May-June 2018 Number 193 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, Morland 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. Discounts at selected Melbourne bookshops. Meetings of the Mel- Since 1952 bourne Science Fiction Club take place every third Friday Night. Unless The MSFC is a place where people who en- it is Good Friday. joy science fiction and fantasy meet to dis- cuss their love of books, TV, film and coffee. Most Club Nights - $2 for members, $5 for nonmembers. Some nights may cost an extra fee, such as Trivia Nights. Contacting the MSFC. Premises open at 8pm on the third Friday of the month, events start at General enquiries. 8.30pm. Lights out at 11pm. [email protected] Sustenance - Hot food, cold snacks, coffee and hot chocolate and Soft Magazine. Drinks are available. [email protected] Editor: Edward McArdle Members - club nights. Discounts for members [email protected] Website Annual membership: Show your MSFC membership card when asking for these ben- www.msfc.sf.org.au Single membership $35* efits. Family or household $45* Our website page: 20% discount with cash or Interstate Ethel the Aardvark https://www.facebook.com/ debit card, and 15% discount with groups/4658278007 subscription $25 cedit cards off all books at Sybers Books Postal address *plus $10 for interstate subscribers 38 Chapel St Windsor 3181 MSFC wishing a hardcopy Ethel subscrip- phone 9530 2222 tion. PO Box 110 668 Glenhuntly Rd Moonee Vale Vic 3055 All denominations are in Australian Caulfield 3161 dollars. Please send us Australian phone 9523 6686 currency or equivalent, able to be 2016 MSFC Committee contacts 5% off books and magazines President: Alison Barton banked in Australia. at Minotaur, 121 Elizabeth St Our treasurer will thank you. Melb 3000 Vice-president: Peter Jordan www.minotaur.com.au MSFC membership benefits phone 9670 5414

Secretary/ Public Officer 10% off all SF books at Clare Mcdonald-Sims A year-long subscription to this Dymocks Southland fanzine, Ethel the Aardvark, six shop 3067-68, Treasurer issues per year. Westfield Centre Mark Ford Cheltenham Discounts at selected Melbourne phone 9584 1245 Committee bookshops. Edward McArdle Eva Stein Voting rights at the Annual General LynC Meeting! If you are good you can actually stand for election! MSFC LIFE MEMBERS One hopes these advertisements Alan Stewart Access to the MSFC email list. will be more accurate in the fu- Bill Wright ture! Bruce Gillespie The pleasure of being in a place Dick Jenssen aka Ditmar where people share your enjoyment Helena Binns of science fiction and fantasy. James Allen aka Jocko Lee Harding Merv Binns Page 2 Race Matthews Robin Johnson Krin Pender-Gunn MSFC AGM 2018 01 Proposed – LynC Hello all MSFC Members, Seconded – Clare McDonald-Sims Vote results: Our Annual General Meeting will be held on Friday For – 9 20th July 2018 at St Augustine’s Church Hall, 100 Against – 0 Sydney Rd, Coburg. Doors open at 8pm, with official Abstained – 0 proceedings scheduled to start at 8:30pm or soon Motion carried unanimously after. (Food and beverages available from the kitchen President’s report at the usual prices.) Ordinary Business of the AGM shall be; Good evening all and welcome to the 2017 AGM. It has been - To confirm the Minutes of the 2017 AGM. a moderately quiet year for the club, but hopefully an enjoy- - To elect Officers of the MSFC and Ordinary able one for members. I would like to extend my thanks to all Members of the Committee. the committee members and assorted helpers of the club over - To receive and vote upon the Treasurer’s Re- the past 12 months. The contributions of all our volunteers, port. (Other Committee members shall also present both big and small are essential to the ongoing operations of reports.) the club, so thank you. I extend my thanks also to the various presenters, guest speakers and meeting runners throughout Special Business of the AGM shall be; the year. Thank you for continuing to share your time and - To discuss future plans for the Library (in- enthusiasm with us. cluding review of current titles, and what new titles members may be interested in). Business raised by The change to monthly meetings has been quite successful. James Allan. I think it has provided a bit more focus, and attendance has - To discuss current storage arrangements for been more consistent. Please, if you have any feedback about the Library. Business raised by Murray and Natalie the meetings we are running, get in touch with the commit- MacLachlan. tee. We are always open to ideas, (and volunteers of course), but also, as our aim is to provide a variety of functions that All current members over the age of 18 are eligible to are of interest to our members, we are very keen to have your vote. Membership renewals will be accepted at the feedback, not only on the meetings that we have run, but on meeting prior to the commencement of official pro- topics of interest that you would like to see covered in future ceedings, and including any members whose renewal meetings. is less than 61 days overdue. New membership appli- cations (including members whose renewal is more The library continues to be a work in progress. To date we than 60 days in arrears) can submit an application have donated approximately 50 boxes of books and fanzines for membership at the conclusion of official proceed- to the Monash Rare Book collection. We will be participat- ings. Guests and observers are welcome but are not ing in an event with them later in the year, and will keep you eligible to vote. updated with details as they come to hand. The librarians are making good progress so far with cataloguing the items, and Any nomination forms or proxy forms should be sent it is anticipated that we will make further donations as we to the Returning Officer, to be received no later than continue to sort and evaluate our own library collection. We 8pm, Thursday 19th July to; hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Returning Officer, c/o MSFC PO Box 110 The last thing I would like to mention are the committee Moonee Vale, Vic 3055. positions. We have not had a full complement of committee or electronically via [email protected] members for the past few years. The more hands we have to Positions open for nomination are; help, the better able we are to plan and run the club, so please, - President consider joining the committee, or offering your assistance - Vice President in whatever way you can. In particular we are really look- - General Secretary (Public Officer) ing for some volunteers to share the duties in the kitchen and - Treasurer also with putting together our fanzine Ethel the Aardvark. - Ordinary Committee Member (5 positions We have a couple of nominations for executive positions this available) evening, but I am certainly hoping that there will be some more nominations for the vacant positions and General Com- Below are the draft minutes from last AGM, to be mittee from the floor. ratified at this meeting. MSFC AGM 2018 02 Thanks for coming this evening, and here’s to another year. 1. Meeting opens Time: 8.40 pm Alison Barton a. Members present President. 9 current members present (10 after 9.00 pm) 2. Presentation and voting on minutes from last AGM and reports from exiting Committee Vote to accept minutes (incorporating the correction of the spelling of 2 names): Shortish crostic puzzle

