—The Cover On May 5, 1961, I was afforded the incredible luxury of either feigning or being sick. I was allowed to stay home from school. I was a rocket nut. If that date is not familiar to you, it has been burned into my mind. The day Alan Shepard riding a Mercury-Redstone rocket became the first American into space. It was pretty much an elevator trip, no orbit, just a quick trip 116 miles up and dip back into the ocean. I was with him all the way. I cheered when he was recovered. ‘Take that Gagarin,’ I thought. On February 2, 1962, John Glenn made orbit three times in Friendship 7 without my participation. On January 27, 1967, on Launch Pad 34 at Cape Kennedy Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were asphyxiated when the Command Module interior caught fire. I wasn’t paying nearly as much attention to the space program when the tragedy occurred. July 20, 1969, I arrived with my new wife on a hilly street in Berkeley California. Trudged up the steps to my friend’s apartment, sat down on the floor in the room crowded with people gathered from the apartment complex, and landed on the moon. Exciting as that day was I feel NASA did all they could do to make the space program seem like a drag. Even the slow pace of the movie “Destination Moon” was a thrill ride in comparison. Lately, I am feeling that glimmer again. We may make it back to the Moon. We may travel to Mars. The planets have been revealed in new splendor photographed in fly-by missions. I am soberer about space travel. Living outside our atmosphere is inimical to life. Rife with dangers. More than envisioned in science fiction. February 18, 2021, I was just plain home and not ill. I turned on the TV and cheered with the folks at JPL when the “Perseverance” rover set treads on Mars. In a dream later that evening I found myself in an early scientific laboratory, possibly with Tesla, when an experiment went awry, and we were transported to the surface of Mars. So many friends were there if you exclude both Phobos and Deimos in a ridiculous orbit, and an equally silly sign I made up from the culinary Martian I know, there are Seven visits from our wonder-filled science fiction imaginations. Can you name them? Feel free to add others and email them to me. I will print any and all, other than the extremely vulgar and erotic, in the May Issue of Sigma. [email protected] —Meeting Notes – Parsec Meeting 03-20-2021 by Kevin Hayes President: Joe Coluccio (absent) Vice President: Karen Yun-Lutz (Standing in for President) Secretary: Bill Hall (absent) Treasurer: Greg Armstrong (absent) Commentator: Kevin M. Hayes (Standing in for Secretary) Welcome to the March Parsec meeting Meeting was brought to order by Karen Yun-Lutz, vice-president, at 1:02 PM Our president, Joe Coluccio will not be able to join us today. He is not feeling well after receiving his second dose of the Covid 19 vaccine. Our secretary, Bill Hall is also out today. His computer died. He hopes to be with us next month. Karen opened the meeting with two Quotes In honor of Women’s history month: “Kindness eases change. Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful Positive obsession Blunts pain, Diverts rage, And engages each of us In the greatest, The most intense Of our chosen struggles.” ~Octavia E. Butler, from her book Parable of Talents. Winner of the nebula award for best novel 1999 “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ~Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness Two Unknown Guests: Beth Wilson and Robert Lohman. Karen sent both of these people private messages, but neither responded. Both kept their cameras off and microphones muted the entire meeting. (a lot of the verbal discussion was reflected in the Chat feature of the meeting) Old Business: Parsec Ink: Report given by John Thompson 272 stories were sent in 106 stories have been rejected 166 stories are still in progress of being read Accepted 0 The two editors, John Thompson and Diane Turnshek are holding 30 stories that they have agreed upon The editors are looking at the end of July as their publish date. New business: None Treasurers Report: None. Treasurer not in attendance Mary Soon Lee, poetry reading. “On Reading Le Guin” Published in the book, Climbing lightly through Forests. Kevin Hayes gave a brief story history on the Parsec Vice President. Announcements: Karen Yun-Lutz noted Parsec Ink has a new newsletter and provided the link where people can sign up: http://eepurl.com/dFpuZT Diane Turnshek encouraged everyone to sign up to follow the goings on of the