BSFA Membership UK Residents: £26 or £18 (unwaged) per year. Please enquire, or see the BSFA web page for overseas rates. Renewals and New Members - Estelle Roberts - 97 Sharp Street, Newland Vector 1 Avenue, Hull, HU5 2AE Email: [email protected] USA Enquiries - Cy Chauvin, 14248 Wilfred Street, Detroit, MI 48213 USA The Critical Journal of the BFSA Contents Other BSFA Publications 3 Editorial : The View from Behind the Sofa Focus: Simon Morden - 13 Egremont Drive, Sherriff by Andrew M. Butler Hill, Gateshead, NE9 5SE 4 The Picaresque in Juliet E McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn Email [email protected] by Michele Fry Matrix 10 A Pussy in Black Leather: Greebo & the Queer Aesthetic Commissioning Editor: Tom Hunter - by Stacie Hanes Email: [email protected] 14 First Impressions Book Reviews edited by Paul N. Billinger News & Features Editor: Claire Weaver - Email: [email protected] Published by the BSFA ©2005 ISSN 0505 0448 All opinions are those of the individual contributors and should not Production Editor: Martin McGrath - 91 Bentley necessarily be taken as the views of the editors or the BSFA Drive, Harlow, Essex CM1 7 9QT Email: [email protected] Cover The British Science Fiction Association, Ltd. A radar image showing the east coast of central Florida, including the Cape Canaveral area. The Indian River, Banana River and the Atlantic Ocean are the three bodies of water from the lower left to the upper right of this false color (monochromed) image. Limited by guarantee. Company No. 921500 Registered address: 1 Long Parts of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and the Cape Canaveral Air Row Close, Everdon, Daventry, NN11 3BE. The BSFA is a non-profitmaking Station (CCAS) are visible. KSC occupies much of Merritt Island in the center of the organisation, staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers. image, as well as the northern part of Cape Canaveral along the right side of the image. The light areas on Cape Canaveral are the launch pads used by NASA and the Air Force. The two pads in the upper left of the image (light hexagons with bright areas in BSFA Officials the middle) are Launch Complex 39 pads A and B, originally designed for the Apollo program and now used by the space shuttle. The other launch pads that dot the coastline are part of the CCAS and are used to launch robotic spacecraft, like the • Chair(s): Elizabeth and Paul N. Billinger - 1 Long Row Close, Cassini mission to Saturn which launched on October 13, 1997 and which also carries Everdon, Daventry NN11 3BE an imaging radar system. Two runways also appear as dark lines in the image. The Email: [email protected] runway in the upper left is part of the space shuttle landing facility and it is one of the longest runways in the world at 4,572 meters (15,000 feet) long and 91.4 meters (300 feet) wide. This image is centered at 28.5 degree North latitude, 80.63 degrees West • Membership Secretary: Estelle Roberts - 97 Sharp Street, Newland longitude. The area shown is approximately 23 kilometers by 33 kilometers (14 miles Avenue, Hull, HU5 2AE by 20.5 miles). North is toward the upper left. This image was acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar when it flew aboard the shuttle Email: [email protected] Endeavour on Oct. 4, 1994. SIR-C/X-SAR is a joint mission of the U.S./German and Italian space agencies. • Treasurer: Martin Potts - 61 Ivy Croft Road, Warton, Nr Tamworth B79 0JJ Email: [email protected] Editorial Team • Orbiters: Gillian Rooke, Southview, Pilgrims Lane, Chilham, Kent • Production and General Editing: Tony Cullen - 16 CT4 8AB Email: [email protected] Weaver’s Way, Camden, London NW1 0XE Email: [email protected] • Publications Manager: Vacant • Features, Editorial and Letters: Andrew M. Butler - c/o • Awards: Claire Brialey - 59 Shirley Road, Croydon, Surrey CR0 7ES Department of Media and Arts, Canterbury Christ Church Email: [email protected] University College, North Holmes Road, Canterbury CT1 1QU • Publicity /Promotions: Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] • Book Reviews: Paul N. Billinger - 1 Long Row Close, • London Meeting Coordinator: Farah Mendlesohn - Everdon, Daventry NN11 3BE 22 Addington Road, Reading, RG1 5PT Email: [email protected] • Webmistress: Tanya Brown - Flat 8, Century House, Armoury • Associate Editor: Tanya Brown - Flat 8, Century House, Road, London, SE8 4LH Email: [email protected] Armoury Road, London SE8 4LH Email: amaranth@ amaranth.aviators.net BSFA Web Printed by BSFA Web page: PDC Copyprint (Guildford), Middle Unit, 77-83 Walnut Tree Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 