Page 4 Something I haven’t seen for a while! Being Editor. George R R Martin started off a line of novels, or collections of short stories, which have now grown to a lot of titles, about 25. The rule is that everyone in the club re- The back story was that an alien invasion affected the earth’s ceives a copy of Ethel the Aardvark five population, resulting in a lot of our people being turned into Aces and Jokers. Aces are what we might have called Superhe- times a year. roes, Jokers were people affected unfortunately by their gifts. I took this on, and have enjoyed it, but there does not seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for I used to have a lot of these, but I got rid of them, because I have too many books! And they are of different standards. someone else to take it on. Part of this is be- Some are sad. cause I have been editing with a Macintosh, with InDesign. But I am now over 80, and The latest books I have picked up were High Stakes, which were edited by Martin and Melinda Snodgrass, published in don’t like traveling at night. 2016, and Mississippi Roll edited by George R R Martin from If you become editor, the magazine is what- 2017. How does he fit all these in with his work on A Game of ever you make it. Thrones? I seem to remember someone saying that High Stakes is one of those huge anthologies, with a series this is not a journal where people can write of stories. Both of these books have a basic set of characters, fiction. If you take over the reins you can which shows that they are fun to write. Mississippi Roll takes place on a gambling ship on the Missisippi. It has an overarch- print fiction and see if anyone complains. ing story, with a few takes inserted into the main arch. I also have no idea why the magazine seems High Stakes, on the other hand, is remarkably bloodthirsty. to have sixteen or twenty pages. Someone It also gives the impression that everybody in the world is a Joker or an Ace. started this and everyone else carried it on. I enjoy taking photographs, and they use up pages quickly. My excuse is that the magazine focuses on the Melbourne sci- ence fiction community, so anything in that area is up for use. There is also a good bit of overlap, so anyone who is a member of our group is likely to be a member of Austrek, the Club, the Browncoats, Star Walking, etc. My own interest is in the making of puz- zles, and I have been creating crostic puz- zles. I have no idea how many people do them, but they are fun to make up. Others might like to create crossword puzzles. And The Medusa Chronicles, by Stephen Baxter and Alistair Reynolds, 2016. Reviewed by Edward McArdle. they fill up pages! My other interest is in reading books and I seem to have been reading a number of Stephen Baxter’s books watching films. This has grown out of scale, lately, occasionally by himself, but often jointly, with Alistair Rey- nolds, Terry Pratchett, etc. Which leads one to wonder how much so that keeping up with the latest releases of the book he wrote! is a problem, especially books. Films tend This book sounds similar to others, but has his style. A plain story to be seen by a larger number, and they live of outer space and the future, and enough detail to make one wonder how he got all this knowledge? How was the writing throughout DVD and bluray discs. organised? So some of the things needing to be consid- One of the difficulties is that this book is written as a continuation ered are of Arthur C Clarke’s A Meeting with Medusa. It doesn’t mention that you should first have read A Meeting with Medusa! how big should the newsletter be? The main character is Howard Falcon, who almost died in previ- what should it focus on? ous adventures, and is mostly a brain in a suit. He starts to realise can we have people reporting on various he is almost immortal. He is also the only person of his kind, as they don’t make tthem like him any more! things? The story opens in a somewhat hard to follow manner, as there are chapters in the 1970s and others in our far future. The chapters in All these things are yours to consider! our time are about people trying to abort a comet about to smash into the earth, which would wipe us out. Presumably this will suc- ceed, as the other chapters are a long way in the future. Edward McArdle. There may also be another for him to talk to! Page 5

