Contents

Editorial Page 1 The Bearded Triffid - A Column On Science Fiction Topics Page 5 Letters Page 8 Bullseye Page 9 Odds and Sods Page 12 Outback Walkabout Page 13

Art Credits - Cover by Glenn Young

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Phlogiston is published every three months. Next publication date is 1st May 1986. Deadline for Contributions 1st April 1986. Readers are invited to submit material for publication, however, no promise is made of publication. Any published material entitles the contributor to a free copy of the issue in which it appears.

Thanks to Nicky McLean – Proof reader and subeditor – All mistakes are his, I tell you! Editorial

There are several books in my collection which, every time I read them, raise my blood pressure to life threatening levels. Fortunately for me, and my blood pressure, I can use such books as the inspiration for (what I consider) interesting and (hopefully) enlightening editorials.

Into this category falls Jerry Pournelle's epic work - A Step Further Out. Some of the ideas that Jerry Pournelle expounds in this book are so tenuous that the slightest breath of common-sense should be enough to blow them into that murky quagmire reserved for all half-baked ideas.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Jerry's ideas about the use of nuclear energy and the methods whereby we might deal with its dangers. In this editorial I hope to be able to show why I feel that the use of nuclear energy may well prove fatal to the biosphere of this planet, and along the way I also hope to demolish some of Jerry's ideas on this subject.

Despite this so called "Atomic Age" we live in, few people realise that there is a steady rain of radioactive particles passing through their bodies. And every one of those particles has the potential of interacting with any of the billions of cells within their bodies. This steady rain is known as the "Background Count" and it varies in level from place to place on the globe - as an example; the background count at Bikini Atoll is high enough that a lengthy stay in the area (more than a few hours) would be hazardous to the health!

Every time one of these particles (and there are hundreds passing through our bodies every second) passes through a cell there is a small chance that it may damage the cell in such a way for it to become cancerous. Fortunately for us, this has been going on for millions of years and over that time our bodies have evolved mechanisms to cope with such events. This means that a cancerous cell caused by radiation has a very small chance of living long enough to grow to the point where it can kill or inconvenience its host.

So why do people die from radiation poisoning? Simply because they are exposed to levels of radiation hundreds of times greater than the level of the background count. This has the effect of increasing the number of damaged cells by hundreds of times and the body soon discovers that it cannot function when many cells are either dead, dying or cancerous. The result, depending on the dosage and whether medical treatment is available, is either rapid death or a very slow painful one as the cancers within the victim's bone marrow expand to the point where they burst the surrounding bones.

However, if this was the whole story then there would be no problem. We would merely avoid exposure to high levels of radiation just as we avoid burning ourselves on hot objects. Regrettably the situation is not as clear cut. While contact with a very hot object for a short period of time is safe and we may suffer minor burns - the same cannot be said for radiation.

Every time a particle zips through your body there is a small chance that it will turn a cell cancerous and there is an even smaller chance that that cell will be able to multiply to the point where it can kill you. But there is nothing you can do about reducing this possibility. Even if you became a hermit you would still stand roughly the same chance of dying from radiation induced cancer as I do.

And here is where Jerry Pournelle comes in. In his book he argues that the chance of dying from radiation induced cancer (let's call it radcan for short) is so low that we shouldn't worry about it. On page 327 he tosses off a little piece of arithmetic to illustrate his point. . .

"So let's look at radioactivity in quantitative terms. Figure 34 shows the dose in millirems (thousandths of a rem) received by each US citizen on the average. Further, let's add a couple of bits of information: of the 24,000 survivors exposed to 140 rems (140,000 mrem) at Hiroshima- Nagasaki, fewer than 200 died of cancer. The probability of developing cancer from radiation exposure is about 0.018% per rem (not mrem)."

Now notice the sleight of hand - he mentions that less than two hundred people died from radcan and then states that the probability of developing cancer is 0.018% per rem. It's a pity that there doesn't seem to be any way of

1 relating the figures he gives to the result he produces seeing as how at one moment he's talking about deaths from radcan and the next the probability of developing cancer. But for the moment we will accept Jerry's figures as correct. That means that if a person is exposed to 500 rems then their chance of developing cancer is about 9% which is obvious nonsense - firstly there is not a linear relationship between exposure to radiation and the development of cancer and secondly a dosage of 500 rems is quite capable of killing most people.

So let's look at figure 34 - this table tells us that the annual dosage received by the average US Citizen is 131 millirems from natural sources and 121 millirems from Man-Made sources; giving a total of 252 millirems. Using this figure we can calculate, using Jerry's figure for the probability of developing radcan, that the chance of the average US Citizen contracting radcan is 0.0045% per year. Assuming that our US citizen lives "three scores years and ten" then the total chance of them contacting radcan over that period is 0.32%. Therefore three in every thousand people will "on the average" contract radcan in the course of their lives. If we multiply this figure by the population of the US (say 250 million) then 600,000 people are going to die of radcan every generation - that's quite a respectable figure.

Of course - to be absolutely fair I'm just playing with numbers here. Jerry's figure is meaningless and so too are my results.

