Copyright 1998
The Electronic Edition
David Henninger, Editor
Robin R. Brunner, Publisher
The Circular of Janus is a publication of the Circle of Janus Science Fiction Club of Central Indiana. Subscription is included with membership, $10/year. For information, write to Circle of Janus, P.O. Box 68514, Indianapolis, IN 46268-0514 or e-mail davidhenninger@cs.com
IN THIS EDITION:
MEETING INFO
SEC'S NOTES by Lynnette R. F. Cowper
DEALER'S ROOM UPDATE by William (Andy) Andrews
INCONJUNCTION XVIII CONCHAIRBEING'S REPORT by William (Andy) Andrews
NOTES FROM THE NETS Book Reviews
MOVIE RELEASE DATES by David Henninger
A WEB SITE FOR GROWNUPS by David Henninger
ECCENTRIC ORBIT #43 by Don Daily
REMEBER WHEN?
TOP 15 BEST THINGS TO SAY IF YOU GET CAUGHT SLEEPING AT YOUR DESK
MEETING INFO
The next meeting of The Circle of Janus will be at the Children's Museum, Saturday May 2nd.
A Con Committee meeting will be held at 6:15 PM and the regular meeting will follow.
SEC'S NOTES
(Minutes of the April Meeting)
The April meeting of the Circle of Janus was held on April 4th, 1998, at the Children's Museum. The meeting opened at 7:40 PM. 28 adults and 3 children were present. All officers were present.
The minutes for March meeting were read and accepted.
In convention reports, for InCon '98, Andy reported that the flyers have been mailed out. There were a couple of errors, but nothing major. The dealers room is 1/2 sold. The art show has sent out 120 invitations and has already received 10 responses. Due to ill health of the IAC member who did the anime room last year, Steve Kitchen will be doing it this year. Cheryl announced she would be casting the play after the meeting. In gaming, it was mentioned that Steve Jackson wants to ship 100 lbs. of Lego to the con for a game. The cost is being investigated. Randy mentioned that he and some others would be doing a "street" devival at Marcon where they would be passing out flyers for InCon, for 20 or 30 minutes, or "until the cops come" instead of a room party. Vicki asked that anyone interested in doing a panel to please contact her at vjmerri@iquest.net.
Randy Porter reported on InCon '99 that Pat Rawlings, a space artist who does work for NASA, JPL, the Challenger Center, and so on, will be the artist GOH. He is still waiting to hear from William Fortschen about the author GOH spot.
Keith Chike reported that for InCon 2000 he has an idea for an author GOH, but wasn't going to mention names.
Dave Henninger reported on the club directory. For 50 copies of 50 pages, 3-hole punched, offset printed would be $363.75. The same number photocopied would be $132.50. The offset press people, however, claimed that after a while, photocopied pages would stick together. This was discussed and decided that it's not that great of a risk for the number of pages that will be in the directory. Randy Porter moved that Dave Henninger be empowered to arrange to have the directory photocopy printed. There were several seconds. The motion carried. Vicki Merriman further moved that each member pay $3 for their directory to offset the expense of the project. There were once again several seconds and the motion carried.
Dave needs to have info from each member that he requested, as well as a picture, as soon as possible. In case people have misplaced his original request, he is going to remail his info needs.
Linda is putting together a one-page membership list with just names, addresses, phone number and email for the time being. People were asked to check their listing with her to see that it was accurate.
In alternate meeting locations, Dave Henninger reported that Uno's have private rooms available if everyone orders dinner, but they are unavailable on Fridays and Saturdays. We might, however, keep them in mind for Sunday non-meetings. Donato's is free with a pizza order and is available Saturdays. However, both these locations have possible drawbacks with the whole business of ordering and eating food. Kat Robertson reported that she noted the contract for the Washington Community center states that extended hours are negotiable, so this may not be as much of a problem as we first thought. It was also mentioned that IUPUI has conference centers that are scheduled in 4-hour blocks. Rhea also mentioned the Cool Creek Nature Center, though it would be somewhat out of the way for some of our members. In order to avoid repeating each other's work or missing contacting possible sites on the assumption that others will do so, it was decided that all ideas for meeting sites should be passed to Kat Robertson katmandu@iquest.net and/or Chris Canary per@indy.net to look into.
