Copyright 1994, Cyberspace Vanguard Magazine ================================================================ |----------------------------------------------------------------| | C Y B E R S P A C E | | V A N G U A R D | | News and Views of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Universe | ================================================================ | cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu Cyberspace Vanguard@1:157/564 | | PO Box 25704, Garfield Hts., OH 44125 USA | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | TJ Goldstein, Editor Sarah Alexander, Administrator | | tlg4@po.cwru.edu aa746@po.cwru.edu | ---------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 2 January 21, 1994 Issue 1 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS --!1!-- Ramblings of a Deranged Editor (and a few deranged readers ...) --!2!-- Getting Away From It All: Taber MacCallum and Life Inside Biosphere 2 --!3!-- Virtually There: Writing the Screenplay for DOUBLE DRAGON --!4!-- Either Here or There: Mike Resnick on Terrestrial Looks at Extraterrestrial Societies --!5!-- Past, Present, and Future Filk --!6!-- Computer Mediated Communication and Science Fiction Media Fans --!7!-- Reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper --!8!-- The Infamous Reply Cards and What You Said --!9!-- SF Calendar: What's Coming Up in the Near Future --!10!-- Shoelaces of Truth: The News, The Whole News, and Nothing but the News --!11!-- Spoilers Ahoy! (And season 2 of the TWILIGHT ZONE Episode Guide) --!12!-- Contests and Awards --!13!-- Conventions and Readings --!14!-- Publications, Lists and the like --!15!-- Administrivia --------------------------------------------------------------------------- REPOSTING information: CYBERSPACE VANGUARD may be reposted IN ITS ENTIRETY anywhere and everywhere without further permission, but we would appreciate knowing where it's going so we can keep track. All rights revert to the authors upon publication, however, so we insist on being contacted for permission to repost individual articles. News items may be reposted without further permission, but must include our contact information. CYBERSPACE VANGUARD: News and Views of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Universe is registered with the United States Copyright Office. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!1!-- Ramblings of a Deranged Editor (and a few deranged readers ...) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A little over a year ago, recovering from pneumonia, I took a couple of interviews I had sitting around from a local newszine that had gone on indefinite hiatus and some news I found on the net, put it together into a newsletter, and dropped it on a couple of newsgroups. Everyone I knew (including me, really) thought that would be the end of it. In the year since then, CYBERSPACE VANGUARD has grown into a full scale newsmagazine, with interviews and articles, real news from on and off the net, and hundreds of subscribers in more than 30 countries. Frankly, nobody is more surprised than I am. Oh, that's not to say we're fully grown, of course. I still have to do much more of the writing than I'd like (after all, I like to sleep too), we don't yet have full news coverage of all the areas people want to see, and publicity people at studios and publishers are still completely mystified when confronted with a magazine that, when you come right down to it, doesn't exist in a tangible form. (Thankfully, they do accept the ASCII printouts we send them.) But we've come a long way from that "Preview Issue" we sent out all those months ago, which I now find painful to read. So, what it boils down to is that I'd like to take a screenful or so to thank all of you who have been and continue to be so patient and supportive as we experience our growing pains, and invite you to stick with us for what looks like it will be an equally spectacular year! There, now that wasn't so bad, was it? First off this issue, we picked the brains of TABER MACCALLUM, one of the eight men and women who inhabited the controversial BIOSPHERE 2, a precursor to long-term space stations and colonies, where everything was generated in-house, from the food they ate to the air they breathed, to give you a feeling for what it was like to live inside. Then, from the ideal world to a world where even the police don't go out at night, we take you to a conversation with PETER GOULD and MICHAEL DAVIS, who wrote the screenplay for the upcoming DOUBLE DRAGON movie -- as opposed to the new Saturday morning cartoon, which has just debuted. (They sure move fast from television to movies these days, don't they?) And, speaking of writers, we've got a brief interview with Hugo-winning author and editor MIKE RESNICK, one of the more prolific writers in the genre. Finally, we've got a couple of scholarly pieces to enlighten both experienced and neo-fans alike. Filker JOE ELLIS explains just what filk music is and what significance it has to the fields of science fiction and fantasy, and SUSAN CLERC checks in to tell us just where we net-connected fans stand in relation to the rest of fandom. In other words, just who are we, anyway? And of course there's the news, columns, and spoilers -- including lots'o'stuff on the upcoming BABYLON 5 and the next installment of the TWILIGHT ZONE Episode Guide. Which brings us to the letters from you, our readers. Oh, and a comment: After we introduced this feature, the number of letters dropped significantly (though Reply Cards kept coming in, of course). Let us know what you think! We'd be happy to withhold names and addresses, if you like. We welcome letters of comment on both the format and content of the magazine, especially from those of you who are OFF the net. They can be sent to any of the addresses above. WHY SO MUCH MEDIA? I've been reading CV for a couple of issues now, and overall I really like it, but I've been wondering about one thing: Why so much media and so little on books and magazines? ---- Jerry Pention [A few months ago, we started looking for writers to contribute foreign news. One respondent asked for a sample issue, then proceeded to complain because the issue carried almost nothing but news from the United States. Put simply, we print what we can. Personally, I'm smart enough to know I don't read enough. If any of you out there would like to help out, we'd love to hear from you -- and that goes for any area where you feel that we might be lacking. This is your magazine too! ---- TJ] THE HEART OF THE HIGHLANDER Thank you for your interview with ADRIAN PAUL in the last issue. Do you have an address where I can send him a letter? ---- Tina Madigan [Fan mail for the HIGHLANDER series is generally handled through SSA Public Relations, at 15060 Ventura Blvd., Suite 360, Sherman Oaks, CA 91430. For more information on writing in support of the show, have a peek at Debbie Douglass's column in the news section. ---- TJ] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!2!-- Getting Away From It All: Taber MacCallum and Life Inside Biosphere 2 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- by TJ Goldstein On September 26, 1991, four men and four women in jumpsuits entered a building with glass walls and (except for a small medical emergency) didn't come out again for two years. They were the "Biospherians," or the first crew of Biosphere 2, the brainchild of philecologist Edward Bass and the product of Space Biospheres Ventures (SBV). Biosphere 2 was an experiment in "closed systems," basically a system that is "materially closed." That means that no matter, including oxygen, goes in or out. All food has to be produced inside, as does a breathable atmosphere. Taber MacCallum, a member of that first crew, isn't employed by or representing SBV anymore -- he is now the president of Paragon Space Development Corporation -- but he does travel the country with an entertaining and frank talk about his experiences in the Biosphere. We caught up with him at Case Western Reserve University in the fall. Biosphere 2 can be thought of as having 4 main sections: the living quarters (including the lab, command center, and library); agriculture, where the food was grown; wilderness (ocean, marsh, desert and rain forest), which was 2-3 times the size of the agriculture section; and the basement, where the mechanical workings of Biosphere 2 were located, and which came to be known as the technosphere. Given the different areas, it was inevitable that life inside was a study in contrasts. What a tourist can see from the outside are idyllic settings, where one can dive among living coral or enjoy a walk in a tropical rainforest, but below is a setting more typical of an industrial plant, albeit a pollution free one. Water based heat exchanges outside the Biosphere helped to keep it cool, but maintenance of the Biosphere's air handlers was critical. Capable of cycling and cooling the entire atmosphere of the Biosphere in 90 seconds, they were all that kept the facility from acting like the huge solar oven that it is. If the air systems were to cut out completely, within 30 minutes the temperature inside would have killed all the plants. On a sunny day in summer, the entire facility uses about 2 megawatts of power. Although Biosphere 2 was built with private money and the interior clearly is not open to the public (though the outside of the facility is open to tourism at $12.95(US) per adult), the state of Arizona classified it as a public building, requiring it to meet all the applicable building codes. That means, among other things, that it has a sprinkler system, and that all overhead glass is safety class. (Emergency exits are accomplished by breaking the vertical panes of non-safety glass along the floor.) Mr. MacCallum feels that "closed system" technology sits where aircraft were after the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk -- it's been proven it can be done, and now other companies besides Space Biospheres Ventures are beginning to try their hands at it, bringing in a variety of approaches. The technology is not inaccessible, in that "there is no proprietary or patented technology required to build closed systems and closed systems themselves cannot be patented." Mr. MacCallum does have a word of advice for those who would try it, however. "The 'know-how' to build closed systems is available. I would not recommend starting from scratch and making all the mistakes that we did." But why would anybody want to try it? What is it good for? At the moment the probable applications for Biosphere 2 are all scientific. Besides the obvious use for space exploration, it lends itself to ecological and nutrient modeling in a way that cannot be accomplished with either laboratory experiments or observations in the wild. Unlike NASA closed system experiments, where stability is maintained by choosing only a small variety of plants, the crew of Biosphere 2 engaged in "species packing," trying to get as many species of plants into the Biosphere as possible. While this gave them a nice diversity, it did mean they had to devote a good deal of time to actually cutting back species that did TOO well, such as morning glory and Bermuda grass, which thrived so well in the Biosphere environment that they became "invasive species." SBV imported plants, animals, and even milk tankers full of ocean water (for microbial content). One of the delays at the Arizona border involved a misunderstanding when a driver was thought to say his truck was full of "mangoes" instead of "mangroves." Mangoes are illegal in Arizona, so you can imagine the hassle of trying to bring in seeds from Israel, plants from ... you get the picture. They did, however, give up on trying to have tons of rain forest soil shipped in, electing to "make" it themselves, working hard for the right consistency and content. Not all of the residents of the Biosphere were brought in intentionally, however. The inside and outside of Biosphere 2 were built concurrently, which allowed insects and other creatures which would do well in that environment to find their way in, a welcome addition to the diversity. To feed the 8 crew members required 156 man-hours per week, which was, curiously, roughly what a similar Soviet experiment had found. Every day each crew member would go into the agriculture section and do a few hours of farming to help provide their mostly vegetarian diet. Another crop that did exceedingly well was hyacinth beans, which became the crew's major source of vegetable protein. Papayas and bananas were the crew's main sweeteners, and if he never sees a beet or a sweet potato again, for Taber MacCallum it will be too soon. Often, if more food became ripe than they could eat before it went bad, they would freeze daily portions for later use. That's not to say that it was entirely a vegetarian diet. Goats provided milk, cheese, yogurt, and occasional meat, eating the parts of the greens that were inedible for humans. The ratio of calories per man-hour spent on feeding, stall cleaning, and veterinary care was small -- and "in a system for space, animals would not be economical" -- but the variety it put into the diet gave a much needed boost to morale, so no-one would say it was too much trouble. Pork, on the other hand, was a different story. "We started out with some pigs, but they needed a daily complement of starchy vegetables, which put them in direct competition with us. So we ate the pigs." Although plants were of course the principle means of moderating the atmosphere, the agriculture section was planned with regard only for what food crops would be best suited to the climate and most useful to the crew, leaving atmosphere modulation to the wilderness areas. The crops made up a nutrient-dense, low fat diet, to the point that the crew not only dropped to 8% body fat, towards the end they were actually in danger of a fat deficiency. Although Mr. MacCallum lost 60 pounds during his stint in the Biosphere, it was not entirely due to the low fat nature of the diet. Due to a greater than expected light loss (55%) the crops were not as abundant as they had hoped, and their daily intake was at first 1800 calories, and later only 2200 calories. (The light loss also led to brand new plant diseases and rare pests.) "So what it came to was that by 4 in the afternoon you were wiped out. You wound up really planning your day. If you had a big job to do you didn't do it early because it would ruin you for the rest of the day. Instead of budgeting money, you budgeted energy. You didn't go up and down the stairs more times than you absolutely had to." Since hunger seemed to be a common theme, the question then becomes "Why not make more farmland?" The answer is a pragmatic one. "The eyes of the world were of course very much upon us, and we worried about the message we would be sending if we cut down part of the wilderness for farmland." As it was, they only grew 80% of the food they ate. The other 20% was made up by stocks of food already grown and stored when the mission began and by seed stock for plants that failed to thrive in the Biosphere. They took turns cooking, with one person cooking dinner and then the following breakfast and lunch. "You tried never to cook a bad meal, because you'd really hear about it." To avoid getting depressed about lack of food, once a month they would have a "feast," purposely putting more food on the table than they could possibly eat, and once every 3 months they had coffee. "And you can imagine what a cup of coffee's like after 3 months without it!" They celebrated the traditional holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the holidays they really marked were the solstices and equinoxes, because it directly affected their food