Secretary’s report e. Nominations for General Secretary The separation of duties into General Secretary and None received – position was declared vacant. It was noted Membership Secretary has worked well. Otherwise that for legal purposes Clare McDonald-Sims would contin- there is no change in the status of the club. ue to perform the essential duties of Public Officer (eg lodge the club’s annual return) until the position was filled. Clare McDonald-Sims f. Nominations for General Committee General Secretary 4 nominations were received: i. Eva Stein (by Alison Barton and Clare McDonald- Jocko commented that there had been little in the way Sims) of mail to the Post Office Box. ii. LynC (by Clare McDonald-Sims and Robin Johnson) iii. Edward McArdle (by LynC and Thomas Bull) Membership Secretary’s report iv. Clare McDonald-Sims (by LynC and Alison Barton) All nominations were declared elected unopposed. Summary: 4. Other business 53 current members, including 2 children. 14 expired in the past year and were not renewed. Library Full report attached. Following Alison’s earlier comment about the cost of stor- age there was some discussion as to what to do with the LynC remaining library. It was noted that we should review the Membership Secretary contents of the library, and would need to do more sorting before anything else could be donated to Monash Univer- Robin Johnson raised the possibility of publishing sity. A working bee was suggested. Ethel to efanzines.com website. LynC noted that over half the current members receive their Ethel electroni- Meeting location cally. There was some discussion about the location of the meet- Treasurer’s report ings – there was a general consensus that the current premises were not ideal, and that since there was no longer Summary: the chance that the library may one day be housed there we Income = $7860.85 should look for other premises. Expenditure = $6472.54 Current holdings as at 30 June 2017 = $15,625.03. Jocko suggested Coburg library, but indicated that it may This represents an increase since last year of $1388.31. mean a change of meeting date and/or time as well. He will Overall it’s consistent with previous years. As usual investigate further. printing storage postage and hall rental are the highest 5. Meeting closes costs. We also received a number of anonymous dona- Time: 9.40 pm tions, which helped the bottom line. ------Full report attached. Recently there have been yet more Marvel and DC televi- sion shows, and two appearing recently are Iron Fist and Mark Ford Cloak and Dagger Treasurer Iron Fist was paired with Luke Cage Hero for Hire, and Robin Johnson noted that over half of our income was the series is to be paired with it. Luke Cage was paired donations. Without those we would be losing money. with Jessica Jones in her series, and that was excellent, but Alison Barton (President) noted that there are peaks his own series was not very good. Rumour has it (those and troughs in every year, but we would not be broke who have Netflix) that the second series is much bettere. even without the donations. She also noted that the Iron Fist is just like the comics, as far as my memory goes. donation of material to Monash University did not The main villain is our own David Wenham. reduce the costs of storing the library. 3. All committee positions were declared vacant Cloak and Dagger was a comic like the original Spider and nominations were called for. Man, based on the comics of Steve Ditko, but never rose to that series’ heights. Howver it is starting on Sunday b. Nominations for President nights on Foxtel this July. So we can keep hoping! One nomination received – Alison Barton was de- clared elected unopposed. c. Nominations for Vice President None received – position was declared vacant. d. Nominations for Treasurer One nomination received – Mark Ford was declared elected unopposed.