What is interesting is the fact that almost half of the radiation the average US Citizen receives is man-made (the greatest amount - 103 millirems - coming from diagnostic X-rays). And of that man-made amount four millirems is from Global Fallout. Now I personally find that figure hard to believe since I remember an article about a special type of Brain-Scanner that had to be made from steel recovered from WW I sunken warships. It seems that modern steel is too radioactive (due to fallout) and ruins the readings! The question therefore before the court is whether or not four millirems is going to make that kind of difference? I suspect not. By the way, using Jerry's figures, I'd estimate that the annual dosage of New Zealanders is about 150 millirems plus or minus 50 millirems.

But I'm digressing - the key point here is that there is a risk of contracting cancer from exposure to radiation in the normal course of life. Normally that risk is so low that it's not worth worrying about. But at the same time it is a risk you cannot avoid. However, such things as nuclear waste and "nuclear accidents" can very dramatically affect the amount of radiation you receive.

For example : At Three Mile Island the radiation leakage was such that at half a mile away the dosage was 83 millirems (a third of the annual dosage of that "Average US Citizen"). What's more, that exposure is not a one- time occurrence - everything in that area of effect became just that bit more radioactive including the grass that cows in nearby paddocks were eating at the time. Now it is a well known fact that substances become more and more concentrated the further up the food-chain you go. In this case the cows would have received more than 83 millirems of radiation from the grass they ate, this higher level of radiation would be reflected in the milk they gave. And if humans had drunk that milk they could have received a much much higher dosage than a mere 83 millirems. It will be interesting to note the incidence of cancer among residents in that area in twenty years time.

The nasty thing is that this radiation exposure is not a one-time effect. The radioactive material released will remain in the environment until it breaks down into stable non-radioactive substances. This process in the case of long-lived isotopes, can take hundreds of thousands of years. Meanwhile the area around the Three Mile Island plant is just a little more radioactive. An effect which will diminish as the material spreads further and further away and is diluted more and more. Still, it will add its tiny amount to the amount of radiation that we all receive.

Now magnify this effect by the hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid nuclear waste generated since the 1940's - if this material was to leak into the biosphere the result would be a massive increase in the level of the background count - dramatically increasing our chances of contracting radcan. Further, some of this material is in the form of isotopes such as Strontium 90.

Strontium 90 is chemically identical to Calcium as far as your body is concerned and it happens to be highly radioactive. If you were to ingest this isotope your body would incorporate some of it into your bone structure. The danger is that your bone marrow, which makes most the white cells in your blood stream, is right in the line

2 of fire of the particles emitted by the Strontium 90. The result tends to be a much greater risk of contracting leukaemia. This isotope and other wastes such as radioactive iodine cannot be allowed to enter the environment where they will eventually find their way into our bodies. We must store these particular isotopes away from any contact with the environment for at least 1500 years. In the case of the more dangerous elements such as plutonium the storage time is at least 300,000 years.

Aye there's the rub - hands up all those who believe that we can safely store this stuff for a period of time that is at least a hundred times longer than western civilisation has existed? I myself doubt it excessively. But that's where the Jerry Pournelle method of waste containment comes in. To quote Jerry. . .

"As to storage: it's true that at present most nuclear wastes are stored as liquids, hundreds of thousands of gallons of them; they leak from time to time. But liquid-storage was never intended to be anything but a temporary expedient; it is possible to take those wastes and make them part of glass blocks, only legal, not technical, barriers have prevented that Glass is a very stable substance. It is practically eternal. If all the nuclear wastes accumulated from the Manhattan Project-including those resulting from weapons manufacture, which created more wastes than the power program- were solidified, the resulting block would be somewhat less than 60 feet on a side. If the entire country ran off nuclear power, all the wastes from now to the year 2020 could be contained in a block less than 100 feet on a side. And the block could be stored under a superdome-like structure in the Mojave Desert for want of anywhere else to put it. Build a concrete dome; put in the wastes; and surround it all with a chainlink fence and the warning sign "IF YOU CLIMB THIS FENCE YOU WILL DIE." Or guard the area. Or both. Eventually we will have either a use for the wastes or a permanent storage area such as geologically stable salt mines; but certainly the Mojave would hold them for a couple of hundred years if need be."

What Jerry doesn't mention is that there are other nuclear wastes. Such as the reactor cores of nuclear power plants. These cores only have a working life of about thirty years and are extremely radioactive at the end of that period. We are talking about at least forty tons of highly radioactive material here – which has to be removed from the power plant and stored somewhere for a long long time. Another interesting piece of information is that the US Navy has six submarines that are so radioactive that it's going to cost them millions of dollars to decontaminate the subs to the point where the AEC will let them bury the damned things at sea.

There are two major flaws in Jerry's scheme. The first is Alex's Rule of dealing with nuclear waste - "Whatever you expose to radiation is going to become radioactive". I'm not sure about the ability of glass to stand up to fifty years of having its atoms knocked out of its molecular structure but I sincerely doubt its ability to contain waste for 200 years. Moreover when it comes time to shift the glass blocks they are not only likely to be extremely fragile but also extremely radioactive - I pity the poor fools who would be doing the work of shifting the stuff.