4UH http://www.bsfa.co.uk May/June 2005 • Vector 241 Editorial The View from Behind the Sofa missed when I tried to tell them who he was. He was the one who turns psycho in Shallow Grave, the lead in Our o he's back. We're clearly pretending that that whole Friends in the North, a focus group leader in eXistenZ, and business with Grace Holloway never happened, and no doubt had the requisite appearances on Cracker or The something pretty nasty has clearly happened to his Bill. The one thing that struck me immediately is that he Shome planet, and his ship's clearly had a refit, includinghardly ever repeated himself, and that I could not see him the fitting of a bicycle pump, for inexplicable reasons. playing a character long-term. It was with little surprise that Yes, Saturday night is once more Doctor Who night, I heard the news that he did not want to do a second series and only the death of a pope and the calling of an election because he'd found the nine-month shoot to be gruelling has knocked it off the news pages. I've only seen two and the character to be limiting to his wish to be a episodes so far, whereas by the time you read this the series chameleon. Of course, at the time of writing, it's still will almost be over, and Christopher Eccleston will have possible I'll be glad to see the back of him. departed the role. Easter Saturday, 7pm, arrives, and the familiar music The BBC seemed to lose faith in Doctor Who at some returns, remixed for the noughties. The episode had much point, never quite repeating it in the same way as they did at stake: it had to introduce us to a new version of a Star Trek or Fawlty Towers, and so I only ever saw most of character that half of the audience was too young to have what I saw once - which was pretty well every episode seen on a regular basis, it had to explain the set up, it had from the introduction of Leela to the penultimate season to introduce us to a new companion (one of those feisty before the huge break. To my mind it was never quite the southern birds, another Ace I fear) and it had to have an same after it returned from the first hiatus enforced by uber­ adventure and saving of the Earth. The episode mimicked exterminator Michael Grade, but I watched it faithfully, one of its previous cold restarts: “Spearhead from Space”, albeit on videos as work intervened to prevent my Jon Pertwee's debut against the Autons and the Nestene watching them live. The underrated Colin Baker gave way Consciousness. At least with that episode we had the faint to the overrated Sylvester McCoy, Peri was succeeded by familiarity of the men from UNIT, although that was still an the deeply annoying Mel, but that was nothing to the early appearance. annoyance factor of some bird named Ace. Perhaps I had So we have a feisty female lead, played by one Billie grown up, perhaps it was the wrenching of the series from Piper (who is some kind of popular beat combo who had a its Saturday tea-time slot between Football Focus and stunt marriage to Chris Evans, a player of records by something featuring the Krankies (happy days...), perhaps it popular beat combos rather than the author of Capella’s was the shift to forty-five minute episodes. Perhaps it was Golden Eyes and Aztec Century). We have a short-haired, the sense that bizarre casting of minor celebs had taken leather-jacketed Doctor, who seems rather smug and over from hopeful monsters. But I gave up before the BBC definitely alien, and frankly feels like a character from drove the last nails into the coffins. Queer as Folk. We have a man attacked by a wheelie bin, There was the resurrection, with a star in Paul McGann several people pretending to be attacked by a plastic hand who would be unlikely to commit to a long-running (oh... good... grief...), and, it has to be said, a rather neat television series. Fortunately we never got a chance to night shoot on the Thames with some rather confusing work out whether he would or not, as the ninety-minute geography. one-off was all that ever happened. I should be careful The despair hasn't yet set in but it all seemed to be over about passing judgement on that as I realised about fifteen rather quickly, although of course the story began mid­ minutes in that I had better things to do with my time. invasion. I don't like the telefantasy hour, which I guess has And that, we feared, we wished, we knew, would be it. its origins in Star Trek, and enables everything to be tied up The nostalgia that many of us feel for series from our in forty-five minutes of screen time with witty epilogue and childhoods - where two or three are gathered together they arched eyebrow.