Page 7 The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi. 2017. The Medusa Chronicles, by Stephen Baxter and Alistair By Edward McArdle. Reynolds, 2016. Reviewed by Edward McArdle.

I bought this because I seem to have been reading a number of Stephen Baxter’s I had enjoyed Scallzi’s books lately, occasionally by himself, but often jointly, with other novels. He has an Alistair Reynolds, Terry Pratchett, etc. Which leads one to original way of looking at wonder how much of the book he wrote! stories. This book sounds similar to others, but has his style. A plain story of outer space and the future, and enough detail In this one these are a to make one wonder how he got all this knowledge? How number of planets which was the writing organised? can be reached by a mys- One of the difficulties is that this book is written as a con- terious Rift. There is no tinuation of Arthur C Clarke’s A Meeting with Medusa. It faster-than-light travel, doesn’t mention that you should first have read A Meeting but the Rift allows you with Medusa! to get to certain places. The main character is Howard Falcon, who almost died One weakness (to me) in previous adventures, and is mostly a brain in a suit. He was that the planets were starts to realise he is almost immortal. He is also the only designed never to be person of his kind, as they don’t make tthem like him any complete, so if one planet more! were to be cut off it would die. In fact that happened to The story opens in a somewhat hard to follow manner, as one of them, which had never been heard of again. there are chapters in the 1970s and others in our far future. The chapters in our time are about people trying to abort a There is one planet called Hub, which can be reached comet about to smash into the earth, which would wipe us from other places, but the planets reachable from it can- out. Presumably this will succeed, as the other chapters are not reach each other. a long way in the future. There may also be another for him to talk to! Not a lot of people seem to have twigged that the Flow is moving around. If it twitches places will be lost. As it happens, there are only two planets which can support life, Hub and that old place of legend, Earth, which has been lost to us. All the other stops are space habitats, with The Day She Saved the Doctor, by f our giant complexes. authors. 2018. It turns out that this is the first part of a galactic series (in Reviewed by Edward McArdle. fact, we don’t know it is within a galaxy), but this has an ending. There will be more! This was on sale at Continuum, and no doubt other places.

The main characters include the ruler of one planet, and It is a thin book, with four short stories. The authors are a brother and sister. There are a bad family, who would Susan Calman, Jacqueline Rayner, Jenny T Colgan and Dor- like to take over everything, and seem to murder with othy Koomson. The T in Jenny T Colgan signifies that she is impunity, and people come and go unexpectedly. writng a Doctor Who book.

One of the things which attracted me to the book was The theme is that each of four of Doctor Who’s companions that things don’t go as you would expect. You suspect needs to save the Doctor, instead of him as usual needing that there will be things happening down the track. Oops! to save her. And who knows where the apostrophe goes in They happened and are over! that question?

There is a puzzle of sorts. I know who the companions are in each story, but I don’t know which doctor they go with! In a longer story you can identify the doctor! On the next page are two forms for voting by proxy, or nominating committee members. If you want to keep In the first story Sarah Jane has to rescue the Doctor, be- your newsletter as a mint copy, just photocopy the page, cause he is male! He gets into the wrong all-female group or simply write it out. of Romans. The second tale the Doctor does not need sav- ing!

Page 8 MSFC AGM 2018 03

NOMINATION FOR COMMITTEE FORM

If you would like to nominate for a position on the 2018 - 2019 committee, please submit a nomination using the wording below, ensuring the nomination has been both accepted by the nominee and two nominators (all of whom must be current MSFC members.)

Nomination Form

I, ______nominate ______for the position of

______for the MSFC for the 2018 - 2019 operational year.

Signed______(signature).

Seconded by ______(signature) ______(name)

Accepted by ______(signature)

Dated ____/_____/_____

MSFC AGM 2018 04

PROXY FORM

If you are unable to attend the meeting in person, you may appoint a proxy (who is a current member of the MSFC) by sending the following form to the Returning Officer to be received no later than Thursday 19th July.

Form of Appointment of Proxy I, ______(name) of

______(address) being a member of the Melbourne

Science Fiction Club Inc., appoint ______(name of proxy holder) of

______(address of proxy holder), being a member of that Incorporated Association, as my proxy to vote for me on my behalf at the Annual General Meeting of the Association to be held on Friday 20th July, 2018 and at any adjourned meeting.