The other major problem is that while you could pile all the waste in a cube sixty feet on a side it would very quickly melt into a puddle all over the floor. The amount of heat that nuclear waste generates is amazing and the more of it you have in one place the greater the amount of heat generated. So you would need to spread the 18,000 tonnes of waste (yes it sounds a lot less when you talk about "cubes sixty feet on a side") over a fairly large area.

But the thing that makes Jerry's suggestion totally inane is that remark about "If you climb this fence you will die" - if the radiation level is that high outside the containment area then it will be turning the sand and the very air radioactive. Remember Jerry pointed out that even if you were exposed to a dosage of 120 rems you would only stand a 2.2% chance of contracting radcan. So the level of radiation would have to be much higher in order to kill people crossing that fence. Such levels of radiation would be extremely dangerous as they dispersed into the environment via wind blown sand and radioactive gases. Oh by the way - a good tip for terrorists: threaten to drop a bomb on the containment area. The resultant dispersal of wastes will eventually kill you as well but it's more than likely that most of the "average US Citizens" will be wiped out first.

What else hasn't Jerry considered? That even if something is technologically possible it does not necessarily mean that it can be done. There are a whole host of social and economical problems associated with the storage of radioactive waste. I'll leave those problems as an exercise for the reader.

3 So, if nuclear energy is dangerous and the risk-factor is so high, how can the need for nuclear energy be eliminated?

The best weapon to use in this fight is CONSERVATION. The amount of energy usage that can be saved by such simple measures as proper insulation of buildings, use of passive solar energy and recycling of waste heat is tremendous. In the period 1973 - 1978 95% of all new energy supplies in Europe came from more efficient use of existing energy sources - 20 times the amount of energy supplied by the European nuclear program. Further to this point is the simple fact that only 8% of the US energy demand is electricity dependent. The bulk of US energy usage is for heating and cooling (58%) and transportation needs (34%).

Instead of spending the hundreds of millions of dollars to build each nuclear power plant why not spend that money on either research into ways and means of reducing energy usage without compromising standards of living or into such conservation measures as insulating buildings? Instead of a blind quest for more and more energy to waste.

And what can we New Zealanders do? Admittedly we are far from being the "movers and shapers of the world" but we too have our small part to play. As with most things the American and European nuclear energy programs do not exist in a vacuum - indeed there is strong evidence to suggest that they exist partly as a method of making nuclear weapons more "friendly" and less "fearsome" to us proles. The politics of nuclear energy are firmly ensconced within and around the politics of nuclear weapons and the nuclear deterrent. To strike a blow at one is to strike a blow at the other.

To this end I firmly support the no-nukes policy of the present Labour Government. To ban nuclear armed and nuclear capable ships from our territorial waters not only safeguards against "accidents" but also shows to the world that some people are concerned enough about the nuclear "threat" to do something positive about it. Even if that means annoying one of the most militant and warmongering nations on this planet.

We can oppose the dumping of nuclear waste into our area of the Pacific - much of the waste already dumped is in steel drums that have been shown to be incapable of containing waste for periods greater than 50 - 80 years. Indeed some of those drums may have corroded already - releasing the waste into our environment

It is also interesting to note that current energy plans predict a need for a nuclear power station to be build in this country by the turn of the century (or sooner if possible). We are fortunate in that the only organisation in this country capable of building such a plant is the government - which is subject to public opinion. Should serious plans be made to spread the "nuclear disease" to our shores we can firmly make our feelings known to the government in the hopes that they will see sense.

Finally we can cultivate a strong sense of inquiry. Do not merely passively accept - question! Especially those people that tell you something is "safe" or the risk-factor is "low". In today's world more and more substances and practises are showing themselves to be dangerous - one of our few weapons is to ask the questions "Who says it's safe?", "How do they know?" and "Where's the proof?". Below is a list of interesting books to read but be warned - some of them are pretty terrifying.

The Turning Point Frijof Capra ISBN 0-00-654017-1

A Step Further Out Jerry Pournelle ISBN 0-49-102941-1

SIOP Peter Pringle & William Arkin ISBN 0-72-217028-9

The Effects of Nuclear Weapons Samuel Glasstone & Philip J. Dolan No ISBN Number!!

4 The Bearded Triffid - A Column on Science Fiction Topics Alan Robson

In New Worlds Quarterly No. 4 published in 1972, Alfred Bester in an interview with Charles Platt revealed the secret of writing a good article. Start with your second best anecdote, he said, to attract the attention of the reader.

The first time I saw Harry Harrison in action was at a convention in England some years ago. He had a pint of beer clutched in one hand and a microphone in the other and he prowled around like a tiger in a cage, taking long reviving draughts of beer and yammering into the mike. “I want to talk about two things,” he said. “Something that interests you—sex, and something that interests me—my new book.”

