The B.S.F.A.'s magazine for writers Fiction from Wayne Stamford Lone Wolf Publications: Poetry from Steve Sneyd E’s are good Competition results Original sins? Juliet McKenna looks for fresh inspiration Issue 38 November 2000 ISSN 0144-560X £1.75 Issue 38 November 2000 The B.S.F.A.'s maaazine for writers Editor Contents Simon Morden 13 Egremont Drive Editorials: Sheriff Hill Gateshead 3 Pedants Anonymous NE9 5SE Submissions policy [email protected] Poetry: The opinions expressed are those of individual contributors and do not necessarily represent 4 Billions to get one there those of the BSFA. Steve Sneyd Individual copyrights are the property of the The Revenant authors, artists and editors. David C. Kopaska-Merkel Focus is published bi-annually by the British Science Fiction Association © 2000 Fiction: 5 The Last Virgin Wayne Stamford Articles: BSFA membership rates 8 Rabid! Music please Renewals and new members: Neal Asher Paul Billinger 1 Long Row Close, Everdon, Daventry, Northants. NN11 3BE 9 The Focus Interview UK residents: £21 per year (£14 unwaged) Brian Hopkins & Richard Wright Life membership £190 12 Keep young and beautiful Europe £26 per year Juliet McKenna Rest of the world: £26 surface mail £32 air mail. 15 Market News USA enquiries: Cy Chauvin, 14248 Wilfred Letters Street, Detroit, MI48213 USA 16 Focus dateline 2101 Other BSFA publications: Matrix: news magazine Artwork and photo credits: Andrew Seaman, 128 Pickhurst Rise, West Front cover Keith Martin/Eden Project Wickham, Kent BR4 0AW a.seaman@talk21 .com Page 4 Sean Russel Friend Page 5 Sandra Scholes/Armand Designs Vector: critical journal Page 6 Sandra Scholes/Armand Designs Tony Cullen, 16 Weaver’s Way, Camden Town, Page 7 Sandra Scholes/Armand Designs London NW1 0XE Page 8 Sean Russel Friend tony .cullen @ dfee.gov.uk Page 10 Chad Savage/Lone Wolf Publications BSFA Orbiters: writers' postal workshops Design Pod Productions Chris Rogers, 98 Greenland Avenue, Maltby, Rotherham, S Yorks S66 7EU chris @ orbiter.freeserve.co.uk Cobbled together from sheets of MDF, painstakingly carved by the editor using the edges of old bricks. Transported heavenwards by BSFA website Ezekiel's Chariot. www.bsfa.co.uk Digital copy thanks to Hewlett Packard and no thanks at all to Microsoft. The British Science Fiction Association Ltd is a Company limited by guarantee, number 921599, Printed by PDC Copyprint, 11 Jeffries Passage, Guildford, Surrey and is a non-profit organisation run solely by GU14AP unpaid volunteers. Distributed by Bramley Mailing Services. Registered address 1 Long Row Close, Everdon, Eaten by your toddler when your back was turned. Daventry, Northants. NN11 3BE 2 Focus#38 a®@S3M® Submission guidelines Non-fiction Articles on all aspects of writing, publishing, Subject: Re: Magazines/Mailing report editing, drawing, printing even, are always Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 22:26:06 +0100 welcome. Length should be no more than 5000 From: Andrew M Butler words. Letters regarding Focus are also gratefully Ever so slightly confused to see Focus describing received. Please mark ‘for publication’. I reserve the right to edit/shorten them. itself as an 'erstwhile magazine.1 What is it now? Fiction and poetry Subject: Re: Magazines/Mailing report Focus needs high-quality fiction and poetry of 5000 words or less. Science fiction, fantasy, and Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 14:17:43 +0100 psychological horror all taken. There's no From: Simon Morden payment, but you’ll see your work grace the pages Our hero riffles through his beaten copy of the of this magazine. Pocket Oxford Dictionary, pausing only to note Art that those damn Yankees spell oesophagus without the initial 'o'. He stops at his desired Black and white only! Focus is always on the look­ resting place, and reads carefully. Twice. out for covers, illustrations and fillers. Good clean line-art works best. "Arse," he mutters under his breath, too low for his daughter to hear him and thus subject him to an Non-BSFA contributors get a complimentary copy afternoon of running around the house shouting of Focus. “Arse!” at the top of her voice. He remembers too How and where to submit well the “Big dog's bollocks" incident of the week before. By post: It was there in black and white. Erstwhile: in his Text: double-spaced, single-sided A4, or on disk. I mind he had filed its meaning as 'proud and can convert most formats, but always include a noble, but poor'. But he was tragically wrong, and .txt file in case. he hung his head in shame. Publically exposed as Art: one illustration