. Buck Coulson's column yet); however overseas readers are THE EDITORIAL SLANT amply represented in THE R&R DEPT. I hope you like the colour cover this issue - you won't be seeing another for some time. Kurt Stone is an excellent artist - by Ron Clarke and a member of the Gargoyle Club. I've several other illos of his, which I'll be using in future issues. If you like the Molesworth History the next few episodes will have quite a few Well, I didn't leave myself much space this issue for my photos from the period. I have just had the compressor of the editorial... As you can see from the header this issue, this is the ABDick press cleaned, so should not have any more trouble 30th Annish. There has been several breaks of a few years, with that problem for a bit. when I gafiated, and several years of intense activity, when I Melbourne is apparently bidding for the 1999 WorldCon. published monthly, but overall it's been pretty steady. The only odd thing that I notice is that they have the problem that Because of the usual size restraints the overseas they said Sydney had for it's two bids - who outside of readers may not get my reviews - I won't know until I weigh an Melbourne fandom has heard of the majority of the Committee? issue. This issue all the artists and authors are Australian - Not th at I'm volunteering - but certain fans need to get their own except Andrew Darlington (mainly because I haven't received medicine given to them. JULY 1994 page 1 Enclosed is a DUFF voting form. Please vote, even if you now. Being alone meant she could do what she wanted, go where she don't vote for me - it'll give a higher profile to Australians for the wanted. Once she had even travelled to the far side of the chamber and '99 WorldCon bid. I've been winnowing my library and I've got passed through a doorway that was nearly ten times as big as her tiny hundreds of SF and fantasy paperbacks and H/Cs for sale. If frame and entered the next chamber. Unlike the stories she had heard the interested, send me a long SSAE for a 10 page list. Pbs are $3 adults tell the other children, that huge monsters lived outside the ea and H/Cs and tpb are $5 ea (plus postage). chamber, only more people lived in the next chamber. She had soon grown tired of them and had gone back to her little hidey amongst the The Sydney SF clubs are going well - it is getting so that girders. nearly every week there is a meeting of a (different) club to go to! Now, with the flashing red lights making people's movements I'll be listing said clubs and giving meetings details and dates appear jerky and the sirens almost driving her crazy, she saw something in future issues - there ain't space this time around. - Ron. that made her little heart almost stop its beating. It was a monster, she was sure of it. It was the monster the adults had spoken about. She wanted to pee. It was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. If she looked anywhere near as bad as that beast did, it was no STAR RISE OVER HADES wonder people shunned her the way they did. She watched in horrified fascination as the monster, all fifteen or twenty feet of it, stood passively in the huge doorway. She had seen the size of the doorways throughout the chambers and had only briefly by Andrew Sullivan wondered why they were so big. Now she knew. The monster, it looked to be more machine than actual monster, seemed to regard the mass of terror frozen bodies before it. Its head, or what the girl took to be its head, rotated slowly from side to side as though taking in every single frightened, upturned face. It raised a huge limb up above its head and thumped the solid metal of the door lintel. The resultant boom echoed throughout the chamber. People cringed in fear but no one fled, they were simply too scared to move. A shrill scream tore through the chamber, drowning out the few wails of children and the whimpering of those adults too close to breaking A loud klaxon echoed throughout the vast chambers of the ship. point. The scream ranged up through the registers until it seemed to cut Warning lights flashed their red light like bright pulsars, waxing and right through the young girl's brain and then it fell quickly, becoming a waning with the rising and falling volume of the siren. The many booming bass sound that made her stomach quiver and her lungs ache. It inhabitants of this chamber stirred uneasily, not sure where to run if was then that she realised the monster was speaking. danger should show its ugly head. Like sheep they waited for someone or She knew the sounds were words but she did not understand them. something to show them the way. They would come soon, They knew It was speaking the language They speak. She had heard some of the what to do, They always did. adults speaking in the same tongue occasionally but she had never heard A young girl, naked like those around her, huddled into a corner enough to learn it. The words boomed around the closed chamber, as far as the restricting bulkheads would allow. This is what she had done echoing and re-echoing until, even if she could have understood what it last time the lights and sirens had gone off and she had survived that. was saying, she wouldn't have been able to recognise the words. This time would be the same. She hoped. She might not have understood the words that seemed to come Around her, adults and older children alike stood rooted to the from every point in the chamber but it seemed those around her did. The metal floor and swayed to and fro uncertainly. She did not know how adults scooped up children that were clinging to legs and began to shuffle many people there were in this chamber but there were a lot. Others had towards the monster. The terror that had bolted them to the floor now mentioned words like millions or billions. She didn't know what the words drove them on towards the huge, towering monster at the far end of the had meant but she had the feeling that they were talking about a lot of chamber. The young girl watched in horror as those around her followed people. the booming voice. She shrank back further into the corner but no one The loud sirens hurt her ears and the flashing lights hurt her eyes, paid her the slightest attention. It was as though they had never known eyes and ears that were used to the cool, quiet darkness of the immense she was there. The monster paused in its outpourings as though to draw chamber. The loudest noise she had heard in her short life before the breath and the people shuffled forward in silence, the only sound in the sirens had been a fight between a few of the adults, a fight that had chamber being the slap and shuffle of bare feet on the cold metal floor. ended with one of the adults, a woman, lying motionless on the cold The monster stepped forward and to one side, its metal clad feet metal floor with a pool of dark sticky fluid leaking from her head. No one sending tremors through the floor, the crash of its soles contrasting with the was fighting now, they were all too scared to even talk. The only sound near silent tread of thousands of people. It stood to one side of the huge was the siren that tore the silence to shreds.