He spoke for well over an hour, and the talk was full of bad jokes that amused Harrison even more than they amused his audience. He laughs a lot and very infectiously too. But the mood swung wildly and the jokes about the Hollywood moguls who took his novel Make Room, Make Room and ruined it as the movie Soylent Green were bitter jokes indeed. He was hurt by the way they had trivialised what he had to say for that book was very close to his heart. He told them about overpopulation and pollution; about the world running out of natural resources. They were dubious and shook their heads. It didn’t seem important enough to make a film about. Then someone produced the idea of cannibalism, and the moguls took fire. “Hey yes—that’s something we can really get our teeth into.” Harrison shrugged his shoulders eloquently and he raised his eyes to heaven. Then he told us about the bit that hurt most of all. He was willing, he said, to forgive them the rubbish, to put up with the trivialisation because the film did have its good parts. There was the gritty naturalistic way it was shot, showing the harsh realities of life in the overpopulated world just around the corner. You could smell and taste the poverty in the images on the film. That was worthy and it was worthwhile. And there was a most wonderful scene that summed up the point of the movie for Harrison, that gave it a reason for existing in his eyes. One character asks another, “How did we get into this mess anyway?” The reply was “Because no government ever had the courage to force a policy of birth control on the people.” Harrison paused for a moment at that point. It was a great scene, he explained. Of course you don’t remember it, he said. You never saw it. They cut it out of the movie in case it offended the Catholics. Jesus Christ!

For a moment the bitterness and the pain showed.

Harry Harrison is an infuriating writer. So good and at the same time so bad. He can be brilliant when he puts his mind to it. Just look at Bill, The Galactic Hero or West of Eden to take the two extremes of his writing style. The one is a comedic tour de force, the other a beautifully imagined and immaculately written biological/sociological speculation (true sense of wonder). Yet this same writer also turns out such unutterable rubbish as Planet of No Return, a book so bad, so vile that I once suggested that the only way to get through it without throwing up was to read it with your eyes closed. How do you answer the riddle of such a man?

He started his professional life as a commercial artist. In an autobiographical article published in Hell’s Cartographers in 1975 he recalls the assignments he got from various editors:

Harrison, I want a three by four of an eight tentacled monster squashing a girl with big tits in a transparent space suit, line and none of your zip-a-tones or damned Benday, twelve bucks by tomorrow afternoon.

What more natural then that when he graduated to writing, he went to the editors to find what they wanted, and then he wrote it. Men’s adventures, that’s what he wrote.

I Went Down With My Ship. I Cut Off My Own Arm. Magruder—The Wooden Cannon General.

5 He wrote true confessions.

He Threw Acid In My Face. My Iron Lung Baby. My Husband Gambled My Body Away.

(All titles mentioned in that article in Hell’s Cartographers.)

I think this explains a large part of the paradox that is Harry Harrison the writer. He makes his living at it, it pays the bills. Despite his love of SF (and he does love it, that shines like a beacon through everything he says and does) he knows that hackwork, the action novel will always sell. He has always been very commercial in his attitude. If it will sell, he will write it. He has even ghost-written. The novel Vendetta for the Saint by Leslie Charteris was written by Harry Harrison. Bills have to be paid.

But despite all this, the artist breaks through on occasion. West of Eden is a long complicated book. It is deeply felt. I doubt that it will sell well—it is too complex, too slow moving to appeal to the great unwashed. It assumes that the dinosaurs did not die out but continued to evolve and develop a civilisation. It examines what happens when the dinosaur culture meets that upstart mammal man. If you read nothing else by Harry Harrison, you should read this one.

In person Harry Harrison talks like a machine gun, spraying ideas and jokes like bullets around a landscape. His talks are never scripted (or if they are he pays no attention to his lines). Ideas spark off one another in a continual stream of consciousness which is one reason why this article is so anecdotal. Harrison the man illustrates his points with anecdote and barbed wit. The same method is the best way to approach Harrison the writer. There is a lot of the man in his books. The passionately held beliefs of Make Room, Make Room and the humour of The Technicolour Time Machine.

There is a convention as old as science fiction. At some point in the book the hero asks the mad scientist to explain his wonderful galaxy saving device. That question then becomes an excuse for the writer to fill the next ten pages with pseudoscientific technobabble, while the hero nods knowingly and says “Gee, that’s right. I forgot.” At half a cent a word, you need all the words you can get. This is a good way of getting them. In The Technicolour Time Machine, Harrison explained to us, he decided to have some fun with this convention. In due course one of the characters asks the mad scientist to explain his time machine. The scientist, who is rather irascible, takes a deep breath and says words to the effect that “Aaah, you’re too stupid to understand.”

As I said before, the artist continues to show himself. Although himself an avowedly commercial writer whose books are conventional and often formulaic, when he wears the guise of editor he allows the writers that he publishes more artistic freedom than he ever allows himself. In collaboration with Brian Aldiss (an old drinking pal) he edited for many years The Year’s Best SF. By himself he edited the Nova series of anthologies. Both series are dead now (alas) but while they lived they published some marvelous works—stories which (had you read only Harrison’s published fiction) you would never have believed he would have countenanced. It was there that I first encountered the fabulations of Josef Nesvadba and J. G. Ballard’s The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race. Strange and wonderful stories.

Again with Aldiss, he edited a series of novels (the SF Master Series)—books which the editors considered were classic and important works in the field. With supreme egotism, he chose one of his own novels for the series (A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!). That is typical of the man.

Aldiss popped up again as co-editor of The Astounding-Analog Reader; stories chosen from the golden age of SF when Campbell was king. Then there was the Decade series where the two of them chose the best and most representative stories of the given decade—the 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s. These books were a labour of true love.

