SF COMMENTARY 101 February 2020 129 Pages
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SF COMMENTARY 101 February 2020 129 pages JAMES ‘JOCKO’ ALLEN * GEOFF ALLSHORN * JENNY BLACKFORD * RUSSELL BLACKFORD * STEPHEN CAMPBELL * ELAINE COCHRANE * BRUCE GILLESPIE * DICK JENSSEN * EILEEN KERNAGHAN * DAVID RUSSELL * STEVE STILES * TIM TRAIN * CASEY JUNE WOLF * AND MANY MANY OTHERS Cover: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen): ‘Trumped!’. S F Commentary 101 February 2020 129 pages SF COMMENTARY No. 101, February 2020, is edited and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard Street, Greensborough, VIC 3088, Australia. Phone: 61-3-9435 7786. DISTRIBUTION: Either portrait (print equivalent) or landscape .PDF file from eFanzines.com: http://efanzines.com or from my email address: [email protected]. FRONT COVER: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen): ‘Tumped!’. BACK COVER: Steve Stiles (classic reprint from cover of SF Commentary 91.) PHOTOGRAPHS: Elaine Cochrane (p. 7); Stephen Silvert (p. 11); Helena Binns (pp. 14, 16); Cat Sparks (p. 31); Leigh Edmonds (pp. 62, 63); Casey Wolf (p. 81); Richard Hyrckiewicz (p. 113); Werner Koopmann (pp. 127, 128). ILLUSTRATIONS: Steve Stiles (pp. 11, 12, 23); Stephen Campbell (pp. 51, 58); Chris Gregory (p. 78); David Russell (pp. 107, 128) Contents 30 RUSSELL BLACKFORD 41 TIM TRAIN SCIENCE FICTION AS A LENS INTO THE FUTURE MY PHILIP K. DICK BENDER 40 JENNY BLACKFORD 44 CASEY JUNE WOLF INTERVIEWS WRITING WORKSHOPS AT THE MUSLIM SCHOOL EILEEN KERNAGHAN 2 4 I MUST BE TALKING TO MY 20 BRUCE GILLESPIE FRIENDS The postal path to penury 4 BRUCE GILLESPIE The future is now! 51 LETTERS OF COMMENT 6 BRUCE GILLESPIE AND ELAINE COCHRANE Leanne Frahm :: Gerald Smith :: Stephen Camp- Farewell to the old ruler. Meet the new rulers. bell :: Rich Horton :: Leigh Edmonds :: John Litchen :: Martin Morse Wooster :: William Breiding :: Chris Gregory :: Casey Wolf :: 10 Murray Moore :: Alex Skovron :: Jeff Hamill :: TRIBUTES Mark Plummer :: Tim Train :: Iola Mathews :: 10 BRUCE GILLESPIE Race Mathews :: Robin Mitchell :: Ron Sheldon :: Ray Wood :: Ron Drummond :: Matthew A giant falls: Steve Stiles (1943–2019) Davis :: Andrew Darlington :: Robert Day :: 13 DAVID RUSSELL Robert Lichtman :: Doug Barbour :: Murray Vale, Leslie Shane Robertson MacLachlan :: Kim Huett :: Alan Stewart :: Steve Jeffery :: Andy Robson :: Doug Nicholson 18 JAMES ‘JOCKO’ ALLEN :: Joe Siclari :: Lech Keller-Krawczyk :: Jerry Leslie Shane Robertson Kaufman :: Lloyd Penney :: Julian Warner :: John Litchen :: Roman Orszanski :: Daniel King 19 GEOFF ALLSHORN :: Lavelle Allen :: Cy Chauvin :: Curt Phillips :: Adrienne Losin (???–2019) Greg Benford :: Michael Bishop :: Robert Elor- dieta :: Irene Pagram :: Rob Gerrand :: Geoff Allshorn :: Michael Dirda :: Patrick McGuire 126WE ALSO HEARD FROM ... 3 I must be talking to my friends The future is now! (cover story) No SFC letter writer has commented on the obvious fact that atmosphere. Internal combustion engines stop. Various types of during 50 years of producing this magazine, I have avoided writing energy-producing machines stop. But millions of lives would be about current affairs and politics. lost, either from the sudden disappearance of heating or cooling devices in extreme climate zines, or from the breakdown of the I have plenty of good reasons for doing this. I don’t know enough many industrial processes on which people rely. about most topics to throw in my two bits’ worth. People who write to me occupy a wide number of points on the spectrum of political Let’s imagine that I become a really magical world dictator — don’ bias and opinion. Let them argue with each other. I don’t mind wanna hurt nobody no-how. I ban all use of machines that rely disagreeing with readers, but I don’t want to be seen as an on petrol- or diesel-powered engines or the burning of coal or idealogue — it might encourage the other idealogues. I like to wood. I replace every one of these processes powered by devices publish within the great fanzine tradition: keep it light, keep it that generate electricity by solar, water, or wind power. I replace clear, keep it personal. all cars with universal public transport systems based on renew- able sources of electricity. I replace millions of the trees that have So I won’t write about politics here. I’ll write about science. I’m been cut down or burnt during recent years. The world is forbidden writing about the weird experience of taking part in a 200-year-old from emitting any more greenhouse gases. experiment that has unfolded around me and everybody now alive. The future is here, not up there in time somewhere. Problem solved? No. Let us imagine a truly horrific scenario: Bruce Gillespie becomes Even if good old Gillespie rules and nobody assassinates him for world dictator. I’ve been elected to stop the ‘hothouse effect’: the his trouble, the amount of carbon dioxide, methane, and other heating of the atmosphere because of the increasing percentage greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will