The Critical Journal of the BSFA
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Sept/Oct 1999 £2.25 207 The Critical Journal of the BSFA EDITORIAL TEAM 2 PRODUCTION AND GENERAL EDITING Tony Cullen – 16 Weaver’s Way, Camden, 0 London NW1 0XE Vector EMail: [email protected] 7 THE CRITICAL JOURNAL OF THE BSFA FEATURES, EDITORIAL AND LETTERS Andrew M. Butler – 33 Brookview Drive, Keyworth, Nottingham, NG12 5JN Contents EMail: [email protected] Gary Dalkin – 5 Lydford Road, Bournemouth, 3 Editorial: The View from the Fleapit Dorset, BH11 8SN by Andrew M Butler Email: [email protected] 4 BOOK REVIEWS Letters to Vector Steve Jeffery – 44 White Way, Kidlington, Oxon, 4 All the Time in the World, and All That OX5 2XA Jazz EMail: [email protected] An email interview with Kathleen Ann PRINTED BY: Goonan by Gary Dalkin PDC Copyprint, 11 Jeffries Passage, Guildford, 10 Neil Armstrong – First Step... Last Step? Surrey GU1 4AP Andrew Darlington on the Legacy of the Apollo missions BSFA Officials 14 Standin’ at the Crossroads TREASURER – Elizabeth Billinger, 1 Long Row Close, Everdon, Daventry, The Music of the Spheres, part 5 –Andrew Northants NN11 3BE EMail: [email protected] M. Butler on Robert Johnson and SF MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY – Paul Billinger, 1 Long Row Close, Everdon, 16 Cognitive Mapping 17: Backwards Daventry, Northants NN11 3BE EMail: [email protected] PUBLICATIONS MANAGER – Vikki Lee, 44 White Way, Kidlington, by Paul Kincaid Oxon, OX5 2XA EMail: [email protected] 18 First Impressions ORBITERS – Chris Rodgers, 98 Greenland Avenue, Maltby, Rotherham, S Yorks, S66 7EU Email: [email protected] Book Reviews edited by Steve Jeffery AWARDS – Chris Hill, The Bungalow, 27 Lower Evingar Road, Whitchurch, Hants RG28 7EY EMail: [email protected] COVER: Detail from the cover, by Fred Gambino, of Kathleen Ann PUBLICITY/PROMOTIONS – Claire Brialey, 26 Northampton Road, Goonan’s The Bones of Time Croydon, Surrey, CR0 7HA EMail: [email protected] AND Mark Plummer, 14 Northway Road, Croydon, Surrey CR0 6JE VECTOR LONDON MEETING COORDINATOR – Paul Hood, 112 Meadowside, Published by the BSFA © 1999. ISSN - 0505 1448 Eltham, London SE9 6BB EMail: [email protected] WEBMISTRESS – Tanya Brown, E73 DuCane Court, Balham High Road, London, SW17 7JL EMail: [email protected] All opinions are those of the individual contributors and should not necessarily be taken as the views of the editor or the BSFA. Other BSFA Publications FOCUS The British Science Fiction Association Ltd. Carol Ann Kerry-Green, 278 Victoria Avenue, Hull HU5 3DZ EMail: [email protected] & Julie Venner, 42 Walgrave Limited by guarantee. Company No. 921500. Street, Newland Avenue, Hull, HU5 2LT Registered Address: 60 Bournemouth Road, Folkestone, Kent. CT19 5AZ MATRIX CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Janet Barron (Books), 3 Ullswater Road, Barnes, London SW13 9PL The BSFA is a non-profitmaking organisation, staffed Email: [email protected] entirely by unpaid volunteers. Yvonne Rowse (Fandom), Evergreen, Halls Farm Lane, Trimpley, Worcs, DY12 1NP Email: [email protected] BSFA Membership Glenda Pringle (Magazines), 22 Mead Way, Kidlington, Oxon, OX5 2BJ Email: [email protected] UK RESIDENTS: £19 or £12 (unwaged) per year. Please enquire for overseas rates. BSFA WEB PAGE: RENEWALS AND NEW MEMBERS – PAUL BILLINGER, http://members.aol.com/tamaranth/ 1 LONG ROW CLOSE, EVERDON, DAVENTRY, NORTHANTS NN11 3BE USA ENQUIRIES – Cy Chauvin, 14248 Wilfred Street, Detroit, MI 48213 USA September/October 1999 • Vector 207 Editorial • Editorial • Editorial • Editorial • Editorial • Editorial • Editorial • Editorial The View from the Fleapit local hostelry), and we know that he is going to fall. How awfully messianic. Could it be that this is a necessary Fall, that he has turned You may have noticed that there’s a new Star Wars movie out to the dark side in order that his son can save the universe? And so, You may have noted that we at Vector have been ignoring surreptitiously, he alters the blue prints to add an obvious weak it. Loudly. Across the mailing at Matrix, my esteemed co-editor point? Perhaps he even tips them off? Without this Secret Plan, the Gary Dalkin has been defending the original Star Wars, which incompetence of the Jedis is astounding: having (rightly it seems) is to say Episode IV: A New Hope, from the condemnations of worried about taking on Anakin at the ancient age of nine, surely John Ashbrook. And in the previous Vector editorial Gary Obi-Wan should have learned from the mistake and ignored the outlined how much joy he has received from watching the film. teenager Luke. No disputum tastum, as the Latins no doubt don’t say, but I Still, by the end of the film, the only