There was no new business.
In other announcements and reviews:
The movie _Lost in Space_ was reviewed as fun, with a similar acting style to the TV show.
Randy Porter mentioned that a new David Weber book, In Enemy Hands is out.
From the _Earth to the Moon_, based on the Chakin book, was starting the night after the meeting, 8:00 PM on HBO and would be 12 episodes long. It promises to be excellent.
Kat Robertson mentioned there is a Babylon 5 con in Chicago on April 18th. Anyone interested in for info should contact her.
Randy Porter mentioned that NASA is collecting 1 million kids' names for the Mars Polar Lander. They also are hooking up microphones to this one in order to hear the ambient noises of Mars.
Dave mentioned that articles for the Circular need to be in to him within a week after the meeting in order to make it in the next month's Circular.
Andy asked that anyone going to a con in the near future pick up some InCon flyers to take with them.
Chaos was declared at 8:40 PM.
The after-the-meeting gathering was at Flakey Jakes, as usual.
Respectfully submitted,
DEALERS' ROOM UPDATE
The Dealers' Room is always one of the more popular areas of the con just to spend money, or hang out and soak up the ambiance. At this time about 2/3rds of the tables are gone. Dealers from whom we have cash in hand are listed below, as well as the type of merchandise they sell. We seem to be well stocked in the area of new and used book dealers and costumes and jewelry. We're a little light in the area of knives, swords, and other forms of iron mongery. However 2 separate dealers who handle such have assured me that "the check is in the mail."
You might note that every one of these people have been dealers at a past InConJunction.
Gee, they must like us!
p.s. Laura Hohman is handling the Dealers' Room this year. She's the one who supplied this list. I'm just plagiarizing her work and taking credit for it.
The Amber Fox
Beyond Reality Black Dragon Workshop
Castle Perilous Games and Books
Costumes by Loren
Dragon's Flower
The Dragon Never Sleeps
Steve Jackson (Gaming GOH)
Mysteries from the Yard
Science Fiction Collectibles
Larry Smith, Bookseller
Trekkibles
Larry P. Ulrey
Imagine This
Wormhole In The Wall Gang
InConJunction XVIII ConChairbeing's Report
There's a certain zone I've got to be in to write something for the Circular. (Yes Randy, I know I've been out of it for a long time. However the twilight zone makes more sense than Indiana on Daylight Savings Time. Ya' know, I've always wondered how they did that. What kind of container do you save daylight in?)
Anyway, I digress. Back to the task at hand, coming up with something that resembles a report on the upcoming convention. Well, we're going to have one! Yeah, I mean we've got guests, and the hotel is reserved, and people are sending in money to register, and people are sending in money for dealers' tables, and we're putting out flyers and stuff.
Oh wow, where do I go from here? Ya' see, this pretending like I'm the head honcho on this thing and working hard at it is causing me a severe headache. I mean, my personal philosophy on this convention stuff is that we are all in this together, so why should I do anything? (I mean, with such a capable staff, why should I have to do anything?) Well, as an interesting side note, Steve Jackson wants to send us about 100 pounds of legos to use in some weird game that he's come up with. (The big problem is we can't keep them. We've got to send them back.)
(FRAK! I wonder how much more space Dave wants me to fill? What in the 6.33 hells of Pumbagon is there I can ramble on about? Ah!) Elsewhere you'll find a list of all of the people who've bought tables in the Dealers' Room. (Crap, I can't claim that - Laura did it.) The Art Show has had at least ten contacts so far on people interested in having stuff in the Art Show. (#$%^ it! I can't claim that one either. Lisa sent out over a hundred letters just a couple of weeks ago.) The flyer looked pretty good (...nope, Jeff did that.) There are some indications that Steve Jackson isn't going to have time to breathe, let alone go to the bathroom. Gaming (Ken) wants him about 25 hours a day (I'll bet he's got some of that saved daylight time he intends to use!), and then Vicki and Lyn in programming think that just because Steve's one of the GOHs they can actually put him on a few dozen panels and such.