supply. "When the spring equinox came around we knew we were going to get more hours of sunlight, and THAT was something to celebrate." The shorter winter days were hard, and it's easy to imagine the dread early farming tribes would have felt at the fall equinox. Inside the Biosphere, the biomes experienced seasons, some of them being put into a dormant state in the summer, when less photosynthesis was needed. When that happened, the dead grasses were harvested, dried, and stored downstairs in the basement to prevent them from decomposing and releasing more carbon dioxide into the air. Getting the biomes to go dormant was a non-trivial problem, however. Condensate on the windows was a constant presence, providing both a source of clean drinking water and problem. In some of the larger areas, it would rain unpredictably. (Large open buildings, like Houston's Astrodome, often have the problem of their own weather.) This was particularly a problem in the desert, which never completely dried up. It was originally designed as a "fog desert," where there is plenty of moisture but no rainfall, because they knew it would be humid inside the Biosphere. Because of the rainfall problem, however, it is now more of a coastal sagebrush. Not all of the crew's time was spent on scientific pursuits. Contact with OTHER PEOPLE was crucial, and a popular diversion was "going to the electronic cafe," connecting by videophone with other "cafes" around the world. For his part, Taber spent most of his free time with electronic mail. "It's amazing what you can do with e-mail and fax machines," he said. "I bought land, built a house, started a small aerospace company ..." (He's not kidding. Paragon Space Development Corporation was started during his time inside with another Biospherian and people on the outside.) The office itself is essentially paperless, which is no big deal today, but was something to behold when it was envisioned in the mid- eighties. "Remember, when I went in, the Cold War was still going full- tilt." Although the whole idea was that nothing would go in or out, after the first year, samples were sent out and some spare parts were brought in. "It's not that we couldn't have made it through without the spare parts. We'd have been limping along, but we'd have made it. It's just that lots of research opportunities would have been lost, and we didn't want to give them up in the name of idealism. It would have defeated the whole purpose." The samples that went out where small enough to have no effect on the ecosystem as a whole. Strategic decisions were made on the outside, but tactical decisions about how to carry it out were made on the inside. One major decision made on the outside was that no food would be brought in. If there wasn't enough to sustain the crew, they would have to come out. Other decisions were not as simple. Not too far into the planning of the mission, it became obvious that they were going to need some way to take carbon dioxide out of the air, which led to the addition of a carbon dioxide "scrubber." "That's the infamous 'secret scrubber' that caused so much controversy. It really kills me how they could call it a secret, considering that I had 150 people working on it and several reporters wrote later that they had been shown it. The only thing secret about it was that *SBV* didn't think it was necessary to issue a press release." But even with the scrubber to remove CO2 from the air, there were problems. The natural atmosphere at sea level is just under 21% oxygen. Nineteen percent is considered to be the lower limit before function becomes impaired. Given that, when Mr. MacCallum discovered that the atmosphere was losing .25% oxygen per month, it was a serious problem. No solutions, however, were readily obvious. A loss in oxygen would normally be accompanied by a rise in carbon dioxide, but this wasn't the case, even though the soil was actually putting out MORE carbon dioxide than expected as organic material in it decayed. Eventually calculations pointed to missing oxygen to the tune of 25-30 TONS. Certainly NOT a trivial amount. After studying the C12/C13 ratio in the plants, they realized that tons of CARBON was missing too, and no natural process could account for it. Finally, consulting with scientists on the outside, they were directed towards an obscure scholarly paper on the absorption of carbon dioxide by concrete. Incredulous, they compared concrete from inside and outside the Biosphere. Sure enough, that was the problem. Heavy amounts of organic carbon were present in the soil, leading to increased use of oxygen as carbon dioxide, which was then taken out of the system by absorption into the concrete, and was thus not available for reclamation. Although people living at high altitudes often have to deal with decreased oxygen and don't have a problem once they adjust, few of the bodily changes they experience were seen in the crew. "We were breathing the atmosphere of 10,000 feet, but some of our parameters were still at 3,000 feet." But although they had solved the mystery, there was no easy solution in sight. Finally the crew issued an ultimatum: pump in oxygen or we're out of here. So the concrete sits, slowly absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, the carbonated layer getting thicker. It leaves SBV with only two options: rip out all the soil and begin again with a low organic carbon variety, or resolve to pump in O2 for the next 10 - 15 years until the extra carbon in the soil has been expended. For now, at least, O2 will be pumped in. There were other physiological problems as well. The day the mission ended, Taber went out with friends and stocked his refrigerator. "That night I opened my refrigerator and looked at all that food ... and realized that I had no idea where any of this food comes from. For the past two years I had known exactly where every bit of food I'd eaten had come from, what hadn't been sprayed on it, what had happened to it since it left the field. But this stuff ... "If people knew just how much pesticides were in their bodies, they'd be terrified." Many pesticides are stored along with body fat, and when they slimmed down the chemicals re-entered their bloodstreams. With their non-fat diet, there was no way for their bodies to get rid of it. Despite all the problems, overall the mission was a success. An engineering criteria for success was if less than 50% of the plants died and the biosphere remained habitable for two years. "We were prepared for a 50% species loss." Taber MacCallum's criteria for success was not whether the Biosphere "worked". i.e. the Biosphere remained habitable for the humans as well as the majority of plants and other animals, but rather, no matter what happened, that they understood why whatever happened occurred. "If we can learn from this type of an endeavor then it is a success. We understand why the oxygen was depleted and food production was low. Those were the two major problems in the Biosphere. So I think is was a success." So would he do it again? The answer is a hesitant "no. Not the way it is right now. Maybe if it was redesigned and there was a heavier emphasis on psychology." The crew consisted of 8 people who were chosen not for their compatibility or current relationships but for their familiarity with Biosphere's systems, both mechanical and ecological. Any relationships that existed before the mission began survived and no new ones were created, but there was definitely friction. "One of the things that happened after 6 months is that everyone started calling up any old girlfriends and boyfriends that they might have parted with on bad terms. "You get this urge to clean up all your bad karma on the outside because you're generating enough on the inside! "In an ICE -- an isolated, confined environment -- everybody finds your buttons, and you find theirs. The difference is that you can't just get away, and you can't stop the situation." Mr. MacCallum says he wishes they had their own councilor, like the crew of the Enterprise. "Some of us set up with outside psychologists. I think if you don't you have to go crazy." Despite the problems, however, he still calls it "a great opportunity for personal growth." So what happens to the Biosphere now that the mission is over? Changes are currently being made, and another crew will have a chance for "a great opportunity for personal growth" starting March 6, 1994. [Editor's note: Taber MacCallum is available for talks to Universities, student groups, etc. You can contact him at HCR 01 Box 2366, Oracle AZ, 85623 or 1-800-TO-ORBIT (1-800-866-7248).] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!3!-- Virtually There: Writing the Screenplay for DOUBLE DRAGON --------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the movie LAWNMOWER MAN hit the theaters, lots of critics with very little exposure to Virtual Reality hailed it as a VR triumph. Not everyone was satisfied with it, however. Two of the disgruntled were Michael Davis and Peter Gould, who later (as in last year) went on to write the screenplay for the upcoming film DOUBLE DRAGON. Peter has done award-winning short films, garnering the City Golden Eagle, the Select Festival Award, and the Nissan Focus award, and has been directing music videos and direct-to-video projects for children. He has also been writing screenplays, including one with Michael called SCARY TALES AND TUNES, but this is the first to be translated to a big-budget film. His student film "Dirty Little Secret," about a man with a foot fetish who ends up working in a ladies shoe department, is, according to Michael, "an industry favorite." Peter is also an instructor in film production at USC. Michael was a storyboard artist for films like TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, TREMORS, and MEDICINE MAN, and has been doing some directing, including THE AMAZING LIVE SEA MONKEYS for CBS. He also directed the "CHEERS: Last Call" show that preceded the last episode, but he seems most excited about a short film he directed for none other than Steven Spielberg. A takeoff on IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, it was a "happy birthday" tribute to Steve Ross, head of Time Warner, and featured people like Clint Eastwood and Barbra Streisand. DOUBLE DRAGON is also the biggest notch in his career. Virtual reality plays a large part in the plot of DOUBLE DRAGON, which is set in New Angeles. It's Los Angeles after the earthquake people feared was happening his past week has sent half of the city under the Pacific Ocean, and the gang problem is so bad that the police have agreed to patrol the streets by day and leave them to the gangs by night. "So what this let us do is that because the streets are so dangerous, kids, teenagers, NOBODY goes out at night. There's a curfew. So we figured in a society like this, where kids couldn't go out at night, teenagers couldn't party on Saturday night, where would they go? So we came up with the idea of these virtual reality clubs. They would go to these rock and roll clubs through virtual reality. That's the only safe way to party." "In this movie, people just take virtual reality for granted," Michael adds. "It's not the coolest, latest thing. it's been around for a while to the extent that Gilbert Gottfried plays a used VR gear salesman. He's got basically a used car lot except with used VR gear that he's trying to sell the boys in the film." Peter liked the way they could turn the present on its ear. "You know the car that was owned by the little old lady from Pasadena that only has 10000 miles on it and it's a good deal because she only drove it to church? Well, he's got a VR suit that was driven by a little old lady who went to VIRTUAL church. It's only got 999 user hours logged on it. Kind of like the odometer on a car. And he doesn't turn it back, either." The plot revolves around two young boys, Jimmy and Billy Lee, who have half of the Double Dragon medallion (surprise, surprise) and have to keep it from falling into the hands of the villain, played by TERMINATOR 2's Robert Patric. Patric's character has the other half, which gives him the magical ability to step into other people's bodies, and if he gets the boy's half he will become all-powerful. Peter explains how virtual reality fits in: "In the story the VR sequence actually is a key sequence because in the film there's a sort of a 'good guy' gang called the Power Core, that fights all the nasty gangs, and the boys have to contact their leader, Marion DeLario, played by Alisa Milano, but they don't know how to find her. It's a Power Core secret. But the way that the Power Core communicates with the kids to get them to not join the other gangs is by beaming pirate signals into the VR clubs. They end up going to a VR club and they see this pirate signal that's sent by Marion. Her head is projected 8 ft tall and they notice in the background a certain piece of geography that tells them where the headquarters is. So it helps propel the boys forward. They end up with this used VR gear salesman, J.W. Worthington, sort of like Hal Worthington of VR salesman, and of course the boys are broke and they're on the run, so they con the guy into giving them a test drive, and they get the information that they need." Michael explains what the pair was after when they put the VR aspect into the film. "We were kind of disappointed with the way they used it in LAWNMOWER MAN. They just weren't clever with it. Like, we intercut between reality and virtual reality, which is very funny. They boys might be dancing with girls in the clubs, but then we cut wide and they're dancing around this empty warehouse. We liked the humor of the juxtaposition. Peter did this thing where Billy falls down a level in the warehouse in reality, and since he's now lower in reality, in virtual reality now his head is coming up through the floor. "The other thing is that Jimmy, some of his attributes and insecurities in reality sort of come through in virtual reality. As he's putting on his VR suit he's using this breath spray in reality, but of course in virtual reality, it just looks like his hand is just holding air and spraying nothing into his mouth. So Billy says 'why are you spraying breath mint into your mouth? That doesn't matter in here. They can't tell if your breath is bad.' He says 'It matters to me. I'll know.'" Peter mentions that there was another reason for playing with VR: playing out their fantasies. "One other thing that I think would be great in reality is that they have this overhead display so when they look around the club and they zero in on this girl there's this display above that runs by all her vital statistics, is she dating anybody, who she's been seeing. Frankly, I'm newly divorced. I think it would be great to be able to look around a club and know who's available and who's not. "So we're excited. We talked a little about LAWNMOWER MAN. They didn't really show kind of the impact of virtual reality on our society, how it might be used in our society as a form of entertainment, how it might be used as another form of travel, or whatever. What we've done is, since the film takes place in the future, is show how VR is going to be like going to the movies, or watching television, or going on a cruise, whatever. By making it more reality based. By taking something that's fantasy based right now and making it accessible by having the boys boy it at a sort of used car lot." "Since we wrote this we've seen a whole spate of virtual reality projects," Michael adds, "and I think what sets this apart is that we're having a lot of fun with the project. I think it's going to be a really fun sequence. We're also excited that they got Gilbert Gottfried to play the salesman." They came into the project after