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BSFG News 363 December 2001 DECEMBER 2001 ISSUE 363 Brum Honorary Presidents: BRIAN W ALDISS Group HARRY HARRISON Com m ittee: News Vernon Brown (Chairman) Vicky Cook (Secretary) The Free Monthly Newsletter of the Alan Woodford (Treasurer) Rog Peyton (Newsletter Editor) BIRMINGHAM + Steve Jones & W illiam McCabe SCIENCE FICTION GROUP NOVACON 31 Chairman: Tony Berry Friday 14th December CHRISTMAS SOCIAL It’s THAT time of year again - the The event is at the Selly Park time when we can all get together for a Tavern just a 10-minute bus ride great social evening. Once again, we’re from the city centre. Bus routes are off to a skittle alley - the ever-popular the 45, 47 or 47A which leave the pass-time for non-sporty types like us. bottom end of Corporation Street Already we’ve sold over 30 tickets (outside Beattie’s) at approximately but we are nearing the cut-off point so if 15 minute intervals - and stop outside you haven’t already got your ticket, the Selly Park Tavern. phone or email NOW either our We have the use of the skittle alley Treasurer Alan Woodford (see details from 7pm till 11pm. Food will be on back page) or phone, email or collect served between 8.30 and 9.00pm. We’ll a ticket from ANDROMEDA. Price is be playing traditional skittles as well as only £10 per person which includes some variations that border on the food. When booking your ticket please downright silly. There will be prizes for state which meal is your first choice and winners in each of the games and for which is your second. The choices are:- some gallant losers. There will also be a Roast Chicken Breast & Chips Christmas Raffle. Lasagne & Chips Fish and Chips See you there! Scampi & Chips Vegetable Lasagne & Chips JANUARY 11th MEETING - THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING where you vote 'for next year's committee. This will be followed by an auction where you can get books - CHEAP! i PANIC FRIDAY March 29 - April 1 2002 HELICON 2: Hotel De France, St.Helier, Jersey, Channel Your Editor's apology Islands. £35 reg. Guests: Harry Turtledove, Brian Stableford, Peter Weston. Contact: Even the less observant among you Helicon 2, 33 Meyrick Drive, Wash (with the exception of yours truly!) will have Common, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 6SY. noticed the date error on the front of last Website is www: helicon.org.uk month’s newsletter. Yes, the November issue listed the meeting date as being in All details are correct to the best of our October! I don’t think it confused anyone - it knowledge, we advise contacting organisers was an obvious error. But I did hear before travelling. Always enclose a stamped, rumours of one member trying to hire a self-addressed envelope when writing to any time-machine... of the above contact addresses. How did the error occur? Well, it was Any information about forthcoming SF / the Thursday evening before NOVACON - I Fantasy / Horror events are always welcome suddenly remembered I hadn’t done the - please send to me at newsletter and it HAD to go out the next rog@rogpey ton. fsnet.co.uk, tell me about it day. So I stayed up typing it till I fell asleep in the shop or phone me at the shop on 0121 at my computer - about 3am Friday 643 1999. morning. After breakfast I completed it by midday, rushing through it because I had to get it printed, get labels stuck on envelopes and get it posted. I also had to pack my clothes for NOVACON. I left home and B o o k R e v ie w s walked down to the bus stop at the end of the road - five times, I did this because each time I remembered something I’d forgotten to pack. When I finally caught the bus, I (REVIEWERS please note:- in future all reviews should be emailed direct to me at remembered something else I’d forgotten! rog@rogpev ton. fsnet. co. uk) Deadline for When I arrived at the shop (about 1pm), I each issue is the 1st of the month. had to pack all the books for the weekend - all this by 4pm (normally packing books for Rating system cons takes about a day and a half!). With the 5 star - excellent. A must to read. help of my staff - Harry and Arfan, the 4 star - very good. newsletter got sent out and Ped and I got the 3 star - good but flawed. books packed by about 5pm - we had to take 2 star - very average. the books from the shop to Walsall via my 1 star - read only if there’s nowt on telly. home to collect something else I’d 0 stars - Turkey! Turkey! Turkey! forgotten!!! I know I’ve been accused of cutting things fine before, but this really was Panic Friday. RGP TOXICOLOGY by Steve Aylett