per page. Don’t send originals a dullard and a fool, how would he ever regain the - only photocopies. If you want to send a disk, respect of peers? you can. Again, I can read most formats. If you want your work back, enclose an SAE with sufficient postage. If you don’t, mark the work as disposable, and either enclose an SAE or a valid email address for a reply. I like covering letters. By email: Text: as part of the body text, please. No attachments. Art: not by email! Put it on the web and send me the URL! The address for postal submissions is: Simon Morden Simon Morden Gateshead, October 2000 Focus 13 Egremont Drive About the cover Sheriff Hill Gateshead The Eden Project is not what you expect the Brits NE9 5SE to be good at: far-thinking, ambitious and really The address for electronic submissions: very, very big. [email protected] The conservatories (‘biomes’) are self-supporting shells of tubular steel and triple-glazed ethyl tetra Queries regarding the suitability of submissions fluoro ethylene, and are designed to reach 45m at should also be directed to the above addresses. their highest point and span 100m at their widest. I'll be as prompt as a man with two kids under four can... (Happy Birthdays, Eleanor and Sam) Find out more from either: http://edenproject.com, or NEXT ISSUE DEADLINE: http://members.tripod.co.uk/edenproject/index.htm 1st March 2001 3 FOCUS# 38 Billions to get one going there The Revenant Steve Sneyd David C. Kopaska-Merkel The corpse had drifted for centuries shipbrain didn’t like it tried before its rendezvous with my probe; hard hard hard to deter but couldn’t its suit had protected it well. in end override command would after I collected it and thawed it; all affect only astronaut skin any objection nanomachines repaired cell disruption and other involving sociological aesthetic etc factors effects of freezing - not more than sketchily available in These were little enough, as it was one of the precursors, the first I'd seen up close - they are programming no health risk not here sterile remarkably hardy. environment and mediprogrammes advancedest I knew the corpse was female but Sendworld’s finest docskills could provide the revenant was a shock: and so and so would do did is done is on raven hair and a good figure, well over 6 feet tall, right forearm can look at any time remind utterly free of blemish. self over and over if needed strengthen When her eyes opened she stopped my breath ... determination on if-when return as sewn those eyes! lips though maybe not proof against scop Psychologists say the eyes don't convey emotion, they say it’s all pheromones. truth drugs whatever still would try would try and there on arm forever now words data All I know is I fell into her like a comet into a star, and with nearly the same effect. bank’d found him said were oncelive poet of We became once-state the THE America in Americas says lovers almost immediately, “Travellers between worlds are mute” didn’t though we had no speech in common. bother to add rest where said “they cannot Sex with her was unstoppable; tell us what they know" it was not case of she felt hard and solid, that but would not WOULD NOT they were gladly her body nearly as warm as a human woman’s. welcome to all sensors took in all shipbrain But I grew cold under her avalanche, stored samples be content be content greeds cold and weak. I grew to need her, I followed her about; wannabe voyeurs with that oh be content leave I was well-nigh devoured. free to be own too own to share onemate Space After two harrowing weeks we made planetfall. Steve Sneyd is a creative writing tutor and renowned She landed the ship and, poet. His collections include Bad News from the Stars, after the engines cooled, strolled away without a What Time has use for, and the wonderfully titled backward glance. Gestaltmacher, Gestaltmacher, Make me a Gestalt. He I tried to follow, but could not find her: is a tireless promoter of genre poetry. she had entered the city and vanished. I saw her, I think, in a crowd a few days later, but I am not sure. Something alien was in the air, but I didn't see her eyes. Things are different now, but the changes are hard to define. They surge through society like a rising tide, like the coming of winter. Already there's talk of a special election. Everyone talks about new directions - and some say the sector capital should be moved here, where the action is. But I don’t like what I hear, and I keep searching for the one who abandoned me. Is there a war on? I can almost smell it. David Kopaska-Merkel studies rocks for the State of Alabama.