I seem to be mentioning Brian Aldiss a lot, so let me digress here in true Harry Harrison lecture style. At British conventions they always start by introducing the celebrities who are present so that everyone will recognise them and be able to pester them for the rest of the convention. The MC, who is slightly nervous because he’s

6 never done much public speaking before says “Now I’d like to introduce Brian Aldiss.” Everybody applauds and looks round. No Brian Aldiss. A small voice from the back of the hall says “He’s in the bar!”. The MC clears his throat and says, “Well—let’s introduce Harry Harrison.” More applause. This time there is a chorus. “He’s in the bar!”. They aren’t stupid. They know that everyone else is in the hall for the opening ceremony and the bar is quiet and the best place to be. They can get in some serious drinking and talking. Harrison and Aldiss are inseparable at conventions. Each wrapped around a pint of beer, they talk and they talk and they talk. As writers they are poles apart but they are nonetheless kindred spirits and they both love the SF genre they have worked so hard in. Aldiss the iconoclast, Harrison the commercial writer. Aldiss and Harrison—fans. Aldiss wrote Billion Year Spree, arguably the best literary history of SF to date, full of stimulating ideas. Harrison wrote Great Balls of Fire, a history of sex in SF illustration; a clever joke and a tightly argued thesis at one and the same time. The symbolic development of SF art takes a radically different approach from the prose that it illustrates. Together the two of them edited Hell’s Cartographers, a collection of autobiographical essays by various SF writers. As I said, labours of love. Only an SF enthusiast could have taken those projects to completion.

I once asked Robert Silverberg for his autograph. Embarrassingly I didn’t have a pen, and neither did he. He looked around in desperation. Seated at a nearby table were Aldiss and Harrison. “Harrison,” said Silverberg, “give me writing machine.” Harrison looked round. “Silverberg,” he said, “you are a writing machine.” He went back to his beer.

Being a commercial writer is not necessarily a bad thing. Other writers operating under the same economic stimulation have produced profound and moving works. Philip K. Dick did it consistently. Michael Moorcock, once he got rid of his more rough-edged prose style, also did it. There is no reason why Harry Harrison should not have done it too. But he fell into the trap of the sequel. I’ve just counted and there are now six Stainless Steel Rat books, each one worse than the one before. There are three Deathworld books and the strain begins to show in the last one. The awful Planet of No Return is a sequel to the equally awful Planet of the Damned. The To the Stars trilogy is a three volume cliché. Sometimes even the singletons fall into the continuation trap. Skyfall is just too damned long for its length. At half the size it could have been a tense and exciting book. As it is, it is just plain flabby and rife with coincidence. But buried in the dross of Harrison’s work is just enough gold to keep me reading even though I am disappointed so many times. Captive Universe is a hoary old idea very cleverly put together (would you believe Aztecs in space?). In Our Hands the Stars (also published as The Daleth Effect) is a clever satire on government funded research and an exciting thriller to boot. A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!; The Technicolour Time Machine and Bill, the Galactic Hero are novels that never fail to make me laugh no matter how many times I read them. Make Room, Make Room and West of Eden are pure gold in anybody’s currency.

Damn the man. He is so inconsistent. He is also very prolific. During the course of this article, I have mentioned perhaps half of his output—the best and the worst. What remains is a halfway house. Books which are merely competent, books that are simply marking time.

In that same interview in New Worlds Quarterly that I started with, Alfred Bester reveals that you should end your article on a high note with your best anecdote.

I asked Harry Harrison to autograph my copy of Make Room, Make Room. He glared at me. “John Campbell liked this book,” he said. “Do you know who John Campbell was?”

“Yes,” I said. “The editor of Astounding.”

Harrison nodded. “He used to write long letters to all his authors telling them the best way to write their books. The letters always bulged at the seams with ideas. They were very useful. I got a lot of letters like that. The letters always ended the same way. Do you know how they ended?”

“No,” I said.

“With a signature!” said Harrison, and he laughed with vast delight at his joke. “With a signature, like this.” Then he signed my book. John W. Campbell.

7 Letters Nick Craven Canada

Dear Alex. . . (This letter has been edited as per Nick's suggestions - Ed) … Anyway. Phlogiston Seven. It's incredible how much Phlogiston has changed since issue one, your editorial (from memory) said that Phlogiston was a personal fanzine, contributions desperately wanted, please send me a LoC, etc ....

Now at issue seven on page 18 you say

"I'm not publishing a "Vanity Press" style magazine and I do not feel a policy of publishing everything I receive is a good one for Phlogiston. If you wish to disagree..."

I don't think your attitude is a bad one, Alex. It's just surprising how much things have changed. Welcome to the big time!

Phlogiston Seven, very nicely produced, very professional. But not a lot to make me sit up and take notice. Glyph by Peter Hyde seemed very well written, but I must have missed the point. I'll have to read it again standing upside down.

The Bearded Triffid, as always, was excellent and informative. I find it hard to have anything to argue with. Alan Robson seems to make perfect sense.

The Halleycon Debate no longer has anything to do with me, I'll be in Canada when it's on. Maybe I'll go to the Canadian Con instead (if there is one).