remain at current levels. of certain gases, especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. My The atmosphere will remain vastly overheated. The ice caps and obvious answer is to stop all spitting of greenhouse gases into the 4 the methane reservoirs trapped in the north Asian tundra will Two days before that, my sister Jeanette and other people continue to melt. The catastrophe will continues attending a folk music festival in the Nariel Valley in northern Victoria had to evacuate to the town of Corryong, which was itself There are no Gillespie Dictators in the world. A few governments threatened by fire. Jeanette was able to reach home in Guildford, throughout the world are enabling massive reductions in the halfway across Victoria. The Nariel campsite was saved (although production of greenhouse gases. Some countries with vast popu- fire ran down both sides of the valley), and Jeanette has since lations, such as India, China, and USA, are still building coal-fired been able to return to pick up the caravan. power stations. Seemingly small-scale Australia is belching out greenhouse gases at even greater rates every year. We even had a bit of excitement in Greensborough, a northern During the 1960s, we suffered from a prologued drought in the suburb of Melbourne, in late December. A grass fire threatened state of Victoria. We lived at Melton, then a small country town houses in Bundoora, only 4 km away. The valley filled with smoke, without a reticulated water supply. Our water supply was a large as it did from the Sydney and East Gippsland fires a week or so currogated-iron tank by the side of the house. During the time later. when it ran dry, we had to buy water carried by tanker from the nearest Melbourne suburb of Deer Park, 20 km away. At the time of writing, fires have burnt 1.4 million hectrares of bushland in Victoria, about 5 million hectares in New South Wales, During the summers of the 1960s, however, a hot day in southern and large areas in South Australia (especially Kangaroo Island), Victoria was 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 36 degrees Centigrade. It Tasmania, and Western Australia (cutting the only sealed road was considered a very hot summer if we had more than three or between Western Australia and the rest of the country). But thanks four such days during January and February. to the efforts of a vast volunteer army of fire-fighters, only 26 lives have been lost throughout Australia during this bushfire On Monday, 30 December 2019, the temperature reached 42C in season. Melbourne. The average temperature for all major centres throughout the continent of Australia was 41C. We had already The Australian press and various other media have tried to turn suffered several days of 41C in Melbourne throughout December. these events into a purely political issue. The conservative Prime New South Wales and southern Queensland had been having Minister, Scott Morrison, was holidaying out of the country as the similar temperatures for months, and had been scoured by bush- fire crisis rapidly deteriorated during December. His only reaction fires since the beginning of September. On 30 December, bush- for a week or so after returning? Patting people on the head and fires raged throughout most of East Gippsland (the eastern tongue declaring that all was normal. As the extent of public anger at his of Victoria). The citizens of the seaside town of Mallacoota, as well seeming indifference has become apparent, various emergency as 4000 tourists, gathered on the beach, hoping they could avoid measures have been taken. being incinerated. 200 houses were destroyed in that small town alone, including that of Don Ashby, well-known Melbourne fan of So what about the science? Australian environmental and atmos- the 1970s and 1980s, and his family. The road to the rest of pheric scientists, especially those working for the Commonwealth Victoria was closed (and has been reopened only gradually four Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), have weeks later). 4000 people were evactuated from the beach by watched appalled as various indicators have shown clearly during Navy ship. the last ten years how rapidly the Australian climate (and world 5 climate in general) is changing. They take no satisfaction in saying George Turner wrote The Sea and Summer (Drowning Towers) to ‘We told you so’ to our politicians. To me, the politics of the demonstrate the social effects of polar ice melts and rising sea situation in any country is swamped by the magnitude of the levels. His novel still reads very well, but he failed to foresee the scientific experiment that humanity has imposed upon itself during rapid destabilisation of weather patterns in the atmosphere. the last 200 years. Until the early 1970s, there was a general assumption that burning various fuels produced harmful waste The political Trumps of this world (see Dick Jenssen’s cover to this products, but a good breeze somehow swept these products out issue) accelerate the catastrophe, but even the most rational to sea.