FORTHCOMING EVENTS Gollancz / 131pgs / £9.99 / pbk reviewed by William McCabe March 8-10 2002 MeCon V, Queen's Rating * * * University of Belfast. £10 reg. Contact: A collection of short pieces extended MeCoN V, c/o 30 Bendigo Street, Belfast from the book of the same title published in BT6 8GD Website is www: mecon.org 1999. Not all of these would qualify as 2 stories - "If Armstrong Was Interesting" is a puritanical humans from the south. Magic is list of the things the astronaut might have disappearing. In volume one, Jennesta sent done rather than follow the script, her crack orc division to acquire an artefact "Bestiary" is a set of 26 definitions - one for called an instrumentality. Due to a number each letter of the alphabet. of unfortunate circumstances, these orcs, Aylett's regular style is something like lead by Stryke, found themselves under her Damon Runyon rewritten by William death sentence and a quest to find the other Burroughs in a world after cyberpunk. This four. They haven't thought as far as to what collection of oddities includes other things they will do once they have them. that depart from that, but still show the The biggest problem is that it is often overall style. There are still "Beerlight" difficult to remember that Stryke and stories but you will also find a couple of company are actually nasty viscous orcs. It Wodehouse parodies (imagine Wooster as a is too easy to compare these unfavourably bungling killer) and something else based on with those in Mary Gentle's GRUNTS! Kafka. The length (or lack of it) makes it where the orcs were over-the-top nasty but difficult to get much out of these (only one you ended up rooting for them. Here, your of twenty-six pieces covers more than ten sympathies are with the orcs from the pages) but there is real style to the lack of beginning. PM substance. WAM WHOLE WIDE WORLD WARRIORS OF THE by Paul McAuley TEMPEST: FIRST BLOOD HarperCollins / 388pgs / £16.99 / pbk BOOK 3 Reviewed by Pauline Morgan by Stan Nicholls, Rating Gollancz / 280pgs / £5.99 /pbk Some authors are able to construct Reviewed by Pauline Morgan complex alien worlds, some can extrapolate Rating weird far future scenarios, some imagine strange space adventures for mankind or Whether you will enjoy this book, conjure near future thrillers. In various of depends on what you look for in fantasy - his books, Paul McAuley has done all of and what you put down before you started these. WHOLE WIDE WORLD is near this one. WARRIORS OF THE TEMPEST future crime. Although a cop, John Dixon concludes the trilogy which began with has always been sidelined into the essential BODYGUARD OF LIGHTNING and kinds of jobs that involve filing and continued with LEGION OF THUNDER. information. In the beginning he is merely The heroes ore orcs, those nasties that been given the job of collecting a couple of got such a bad press in Tolkein's THE computers from a murder scene in order to LORD OF THE RINGS. The pace is fast retrieve any useful data that might be on and furious with the orcs doing what they them. The problem is that the hard drives are best at - killing - a lot of the time. have been stolen though it quickly becomes The setting is Maras-Dantia, a world clear that the murder was broadcast over the populated with a host of mythical creatures, Internet. including centaurs, nyadds, goblins, Superficially, the novel has the form of brownies, kobolds and harpies, from a a conventional crime thriller. The detective mixture of mythologies (bells should start has problems with relationships and doesn't ringing that this is not what it seems). The always obey authority. He uses the usual ice is encroaching from the north and techniques to gather some of the clues and 3 there are a number of possible suspects. The be visiting the Group. Stan will be over in difference is that this is set at least ten years the UK to promote his new alternate history in the future. Between now and then there book - THE YEARS OF SALT AND RICE. has been a revolution in British society. It He’ll also be signing at ANDROMEDA has become more isolationist and much while in Birmingham.. more of a ‘nanny state’. The web is tightly controlled, even the mildest kind of porno­ Newsletter 363 copyright 2001 for the graphy is taboo and almost everywhere you Birmingham Science Fiction Group. go - especially in London - you are tracked Designed by Rog Peyton. Opinions by cameras. expressed herein do not necessarily The pace is fast, the story telling is reflect those of the committee or the slick.
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