it was already well into development. Their agent sent the production people a copy of THE SENSOR, the action- adventure script that they had written together. "The producers, Sunil Shaw, Ash Shaw, Alan Schechter, Tom Kornalski, liked the writing of it, and they met with us, and then we came back with some new ideas for DOUBLE DRAGON, and then they hired us. We had to do like five drafts of the script in five weeks. It was a whirlwind experience." Michael agrees. "It was very exciting because it went right into production. We knew it was going to get made." The film had already had a script, but the production people weren't happy with it. "They basically told us to start from scratch," Peter says. The production company was running short on time because their option on the material was about to expire, which contributed to the rush to put things together. "We got to be in on the production meetings and hear all about the economics and the logistical issues. It wasn't all pie-in-the- sky." Merchandising is often a large part of the planning, but there was no pressure to reshape things. "A lot of these movies get made and the marketing kind of drives the thing, but we were never under any pressure to alter things so they would make a good toy, or to change things so they would fit with the animated show. It shows that the producers really had a lot of faith in what they were doing and they didn't feel they had to cater to those aspects. I think it makes a better movie because you can concentrate on getting a better story and you're not writing something you can merchandise." "I don't know if you're familiar with the movie SUPER MARIO BROS, but it felt to me like they were trying to cram in every element of the video game willy nilly. They didn't really let the story take flight on its own, and I think that we really have." That's not to say that you won't see any elements of the Double Dragon game in the film. After all, the producers were planning to capitalize on the $350 million worth of sales the game has done, making it second most popular game in the world. "When we first heard about the project we went out and played the arcade game, which is kind of alike a Streetfighter type of game, where the two brothers work together to fight the street thugs." Peter adds, "These guys don't know how to work together at the beginning and as the movie goes on they begin to learn what's best in both of them. And that came about because we played the video game and Michael was holding down the villains while I kicked them. We really got a lot of aggression out. We tried to construct some of the scenes in the movie to feel like the video game. Eventually the Robert Patric character rounds up all the gangs to work for him. He's searching for the boys because they have the other half of the medallion. So there's this one scene where the boys think 'It's daytime. We made it. The cops are going to be out.' But what's happened is that because the villain has rounded up all the gangs, he's sent them out during the daytime. This is like a really big deal. They come after the boys and the gangs are behind every trashcan, on rooftops, coming out of manhole covers, they're coming from all different directions, and that's really how the game is, but we wanted to motivate that." They were sensitive to the issue of gangs in LA, though, so to make them a bit less frightening than the real gangs, each one has a theme, such as the clowns (complete with whiteface), the Postmen, the Dudes, etc. "We wanted to have a sort of stylized reality." Last year's SUPER MARIO BROS. was far from a box-office smash, but the pair feel that DOUBLE DRAGON can't help but do better. "If nothing else it should do pretty well in Japan because Alisa Milano has a great career there. They love her. They also love science fiction, so it should do very well." They won't give a figure on the budget, but they will say that "they're spending some money. It'll look good." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!4!-- Either Here or There: Mike Resnick on Terrestrial Looks at Extraterrestrial Societies --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Resnick claims to have one of the genre's largest collections of active pseudonyms, making his prolific reputation even more astounding. Last spring at Marcon, he took some time to talk to us and at the time, he said that in the last three years, he'd done 40 novels and 80 short stories, won a couple of Hugos, and had 7 Hugo nominations and 5 Nebula nominations, and in the past two years had edited 17 anthologies. He'd had two bestsellers, SANTIAGO and IVORY, and had written 51 books. He's best known for his KIRIN YAGA series, named for the Kikuyu words for Mountain of Light. On top of all that he maintains an impressive list of interests. "Africa, of course, is one of them, Theodore Roosevelt is one of my passions. I've done a number of stories about him and I've read his collected works over the last few years, that's 20 odd books. I'm very interested in horse racing. I did a weekly column on it for 17 years. I don't bet, but I'll read almost every publication that comes out on it, and for years, my wife and I were among the leading collie breeders in the country, and even though we're not active, I read an enormous amount on collies and canine genetics. My favorite authors, in no particular order, are Barry Malsberg, C.L. Moore, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Olaf Stapleton, Alfred Bester, (Oh I'll give you a couple of live ones), James White, and RA Lafferty." But let's go back to the beginning. What makes a man with such diverse interests decide to be a writer? "I can't recall ever having not thought I was going to be a writer. My mother was a writer. I grew up thinking most people were writers, even if they had other jobs, and I was always interested in any job that would let me sleep 'till noon and dress like a bum. I've been a full time freelancer for 20-odd years now. I'd never go back to working in an office." Not surprisingly, science fiction is not the only field that has seen his attention over the years. Back in the 1960's, he edited men's magazines and tabloids just to learn the craft. "Editing anthologies came about because I was having lunch one day with Martin Greenberg who is responsible for most of the anthologies you see on the stands. This was at the Boston Worldcon in 1969. He was an old friend, and he asked me what I was working on. I told him I had just finished an alternate Teddy Roosevelt story, which later got nominated for a Hugo. And about 10 seconds later he said, 'great. Let's sell the book.' "I said 'What book? I'm talking about a story.' "He says, 'Oh no, Alternate Presidents. You just gave me the idea. I'll do it, you edit it.' "I looked at him like he was crazy and I said, 'Well, sure. If you can sell it, I'll edit it.' Three hours later he had sold it, and he has been selling books and I have been editing them ever since. Gardner [Dozois] does one, and has sold a couple of reprints, and I sold a couple reprint collections on my own, or anthologies, but all the original anthologies I've done, Marty has sold, and either he has asked me to edit or the publishing company has asked me to edit, and as I say, it's been 17 of them in the last 2 years. They've been incredibly successful. My anthologies put four stories on the Hugo ballot this year (1993) from 3 of the different books, and 3 of my 'discoveries' -- writers I bought first stories from -- made the Campbell ballot. So we're very pleased with it." He has also edited ALTERNATE WARRIORS and ALTERNATE KENNEDYS in that bunch. It's an old story, and one that many aspiring writers dream of and experience writers often quote: Writer talks to Right Person, usually by chance, and before long, Career is launched. But how often does that really happen? "Probably not as much as people hope it does and more than they think it does." There's an old saying that most editors are frustrated writers. "I much prefer writing to editing, but editing is the way that I found I could repay the field. You can't pay back, as they say. Everybody that ever helped me doesn't need my help. So you pay forward. You help out new writers, and that's what I've been doing." But while he has been writing for all of his adult life, the first Hugo nomination was in 1989, for the first KIRIN YAGA story. "I'm your typical 25 year overnight success. I was flabbergasted. I was so uncertain of that story when I handed it in, I thought it was going to get rejected. And it was an ASSIGNED story. It wasn't a story to a prozine, it was a story Orson Scott Card had asked for an anthology. I never had thought of doing any other story set in that milieu, and it turns out I've done seven of them. There will be ten when it's done, and it's already the most honored series in science fiction history. It's won 2 Hugos, it's got 6 Hugo nominations, and it's won Japanese, French, English awards. It's befuddling to me, but I'm very pleased with it." So he sticks with it. "Most of my recent stuff, and especially the award nominated stuff, has been African in conception and origin. I seem to get more story material there than anywhere else." He makes the trip to the continent twice every 3 years, and has been to Kenya three times, to Tanzania, Nimibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Egypt, and Malawe. As opposed to going the tourist route, he and his wife hire a private guide, and "go off the beaten track. But the time I get the safari set up I know what I want to see and I have some notion of what I want to write about, and we've plotted out a trip that encompasses that. Which doesn't mean that we don't go to the game parks and have a good time too, but I always go with a private guide who goes where WE want to, and who speaks the language and can introduce us to various contacts there." Do you write because you go there or go there because you write about it? "Oh, a little of each. I love being there. If it was up to me, I'd live there. Unfortunately, I have a wife and it's up to her, and we don't live there. But she loves going too. There are certain basic assumptions that I think every writer holds. One is that if we can reach the stars we're going to colonize them. Second, if we colonize enough of them, we're going to come into contact with alien culture. And Africa gives 51 beautiful and very distinct and separate examples of the effects of colonization on both the colonizers and the colonized. Also, since any alien you do is merely a distorted reflection of the human condition, the closer to home you can find your source the better, and I can't find any society that's more alien than those I've found in Africa." For the last couple of years, though, he's been working on learning how to do things for Hollywood. "They're making a movie out of SANTIAGO, which is probably the best selling book I've ever done, and I've scripted that. In fact, I was re-writing the script earlier today. I've been rewriting it endlessly, it seems. But theoretically they're supposed to film it this fall. Underline theoretically, because this is Hollywood. It could be 38 years from now." An independent production from Gary Kurtz, Ed Albert, and Peter Krunenberg, it's being financed by German, French and British money. Filming will take place in Berlin with a mostly American cast and crew. "Don't hold your breath, but when it comes out, you'll now. The first time we were talking about it, it was going to come out three years ago, so who knows?" Not that this is his first movie. He's done six or seven, but "None that I care to talk about. I wrote a bunch of scripts for Herschel Gordon Lewis back in the late '60's. The golden turkey awards consider him the second worst director of all time and I think the scripts had something to do with that. It was really 12 hours and out. I would give him a script on Monday and 10 days later it was in theaters." He won't give any titles, but says that SANTIAGO has taught him that "writing scripts for a big budget major Hollywood film is NOTHING like that. I had to unlearn a lot of things." So with all those irons in the fire, where are his standards? When is a piece of work good enough? "At the most basic level, I aim for making it as good as I can, and for selling it. As good as I can means that I can't make it better in any respect whatsoever. It's perfect. And I usually feel that way when I hand a book or a story in -- that it's impossible for anybody to change a word. It's perfect. Then I see the galleys 4 or 5 months later and I say 'well, we can change this, we can knock that line out, we can kill this character,' and I make it perfect again in galleys. Then the book comes out and I'll see a couple of things that I'll wish I had changed. Then I'll read it 4 or 5 years later and I'll wince that I could let anything that poor get out of the house. I feel that way even about my award stuff and the bestsellers. And I suppose that the day I stop wincing I'm as good as I'm going to get and I should go do something else for a living." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!5!-- Past, Present, and Future Filk --------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Joe Ellis Where is filk going? Well, first we need to know what "filk" is, and where it has been. There are many definitions of filk. Most commonly heard is "Filk is what filkers sing at a filksing." While this has wide acceptance within the filk community, it has little meaning to anyone who actually NEEDS a definition for the word. In more specific and less circular terms, filk is the music of science, science fiction, and fantasy. Filk has a long and colorful history. The word itself dates back to the 1950's, when it first appeared as a typo in the headline of an article by Lee Jacobs about "The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Folk Music." However, the roots of filk can be traced back even farther in time, to both 'traditional' folk songs and major vocal and instrumental works by such renowned composers as Mussorgsky (Night on Bald Mountain, Pictures at an Exhibition), Brahms (The Erlking), Wagner (The entire 'Ring' cycle), and Greig (Hall of the Mountain King). When the temper of the Classical and Romantic eras in music turned towards the creative aural picture-painting of the Impressionistic period, composers began to search legends and folk tales for suitable source material. They found a rich, imaginative source there in the fantasy of their time. Filk has very deep and obvious roots in this 'legitimate' music, as well as folk music! Much of this interest (among professional composers) in fantastic themes died out with the dawn of the twentieth century. The 'name' composers of that era were more interested in experimenting with micro- tunings, atonality, minimalism, and the strange harmonies and rhythms of the new style called "jazz". The rich lode of fantasy-based material was all but ignored, and folk music became the only repository of these themes. However, with the rise of fandom came an interest in music based on the same concepts found in the stories. In the 1950's, fen began writing lyrics based on the stories of their favorite authors and setting them to existing songs, and a few were even writing completely original works. Most of these people came from a folk background, and had a large number of traditional songs in their repertoire. Those that weren't guitarists (or didn't play something equally portable) were quickly converted, taking advantage of the availability of relatively cheap instruments that could be easily carried. This was pretty much the situation in filk until the 1970's. What happened then? There were a number of changes that served to bring far more people into the "filkfold". First, it became possible to buy relatively inexpensive and portable recording gear of reasonable quality. This made it possible to do both 'live' and 'studio' recordings of filksongs, and remove filk from the exclusive realm of the convention. Fen were no longer content to hear their favorite songs only in a live setting, and the technology made it possible to carry their favorite performances with them... and not incidentally, to play them for others who were NOT attending conventions. Second, there was an influx of VERY talented newcomers into filk, and, combined with the existing "old guard", there was an increased variety in both the voices and style of material available. Third, we saw the introduction of the first truly portable electronic keyboards. While they have, as yet, not penetrated the filk circles in substantial numbers, there is a growing minority of filkers who choose keyboards over guitars as their accompaniment, and they have even seen use as background instruments in recordings by otherwise 'traditional' filkers. One thing that is destined to have a great impact on the future of filk is the advent of affordable and portable digital recording technology. Now, we have the capability to make crystal-clear recordings in relatively inexpensive home studios, and to turn out a product that meets broadcast standards. Filk is beginning to feel the stirrings of what is possible with this technology, and some recordings have already been released on compact disc. This trend is sure to continue, as recording equipment costs come down, and the cost of CD pressing becomes more reasonable. The "formal" aspect of filk has also re-awakened, and can be found in recorded music, in live theater, and on the movie screen. Recordings such as "War of the Worlds" by Jeff Wayne and "Lord of the Rings" by Johann de Meij echo the concepts of oratorios or pure music meant for the concert hall. Productions such as "Cats", "Phantom of the Opera", "Into The Woods", "Return to the Forbidden Planet", "Little Shop of Horrors", and even "The Rocky Horror Show" have brought the concepts of music and songs of fantasy and science fiction to the stage, while movie versions of those shows and classic film and TV scores for the "Star Wars" films, "Star Trek", "Alien Nation", "The Neverending Story", and Disney's "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin" (among others!) have done the same for the mass market. It is significant to note the Academy Award winners for "Best Song" and "Best Score" in this list! Oddly enough, while some of the above-mentioned works have won awards such as the Sudler Prize, Tony Awards, and Academy Awards, fandom has largely ignored the resurgence of interest in music with fantastic themes. While the Hugo awards recognize nearly every area of professional and fannish endeavor, and even the Worldcon Masquerade receives attention on a par with the Hugos, there is no award comparable in scope or prestige for achievement of musical excellence in the field of science fiction. For a group that prides itself on its eclecticism, totally ignoring this single aspect of the performing arts seems rather strange. Why is this? Well, the reasoning usually follows one of two paths. First, there is the traditional resistance to giving another Hugo, for ANY reason. Most often, this relates to the claim that "It takes too long already!" This seems a remarkably specious argument. If we were talking about another award for yet a further subdivision-by-length-of-text story, then there might be some validity to this, but this would be a long-overdue recognition of a COMPLETELY neglected art form. I cannot believe that another 10 minutes would be that badly begrudged. The other argument presented by some would claim a 'dilution' of the 'value' of a Hugo. Again, the reasoning escapes me. This would not be a duplication or subdivision of an already existing award, but a recognition of the contributions of the only art form that currently has NO category in which it could be nominated. Even dance and stage presentations could currently be recognized under "Dramatic Presentations", but no means exists for the recognition of musical composition in ANY form. The second path usually follows the line that "Filk doesn't deserve an award because it isn't good enough." Even if someone were to propose an award SPECIFICALLY for filk, rather than for music with SF thematic content which could INCLUDE filk, as well as mainstream music, this is simply no longer true. However, this is where the very egalitarian nature of a filksing works against it. Those fen who limit their exposure of filk to what they hear at a convention severely handicap their judgment in this matter. Filk in an open circle has no 'editor', no one to winnow the grain from the chaff. Keep in mind Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is crap." Now, think about those piles of rejected manuscripts at every publisher that never see the light of day. The difference between the perception of filk and the perception of SF as a whole lies in the fact that at a filksing, no one selects who may sing and who may not. NO other aspect of fandom is as democratic, and as open to new performers, as is filk. Because of this, many of the best talents don't perform as often, and the public perception of the general quality of filk can be degraded. However, if you listen to the recordings, you will find a far different story. Here, you will find the best of the songs and the singers. Even in an informal, "recorded live" setting, you can hear the life and urgency you only get when a performer has a passionate belief in their music. Even if fandom chooses to continue its neglect, though, filk will continue to flourish and grow. Much like a dandelion, it can be trampled, ignored, even poisoned, but will return undaunted and stronger than ever. The growing interest of professional musicians in the field, the interest in scholarly research into various aspects of filk, even the attention of as prestigious a publication as the Wall Street Journal (Leisure & Arts section, 'Songs of Tomorrow Today', by Tessa DeCarlo, Nov. 1, 1993) all indicate the burgeoning of a potentially powerful new force in music. So, where is filk going? It has already been to space. Filk songs by filk artists have been used as wake-up calls to shuttle astronauts. Ron McNair was supposed to record a soprano saxophone track for Jarre's "Rendezvous" on the ill-fated last flight of the Challenger. Neil Diamond wrote and recorded "Heartlight", and John Denver, "Flying for Me". The musical mainstream is on the verge of discovering that people have been writing songs like these for well over 40 years. There really IS "only one way to go from here," and "the only way to go from here is up!" --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!6!-- Computer Mediated Communication and Science Fiction Media Fans --------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Susan Clerc Science fiction media fans have taken to Internet enthusiastically, as the existence of several on-line discussion groups dedicated to television series attests. STREK-L, rec.arts.startrek.misc, rec.arts.drwho, blake7@lysator.liu.se, and rec.arts.sf.tv are just a few of the many mailing lists and newsgroups fans use to exchange information and opinions about their favorite television shows. The content of these groups is essentially the same. The difference is chiefly in the way you get messages. Once you subscribe to a mailing list, by sending a message to a "listserv" or the listowner, all messages posted to the list come to you automatically. To read messages posted to newsgroups, however, you must go to them by using a news reader program. Newsgroups provide greater anonymity than mailing lists because there is no record analogous to a subscriber list for who monitors them. These discussion groups are opening fandom up to new people as well as providing a new way for fans to connect with each other. Science fiction media fans existed as a subculture long before the term computer-mediated communication (CMC) came into common use. Two recent books, TEXTUAL POACHERS by Henry Jenkins (Routledge, 1992) and ENTERPRISING WOMEN by Camille Bacon-Smith (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), describe fandom as a vibrant and complex, if somewhat loosely organized, community with a highly developed communication network. This network has long held the geographically dispersed community together and forms the basis of close personal friendships between fans, which in turn form the basis of fandom. Among the components of the network are conventions, fan clubs, and several print formats including newsletters; fan fiction; extensive private correspondence; letterzines (essentially magazines consisting of letters and available by subscription); and apas (Amateur Press Associations composed of a fixed number of people who are all required to maintain a minimum level of activity to continue receiving the publication. Each member writes his or her contribution, makes enough copies for all the members, and sends them, with postage money, to an editor who collates, staples, and mails the apas to each member. Turnaround time can very from monthly to quarterly to whenever the editor gets around to it.) The line between format types is often more blurred in practice than these definitions indicate. How are CMC and traditional methods of communication interacting? A survey posted to the mailing lists and newsgroups mentioned above revealed three basic types of fan netters who will, with great originality, be called groups 1, 2, and 3. For people in group 1, 27% of the survey respondents, the net is their only contact with other fans; they do not participate in any other fan activities such as attending conventions or joining fan clubs. Before the advent of CMC these were the main entry points for new fans seeking others of their ilk, therefore it is likely that many people in group 1 would never have had any outlet for their fannish predilections without it. It's easy to see the comparative merits of CMC over in-person meetings -- CMC is free, easy, and convenient, and there is little risk of being told to "get a life" by friends or family if your only dip into fandom is reading a newsgroup. On-line discussion groups provide all the fannishness many in group 1 want. Some, however, will eventually move into group 2. For people in group 2, 43% of those who answered the survey, the net is the gateway to more active participation in fandom. Through contacts made on-line, they move into attending conventions, joining fan clubs, and reading or writing fan fiction. These are the most popular fan activities, engaged in by 46%, 42%, and 41% of respondents respectively. One respondent reported that he would ordinarily not have gone to a fan club meeting because he didn't know anybody there, but he met some people on- line and went with them. Another said that she began reading fan fiction after seeing addresses posted to a list. These examples are typical of the way CMC is pulling new fans into the community. The remaining 30% form group 3, people who have been participating in fan activities longer than they have been on-line. For them, CMC is primarily a faster way of keeping in touch with old friends and getting news. This latter function is of CMC is also the main attraction for those in group 1. The one use of CMC that all three groups share, aside from reading newsgroups and mailing lists, is private correspondence. Virtually 100% of those who replied to the survey correspond with other fans through e-mail (only 2 individuals said they didn't), compared to 26.5% who use snail mail for this. More than half (54%) write to seven or more people, and a further 24% to four to six. Asked how many of those people they knew before they started talking on-line, 21% reported that they knew none, 41% knew fewer than half. Needless to say, the international scope of CMC connects fans around the world, allowing people who will never see each other, and who would never have connected at all without the medium, to talk to each other and proving the adage "Internet is a way of being annoyed by people you otherwise never would have met." Some correspondents do eventually meet in person, though; 37% have met some or all of their e-friends, usually at conventions. Mailing lists and newsgroups duplicate in almost every way the traditional print formats fans use. Fans exchange information, argue over interpretations, write stories, and so on, in both CMC and print. CMC is faster, however, and this is a factor almost every respondent praised. It is also the possible downfall of print formats. One woman said she dropped her subscription to a newsletter because so much of the content was merely recapped from GEnie and stale by the time she read it in print. Another fan said he found the discussions on-line more stimulating because the fast feedback and ease of reply meant more people participated and the discussions were more "interactive" than in print newsletters and letterzines. The speed and global reach of CMC also makes it possible for fans to mobilize quickly and perhaps influence the directions their favorite shows take. When the NBC series QUANTUM LEAP was canceled, a massive mailing campaign was organized through on-line groups. In the past, this sort of campaign would have depended on telephone calls to individuals who would pass the word on, and announcements in newsletters and fanzines. CMC combines the speed of telephoning with the simultaneous multiparty address of mass mailing. CMC can also allow fans a direct channel to people in charge of their favorite series. The creator of BABYLON 5, J. Michael Straczynski, is very active on the B5 newsgroup, and Jim Mallon, one of the Brains behind MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000, occasionally drops in to that show's newsgroup. There is always the hope, or perhaps suspicion, that someone with influence is lurking and will answer fans' wishes for plot developments. With all these features in CMC's favor, why would anyone stick with print? There seem to be three key reasons -- intimacy, access, and a taste for paper. As was explained earlier, personal relationships are the glue that holds fandom together. One respondent, while appreciative of the speed and ease of CMC groups as well as their tendency to stick to the topic, missed the intimacy of her apa. Since everyone in the apa knows everyone else, there is more personal revelation and a greater sense of community. At least one respondent referred to a mailing list as a community, but on the whole it's very hard to develop a sense of closeness when over 200 people might subscribe and the vast majority only "lurk," or read messages without ever posting one of their own. With newsgroups, there is no way at all of knowing who might stumble in. Even among frequent contributors the turnover rate is high because people lose net access when they graduate or change jobs. This brings us to the second reason print remains important: access. The post office is available to everyone, Internet is not. Although fans who are students or work at large institutions usually have free accounts, most people have to pay fees to commercial services to get on-line. Before they do that, they have to buy the necessary hardware, not a small investment by any means. Aside from cost, snail mail has the advantages of being steady and secure. You might lose your Internet access when you graduate, but the United States Postal Service will find you one way or another and you can be reasonably sure that no one you don't know about will read your mail. For all these reasons, there will always be a number of fans without Internet