BCSFAzine #345 Price: $3.00 The monthly newsletter of the British Columbia Science Fiction Association Something to interest everyone! Vol. 30 No. 2 * Feb. 2001 IN THIS ISSUE: CAN PUB NEWS * CON ORG NEWS * ZINE REVIEW * LORD OF THE O.S. * MiC FOR HUGO * COSTUMECON REPORT * TAG & BINK ARE DEAD BCSFAzine Above prices includes subscription to Something to offend interest everyone! BCSFAzine. Make cheques payable to BCSFA (West Coast Science Fiction Association) c/o 86 BCSFAzine © Feb. 2001 Volume #30, #2, Issue Warrick Street, Coquitlam, B.C. CANADA V3K #345 is the club newsletter published by the 5L4. B.C. Science Fiction Association, a social organi- BCSFAzine is also available by e-mail as an zation. Singe copies $3.00 each. For comments, Adobe Acrobat .PDF file. (Please e-mail subscriptions suggestions, and/or submissions, [email protected] if you wish to receive the write to: BCSFAzine c/o Box 15335, VMPO, magazine by e-mail.) Vancouver, B.C. CANADA V6B 5B1, or e-mail [email protected]. BCSFA’s Web page may be viewed at http:// www3.telus.net/dh2/bcsfa/. BCSFA Executive The V-Con Society’s Web page may be viewed at President............................. R. Graeme Cameron http://www3.telus.net/dh2/vconsociety/. Vice President ....................................... ? Treasurer ..................................... Doug Finnerty Webmaster ....David Hale Secretary ............................................ Alyx Shaw ([email protected] / [email protected]) Archivist .............................. R. Graeme Cameron Editor ........................................... Garth Spencer VCon 27’s Web page may be viewed at http:// Members at Large: ..................... Randy Barnhart www.v-con.ca. Webmistress: Lorna Appleby .................................................. Alan Ferguson ([email protected]) Keeper of FRED, V-Con Ambassador for Life ...... Steve Forty (S.40) BCSFA has an e-mail discussion list at Yahoo! BCSFAzine Layout, Acrobatics & Image Hyper Groups. Text Modem Retrieval Specialist ....David Hale To Subscribe: email BCSFA- ([email protected] / [email protected]) [email protected] To Post a message: [email protected] To contact the List owner: BCSFA Membership Rates: [email protected] To Unsubscribe: BCSFA- New ...................................... $26.00 [email protected] Renewal ................................ $25.00 The Shortcut URL to this page is: New Family (2 Votes)............. $32.00 http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/BCSFA Contents EVENTS UPCOMING Plain Speaking ......................................................................1 February LoCs ..........................................................................................3 CostumeCon 19 ....................................................................6 Saturday Feb 9 at 7pm: Feeding Frenzy at The “Lord of the OS” ....................................................................6 Russian & Ukranian Restaraunt, 3124 Main St., Northwest Conventions ......................................................7 Vancouver. The perogies as legendary, especially the Media File................................................................................9 varieties used for desserts. No need to contact the Fanzines (Ted White) ........................................................ 1 1 organizer; Just show up hungry. Tag & Bink Are Dead (review - D. Finnerty) ............ 1 2 News....................................................................................... 1 3 Feb. 22: BCSFAzine deadline Crank Theories (G. Spencer) ......................................... 1 8 Feb. 24: V-Con Society Meeting (VCon 27 progrep) March Art Credits Mar. 8: BCSFAzine mailout This month’s cover artist: ........ Brad Foster Mar. 22: BCSFAzine deadline p. 9 ........ Garth Spencer p. 12 ........ Colin Upton THIRD WEEKEND - AUCTION AT STEVE’S! Plain Speaking HEY KIDS, LET’S HAVE A CONTEST HEY KIDS, LET’S MAYBE START AN APA With last issue I invited BCSFA members to During one of my manic phases I was think- take part in a contest: spot all the mistakes ing of starting an apa, sort of by way of restarting Garth made in the last issue! How many mis- BCAPA and/or Canfandom and/or CANADAPA. takes did you spot? The member who spots the When I recovered I was still thinking about it, most mistakes gets a free Neat Thing from the but I had enough caution to ask whether this is Garth Spencer Memory Hole, I mean fanzine a Good Idea. collection, and you can give Garth a boot to the head! Graeme wanted to promote hardcopy fanpublishing with Canfandom. What I would THINGS THAT WERE WRONG WITH BCSFAZINE like to accomplish, with an apa, is to review #344 basic information about contemporary fandom, especially Canadian fandom in the Northwest, • gibbled spacing on the front page