The Writers' Workshop is about 25% full at the moment, and Linda bought Kris Rusch's and Dean Wesley Smith's airplane tickets the other day. They'll be flying out of Portland, Oregon. I'm not exactly sure where they live out that way, but it's gonna take 'em a couple of hours of driving just to get to the airport. (There goes some more of the daylight saving time!) Considering what Linda paid for the tickets, I figure they'll be flying in on some crop duster or something.
I got some of the Rivercon folks p.o.ed at me over the Resnicks. Seems Mike was the Author GOH at Millenicon and.... Well, suffice it to say that there's was this little problem with some flyers, some communication, and a couple of wombats. It was my fault, but I didn't really mean to do it.
Heck with it! You want to know more? Come to the next meeting, or the Con committee meeting before hand. I'm outa here.
p.s. I'm lying about the wombats.
NOTES FROM THE NETS
"Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead"
Review by Mary Ellen Curtin
When I left graduate school I went to work for a now-defunct New York publisher who was hoping to catch the genetic engineering wave by putting out a biotechnology abstracts journal. To get the job I did a kind of fan dance to convince my employers that a degree in population genetics was practically the same as genetic engineering. Fortunately for me, they didn't know any better, and I quickly covered my intellectual nudity by reading every comprehensible account of the subject I could get my hands on.
Gina Kolata thus became one of my favorite people. Her articles in Science magazine on genetic research were gestures to the saga-cycle of genetics and biotechnology: Gregor Mendel and the story of his peas, soon followed by Francis Crick, James Watson, and the story of the double helix.
Instead, Kolata has written an insightful history of a century of experiments from "that long ago time when the great embryologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tried to solve the mysteries of life itself." She traces the rise of a bioethics movement during the 1960s and 1970s, and its intersection with two cloning scandals: David Rorvik's 1978 "In His Image: The Cloning of a Man" (originally published as nonfiction, then discredited), which claimed that a clone of a wealthy California businessman was created in 1976 using the same technique used to engender Dolly, and the catastrophic Illmensee affair.
In the early 1980s Karl Illmensee, a charismatic German embryologist, claimed to have cloned mice by nuclear transfer. No one could duplicate his results, and when some of his coworkers became uncomfortable, then suspicious, his career--and the scientific respectability of cloning--collapsed in smoking ruin. "The cliquish community of leading scientists who gathered at scientific meetings and, like the popular kids in high school, were objects of admiration and imitation, followed the claim of cloning with bated breath and its ultimate disparagement with mixed emotions--disappointment ... tinged with a gossipy fascination.... Cloning became a pursuit of those on the edges of science."
And it was on the edges, in livestock research labs, where the first clones were finally created. Kolata puts plenty of human interest into the story--as befits a great reporter--but her book is also, as Nature magazine reports, "a mature reflection on the shifting borders between technology, philosophy, public concern and science." I can only add my professional admiration for Kolata's ability to produce such a thoughtful study of the history and social structure of science while writing on a brutally tight deadline.
--Mary Ellen Curtin is a science writer and indexer. She has written short biographies of 75 Nobel Prize winners.
You'll find more great science books, articles, excerpts, and interviews in Amazon.com's Science & Nature section at http://www.amazon.com/science-and-nature biotechnology abstracts journal.
"Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia"
You can find this book and more at http://www.amazon.com/science-fiction-199803
Review by Craig E. Engler
"Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia" is such a unique novel that it's difficult to begin describing it. It began as a short story that Mike Resnick agreed to write for Orson Scott Card's anthology "Eutopia." But canny old Resnick, who began his writing career at age 15 and who has since published more than 38 science fiction novels, decided to create a short story that would also function as a chapter. That chapter would be followed by nine more, each contributing to the gestalt of the "Kirinyaga" novel.