indication of Anakin’s fall is do have to confess that with the right people, and a few six his conversion from having a moppet hair cut to something even packs, a goodly deal of fun can be got out of watching Star worse, which is enough to tip anyone over the edge. And the other Wars and the rest of the holy trilogy, in particular in spotting characters calling him Annie can’t help. logical flaws in the plot, and cheering the wrong side. Remarkably, the kiddie cute factor in the film doesn’t destroy it. Gary offers the startling suggestion that Star Wars saved The comic relief of Jar Jar Binks comes pretty close though. Flaired cinema for us, and whilst we shouldn’t pile Armageddon, and jive talking, Binks wouldn’t be out of place in an early 1970s Godzilla and other summer blockbuster dreck at his door, the blaxploitation picture. (A Gunga? Puhlease). Anakin’s master is hook- thought that cinema was saved so that we could see a big nosed, and in accent and behaviour seems to be the very image of screen version of Lost in Space does pose the question as to the Jewish stereotype. And if the Uncle-Tomism and the anti- whether it was worth saving. Perhaps Star Wars was simply one Semitism isn’t enough, the two invaders of Naboo struck me as oily in a line of blockbusters – The Godfather, Jaws, American and inscrutable Orientals. Oh, but it is weighed against a black Jedi Graffiti spring to mind – which in turn had been event movies (little more than a cameo from Samuel L. Jackson) and a black soldier to pack in the masses. Who knows if Joe Dante and Robert in the employ of the Queen. So that’s okay then. No racism. Zemeckis wouldn’t have come through anyway, or British Ah, a Queen. The background of the film is that the Republic is technicians have cornered the market in special effects. under threat from a federation of traders (which will presumably Allowing for inflation, Star Wars is still a long way behind eventually metamorphose into an upstart Empire), and the planet Gone With the Wind for box office takings, a record which Naboo is under a blockade (which metamorphoses into an illegal Titanic hasn’t eclipsed either. And Titanic was itself a mixed invasion). The resistance from Naboo is led by a queen, you know, blessing, given multiple viewings by much of its audience someone who has been elected... Oh, and the Queen is helped by (perhaps in the hope that the ship wouldn’t sink this time or in Senator Palpatine, the future evil emperor, using the invasion to some desire to see Leonardo diCaprio die yet again), but further his political ends. The camera shots linger on him at the end eclipsing anything else; perhaps people who wanted to see of the film – as Yoda ponders whether the Sith (read: evil dude Jedis) anything else that year stayed away because of fears of queues. Qui-Gon has killed was master or apprentice – almost to suggesting But anyway, I wanted to see the new Star Wars because I that he was behind the invasion. Except that in the book the prime try to see everything (with the understandable exception of mover in the invasion is Darth Sidious, who in the film continually anything featuring Hugh Grant), and because a few weeks keeps his face cloaked (why? because it looks cool?), just as Emperor before I’d been commissioned by BBC Online to write about Palpatine does in the earlier (later – keep up) film, and who has a Star Wars for their book pages. Suitably disguised I slipped into voice credited but no body. W.H. Smiths and purchased (gak!) a wookie book, Terry Perhaps the most damning thing I can say about the film is that Brooks’s novelisation. the Daily Mail critic Christopher Tookey, a man of impeccable and From the start, I had a sense of déjà vu: Anakin’s pod-racing trustworthy taste, gave it four stars and is now quoted with Nick seemed to have echoes of American Graffiti and Return of the Virtual Sexuality (don’t ask) Fisher of The Sun. But then Tookey also Jedi, and had computer game written all over it. Then the first gave the excellent Happiness five stars, so he does have his off days. droid we come across happens to be R2D2 and C3PO isn’t far Yes, the film is beautifully and excitingly shot, with nearly all of behind. An encounter with scavengers out in the desert. A Jedi the sets being computer generated (and Natalie Portman plays both Knight killed by a black-clad bad guy. And at the climax (hey, the Queen and her handmaiden, thanks to such technology), yes, it is by now everyone who’s interested will have seen it) Anakin’s spectacular. But the usually dependable Ewan MacGregor isn’t a lucky shot sets off a chain reaction that blows up a space young Alec Guinness, and Terence Stamp is wasted in a two minute station, just like the Death Star..