volume & and by reviewing it, turn up and correct any number mistaken assumptions that are floating around; • missing number on the inside front cover and outside of this focus, place contemporary volume & number western Canadian fandom in context – the • outdated server listed for the BCSFA listserv context of the Northwestern congoing circuit, of @dress & URL Canadian fandom and its tentative Canvention • club news out of order ties, and of fandom at large. • Ansible subscription information was all wrong What is an apa, you may be asking, and what • half the page numbers missing would you have to do with it? Well, if you’d like • one half-page entirely blank to participate, you would send in a minimum • uneven type size through the fanzine number of pages per mailout (“minac”) to a Central Mailer. Maybe you’d copy up your con- THE CURSE OF LONO CHARLIE BROWN tribution (“apazine”) to the number per mailout the CM specifies (“copy count”), or maybe the Some people, specifically Barb Dryer, have CM can maintain a fund for the members’ photo- pointed out how many promises and obligations copy and postage costs. The Central Mailer I have forgotten since I took over editorship of collates the copies of everybody’s contributions, this zine. (Catch me up on what I still forget!) This and sends them the collated copies. That’s an isn’t just a subject for the mistake contest. This apa: an amateur publication association. is a subject of concern to BCSFA members. Until the mid-80s apas were one way fans I have a memory like a steel sieve. Rusted responded to rising postage costs, rather than by shut, some days. issuing fanzines to anyone and everyone. After the mid-80s, when the Internet became more I blame this on a Curse which was laid on and more popular and accessible, newsgroups me in childhood, when I somehow offended a and later listservs assumed a lot of the functions Little Red-Haired Girl. Over time this curse has of apas (… including, I should say, wandering off broadened its effect until I not only can’t get a the point, and descending to the kind of queru- girlfriend, I have no charisma, I have no leader- lous personal fights that we now call flaming). ship capability, I ask a gang of people to do There are still several apas going, however. things and they don’t know I’ve addressed them, employers advertising for help keep losing my Cautionary note: I have been told I might do resumes, and I can’t get a plumber on weekends, better to just join existing apas. Also, either. newsgroups and listservs may obviate the need for apas. Then again, they may not: I’m begin- Or I just have a semantic problem in commu- ning to suspect there’s an upper limit to the nicating with other people. total number of people you can communicate 2 with, call it a “communication horizon”, and the subsequent 2000 email contact, trying to beyond that you simply cannot convey or receive elicit more information. Your own experience news. If it’s true, it’s disheartening. may show that a good many contemporary fans do not realize there is anything in fandom out- Why would I bother, anyway? Well … my side of gaming or anime, or comics or Star Trek. experience of fandom is that we tolerate rather a high degree of unawareness, or actual misinfor- People have already heard me rant about mation. For one thing: It took a few months to how new conrunners may have no idea of realis- realize that nobody had been dropping off copies tic budgeting, or the hurdles to inviting actors to of BCSFAzine for sale at White Dwarf Books. For appear as guests. For instance, a fanfiction another thing: At least a month after Paul publisher we will not name thought to start a Carpentier’s press release about VikingCon 19, new “relaxacon”, with a decided media-SF em- at least one member of the SF Northwest listserv phasis; evidently they were naïve about still did not know they had changed their dates relaxacons. for 2002. Even more: I had to cause a commotion online recently to get some Alberta fans to tell I tend to think that promoting a sense of me what the recent history of NonCon was; I did history in fandom is the main remedy for the not know that NonCon simply wasn’t held in troubles they will face, but that’s just me. 2001, and I had been emailing Craig Dyck, and THE STOP PRESS CATALOG quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore P.O. Box 15335, V.M.P.O. Vancouver, B.C. CANADA V6B 5B1 URL http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~hrothgar/stop/ tel. 603-325-7314 * email [email protected] The following fannish publications are now available: Price Confabulation, an anthology of fiction by science fiction fans about science fiction fans (also downloadable from http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~hrothgar/confab.pdf) US$6.00/C$8.00 The