publishing branch of Parsec. And said: Thank you for signing up! Karen Yun-Lutz advised the Confluence YouTube channel is still in need of 12 more subscribers to get our own unique URL: https://www.youtube.com/ channel/UC37uvCJAKMsSf2rh-NlBDSQ (everybody sign up!) Barton Levenson announced he has a short story, “Gorgon,” in the Exterus Anthology which is available on Amazon John Thompson let everyone know “Lepracon’ was up and running on line. With Brian, Benford and Bear as guests. Scot Noel told us about DreamForge - Our Kickstarter is funded, but there’s still time to contribute until Sunday at 8:20 pm, https:://bit.ly/DFKicks. DreamForge Anvil Issue 2 is coming online April 10 and includes a poem by Mary Soon Lee, as well as some great stories by Wulf Moon, Bo Balder, and others. Our Anthology “{Worlds of Light and Darkness” by UpRoar Books is coming out in May and has received good to great reviews, including from Publisher’s Weekly. Mary Soon Lee advised that she and Diane Turnshek are both among the participants at the virtual conference at Flights of Foundry in mid-April. Mary is giving a reading on Sunday. They are also on panels. You need to register for the conference in advance, but it is free (donations requested not required): https://flights-of-foundry.org/ Kathryn Smith provided the url for Lepracon http://www.leprecon.org/lep47/index.html (but that’s kind of moot since this was taking place several weeks ago but this time) Mary Soon Lee told us that her poem, “How to Go Twelfth” is a finalist for the AnLab Readers’ Award and may be read online at https://www.analogsf. com/assets/6/6/POEM_HowToGo.pdf. Links to all the finalists are at https://www.analogsf.com/about-analog/anlab-readers-award-finalists/ Read the official statement on the website: https://confluence-sff.org/ It was announced There will be no in-person Confluence in 2021 people are still encouraged to sign up for the Confluence newsletter! http://eepurl.com/64Xif to stay abreast of the latest developments Kevin Hayes began his presentation about Confluence by providing a little of the history and background of Confluence – when and how it was started and how it developed and changed from year to year. Most of what he said was gleaned from the history section of the Confluence Website. Discussion and chat ensued as the meeting progressed: Randy’s Concerns about holding the conference in October: If we put on something in October, it would have to be on a low-conflict weekend in October. We need to avoid both the first and last weekends in the month at the very least. Another concern that I have with October is that I will have a much harder time getting musicians to perform in October than I will in July. I predict that by October, musicians who have been without performance revenue for 18 months will be trying desperately to line up paying gigs and won’t want to be playing a low- or no-revenue online concert. I’m leaning towards running another most- or full-weekend Confluence the Musical in July and maybe just doing a couple of concerts and some open filking if we do another Confluence the Novelization (or whatever) in October. Panel Topics gleaned from suggestions and conversations. • TCP I-pocalypse - what would happen if the internet went down? • What happens if Facebook takes over? With a view of social and moral determinations/interactions based on decisions from an arbitrary source. • What if Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa became sentient? • Is the internet supporting the growth of a corporate neo-royalty (similar to what Bester develops in “The Stars My Destination”) • Using Low-budget A.I. to monitor on-line content. Faults and foibles—problems waiting to happen • How long after a societal issue can we address that issue in our fiction? (When will it be ‘safe’ to write about the pandemic? ) • If a GoH is chosen, do a review/discussion about their work or a specific piece of their work • In view of some of the programs available (look at the writing A.I. presentation at the virtual con last year) will A.I.s replace human writers and artists and what could happen to creativity? • The effects of the future in SF • Poetry Writing workshops – hosted by Herb Kauderer and/or Timons Esaias • SF/F and Parsec – a demonstration of community. • Draft of the panel topic: How long do we need to wait after a traumatic event before books/movies with similar plot lines/events will be marketable/reasonable to publish? Probably to be discussed with focus on the recent/ongoing pandemic, but not limited to it.