As for Fear and Loathing in Melbourne, it seems that every con report I've read has made AussieCon sound like an enormous "Fiiizzzzzzzer..." You weren't alone in your opinion of the Masquerade, Marc Ortlieb in Tigger spends many pages describing how a masquerade should be run.

Well I can't think of much more to say. This letter may ramble slightly, but if you want you could always cut off the front and end bits and use the rest. . .

Thanks, Nick for your letter - Right back at the start of this venture I vowed that I would not publish something that I felt to not met my standards. I've stuck to that policy (with a few minor slip ups) ever since. Issue Seven was merely the issue that I decided to formally announce my publishing rules. Still, especially in the area of fiction, I have trouble deciding what to print and what not to print - Bullseye in this issue is a case in point - I think it's okay with some minor flaws but as far as I'm concerned the deciding factor is that I find it humorous. Nevertheless if it wasn't that it was part of series and the series improves - I might hesitate about publishing Bullseye (bearing always in mind that I asked Roz Productions for permission to reprint the series). Sigh - of such things are headaches made.

I'm pleased in a bittersweet way that you like Phlogiston, but that it doesn't make you "sit up and take notice" troubles me somewhat. Perhaps more input from the readers via this letter column might help me make Phlogiston more dynamic. One thing that might help would be a good debate in the letter column - alas such has not yet occurred (despite my attempts).

Once again thanks for your comments and here's hoping you enjoy Canada - oh by the way I would be very surprised if Canada doesn't have at least five large conventions this year. At AussieCon there was a list of all known conventions to be held in 1986. It contained somewhere in excess of 500 conventions - surely some of them are in Canada!

We also heard from Perry A. Southam who was the only person to write in and tell me that John Harris wrote The Outward Urge under the pseudonyms of John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes. Perry, your chocolate fish should be in the mail soon - don't spend it all in one place.

8 Bullseye Roz Productions

He rode within a silver blur. His name was ARCH. He was asleep. Hello Arch. Wakey, Wakey. He was awake. "Leave me alone. I was just reclaiming land in Southport harbour. Go away!" You're lazy Arch. Get up. "Shove off. I could have caught that fish if you hadn't frightened it into eating my rod. What's the matter anyway?" There are only a few more hours before therocketreachesterminalhorsemanure. "You need your receptors cleaned again". He grabbed a screwdriver and some cottonwool then attacked a metal jack-plate. Circuit boards hopped around the compartment and stood to attention. "Now which one of you is the dirty one then?" Rhubarb. "What?" Steponacrack. You'llmarryafatulgycowwithnotits. "Aha. You!" He chased a cable junction around his bunk and cornered it by the ham sandwich. "Right!" With a dab of the cottonwool, all was fixed.

But not so for Fred Mulligans who at that moment stared down the long slope of Freemont Hill. He stamped his foot on the brake pedal and moaned. The Jaguar growled and motored down the smooth road.

"Are you sure this map is right?" asked the General. "It was, last Tuesday, Sir." reported the faithful guide. "Damned sun, I knew it would ruin things" he dropped his monocle into his leathery hand and wiped it thoughtfully. "We should have taken a left back there, where that damned crocodile ate Raji." "Yessir." The guide straightened a seam in his stockings. "Maybe if we just push on through the bush we'll get there."

Harvey wasn't simple. He was just playful and enjoyed variety. The girl he was with wasn't different, but she'd agreed to help him out.

The beach was deserted except for a minefield and three units of Marines practising a new tap dance. Harvey lay the foundations while the girl pulled sand from a hole. A group of Officers were filling onto the beach singing a dainty song - with actions. He ran his hand along the canal and under the bridge.

But this was of no concern to ARCH who was playing polo with the computer. There. Royal Flush. That's another fifty credits to me. "Are you sure this game is polo?" NO. "Oh." He buttered a resistor and popped it into his mouth. Your deal. "Oh sorry." He picked up the pieces and shook them in a box. Dealing out, he gave: a King to the computer, a Queen to himself, a Pawn to the computer, another queen to himself, a Bishop to the computer. . .

"Could you please redo my bra for me?" asked the husky guide. "Certainly old boy." Replied the General, absent mindedly crushing a rare Cromnius Spider between his meaty thumb and forefinger. "Well sir, where do we go from here?" asked the Butler as he approached with a glass of iced gin. "Damned if I could say. What do you think my man?" The guide straightened his dress and looked at his compass. "I can't be sure, General. But if we follow the setting sun, it can't lead us to far astray." "Jolly good, we'll be off after morning tea".

9 He wound down the window and stuck his head out into the surging air. "My name is Fred Mulligans!" he cried as an old lady scrunched under the wheels. "My brakes have failed." A man smiled at him and nodded.

Fred bobbed back in and thrush the gears into first. There was a clunk, but the car didn't slow; not even as it side-swiped a hearse, knocking the coffin out the back window and over the bank.

She rubbed her hands up and down his newly erected tower, smoothing away the sand. The fireman's band wasn't concerned - they just formed a semi-circle around the couple and set up their instruments. Harvey flicked his fingers across her well patted main block as she fingered his turrets. With a tap, tap, the band started to play "Mull of Kintyre". The Marines did a disorderly Foxtrot.