access. People who are not connected can still get the news, though; 67% of the respondents who belong to a fan club or group said they relay information from the net to members who do not have net access. The percentage for the reverse process, relaying messages from unconnected fans to the net, is 45%. This seems to indicate that people receive news but are denied voice without their own access. This has caused some scholars to fear that if CMC becomes the dominant means of communication within the community, dissenting voices will be silenced. It is true that strongly worded opinions backed by a vocal minority sometimes appear to be the majority view, especially if those with opposing views remain silent rather than risk starting a "flame war." But fandom is too fragmented, in both CMC and print, for any one source to eliminate all others. In addition, topics are perpetually recycled and the high turnover rate of participants, especially in CMC, means new people have a chance to state their views. On STREK-L, for example, the subject of women's roles has come up at least three times in as many years, each time with different participants and reactions. If a public forum becomes too hostile, fans either take their discussions to private e-mail or switch attention to another list (most people monitor more than one). There is also an impulse to move away from large groups into more intimate ones. This is evident on-line in the frequent spin-offs from rec.arts.sf.tv, most recently alt.tv.X-files. E-mail also allows the formation of small distribution groups without the technical support required for larger lists and newsgroups. All of these strategies militate against homogenization. The issues of aesthetics and convenience emerge primarily in respondents' comments about fan fiction and apas. Apas often contain more thoughtful and longer articles than are usually found on mailing lists and newsgroups where the speed discourages writers from taking as much time to mull over an issue and frame a reply. Several of those who replied to the survey also said they preferred print for things they wanted to save because it was easier to find what they were looking for in print than on a disk. In addition, some people expressed the feeling that e-text is more ephemeral; anything found on-line that was worth keeping was printed out and filed, according to these respondents. This included some fan fiction. Stories, mostly by new writers, are available on-line through a variety of sources, including three alt.creative newsgroups. A few respondents liked what they had read and hoped that more fan fiction would be available on- line soon. Others derided the quality of the stories compared to printed fan fiction that goes through an editing process and questioned the wisdom of violating copyright in such public fora, as well as the possibility of stories being altered and redistributed without their authors' knowledge. One major advantage of on-line fan fiction is that it is free for many, unlike its print counterpart. On the other hand, computer art cannot match the often stunning covers and interior art media fanzines are noted for. Paper is also easier to transport; to paraphrase one reply, try reading alt.startrek.creative on the bus to work. CMC and the traditional methods of communication within fandom both complement and duplicate each other. As long as each medium retains features the other lacks, fans will continue to use both. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!7!-- Reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper --------------------------------------------------------------------------- PASSION PLAY by Sean Stewart Ace, ISBN 0-441-65241-7, 1993, US$4.50 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper I find science fictional looks at religion intriguing, and in that category I would include future theocracies. PASSION PLAY is about a near- future America that is a theocracy, having been taken over by the Redemptionists. The "reds" (as they are somewhat confusingly called) have taken over the entertainment media as well, and everything is now instructive or uplifting. The Reds seem to have some idea of art, though movies and such financed by religious groups now don't seem to show much evidence of this, and it is during the production of a version of FAUST that the murder which forms the core of the book's plot occurs. The story is told in the first person by an independent investigator (who has some semi-psychic powers which are never explained). Reading the book, I felt like a stone skipping over the surface of a lake. There's too much "stuff" in this short book to have any of it examined in depth. The Redemptionist government, the religious structure (what happened to all the non-Christians in the new United States?), new uses of the media (along with a distrust in technology approaching the neo- Luddite level - how do these contradictory ideas get resolved?), puritanism (along with drugs and sex) all these are touched on, but never examined or even made consistent. And wrapping all this around a murder mystery confuses the issue. There's too much the reader is trying to figure out about the background to give him or her a fair chance at figuring out the crime. (Yes, I know a murder mystery is not necessarily a puzzle. Still, it does seem as though the science fiction nature of this merely mystifies the reader further.) PASSION PLAY suffers from a super-abundance of aspects. I rarely find myself complaining that a book is too short, but Stewart needed either to lengthen the book or cut back on the various changes introduced. (It's also possible that an "expository lump" explaining some of what was going on might have made the rest less confusing.) PASSION PLAY is an intriguing novel, but ultimately disappointing. (In fairness, I should note that many people have liked it more than I, and it did win the Aurora Award for Best Canadian Science Fiction Novel in English. But my reaction was that it showed a lot of promise, but didn't deliver on it.) Title: Passion Play Publisher: Ace Author: Sean Stewart Comments: paperback, US$4.50 City: New York Order Info: ISBN 0-441-65241-7 Date: December 1993 Pages: 194pp --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!8!-- The Infamous Reply Cards and What You Said --------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Linda E. Smit It's not easy to answer the question "Do you believe in ghosts, aliens, or other phenomena?" My first article for this set of reply cards was a ridiculously biased representation, so I trashed it. My second try was so carefully PC, that I trashed it, too. So here's the third try. This topic -- or vague combination of topics as our readers helpfully pointed out -- is one of the most unprovable "I'll have to experience it myself" concepts we know. I'll admit that my bias runs toward belief since I've personally encountered ghosts and some unexplained phenomena. Perhaps the best way to illustrate the amazing answers we received is to show you the way the answers were separated. Quite a few folks decided to answer the first question in three parts. Eight people believed in ghosts while twenty-three did not. But only two people said "no" to aliens while thirty-one said "yes". And after the confusion of "other Phenomena," we found ten believers and four non-believers. Of the folks in the all-or- nothing category, thirty-three said "Yes!", seventeen said "No!", sixteen felt there was no absolute answer, and one person had no opinion. The second question was easier. Seventy-eight folks said they'd not experienced ghosts, aliens or other phenomena -- though many wished they would. Sixteen of our readers said they'd had some contact or experience that they couldn't explain. And, although we received several good tellings of these encounters, we only have the space to print one. The following tale was sent to us along with this disclaimer: "In short, if it appears in Weekly World News or on In Search Of..., the answer is no. Not an emphatic, unalterable, bullheaded 'No', but a pessimistic, skeptical, conservative 'No.'" This reader has the same healthy dose of skepticism many of our readers share. But he tells a wonderful story. After finishing my first year at Georgetown University, I lost the campus housing lottery for the following year. I went down to Washington in the middle of the summer to look for apartments, and was able to stay on campus with my former RA, Tom. I met my housemate for the next year, Peter, and we spent a dismal two days hunting for housing, tracking down leads, visiting apartments, all in Washington's usual ultrahumidity. We had finished looking for the day and came back to the dorm to crash. Tom mentioned that we had received a phone call to see an apartment at 9pm that night, and that the apartment was a easy walk from campus. It was about 8:30, and we were pretty exhausted, but desparate enough to keep going. Tom described a short cut to the rental location as "just over a trestle behing parking lot 3, it come out right next to that street, you'll make it with time to spare". When we left the dorm, the sun was still up, but as we walked across campus to the edge of the back parking lot, the sun must dipped below the horizon because it got dark very quickly. Tom had mentioned something of a path leading into the woods behind campus, and we looked around until we found a likely path. It didn't appear that frequently used, but, as I said, we were in a hurry. After going into the woods for a few minutes we became aware of the darkness and started kidding with each other just to lighten the atmosphere a bit. I remarked to Peter that the woods were probably as thick as in Vietnam during the War, and that perhaps we should keep our eyes peeled for snipers. That didn't help the mood, however. The path had started out wide, but seemed to narrow. At best, things had been dusk grey, but now it was nearly pitch black, a combination of a moonless sky and a relatively thick tree canopy. I wasn't too worried until Peter asked me, "Are you sure you know where you are going? I don't have my contacts in an can't see to well". Peter was behind me, with his hand on my back so that we would keep on the same path. "Sure.", I replied, but I had been more feeling the path as a hardness bordered by a grassy edge than seeing the path for the last few minutes. I thought he could see the path. Suddenly, we both stopped. I stopped because I thought I saw a vague form in front of me, greyish, misty, about 5 foot, five inches with very low detail. It may have been anything, but given that the mind tries to fit what it sees to reasonable patterns, it seemed to me that it was a person, a man, dressed in a grey cape with hood, somewhat hunched over. If that was the case, we would have been standing within a foot of each other. A lot went through my head at once. I'm not sure what was more alarming: 1) I am standing in a densely wooded area in Washington DC, the murder capital of the nation, at night, one foot from someone; 2) Peter stopped precisely when I did, suggesting that he also saw something and that this wasn't just some trick of light that had fooled me; 3) The possibility that I had just come face to face with a ghost or similar phenomena. I hesistated for a moment, and then decided to take an aggressive approach. After all, there were two of us, and I would rather have knocked someone else off balance and then straightened things out later. If it was a person, they might have been just as suprised by us. This may sound like I am over-rationalizing in retrospect, but it also occurred to me at the time that if I did not continue forward, I would be admitting to myself that I believed in ghosts, and might never find out what had occured in the woods. I was also concerned about running backwards along the path, as I was not sure that both Peter and I would find our ways back (particularly with an unknown behind us). These thought occurred simultaneously, and jumbled. The net result was to propel myself forward as fast a possible. Peter remained directly behind me and we continued to run forward for a unknown distance, still apparently on the path. Our flight ended when I hit a wall. Actually, it was very difficult to describe in complete darkness: it felt like a wire fence with a big hole in it, arching like a cave mouth. The fence was encrusted with vegetation and we figured it was a wire fence with ivy overgrowth. According to Peter's watch it was 9 pm, and we decided to chuck the idea of finding the house (no apartment is worth this). From that position, we were able to see the red blinking air-craft warning lights on the tallest building on campus, Healy Tower, through the canopy. We promptly decided to make that our target and to get back ASAP. We must have been more scared than we admitted to each other because we tore through the woods in a straight line, irrespective of thorn bushes, trees, nettles, and so on. We ran until we had gotten back to the dorm (not looking to good now). Luckily for Tom, he wasn't home. As we picked thorns from our clothes, we were silent for a bit. Finally Peter asked me, "Back in the woods -- why did you stop so sharply?". I said that I had seen something, and he agreed that he had as well. I asked Peter to write down what he had seen, before he told me, and I did the same. Then we swapped papers, unfolded them, and the accounts matched, more-or-less, the above: we both sensed the presence of a relatively short man, a foot from my face. We were thouroughly weirded out. Neither of us able to explain or remember what it looked like as we ran through the space where the figure had been since it happened so quickly. We sat around trying to come up with explanations, but fell short. We both described the luminescence, but cannot account for the light except by some far-fetched explanations. It was a moonless night, in moderately dense woods. No parking lights or exterior lights would have penetrated to cast light on a bush or something of that nature. There are the old standby excuses, such as "swamp gas" or bioluminescent fungi, but this is weak. It may very well be something along those lines, and we may have both interpreted limited visual information the same erroneous way. The next day, we decided to try the path again, this time in the middle of the day, but carrying heavy maglite flashlights, just for security. We were unable to figure out where we had seen the image, but we did manage to figure out what the fence was. Apparently, there was a railroad bridge across a steep gorge (the trestle to which Tom had refered). The metal framework still extends across the gorge, but many of the wooden cross-slats are missing or damaged, such that crossing the trestle would not be a good idea, particularly at night. The fence was a regular wire fence, designed to keep people away from bridge. There was a large gap in the fence, the "cave mouth" we had felt the night before. As predicted, it was overgrown with vines and other plants. Tossing a rock down the gorge it took too long to hit, the fall would have been 80 or so feet. I know that's a long answer to a short question, but you figure out how to classify the response. Did I see a ghost or just a whaff of swamp gas? Maybe it was just an alien. Who knows? Many of our readers want to believe, but want some kind of proof to do so. Maybe the best way to describe the majority of the answers we received is with one of the responses I liked best: "In other words, I neither believe nor disbelieve, and prefer to keep an open mind..." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!9!