Signed______(signature).

Dated ____/_____/_____

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the committee. Have a fabulous weekend / holidays (for those currently on term break!), and we will see you in July. Cheers Alison Barton President Melbourne Science Fiction Club Crostic puzzle

I have not been to many 3D movies lately, because there are not many on! iMax runs a few, but they are quite expensive, and I didn’t think the latest Avengers film worked all that well. It had a number of wavy images which probably would have worked on a smaller screen. Crostic puzzle answer. So I have come with a heavy heart to buying the latest A) Identity crisis blurays, and not seeing them in the theatres first. We’ll B) A matter of perspective. see how that works. C) Notably D) Cheshire One of the last I saw in a theatre was The Black Panther. E) Ruthlessly I bought that because I was entranced by the scenes F) EST above a waterfall where the new king of Wakanda was G) Alaskan malamute inaugerated. It was a scene where the artists had been H) Sky given their free hands. I) EG J) Yellow But when I got my disk out it was some time before I K) EV could actually see much! The first scenes were totally L) Roundabout. dark, and the actors were all dark! M) Own N) Sign It improved, but the scenes were unnecessarily underlit. O) Is I also had a mistakenly poor impression of scenes with P) O Forrest Whittaker, because this time I thought he was Q) Nylon. quite good!

Having made up the two crostic puzzles at different Unusually, the cast is almost uniformly black! There is times, I was amazed to find out they had identical one hero (played by an Englishman, Martin Freeman), answers! G, in this one. and one villain, played by Andy Serkis, who is usually a made-up character. Page 10 Page 11 married, but they did not know whether they had been Latest TV shows! canceled. One of the other tricks was that one of the main characters turned out to be a villain. Then he was killed, One of the latest things about television shows is that but no he came back, then he was suddenly back again, they are likely to appeal to smarter people! because they were in a dimension where everyone’s personality was reversed, so he was one of the few heroes For many people shows have been aimed at the average again! viewer, because there were not many channels. Then we had different focuses, with channels appealing to more Legends of Tomorrow started off as a silly story, but it and more differentiated groups! As a subset, there are quickly got better, as they had to keep running around shows which appeal to people with plots which will history and fixing time anomalies! Which is still silly, but make you think. much better done. One of the villains of this and Arrow is an immortal man who occasionally gets frozen in time. These tend to be aiming at smaller groups of viewers. But this is not too much of a problem, as he can keep go- Here are a few. ing back in time and reappearing again!

A couple of the earlier ones found their niche by pre- But my three preferences are Gotham, Westworld and tending to be “normal”, and then finding their market, Legion. opening up. Examples of these include Fringe and Alias. Fringe began with an agency which investigated unusual Gotham I did not expect much of. It is the city before problems. These became stranger and stranger, with sud- Batman. It basically has no heroes, except Alfred Penny- den excursions into other worlds! worth, but it focuses on Commissioner Gordon. It has an enormous death rate. Why would anyone want to join the Alias was a similar setup, but the secret agency was a police force? Or live there? fake, and the heroine was tricked into being an agent of But it does all the Batman enemies beautifully - Penguin, villains. Then the head of the agency was revealed as a Riddler, Joker, Catwoman, and many others. bad guy - but then he became a good guy, and in season 3 he was revealed as once again a bad guy. Westworld ran its first season without revealing that it was covering thirty years, so that some people were The one which became famous was Lost. There was a there twice, as old people and young people. The robots mysterious plane crash, where a lot of survivors found of Westworld were always the same. It had a spectacular themselves on a beach. Some people had been killed, but ending. the others were remarkably unharmed except for a few scratches. This went through seven seasons, including I was able to look at Chapter 9 of season 2, and had no one where they lived out theitr “other lives.” In the end difficulty following it - and then was baffled by chapter they turned out to be in purgatory. 10, the last episode. And they at last realised that you don’t have to copy the models you have - you can base There have been a few - all right a lot! - of Marvel and them on existing people! DC series, some of which have proved to be somewhat So all the people you think you know from the previous mindbending. And some not. two seasons - probably are not!