Even so the bush got thicker. "What a damned nuisance" mumbled the General. "I've missed the morning Times. I won't be able to see how my shares in London Bridge are doing, wot." He ducked as the guide took a wide swing with the machete. The Butler saved the brass cutlery from the back of one of the native porters who was being eaten by a lion.

"When??" 0300 Hours. "But that's in half an hour!" Yes I know. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" I forgot. Eurghp. Pardon me. "Pardoned, you shouldn't have drunk all your H2SO4 at once. You know it's bad for your diodes. Sorry

That didn't stop the Jaguar from running in through the front door and out the back of the old Farmhouse. "Howdy" chirped an old man rocking in his chair on the veranda. "It's the brakes!" shouted Fred as he mowed through the front wall. "Sure thing sonny" wavered the old lady hanging out the washing as Fred burst out of the back wall and splattered three squealing children.

A swarm of Red Beret Paratroopers flopped on the ground by the band. Harvey dug deeper into her well as the tide crept in. "Oh when the saints... come marching in..." The Salvation Army marched past. He jabbed his small flagstaff into her back entrance and began to made windows with another stick. In, out, in, out he delved to the beat of the band.

35 seconds to impact. "You've messed it up again, haven't you!" he plugged his finger into the control panel.

She was kneeling forward with her hands over the wall, while he created an arching footbridge (with a little help from the Red Berets). The band took up a new beat as the Jag overshot a bank and thudded through a mob of chomping sleep.

Fred gurgled as his retracting seatbelt retracted around his neck. He let go of the steering wheel and twanged through a barbed-wire fence posted with the sign : NO THOROUGHFARE TO THE BEACH.

"And where's that?" I can't quite estimate. "You're supposed to be a computer!" grunted ARCH as he screwed on his knee and pulled down his trouser leg. That is not my fault - I wanted to be a Red Chrysanthemum. "On a beach you say?" I think so but I can't quite estimate.

"Damned nuisance, " grunted the General as a seal snatched his chubby cigar from his fingers. "Not knowing quite what the jolly time is." "I'm sorry sir," grovelled the Butler, slashing a young Indian Char-Walla with a poker. "But the chimpanzee

10 snatched it when I was avoiding the Anaconda that strangled the last porter." "General, sir. I think we're coming to a clearing!" cried the guide as he adjusted his suspender belt.

But the beach was not clearing. He squeezed her sea shells and rubbed the tips. Five hundred boy scouts came racing along on an orienteering course. He held her as she dallied with his cannons. Boy scouts wove through the crowd 'round the couple as the local council strolled onto the beach discussing the new reclamation.

Fred bounced onto the beach and skidded through four Marines. The guide hacked aside a floppy palm and stepped onto the grey sand next to a chanting Officer.

"There's the beach ." ARCH gazed out through the aura of the flaming streak.

Harvey flung his arm around her and smiled as he added the finishing touches.

"Damned sun, I knew it would ruin everything. We aren't supposed to be here until Wednesday." grumbled the General as he rubbed his pudgy fingers together. "Jolly unfortunate damned thing."

The Jag slid onto its side in a flurry of sand. The band squelched along the right side passenger door. Harvey smiled harder. In a blue white flash the rocket screamed onto the beach.

Touchdown. "Damned nuisance this . . . " Harvey laughed. The Jag crumpled.

"Life readings?" he jabbed a button. Vegetation. Low intelligence forms. Heavy, processed metallic readings and some sort of deceased matter. "Evaluation. If it's not too much trouble?" Waste of time. We might as well go and leave this place called . . . Umm "Earth?" he clicked his neck back into place. Yeah. Earth.

He rode within a sliver blur. His name was Android for the Rating of Civilised Humans. He went back to sleep - what a boring universe.

11 Odds and Sods

Comments on issue seven : Okay, Okay, enough already - yes I know that there were forty-one errors in issue seven. And like all fanzine editors I have excuses - of all colours, shapes and sizes. Fortunately I'm not going to weary your eyes with such feeble excuses, instead I'm merely going to assure you that steps have been taken to insure that such things do not happen again.

Of more concern is the lack of material in this issue. There are several reasons for this - the simplest being that I am not receiving enough suitable material for publication. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. Firstly there is the problem that my standards may be too high or, worst still, inconsistent. So you may get perfectly adequate articles (in the eyes of their authors) being turned down because I feel they are unsuited to Phlogiston. My answer to this point is that quality is better than quantity and as I am the one who makes the effort to bring out this publication then it reflects my ideas of quality. Nevertheless you, as readers, still have the ability to influence my decisions by writing in and making your tastes and feelings known ("I liked article x by y can we have more please", "Author p stinks. . ."). That this is not happening can either mean that people are happy with my decisions (because they don't see the material I reject) or they don't care.

To try and solve this problem I am instituting a "newcomers" section where I will print material that I expect readers to comment on. In this issue the newcomer is the story Bullseye - this is the first of five stories in the Dartboard series and I intend to publish them all - but I want feedback from readers. Do you want this type of fiction in Phlogiston ? Do you want less ? Do you want a different type of fiction ? Do you want fiction at all ? and so on.