-- SF Calendar: What's Coming Up in the Near Future --------------------------------------------------------------------------- .................... Upcoming BOOKS .................... [We'd like to also feature books from some of the smaller publishers. If you have a favorite small publisher you think we should know about, please feel free to send us the address.] January 1994: BANTAM: STAR WARS: TRUCE AT BAKURA - Kathy Tyers DEL REY: WORLDWAR: IN THE BALANCE - Harry Turtledove, THE SPOILS OF WAR (Third book of THE DAMNED) - Alan Dean Foster, THE GOBLIN MIRROR - C. J. Cherryh, HOSTILE TAKEOVER (Fourth book of THE BLACK HOLE TRAVEL AGENCY) - Jack McKinney ------------ February 1994: DEL REY: THE WITCH DOCTOR (Third book of A WIZARD IN RHYME) - Christopher Stasheff, SHADOW OF THE WELL OF SOULS (Second book of WATCHERS AT THE WELL) - Jack Chalker (SF), WE OPEN ON VENUS (Second book of STARSHIP TROUPERS) - Christopher Stasheff, THE WIZARD KING (Fourth book of A CAITHAN CRUSADE) - Julie Dean Smith, THE IMPERIUM GAME - K. D. Wentworth ------------ March 1994: KNOPF: DIAMOND MASK (Second book in THE GALACTIC MILIEU trilogy) - Julian May DEL REY: OUT OF THIS WORLD (First book in the THREE WORLDS trilogy) by Lawrence Watt-Evans, A GUIDE TO THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE, SECOND EDITION, REVISED & EXPANDED - Bill Slavicsek, THE TALISMANS OF SHANNARA (Fourth book of THE HERITAGE OF SHANNARA) - Terry Brooks, THE PRINCE OF ILL-LUCK - Susan Dexter, FIRE IN A FARAWAY PLACE (Sequel to A SMALL COLONIAL WAR) - Robert Frezza .................... Upcoming MOVIES .................... This is not really the "Upcoming Movies" list that Bryan D. Jones (bdj@engr.uark.edu) puts out over Usenet every week or so. It's actually a pared down version that he was kind enough to let us print. We thank him and remind you that if you have any updates or corrections, please send them on to him. All dates are US wide release dates. -Bryan D. Jones (bdj@engr.uark.edu) Jan 14: Body Snatchers Jan 21: Fantastic Four Mar 30: Thumbelina, Into the Mouth of Madness, Wolf May 6: Prison Colony Spring: Blankman, Cartooned, The Lion King (animated, was King of the Jungle), The Muppet Treasure Island, Thumbelina July 1: True Lies Jul 15: Exit to Eden July : Angels in the Outfield August: Tall Tale, Time Cop Summer: Aliens vs. Predator: The Hunt, Clear and Present Danger, The Flintstones, Getting Even With Dad, Autumn: Pagemaster, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Interview with The Vampire Nov 4: Frankenstein Decemb: Godzilla (American), Spiderman, Batman III, Star Trek VII Winter: With Honors 1994 : Ed Wood, The Lawnmowerman 2, The Mask, Tremors II --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --!10!-- Shoelaces of Truth: The News, The Whole News, and Nothing but the News --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Dedicated to Mark Twain's principle that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth puts on its shoes."] .................... BABYLON 5 NEWS .................... by David Strauss "It was the Dawn of the Third Age of Mankind, ten years after the Earth/Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form, its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal...all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last, best hope for peace. "This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. "The year is 2258. "The name of the place...is Babylon 5." With that opening, the first season of BABYLON 5 will begin in syndication the last week of January. More than five years of planning, hoping and hard work will finally hit the airwaves over the Prime Time Entertainment Network, and America will finally begin to untangle the complicated web of intrigue, adventure, and science fiction that is BABYLON 5. The pilot for BABYLON 5 aired last February, and received very high ratings, coming in fourth in syndicated ratings for the week, behind only Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and Next Generation. This summer, RON THORNTON and Foundation Imaging won an Emmy for the Amiga-generated special effects. Several things about B5 are attempts to set it apart from every other attempt at science fiction that American TV has put forth. Importantly, the creator and executive producer of B5, J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI (or JMS, as he is known on-line), has constantly made himself available to the on-line community for praise, criticism, and discussion of the show and its development. (For JMS' description of the broad scope of the series, see CYBERSPACE VANGUARD, Volume 1, Number 3.) Through his presence on GEnie, the B5 discussion area has grown from one small topic to two entire categories. His presence on the Usenet newsgroup alt.tv.babylon-5 has contributed to the fact that over five thousand messages have been posted since its inception. Not bad for one two-hour movie! In fact, several concerns voiced by on- line viewers of the pilot have led to changes in the show since the series began shooting. For instance, those who saw the pilot will note that such effects as the "privacy mode" will not appear in the series, and that the Japanese-influenced alien sector has a completely new design. Besides the various production-oriented changes, there have been several cast changes made since the pilot. The characters who appear in the pilot are profiled in CV 1:3, and JMS has talked about the new characters on-line. Among them are: Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova (CLAUDIA CHRISTIAN) - Introduced in the first episode. On a classified mission, Laurel has been reassigned out on the Rim. An ethnic Russian with a wry, formal, stiff-necked and sometimes very passionate streak that runs through her. Full of a certain rough-hewn mysticism, a sense of absolute fatality and doom punctuated by moments of great belief in humanity. Very much a commanding presence, a little quirky when she wants to be, a shade on the pessimistic side. Dr. Stephen Franklin (RICHARD BIGGS) - Introduced in the second episode. Dr. Kyle is now working with the Earth Alliance President on the issue of alien migration to Earth, a growing problem to some, a benefit to others. Younger, in his mid-to late thirties, dedicated, sharp and intense. Self-assured, confident almost to a fault. He comes largely out of an experimental background, so his bedside manner isn't all it should be. He's often impatient. His character is the newest addition to the B5 team of characters, and this will lead to a fair amount of conflict. Talia Winters (ANDREA THOMPSON) - The New B5 telepath, replacing Lyta Alexander. What this means in the story is that the only two people to have ANY direct contact with a Vorlon have now been transferred back to Earth. Is the Earth Alliance working on something sinister behind the scenes? Winters will have problems with Ivanova, both personal and professional. Maya Hernandez (SILVANA GALLARDO) - Introduced a few episodes in. An older Hispanic doctor, added to balance out Franklin's personality. She's one of many who work under Franklin, since he is medical chief of staff of several medlabs in different locations throughout B5. Catherine Sakai (JULIE NICKSON) - Introduced in the middle of the first season. After having gone his separate ways with Caroline (she wanted him to leave his job, and he wouldn't), Sinclair renews a long- standing relationship with Sakai. She works for an Earth Corp. surveying asteroids and planets for mineralogical exploitation, making sure they're uninhabited, and finding items that might present the greatest possibility for profit. She is captain and owner of a survey ship, the Skydancer. Vir Cotto (STEPHEN FURST) - male Centauri who works with Londo; younger, softer, rounder, sometimes indolent. Introduced in the first episode. Na'Toth (CAITLIN BROWN) - G'Kar's second in command, female, dedicated almost wholly toward personal advancement, lean and hard. Lennier (BILL MUMY) - Delenn's aide/attache. Introduced in the middle of the first season. Only recently out of a very monastic existence. A quiet, restrained, almost monk-like character, fairly innocent in his way. There will be other characters that will recur from time to time, including n'grath, a very non-humanoid alien resembling a large insect. (If you're tired of alien forehead disease, you've come to the right place!) One of the most endearing things to me is the fact that JMS has shown no reluctance in calling B5 a science fiction show. Read the article with CHRIS CARTER on THE X FILES in the last issue, or any interview with DONALD BELLISARIO on QUANTUM LEAP, or even WILLIAM SHATNER's discussions of his new TEKWAR series, and they all try to distance themselves from SF. JMS doesn't. Instead of getting a bunch of writers who write drama and getting them to adapt their style to SF, JMS has gone out and gotten some of the best writers in the SF field and given them carte blanche to write the way they want. Among the writers who have penned scripts for the first season of B5 so far are LARRY DITILLIO, MARC SCOTT ZICREE, CHRISTY MARX, D.C. FONTANA, DAVID GERROLD, and HARLAN ELLISON. Not only high quality writers but high quality actors will be appearing in the first season of B5. Such actors as: W. MORGAN SHEPHERD (MAX HEADROOM), DAVID MCCALLUM (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.), CLIVE REVELL (Tony-Award winning member of the RSC), JUDSON SCOTT (STAR TREK II), CHRISTOPHER NEAME (LICENSE TO KILL), NANCY LEE GRAHN (SANTA BARBARA), DANICA MCKELLER (THE WONDER YEARS), TRISTAN ROGERS (GENERAL HOSPITAL), WILLIAM SANDERSON (BLADE RUNNER), TOM BOOKER (LIFEFORCE), ROBIN CURTIS (STAR TREK III), DAVID WARNER (TIME AFTER TIME), and of course WALTER KOENIG (STAR TREK) will appear in just the first half of the first season, it should be noted. (PATRICK MCGOOHAN, who strongly dislikes doing American television, has expressed an interest in appearing, but so far his schedule has been difficult to work around.) With all of this info, however, it must be noted that there are those that disliked the pilot a great deal. All I can say is that if this describes you, give the show a chance. Unlike recent two-hour premieres for shows like STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, it was truly a pilot. The entire universe had to be created and introduced in 94 minutes of screen time, and as a result the pilot was not everything it could have been. However, recently at LosCon in California, a standing-room only crowd got to see a preview of the first episode, "Midnight on the Firing Line." Viewers of the first episode at LosCon had a lot of comments, far too many to be included here. But almost unanimously, they were full of praise for the first episode, even by those who did not like the pilot. For example, one viewer said, "In the most general terms, I think it's pretty clear that the show was a good order of magnitude better than the pilot, in nearly all respects. Joe has been promising better acting/directing/flow; the main flaw of the pilot. Well, IMHO and judging from the audience response during and after the movie, he delivered. AND HOW." As that viewer noted, one of the major complaints by many over the pilot was the acting and direction. Comments at LosCon were very weighted in praising the improvement over the pilot. There was also a lot of praise for the improvement of the various actors, especially MICHAEL O'HARE, now that he has had time to settle into the role: "They must have taken the Michael O'Hare that was in the pilot and replaced him with an exact look-alike with the same name. Compared to the pilot, his performance was notably better. No more Captain Wooden ..." A lot of praise was saved for the CGI special effects: Some of the most strident praise, however, was saved for the show's depiction of realism in space. Have you ever screamed at the television set when you heard fighters woosh by in space? Have you ever found yourself quoting Newton's First Law at the screen? So has JMS, and it shows. Several science professionals were very complimentary on this point: "The fighter drop sequence and the following scenes were good; not just in terms of effects and so forth, but in terms of realism. At one point when the fighters are manuvering, someone sitting behind me yelled 'My God, someone on that show has read a PHYSICS textbook!' ... Ships in space don't go 'woosh' as they go by; they've handled this so well that several of the comments during the Q&A session afterwards were entirely complimentary on this subject..." Overall, the presentation simply left the viewers with a strong feeling of what JMS has been trying to portray all along. One viewer even felt that B5 will start to be compared to STAR WARS, rather than its television competition. "It just felt a lot more like a MOVIE, which is I think what Joe is shooting for. Movies seem to be grander, perhaps tuned more closely to their intelligent audience. Joe and the gang have hit the ground running this time. This show has the potential to blow the lid off of television. Prepare to be impressed." JMS concluded his preview tape with a speech by Sinclair about why man must go into space and how humanity has become fearful of tomorrow. It's clear that he has much more ambitious plans than to just tell a story for the next five years, and that he has a vision for the future. Perhaps it is this vision that is the guiding force behind B5. JMS is a man of hope, and it is his hope that we will see in B5. Hope that humanity will survive and reach the stars, together. Because, as JMS has said, if we don't go together, then we won't go at all. As you tune in to watch B5 each week remember these words, which JMS posted a few months ago. I have them printed out, hung over my monitor, where I'll see them every day: "I'll spot you ALL of our shortcomings, our penchant for war and for destruction, our faults and our fractures, our shortsightedness and our venality, our violence and our cupidity...I'll grant you all that and more...but look at what we have achieved. We've fought diseases, broken records, written symphonies, struggled and labored and evolved and learned and thrown ourselves into the wind, carried up until we've walked on the moon. "We've pierced the veil of atmosphere and hurled our artifacts to take snapshots of Jupiter and the sleepy side of Saturn. Any race that can produce Einstein and Buddy Holly, Aristophenes and Lao Tsu, Ghandi and Marilyn Monroe has *got* to have something going for it, something with far greater potential than snagging a quarter-pounder at McDonald's after work. "We've always found ourselves in command of forces greater than ourselves. The first person to create fire, to propel an arrow into a bear's hide, to peer through a telescope, to set off gunpowder, to split an atom, to shake molecules until they stayed coherent and steady and gave birth to the laser...all of these must have stopped, and worried, and wondered if this was such a great idea, if perhaps this was too much power. Would we foolishly burn down our own fields and starve when winter came? Would the bomb ignite the atmosphere and turn a green world into a smoking cinder? "We have had the bomb since the 40s. Except for two tragic cases, they have never been used. This is the *first time* in the long history of our species that we have had a weapon for this long, and not used it. "I operate from the central thesis that we are better than we think and nobler than we know; that even when outgunned and outnumbered and utterly without hope, there is something stubborn, and noble, and strong about our species that carried us through millions of years of evolution to stand at the threshold of the stars. And if there is anything that I is apt to humble us, it is when we reach for the stars, and find that our view of ourselves as the center of the universe is no longer valid. It will put much