To my mind, Supergirl has been one of the lesser ones. Legion is another Marvel adventure. You aren’t told that. Supergirl should have been somewhat like tthe original The hero is in a lunatic asylum, but nothing follows. You Superman, a beacon and alone. Instead Supergirl turned can watch whole chapters and have no idea what is going out to be one of a million strange beings. And she hardly on! ever turned on her speed. The show eventually became more of a sob-story, or love story. And stretched out... Which is not normally a good thing. The only person identifiable from the comics is Rogue, but as the show The Flash is better. Barry Allen is also one of a gang of bears no resemblance to the comics, who cares? superpeople, but he does it well. He is there, then he is not, and everyone’s hair is flipped aside. But this series These shows are on already, but others are in the pipeline. still has the problem of long stories dragged out over a At the beginning of July we are to be introduced to Cloak series. and Dagger, so we will see if it is any good. I enjoyed the comics, but more as art works. Somewhat like the earli- Way better were Agents of SHIELD, Legends of Tomor- est Spider Man comics under Ditko. But these were just row, but not Arrow. beginnings, so they too might be under development! SHIELD was held up somewhat because they had to follow the films. And the films came and went, but the TV series was always there. One of the stars was a guest at Comicon this year, and she did not know whether the show had finished! She had a last episode where she was

Page 12 On the long weekend in June there were two conventions, and these pictures were taken at Continuum.

These were taken at the occasional panel I attended, or at the entrance on the opening of the first day.

I enjoyed the day as usual, but the attendance was overwhelmingly of the LBTQ persuasion, with the result that the female memebers of the convention seemed to over whelm the male members about four to one.

On the other hand the other convention was much more amenable to the taking of photographs, except that I knew hardly any of tthe guests!

Page 13 The Austrek May meeting was mainly a dealers’ sale, where people sold off stuff. The pictures show a lot less buyers than I remember, but we hope the dealers sold enough.

I was tempted to sell, but I wanted to keep all I had!

The Good Place, with Ted Danson, Things go wrong. This is a very funny show, but you should watch it in order. Kristen Bell. There are really only six characters, with a few guest stars, and Reviewed by Edward McArdle. there is something wrong with the four people on show. There is a second season already made, and presumably it could go This was a film I had been wanting to see, but it on forever! was on Netflix. Then there was a panel at Contin- uum, and everyone had seen it but me, but it was announced as being on sale at JBHifi! So I dashed in, and it was in the comedy section, for $25. I enjoyed this a lot. It had thirteen episodes, and you should look at them in the right order. In the beginning the heroine has died, and she finds herself in Heaven, but she is worried, because she is in thewrong place. In this heaven you are paired off with your Soul Mate, and you will share with them forever. Page 14 Doctor Who: The Dr Who: The Pirate Planet, story by , Coming of the Ter- novel by James Goss. raphiles, by Michael Reviewed by Edward McArdle. Moorcock. Reviewed by Ed- There is a small subset of episodes by Douglas Adams, with novelisations by James Goss and Gareth Roberts. ward McArdle. This is one, and I have yet to find the last one, City of There are a number of Death. single Dr Who novels Interestingly I asked about the remaining novel, and there by well-known authors, seemed to be none left, so they were going to print me a and this is one. Michael single copy! Moorcock is famous, so They are very good, and use the notes I had to buy this (albeit of Douglas Adams to fill in the stories. second hand.) This novel uses the Tom Baker Doctor Who, and the Mary Way in the future Earth Tamm Romana, but as the Romanas are written by the has been superseded by same writers they are somewhat indistinguishable! various worlds, but there This story takes place during a hunt for the six incredibly are various worlds which powerful Keys to Time. We have found one, and with luck remember bits of earth history! This seems very unlikely. will find another. Then as the story unfolds, one realises that this is not some- The planet we are on is mysterious. There are people who one writing a Dr Who story- this is a Michael Moorcock are slaves, but they have a mysterious god who pours jew- story featuring Dr Who (and Amy). We are in the year ellery upon them, and they have a pirate crew who order 54000, so it is a bit surprising that there should be various them around. tournaments reminiscing about the early1900s. Do we need to know more? When I looked up Michael Moorcock I found that he has wrtten a lot of novels, so it is unsurprising that the back- ground of his one features his creations, and not so much the Doctor! Two of his creations are Peg the Invisible, and Captain Cornelius, so we didn’t have to be suspicious of Captain Cornelius. The back ground story involves a bunch of people named Robin of Sherwood, etc, who keep up the traditions of old Earth with their competitions which don’t quite echo today, and we have intergalactic tournaments. So it is a very over the top story, with its basic story of the end of the universe. But I still enjoyed it. I may read more Moorcock stories, and there are lots of them!