Being an old pro and a good writer, Resnick first sold those stories to magazines and anthologies, where they quickly captured the collective imagination of readers. That was something of a feat, because the topic he wrote about was not typical science fiction: A "mundumugu," or witch doctor of the African Kikuyu tribe, establishes a Kikuyu utopia on an artificial planetoid, a place where all "European" technology is forbidden (except for a few well-hidden computers that help keep the planet running). The new Kikuyu society lives just as the old one once did--farming the Earth, warding off marauding hyenas, and worshipping the god Ngai. There are no aliens or high-tech gadgets, just good old-fashioned stories about human existence.
As individual stories, the Kirinyaga tales have succeeded remarkably well. Together they have earned 57 major and minor awards, award nominations, and critical citations, including two prestigious Hugo Awards. More important, the stories showcase Resnick at the top of his game, writing about a subject he believes passionately in. The details of Kikuyu existence are taken directly from Resnick's personal experience (he is a frequent visitor to Africa and counts many Kikuyu among his friends), while the stories come from his ever-fertile imagination. The result is a set of the best science fiction short stories ever told, although some pack more of a punch than others. The two Hugo winners are "Kirinyaga" and "The Manamouki," while the story that most powerfully evinces Resnick's skill is "For I Have Touched the Sky."
Although the stories of "Kirinyaga" build into an overall theme, the book is more of a collection than a traditional novel. The book as a whole is handicapped by the need of each chapter to stand alone as a story, which means that there is a good deal of repetition. By the end of the book most readers will probably be tired of reading variations of "My name is Koriba, I am a mundumugu of the Kikuyu tribe" that appear, by necessity, in every chapter. The best way to read "Kirinyaga" is probably a story or two at a time, rather than straight through. The final story nicely wraps up the collection, providing readers with a last glimpse of the old Kikuyu and bringing closure to the entire series of stories.
--Craig E. Engler is editor and publisher of the electronic publication Science Fiction Weekly.
You'll find more great science fiction and fantasy books, articles, excerpts, and interviews in Amazon.com's Science Fiction & Fantasy
section at http://www.amazon.com/science-fiction-and-fantasy
MOVIE RELEASE DATES
The other day I was doing a little web browsing, mostly on Coming Attractions, the movie rumor page at http://corona.bc.ca/films/homepage.html.
Here are the release date of a few movies I found. The ones with month and day are hard dates. The dates in the more distant future are more tentative.
Alien Love Triangle - (Kenneth Branagh, Courtney Cox) 1998
Armageddon - July 1, 1998
The Avengers - August 14, 1998
Austin Powers 2 : It's Shagging Time - Christmas 1999
Beowulf - 1998
Breakfast of Champions - (Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey) 1998
Deep Impact - May 8, 1998 - This is a Speilberg project based on The Hammer of God and When Worlds Collide.
The Feelers - 1998 (Dec.?) Another bodysnatchers flick.
Godzilla - May 25, 1998
Legionnaires - Sept. 1998
Matrix - 1998
A Midsummer's Night's Dream - (Kevin Kline, Michelle Pheifer) 1999
My Favorite Martian - (Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Danials, Daryl Hannah) July 22, 1998
Rendezvous with Rama - (Morgon Freeman) Dec. 31, 1999
Star Trek 9: Prime Directive - Nov. 20, 1998
Star Wars Episode One: Balance of the Force - (Liam Neesan Samuel L. Jackson) May 1999
Supernova - (James Spader) Christmas 1998
The Wild Wild West - (Will Smith, Kevin Kline) Summer 1999
The X Files - June 19, 1998
A WEB SITE FOR GROWNUPS
If you have ever browsed the web looking for intelligent, adult articles about sex you have discovered that you can look forever, sifting through all the porn sites, and most likely have given up before you found anything worth while. That's why I heard about this one on television first.
Nerve Magazine (nervemag.com) is a magazine about sex written for grownups. It is in no respect pornographic. The editors are a young couple who happen to think that sex is the greatest thing in the world. Unlike "men's magazines" like Playboy, the articles I found cover all aspects of the subject and all persuasions but are written to be enjoyed by everyone. One, for example, was by a woman whose basic premise was that sex isn't the same if you can't make a lot of noise. There is a photo gallery but, while the pictures might be considered erotic, they are tasteful and artistic and could be in Modern Photography or The Museum of Modern Art. I was reminded of an exhibit of nude Greek statuary.