Another of the reasons for the lack of material for this issue is that I only have a few contributors that produce material (there is one individual who promised me an article over a year ago - they still haven't produced anything of substance). These people are busy with their own lives and cannot be expected to turn out article after article for Phlogiston. But there are two things as readers that you can do: the first being to write in with your comments of the various articles in Phlogiston. There is nothing that encourages a writer more than praise (except, perhaps, money) and there is nothing that improves a writer's ability better than constructive criticism (except - practise). So as readers you can get involved by writing letters that give your thoughts on the issues raised and the comments made in Phlogiston. In the three months between issues surely you can spare a half- hour to put down your thoughts. A healthy dialogue in the letters column will not only make this fanzine more interesting, it also encourage more people to contribute articles (if enough people respond - I might even be able to run a most popular writer/article scoreboard each issue).

The second thing you can do is help me in advertising Phlogiston - the more people that subscribe the more chance that one of them is willing to spend some time in writing an article and just maybe it'll be good enough to publish. So if you think someone might be interested in Phlogiston - show them your copy and suggest to them that they might like to subscribe (or contribute).

So those are the things that you as readers might be able to do to help the current situation - What can I do ? Well, I can try to encourage new writers by telling them why their material won't suit Phlogiston in a non- threatening manner. I can stop printing every article I receive and hold articles over to help smooth out the lean times (for example around Christmas time) and I can try to expand the readership of Phlogiston.

Finally there is Bullseye again - I've done this story in a double column format and I need some feedback on whether you would like to see the rest of Phlogiston in the same format. If so let me know and cast your vote in the great format poll.

Anyway - I hope you enjoy this issue. See you in issue nine.

It's always a problem trying to figure out what to put at the bottom of the page to fill all that space. . ..

12 Outback Walkabout A Country Squire

Yes folks, here we are in the middle of the Australian wilderness (Sydney). I had thought that Wellington was a pretty exciting city, but let me tell you, Wellington is like Onga Onga on a Wednesday night compared to this place. What an eye-opener for a country lad like me.

Anyway from the moment of our arrival in Brisbane in early August, we have been reading our way through The Neverending Story. Imagine … the dead of night and us cosily tucked into bed in our rented campervan, reading a chapter or two of this marvellous story. Suddenly, as the chapter gently draws to a close, a loud laughing sound is heard. Upon glancing out the window we see . .

No not a group of Australians wondering what these strange Kiwi's are doing, but Six Bouncing Kangas, Five Snoozing Koalas, Four Slithering Snakes, Three Duck-Billed Platypi, Two Mating Bunyips and a Kookaburra in a gum tree. By the way, it was the Kookaburra making all the noise - he was having his evening giggle.

As I was saying, we have read The Neverending Story and found it to be quite good. Not worth the rave reviews that The Belgariad was (So there Michael Kowalski) but still interesting enough and with enough excitement to convert easily into bedtime story material.

Having survived the wilds of Brisbane we have now settled into Sydney and discovered it to be an exciting place. We live within crawling distance of the famed Kings Cross and the whole area has a strange feel about it that is very similar to the bedtime story we are reading now. It's called The Magician by Raymond E. Feist. According to the cover it is an Epic fantasy - I wonder, is that because it's an epic task to read it or because of its scope (The book's 831 pages long) ? When I first read it, I wasn't sure how it would be received but there was no need for worry, the insatiable bedtime story listener is gobbling it up like chops, chips and corn (her favourite meal).

I was a bit worried about moving to Oz because, I no longer have good friends nearby who can lend me a book or story at three in the morning to feed the ears of Sheila when whatever adventure I'm reading finally runs out. Luckily I chanced on The Magician while wandering through a bookshop on the Gold Coast and now the quiet of our evenings is assured for sometime (at least for long enough to find some more good friends).

The story starts out in the border town of Crydee where our heroes - Pug (yes that's right, Pug) and Tomas are busy growing up. Initially the story is about the adventures of these two youngsters but things change when, at the Time of Choosing (where the young men of the town are chosen by the various Craftmasters as apprentices to their professions), Pug is chosen by Kulgan the Magician and Tomas is chosen by Swordmaster Fannon. The rest of the story I'll leave you to read for yourself. The best thing is that there are many surprising twists and turns in the plot before the end.

I understand that this is Raymond's first novel and as such he should be forgiven for the occasional lapses in the generally good flow of the story. It does tend to sag a little in places, like a well loved lounge suite, but as long as you are prepared to put up with this, it's quite a comfortable and enthralling tale. It 's the tendency to have the occasional sloppy bit that gives it the strange feel that I mentioned before. Yet it's nothing that I can put my finger on, maybe another more astute reader will be able to tell me what it is - if so, I thank you gentle person.

I hope that many of you are now reading your friends and/or pets bedtime stories as I can recommend this one as suitable fare (after you've finished The Belgariad of course).

Take care and may all the fuzzies in your life be nice ones.

13 Notes from 2010 – Alert readers will note that I make reference to double columning the story Bullseye. As most people are going to read this pdf version on a screen, it doesn't make any sense to double column it, so I've reverted it back to single column. Later issues of Phlogiston switched entirely to double column, and they will be presented as single column in this pdf format.

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