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The November Edition of the Nashville SF Club
and Bems newsletter

Editor Debra Hussey dah2@hotmail.com
or dah2577@nstia1.nsti.tec.tn.us

Nashville Science Fiction Web Page
http://geocities.datacellar.net/area51/dimension/4242/

The next meeting of the Nashville SF Club

tomorrow night..Tuesday
.November 4, 7:30pm
Cumberland Science Museum
One of the topics will be a continuing
discussion on the future of the club.
such as were we will meet in future ect....

The date..place ect for Bems hasn't been decided yet....

The MTSFA club meeting is the third Thursday of the month...
this will be the last meeting
at the Cumberland Science Museum...the December party
will be elsewhere...and
the club will be moving due to the increasing rent and
continued over booking
at the museum, lack of parking ect....

Other good stuff in Nashville

The Vanderbilt Campus Observatory will be open
to the public next Friday November 7th,
from 7-8pm. It is located on the 10th floor
of the Physics - Astronomy building
of the Stevenson Science Center....

The Arthur j Dyer Observatory
will be open to the public Thursday
November 13th from 7-8:30pm
Conventions...

As I am typing this Lee Billings, John Hollis,
Dan Caldwell and other Nashville fen
are making their ways to Columbus,Oh
for the Ohio Valley Filk Fest....
lets see if we get a con report...

The biggest convention news is
from Steve Francis...

''An additional piece of news about RiverCon for the next newsletter. Sue and I and the committee
have decided to retire RiverCon in the year 2000. It will be 25 years (27 conventions if you count
NorthAmericon and the L&N DSC) as well as a good way to end the millennium.
We don't want to try to run RiverCon beyond our ability to do it well.
The other reason is that many of our committee members have been with us
for many years and need that "Light at the end of the tunnel".
I feel that if we continue indefinitely, we will begin to lose valued
committee members along the way. And you know how hard they are
to replace with competent folks. "

RiverCon web page address:
http://members.aol.com/raroehm/rivercon.html

While there were several cons in October
the only one I have had reports of
is Con Stellation in Huntsville...
Everyone had a good time..
though Anita Feller commented on the lack
of room parties.
In the Blue Monday Funnies
Uncle Timmy noted that almost
300 fans attended the con.
He went on to comment
" I will say that I had a ball
and they threw one hell of a bash"

Sam Smith has placed an review of the
con on the Constellation web page
http://www.hsv.tis.net/~constell/constell/
The review is from the Huntsville Times..

There are three cons this month///

Windy Con will be attended by Big Bem
Dan Caldwell
and then there is Thanksgiving weekend...
Some of will be making the trek
to Chambanacon and
others will be attending ConCat.

Chambanacon has been a Thanksgiving SF tradition
in the midwest for 27 years.
Its another place that you can see Andrew J Offutt
and Wilson 'Bob' Tucker...
plus lots of filking..
Its at the Chancellor Hotel in Champaign,Il.

ConCat is the other Thanksgiving weekend con
The Radisson Summitt Hill is the place

other con news...
Chattacon is looming on the horizon.
.and looking at the flyer I noticed
that it says the hotel sold out by
November last year...which means if
you want to stay in the con hotel
you need to get on the phone
and call 423-756-5150
The hotel is the Clarion River Plaza Hotel.
.be sure to mention Chattacon when you call.

They do have an overflow hotel .
.the Days Inn Rivergate.
The price for the con will be
$ 25 until November 30th....

I also received the flyer for MidSouth Con 17.
It will be held at the Grand Viranda Hotel,
Grand Casino Tunica in Mississipi
March 20-22,1998
They have an $ 20 registration until 11/30/97
Local Fen News...
This weekend will see the marriage of Rocky & Susan
congratulations to them both...
I heard from Sherman Dorn .
..he said that Kathryn's started kindergarten...

And this from Sharon Green..
Be an patron of the arts
Sharon is contacting people about
investing in her backlist and trying to get it
printed and distributed. It takes appox
$500 investment for each title.
She also exploring publishing on the net.
You can contact her at
sharongreen@worldnet.att.net

Other fan news

William Rotsler who has won the fan artist Hugo
several times including the
last two years died suddenly on October 18th.
He had recently had surgery for
throat cancer and had been staying at a friends house.
This was from the Sci Fi wire the news service of the sci fi channel.

From Ansible...
Judith Merril died on 12 September, aged 74.
She wrote some notable SF but is most fondly remembered as
an anthologist and feminist champion of SF:
for the dozen ghetto-busting
1960s-70s Year's Best collections, for
promoting the `New Wave' to a US audience
with England Swings SF (1968),
for inaugurating the Tesseracts
anthologies which drew attention to Canadian SF.

Ross Pavlac, well-known fan,
1982 Worldcon chair and connoisseur of Christian SF/fantasy,
has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; the outlook is not encouraging.
Best of luck, Ross.
Also from Ansible
Harlan Ellison appeared again on Tom Snyder's CBS chat-show (24 Sep).
Hinting that publishing Dangerous Visions
might have been harder today owing to censors and bluenoses,
he nevertheless assured us all:
`There will be a Last Dangerous Visions; watch the skies.' [GF]
Dan Gallagher, a new SF writer not known to me,
gained vast notoriety by attaching himself to various
LoneStarCon panels for which he wasn't scheduled and then (a) reciting
the entire plot of His Novel; (b) trying to convert at least one panel into a religious
revival meeting. AUDIENCE:
`Take the mike away from him!' Con-runners are warned. [JG]
From Dave Langford, 94 London Road, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 5AU, UK.
Fax 0118 966 9914. ISSN 0265-9816. E-mail ansible@cix.co.uk.
Logo: Dan Steffan. Cartoon: D.West . Available for SAE, a Voorish
Sign, or the powder of Ibn Ghazi.

On a closing note....
If you spend time on the internet sooner or
later some well meaning friend will
send you either some type of hysterical virus warning
or a well meaning chain letter..
before you pass it along here are a couple of
sites you may want to check out....
CIAC http://ciac.ll.nl.gov/
Computer Virus Myths page http://www.kumite.com/myths/
Urban Legends
http://www.snopes.com or http://www.urbanlegends.

and leave them with a laugh.. some really bad pickup lines...
from the Shoebox web site{those cool cards so sick and
twisted ..and cool to come from hallmark...but they do}
You father must be a thief because he stole the stars
and put them into your eyes.
Are your legs tired because you have been running
through my mind all night?

Your eyes are like limpid pools of primeval ooze- and I am the protozoa who longs to
swim in their depths

so long.....