This site is a rare oasis.
ECCENTRIC ORBIT #43
For the past 40+ years my dear mother has pestered me with "What are you going to be when you grow up?" So, after completing a 20-year career in the military and retiring, and despite being more than half-way to retirement eligibility as a teacher, I've made a momentous decision. When I grow up I'm going to be a "conspiracy theorist."
Why conspiracy theory? Because it's so much fun. If you don't like the theories currently floating around on TV, in the movies, or on the internet, you can just invent your own. Who's to say if you are right or wrong?
When the "Titanic" sailed on her maiden voyage in April 1912, she was in fact the troubled Olympic and she was supposed to sink. The plan, the "Titanic" was to hit an iceberg and go down in the middle of the day. The ship would be literally in sight of no less than 8 other ships at the time and all the crew and passengers would be saved. The insurance would pay off handsomely, the Olympic would be gotten rid of , and the "unsinkable" Titanic would sail on as the Olympic. The trouble is, the ship hit an iceberg in the middle of the night, 10 hours before she was supposed to, and nearly 200 miles from the planned collision site with "rescue" ships. The evidence collected by the authors raises as many questions as it answers, but the book is still a good read.
But the greatest theory has to be the "Great Spam Conspiracy." According to a Top Secret document recently leaked to an unidentified journalist, the "Roswell Event" is confirmed as an alien landing. These aliens have been dealing with our government in secret since 1947. The aliens have digestive problems and certain "glandular secretions" from humans help them overcome these problems. Something like a diabetic needing insulin. In return for allowing abductions of humans for these secretion exractions, the aliens have given our government such secret stuff as transistors and Velcro. But here's the catch. For the secretion to work best and taste good to the aliens, the human donors must ingest great quantities of SPAM! Believe it or not, the legendary "mystery meat in a can" makes us taste better to beings from another world!
So, in the name of good interplanetary relations, I humbly make the following suggestion. During the next informal get together in Dave's back yard, let's ditch the hamburgers and have SPAMburgers instead. A few SPAMkabobs on the grill, and Lynn can make her legendary "dip stuff" with SPAM instead of beef. We can invite the Monty Python Flying Circus singing Vikings over for a few rousing verses of the "SPAM song." And I'm working on a recipe for SPAM and noodles. If that doesn't get us abducted by our alien friends, maybe the guys in the white coats will take us to quiet, soft rooms somewhere. That's strange, I just realized my copy of "Hawaii's SPAM cookbook (containing more that 50 strange ways to prepare SPAM) was published by Interplanetary Press in Roswell. I wonder......
by Lynnette R. F. Cowper
Lynette R. F. Cowper
by William (Andy) Andrews
Richard C. Fox
Merchandise: amber jewelry, fossils, rough meteorites, gemstones, silver jewelry
Carol and Jim Inkpen
Merchandise: costumes, costume accessories, wooden boxes
Scott Thorne
Merchandise: games
Loren and Karl Kuhlmann
Merchandise: costumes, jewelry, and clothes for fashion dolls
Fredda J. Kullman
Glen Cook
Merchandise: books, paper and hard, used and new
Flint Mitchell
Merchandise: books, fanzines, hand made jewelry, toys, model kits, videotapes
Mary Frost-Pierson
Merchandise: mystery and media books
Laura and Russell Peterson
Merchandise: media related toys, cards, T-shirts, jewelry, etc.
Laurence C. Smith
Merchandise: new books
Kevin Weaver
Merchandise: Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Sci-Fi memorabilia, non-sport trading cards, 8x10 photos.
Merchandise: Used books, fire lizards, and misc.
Mark Worrell
Merchandise: jewelry
M. E. Collins
Merchandise: Custom sketch work, misc. original art, misc books & zines
by William (Andy) Andrews
[The next two articles were forwarded to me by Amazon Books, DAH]
by Gina Kolata
Publisher: William Morrow
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0688156924
by Mike Resnick
Publisher: Del Rey
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0345417011
by David Henninger
by Dave Henninger
by Don Dailey