Doctor Who, The Resurrection Casket, by Jus- tin Richards, 2006, 2015, Reviewed by Edward McArdle.

A and Billie Piper novel, it starts off like Treasure Island, and continues with some resemblence to a pirate novel. As a change from the “TARDIS will drop you off anywhere,” the TARDIS gets stuck somewhere in the galaxy, and can’t leave because nothing electrical works here! Solution to a crostic puzzle: After the travelers realise this is not earth, they are stuck Many cliniciatrists who have known me well for decades have in a mystery novel. There are strong reminiscences of always remarked that I am clearly hypomanic . This is a won- Treasure Island with people being passed a Red Spot, derfully elated state of being in which one is being continually although in the original they were not killed off by an pumped with sunshine all the time. interdimensional monster. The pirates were not a group A) Forever War of emotionless robots. But the main villain may have B) A Case of Conscience C) Life’s but a walking Shadow been a madman! I) EIH The Doctor seems, apart from being very silly in his ap- J) Penultimate Treuth proach to danger, somewhat careless of danger to hmself K) Sirens of Titan or others, but the novel is both lighthearted and easy to X) Dawn in Eclipse Bay. read. He is also very warm hearted in his dealing with Fallon, The Psychopath Inside villains. page 15 Dr Who, , by James Goss, 2015. there would be enough custom- Reviewed by Edward McArdle ers to do really terrible things. In this story there was no expla- nation where the alien technol- This is a novel, once again from Douglas Adams’ scriptwrit- ogy came from! ing. It has an unusal start. There is a bit of an introduction of In the first couple of these a villainous race, and then we have The Doctor and Romana books, there are stories in the wandering around Paris for about fifty pages! present tense. “I am doing For a while there is a mystery about the Mona Lisa, mainly this..” Some people can get because there are too many. The Doctor very sensibly uses tthe away with this, but I noticed TARDIS to go back and solve the mystery. it, and it broke the story up for I did not enjoy this book as much as the other Douglas Adams me. stories, but I still liked it a lot. My main objection was that the The second story is told story presented the Doctor as an idiot. Romana was always the better, and is a bit more PG voice of reason. rated, unlike the TV series. Then at the end, the Doctor is back in form, and we may or There is a haunted house, with may not have the end of the universe! Well, probably not, as spiders. Not particularly scary we are still reading the book. unless you don’t like spiders, and the regular characters don’t seem to be in much danger. The third book is a lot easier to read, being in the past tense. There have been a rash of young people doing silly truth or dare risks, and therefore sui- cides. This story echoes Ender’s Game, or Starship Troopers (the movie). It involves a lot of peo- ple being sucked into a game, and we ae not sure if a lot of them have been killed. It seems to have been written about when the TV series ended. It is much better written than the other two novels, but I Class series: Joyride, by Guy Adams; suspect it will not be a winner among readers. The Stone House, by A K Benedict, What She does next will Astound You. I bought the TV series, and it is a lot more scary, with the BBC technicians doing their bit! There is by James Goss. All 2016. a rift in space, where frightening monsters can get Reviewed by Edward McArdle. through. Bad luck if this is your school! In fact there This is a trilogy of books written about the TV series, seems to be a lot of looking away by the parents. If Class. I saw the second and third books in my local your school dance is torn apart by monsters, surely library, and decided to buy the first. When I started you might be concerned! And people keep disap- the first I realised I did not have the starting point, so I pearing! spent another $20 on the first season of the TV series. Apparently there is little chance of the series con- It seems there are only two alien characters, with the tinuing, which is a pity. I suspect that the overall others ordinary earth people. The two aliens are a homosexual vibe would make it a problem for warrior and a young prince. They have fled to Coal Hill selling, but the basis of the show is good. And it all school, and Peter Capaldi appears as the Doctor in the finished up with a good cliffhanger! Also, a good first episode. number of people were killed during the eight The series only lasted one season, and looking at the episodes, so not much chance of their being saved? first episode brought me up to speed. There is a young man, Ram, who lost his leg in the first episode, and he lost a girlfriend as well. Which is all I really needed to keep up! The first tale was a bit mysterious. A bad guy came upon alien technology, which enabled customers to inhabit other peoples bodies, and do bad things. That’s all! It was not a bad story, but mysterious. The villains were basically incompetents, and it was unlikely that

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