of our ego into perspective. "Leave behind our humanity? Not a chance. Because it's that core of humanity, WITH all its flaws and fractures and fallibilities, that brought us this far, and will take us the rest of the way on the journey that will be carried on by our inheritors. To go to the stars will require of us the same naked courage and determination and resolve that has always characterized humankind. That is the very key to our survival. Fortune favors the bold. Check your Darwin for the latest communiques on this one. "We've risen to every challenge that nature, or our fellow, has ever posed to us, and I believe that will be no different now, ten years from now or two hundred years from now...here, or out on the fringe." To quote Laurel Takashima in the pilot, BABYLON 5 is now open for business. [Editor's note: Collectors beware: A hand-painted bust of G'Kar has been STOLEN from the BABYLON 5 offices. Please keep this in mind and if you happen to see it for sale at a convention or by a private collector, please call Warner Bros. and do not support this kind of activity. .................... HIGHLANDER NEWS .................... by Debbie Douglass Filming has finally begun in Montreal for HIGHLANDER 3: THE MAGICIAN. Starring CHRISTOPHER LAMBERT, MARIO VAN PEBBLES, and DEBRA UNGER, it takes place after the original film but before HIGLANDER 2. Van Peebles plays the Magician, who also has certain powers as a swordmaker. After MacLeod has won the Prize, an expedition uncovers three immortals who have been trapped in a mountain in China since long before the Gathering. Now there are four Immortals, when as we all know, there can be only one. WILLIAM PANZER is on on the writing of the script. SEAN CONNERY has no connection whatseoever with the film, and neither does AXL ROSE, whose name has come up in connection with the film but who had never actually been approached about appearing in it. According to VARIETY, there was a little trouble on the set when Lambert walked off the set, insisting that his salary be placed in escrow. He was gone for only one day, and all is reportedly settled. For those who can't wait for another glimpse of Christopher Lambert, he can be seen in "Gunmen," directed by DERAN SARAFIAN. It also stars MARIO VAN PEEBLES, DENIS LEARY, PATRICK STEWART, KADEEM HARDISON and SALLY KIRKLAND. It's due out in the theaters sometime this month. The Soundtrack just came out. Description: An action oriented caper comedy, co-stars Mario Van Peebles and Christopher Lambert as a pair of tough guys with little in common except their desire to find $400 million worth of tainted drug money. Van Peebles is a New Yorker motivated in part by revenge, and Lambert is an illiterate, bumbling smuggler who just wants his dead brother's share of the loot. Their arch enemies are played with panache by Patrick Stewart and Denis Leary. As for HIGHLANDER: THE SERIES, the second half of the season has begun filming in Paris. At the beginning of the season, many letters were received from fans disgruntled about the removal of ALEXANDRA VANDERNOOT and the reduction of STAN KIRSH'S part. There were also comments that with the character of Tessa gone, the show is somewhat "testosterone loaded." To balance these negative comments, it is requested that positive feedback and letters in support of the show be sent to Keith Samples, C/O Rysher Entertainment, 3400 Riverside, Burbank, CT, 91505 to help convince stations to keep, or to pick up, the show, as the case may be. .................... STAR TREK NEWS .................... by TJ Goldstein As most people know, this, the seventh season of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION will definitely be the last. As we go into the final stretch you can look for appearances by WIL WHEATON (Wesley), DWIGHT SCHULTZ (Barclay), and JOHN DELANCIE (Q), who will be in the series finale. (What goes around comes around, I guess.) MICHELLE FORBES (Ensign Ro) will NOT be returning. Before you get out your pens for that letter writing campaign, however, keep in mind that this is a planned end to the show, as the cast will be going on to do movies. The end of the television series is one of the only things definite, however, along with the fact that filming will begin in April (mere days after filming on the final episode is completed) and that it will be in the theaters in late 1994. (Old) rumors have it that theaters have already booked the film, so it HAS to be ready. Probably the most indefinite part of the movie is the script, which hasn't been finished yet -- so don't believe anybody who tells you they have it, or the storyline, for that matter, though the most reliable rumors point to the Dominion as the villains -- though the title falls a close second. As it stands right now it will probably be STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION: THE MOVIE. Right. According to reports, they have chosen a director, however, in DAVID CARSON, who has directed lots of ST episodes, including "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "The Emissary." For those who are curious about the appearance of the members of the original cast, at least some members will be "involved," according to Producer RICK BERMAN in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, but there is no word how. LEONARD NIMOY has been quoted in the print media as saying he would appear if and only if there was something substantial for him to do. A walk-on is definitely out, if you can believe that. As for ST:TNG's replacement, it's STAR TREK: VOYAGER, and the details are a bit sketchy there as well. According to print reports such as ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, the show will involve a Federation ship that is mysteriously thrown to another section of the universe without any obvious means of getting back. (And yes, the comparisons to GILLIGAN'S ISLAND were quick to appear on the boards.) Nobody has been cast yet, but the characters will include: a Vulcan, a female human/Klingon mix, a member of a colony of Native Americans who left Earth in the twenty-first or twenty- second century, and, surprise, surprise, a holographic character. Producer RICK BERMAN told EW that the hologram is "really hard to explain, but will be great when you see it." Considering that just the past few years have brought Al on QUANTUM LEAP, Selma on TIME TRAX, and Rimmer on RED DWARF, it's going to be tough to come up with something truly original. About a year ago, Chris-Craft was reportedly forming a new network in order to carry the Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN), which includes BABYLON 5 and TIME TRAX and is put out by Lorimar, the television branch of Warner Bros. (Got that so far?) But wait, you say, didn't I hear something about Chris-Craft getting together with Paramount? Well, yes, you did. According to newspaper reports, Chris-Craft is getting together with Paramount to provide 4 hours of programming a week to be anchored by STAR TREK: VOYAGER. Together, the two companies own 15 stations. In the meantime, these reports come one month after reports emerged (in the hard copy press) that Warner was going to be starting a new network to be headed by former Fox Broadcasting President Jamie Kellner. Warner is not commenting on either network. WILLIAM SHATNER'S TEK WAR, based on his novels, will be premiering this week on ACTION PAK (see OTHER TV NEWS). Shatner wrote the starring role for himself, but reportedly "decided he'd rather be behind the camera" so the role will be played by GREG EVIGAN. Shatner will be appearing as the owner of the Cosmos Agency. And yes, those who caught the behind the camera reference, Shatner DID direct the film. There will be a series of four television "films," with the possibility of a weekly 1-hour series, which was what allegedly made Shatner decide not to star. TEK WAR is set in the future, where Tek is a drug, and Jake Cardigan, police officer, is caught dealing it. In other ST news, one of Full Moon's two theatrical releases for this year (as opposed to their usual direct-to-video), OBLIVION, has two STAR TREK connections, with GEORGE TAKEI starring and a script by PETER DAVID. (David is also working on a new Trek novel, Q SQUARED.) Others in the cast include JULIE NEWMAR, MEG FOSTER, CAREL STRUYKEN, JACKIE SWANSON, RICHARD JOSEPH PAUL, and JIMMY SKAGGS. It's due in the theaters in August 1994. .................... OTHER TV NEWS .................... ABC has extended LOIS & CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN to a full 22 episodes for this season. The network seems to be supporting the show, even re-running the pilot on two consecutive Wednesdays with 20 minutes of extra footage. (There is some question, actually, as to whether it was really "extra" footage. When the pilot originally aired, it was only one hour and 40 minutes long, including commercials. The other 20 minutes was taken up by a "Making of ..." type special.) The move to Wednesday did boost L&C's ratings somewhat, and the show has not only been holding its own against SEAQUEST DSV, on a significant number of weeks it's been beating it. DEAN CAIN, with a bit of a cavalier attitude, told TV GUIDE that he thought Lois and Clark should jump into bed together. THE X-FILES has been picked up not only for the rest of this season, but has already been assured a place in next year's line up. Though it started quietly, it has been steadily picking up an audience. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY rated it the Best Cult TV Show of 1993 in their year-end wrap up. The Cleveland PLAIN DEALER ran an interview with STEVEN SPIELBERG under the lead "If you're disappointed with SEAQUEST DSV, you're not the only one." According to SQ publicist VIC HEUTSCHY, however, Spielberg's comments about being disappointed with the show and not having spent enough time on it because he was too busy with SCHINDLER'S LIST were taken out of context and misrepresented him. Rumors of mass firings are (according to Heutschy) untrue, though there have been some ADDITIONS, including DAVID BURKE and PATRICK HASBORG (Executive Producers), and BOB ENGLES (Co-Executive Producer). Several new shows are on tap for the second half of the TV year: VIPER has already debuted to somewhat ... "mixed" reviews. From the producers of THE ROCKETEER and THE FLASH tv series, DANNY BILSON and PAUL DEMEO, it is about a car, designed by a wheelchair-bound scientist to fight an organization called The Outfit, which equips it's theives with high tech cars (naturally they're all expert drivers). The Viper has the ability to morph itself from (as far as we can tell) red to gray, and has no guns. (The designer was paralyzed by a bullet.) To drive the car, the cops have captured one of the bad guys (after he racked up his own car), erased his memory, and convinced him that he's really a cop. The pilot deals with him and his memory. When the project is shut down, they steal the car and now fight crime as vigilantes. TV Guide's JEFF JARVIS notes that if you think the lack of weaponry on the car means it's a kinder, gentler cop show, think again. "The car is the only one who's not heavily armed." (Jarvis hated it, but we feel it's only fair to point out that he hated BABYLON 5 too.) ACTION PAK is where you'll find WILLIAM SHATNER'S heavily hyped TEK WAR series. The show is something like the old CLIFFHANGERS, but it is unclear as to whether they will be continuing stories or isolated movies. There are five separate "shows," including TEK WAR, HERCULES from SAM RAIMI, and FASTLANE, a comedy from JOHN LANDIS that starts with the discovery of an abandoned spacecraft. WEIRD SCIENCE will be hitting the television airwaves after almost 10 years. The 1985 movie was about two teenage boys who use a computer to create a woman who basically has the power to grant them anything they want -- the ideal woman. This version, starring JOHN MALLORY and MICHAEL MANNASSERI, was helped to the small screen by the success of none other than BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD, according to Executive Producer BOB WEISS in comments made to TV GUIDE. EARTH II, reportedly in the works from STEVEN SPIELBERG, will NOT hit the airwaves this season. Set in the future, is is only "in development" and no information is available. No word on whether it will be related in any way to the 1975 movie of the same name, about a space colony. PRISONERS OF GRAVITY has been picked up for another 12 episodes. The series, which features science fiction, fantasy, and comics interviews, can be seen on PBS in the United States as well as throughout Ontario, Canada. (Episode titles and approximate dates are in Spoilers Ahoy.) The Science Fiction Channel has announced that they will stop showing DR. WHO, reportedly at the specific request of the BBC. (Take that any way you like.) .................... MOVIE NEWS .................... JACK NICHOLSON and MICHELLE PFIEFFER will be starring in WOLF, about a man who turns into a wolf, presumably another twist on the werewolf. Look for it in March from Columbia. Also in March is INTO THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, from JOHN CARPENTER. From New Line, it's a thriller about an insurance agent who tries to find a missing horror writer and finds out that what the guy writes is more than just his imagination. JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME will be starring in TIME COP from Universal, due out in August. According to a source at the National Association of Theater Owners, 20th Century Fox is considering doing a live-action version of the X-MEN. According to convention reports, MGM has optioned HARLAN ELLISON'S novella MEPHISTO IN ONYX. Talk of a fourth ALIEN movie, known among fans as ALIEN VS. PREDATOR, has been around since the third installment hit the theaters, but now it has been confirmed in print media reports that a fourth film is in the planning stages. According to UPI, the 20th Century Fox film will "find the enormous, insect-like creatures landing on Earth to do combat with guardians of the planet's well-being." Nobody is saying what will be done about the fact that Ripley, played by SIGOURNEY WEAVER, was killed in ALIEN3. WES CRAVEN is working on a movie based on the DR. STRANGE comic to be distributed through Savoy Pictures. The 1973 film THEATRE OF BLOOD is will remade. The new film is under development by director CHRIS COLUMBUS, and will be distributed by MGM. FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA (BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA) has been named to the board of directors at MGM. Just after our last issue we received the sad news of the death of RIVER PHOENIX. Phoenix, probably best known in this community for his role as the young Indy in INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, was known for being an advocate of clean living and a vegetarian, but according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office his collapse outside of the Viper Club (partially owned by JOHNNY DEPP) last Halloween night was due to a combination of cocaine and morphine. Other contributing factors were traces of marijuana and the prescription medications Valium and ephidrine. Phoenix, who was considered by many to be someone to watch in terms of Hollywood stardom, was also known for his role as front man for his own rock band. He was performing at the Viper Club the night of his death. Phoenix was slated to begin shooting INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE and was in the process of shooting DARK BLOOD. Production has been stopped, as the producers felt that it could not be finished without recasting and reshooting. His part in INTERVIEW has been recast with CHRISTIAN SLATER, who has said that he would donate his salary to a favorite charity of Phoenix's. His recent film SILENT TONGUE premiered at the American Indian Film Festival, where opening night was dedicated to him. Phoenix was only 23 years old. You may remember that PIERCE BROSNAN (LAWNMOWER MAN) was approached about replacing ROGER MOORE as JAMES BOND some years ago, but because of conflicts stemming from his REMINGTON STEELE contract, he wasn't able to. Current rumors are saying he's up for it again, but in interviews for his role alongside ROBIN WILLIAMS in MRS. DOUBTFIRE, he's said "I've heard rumors, and a lot of people think that I have been approached, but I haven't been. If it is true, I wouldn't mind sitting down to talk about it." Puppets and sets from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS have been auctioned at Sotheby's Animation Art auction. Included are seven sets and around 60 puppets, including two 18 inch Jack Skellington's, (with one head each) and a 8x6x7 foot set of the town hall interior, including several puppets. The release of ROBOCOP 3 has reminded a lot of people of the dismal failure of ROBOCOP 2, the first sequel to the well loved film. Even NANCY ALLEN, who played Murphy's partner Officer Lewis in the three films felt that the second film was "heartless." According to UPI, it didn't appear that she had any kind words for the film's director, IRVIN KERSHNER. "I didn't have a good relationship with the director. We didn't connect. He hated me, is the truth of it," she said. (For those who feel that this might be sour grapes, you might recall that similar gripes were voiced around Kershner's direction of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.) Allen does feel that the third film has recovered the "heart" of the first one. Despite rumors to the contrary, SEAN CONNERY (INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE) does NOT have cancer. A spokeswoman for the actor told UPI that the "undisclosed throat condition" everyone assumed was the disease was actually "a pre-existing benign throat condition known as dysplasia...a series of abnormal cells...not, in Mr. Connery's case, cancer." He has undergone six weeks of radiation therapy and is "perfectly fine." STEVEN SPIELBERG is the chairman of the Starbright Pediatric Network, the sister organization of the Starlight Foundation, which grants wishes to seriously ill children at the rate of 12,000 a month. Starbright has just acquired the former Merv Griffin Studios (and also formerly KABC-TV) as a gift from Coca-Cola Co. and plans to begin broadcasting next year. The network will use satellites and computers to broadcast programming designed to entertain, inform, and improve the experience of ill children into hospital pediatric wards. According to UPI, Spielberg said, "We are going to use this incredible technology to shrink the world and create a oneness." The studio is embarking on a $37 million fundraising effort to see it through the first five years of operation. Spielberg is currently developing a film version of CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST. CHRISTINA RICCI (ADDAMS FAMILY) will be appearing in the film. BATMAN III update: Word is that the Boston Globe announced auditions for actors looking to play Robin in the next BATMAN movie. Interestingly, no mention was made of any requirements that the respondents be male. ROBIN WILLIAMS has been quoted in Entertainment Weekly Magazine as saying that if they come up with a good script, he would be willing to appear in BATMAN III. TIM BURTON will NOT be directing. That chore will be taking over by JOEL SCHUMACHER. The interesting thing about all this is that it could all be academic, because MICHAEL KEATON has not yet committed himself to the film. MCA Inc., part of Matsushita and the owner of Universal, plans to build a Universal Studios theme park in Osaka, Japan. The park, similar to those in California and Florida, will be approximately 140 acres, and is expected to open in 1999. While Euro Disney has not performed to expectations, Tokyo Disneyland, about 3 hours away from Osaka, has done extremely well for the past 10 years, which probably had something to do with MCA's decision. .................... WRITTEN SF .................... Imagine, for a moment, a movie based on THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY produced by former Monkee and creator of ELEPHANT PARTS, MICHAEL NESMITH. Author DOUGLAS ADAMS is reportedly seeking stories of how popular the series of books is as part of an attempt to woo a distributor for just such a project. According to Ansible number 78, Adams says that he will be "thoroughly involved" in the project. Also according to ANSIBLE, the National Student SF Association is going to hold a demonstration protesting the British government's decision that sf "is not a 'core activity' for a student's union (i.e. no more funding)." For more information, contact Gareth Rees, 29 St Stephen's Place, Cambridge, CB3 0JE. According to Patrick Neilsen Hayden of Tor Books, Orson Scott Card's upcoming novel PASTWATCH is about future observers who can see the lives of people in the past. In particular, the main character uses the ability to travel backwards into an old woman's life to see why she is so sad. Hayden said that for a while the novel was to be called THE REDEMPTION OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. It will be out in paperback from Tor around 1995, about a year after the hardcover version hits from Don Grant. Don't brag about your graffiti to RAY BRADBURY. Incensed over graffiti artists appearing to lecture UCLA classes, he suggests an anti-graffiti day, where everyone in his home city of Los Angeles grabs a half-pint of paint and covers over the graffiti on his or her wall or storefront. He told UPI that he'd be "glad to show up as No. 1 painter for a day." (In other places where this has been tried, it's taken a bit of perseverance, but it's actually worked, albeit on a smaller scale.) ANTHONY BURGESS, author of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and more than 50 other novels, Has died at the age of 76 after a long battle with cancer. Burgess also wrote more than 15 non-fiction works, was a linguist and composer, and was well respected for his reviews and articles. Born in Manchester, England, he also served in the Colonial Service in Malaya and Borneo. COLLECTOR ALERT: Vic Ghidalia, the anthologist responsible for lots of sf anthologies around the '70's (such as THE LITTLE MONSTERS, DEVIL'S GENERATION, and THE VENUS FACTOR, the first sf anthology by women about women) is selling his very extensive book collection. He has lots of quality sf and "dark fantasy" from the 1930's through the 1950's and books from specialty and smaller publishers such as Arkham and others, and plenty of MUST HAVES. He was lucky enough to get first crack at a dealer's personal collection several years ago, and he's got lots of things like Ray Bradbury's first novel, Lovecraft, and plenty of other things. Lots of first editions. He's also got lots of contemporary stuff. (He was also saying that the older books are quality bound as well, and are beautiful just to look at.) Since he's got literally hundreds of books, he can't really catalogue them all. (He's not really a computer person.) So, what he's doing is taking "want lists." If there's that novel that you've always tried to find, let him know and he'll see if he has it. Or, send him authors and he'll tailor a list for you. You can send your list to Vic Ghidalia, 480 Riverdale Ave., Yonkers, NY 10705, or, if you're lazy, just send them to the editor at tlg4@po.cwru.edu with your Snail Mail address and I'll forward them to him. If you write to him, please tell him where you heard about it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [This file is from the Sf-Lovers Archives at Rutgers University. It is provided as part of a free service in connection with distribution of Sf- Lovers Digest. This file is currently maintained by the moderator of the Digest. It may be freely copied or redistributed in whole or in part as long as this notice and any copyright notices or other identifying headers or trailers remain intact. If you would like to know more about Sf-Lovers Digest, send mail to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@RUTGERS.EDU.] NOMINATING BALLOT FOR THE 1994 HUGO AWARDS AND JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD This ballot must be postmarked by MARCH 31, 1994, and received by APRIL 6, 1994 Mail to: 1994 Hugo Awards Seth Goldberg, Voting Administrator P.O. Box 271986 Concord CA 94527-1986 U.S.A. Name:______________________________________________ Address:___________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ Signature:_________________________________________ Please check one: __ I am a member of Conadian; my membership number is_______________ __ I am not a member of Conadian but was a member of ConFrancisco; my ConFrancisco membership number is _____________________ __ I enclose $110 US/$150 CDN for an attending membership in Conadian. (If you select this option, your ballot must be postmarked by January 31, 1994.) Cheques payable to Conadian. __ I enclose $25 US/$30 CDN for a supporting membership in Conadian. (If you select this option, your ballot must be postmarked by January 31, 1994.) Cheques payable to Conadian. If you wish to pay for your membership with your credit card, please provide the following information: __ Visa __ MasterCard Card Number: ________________________________ Expiration Date: ____________________________ Please read these instructions carefully before casting your ballot. ELIGIBILITY TO NOMINATE You may nominate for the Hugo and Campbell Awards if you either: a) were an attending or supporting member of ConFrancisco (the 1993 World Science Fiction Convention) or b) become an attending or supporting member of Conadian (the 1994 World Science Fiction Convention) by January 31, 1994. You may purchase a membership in Conadian by completing the appropriate information on this ballot and enclosing a check for the membership fee. If you are already a ConFrancisco or Conadian member, do not send any money with your ballot. Just fill in your name, address, and (if you have it) your membership number so that we can verify your membership. Please print or type. DEADLINE Ballots must be postmarked by March 31, 1994, and received by April 6, 1994, to ensure that they will be counted. Please mail as early as possible. Overseas members should send their nominations airmail. Mail your ballot to: 1994 Hugo Awards, Seth Goldberg, Voting Administrator, P.O. Box 271986, Concord, California, 94527-1986, U.S.A. Within Canada, you may mail your ballot to the Conadian main office: Conadian, Attn: Hugo Awards, P.O. Box 2430, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3C 4A7. However we cannot guarantee that last- minute ballots sent to this address will be received in time to be counted. WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU USE AN ENVELOPE; stapled mail will usually be mutilated or rejected by the post office. Taping the ballot shut is permissible in U.S. domestic mail only. You can fax your ballot to (707) 746-5195. Do not E-mail your ballot. Please be sure to fill in the previous page and mail all four pages. We cannot count your ballot if you do not do this. For faxed ballots, it is not necessary to send the instruction page or a cover sheet. HOW TO NOMINATE You may nominate up to five persons or works in each category. However, you are permitted (and even encouraged) to make fewer nominations or none at all if you are not familiar with the works that fall into that category. The nominations are equally weighted: the order in which you list them has no effect on the outcome. Don't bother to nominate "No Award" (unless that's the title of a story or magazine you want to vote for). "No Award" will appear automatically in every category on the final ballot. Please include source information whenever possible. This is not mandatory, but makes it easier for us to identify the work you intend to nominate. For the fiction categories, Dramatic Presentation, Non-Fiction Book, and Original Artwork, space has been provided for this. In the continuing categories (Professional Editor and after) there's less room, but if your nominee is not well-known we'd appreciate your writing in a source where his or her 1993 work in that category may be found. Please type or print clearly. We cannot be responsible for what you may inadvertently nominate if your writing is not clear. The five top vote getters in each category (more in case of ties, fewer if not many nominations are cast in that category) will appear on the final Hugo Awards ballot, which will be distributed with Conadian Progress Report #6 (scheduled for publication in May, 1994). Only members of Conadian (including those who join after January 31, 1994) will be eligible to vote on the final ballot. ELIGIBILITY Works published in 1993 are eligible for the 1994 Hugo Awards. Books are considered to have been published on the "publication date" which usually appears with the copyright information on the back of the title page. If there is no stated publication date, the copyright date will be used instead. A dated periodical is considered to have been published on the cover date, regardless of when it was placed on sale or copyrighted. Serialized stories or dramatic presentations are eligible in the year in which the last installment appaers. A work originally appearing in a language other than English is eligible both in the year of its original appearance and in the year in which it first appears in English translation. Exclusions: The Conadian Committee has irrevocably delegated all Hugo Administration authority to a subcommittee. Therefore, only David Bratman, Seth Goldberg, Athena Jarvis, Peter Jarvis, and Kevin Standlee are ineligible for the 1994 Hugo Awards. Other rules of eligibility are given with the specific categories. REPRODUCTION Reproduction and distribution of this ballot are permitted and encouraged, provided that it is reproduced verbatim (including voting instructions), with no additional material other than the name of the person or publication responsible for the reproduction. -- David Bratman and Seth Goldberg Hugo Awards Administrators BEST NOVEL (40,000 or more words): A science fiction or fantasy story of 40,000 words or more that appeared for the first time in 1993. (See "Eligibility".) Author & Title / Publisher A. _____________________________________________________________________ B. _____________________________________________________________________ C. _____________________________________________________________________ D. _____________________________________________________________________ E. _____________________________________________________________________ BEST NOVELLA (17,500-40,000 words): A science fiction or fantasy story between 17,500 and 40,000 words in length that appeared for the first time in 1993. Author & Title / Where published A. _____________________________________________________________________ B. _____________________________________________________________________ C. _____________________________________________________________________ D. _____________________________________________________________________ E. _____________________________________________________________________ BEST NOVELETTE (7,500-17,500 words): A science fiction or fantasy story between 7,500 and 17,500 words in length that appeared for the first time in 1993. Author & Title / Where published A. _____________________________________________________________________ B. _____________________________________________________________________ C. _____________________________________________________________