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Editor's Diary Archive

December 5 (Wendy section)

Today's big news, reported in Databank, is that NASA has identified sedimentation on Mars. Scientists have discovered what they are sure are ancient sea of lake beds, and since water could equal life, plans are already underway for future martian missions to go to these areas to seek fossils or other signs of past lifeforms.
Already the Beagle II project has said it is looking at the possibility of re-routing their craft to go to the area. The project is run by the Open University and is headed by Professor Colin Pillinger, who has announced that he has raised the full £30m needed to run the British venture (including £9m from ESA and the rest from commercial sponsors). Beagle II is due to launch in June 2003 and land on Mars that Boxing Day (December 26)

November 16, 2000

These have been a busy few days at FTL. The big news, at least for me is that I have appointed a Deputy. Ian Horsewell, who some of you may have spotted as a book reviewer recently, now joins me in the editorial chair (in a manner of speaking that is!).
Ian knows much more than me about SF books and about science, although, since I am eons older, I have a mental archive which defeats his youthful zest (at Novacon this weekend where he made his debut he demonstrated that zest by running up six flights of steps while I waited geriatrically for the lift).
I will still be in overall charge however, which means that I get to pick the books I want to read and review (see Read Out for my review of Terry Pratchett's latest The Truth)
FTL's artist Claire was at Novacon also, at least electronically, as her work was one of four exhibited in the artshow on CD Rom, an innovation for this year which was favourably received. When I lurked in the artroom for comments on her work - much of it culled from these e-pages - I was delighted by how approved it was. Hurrah for Claire!

November 9

Getting organised before setting off for Novacon in Birmingham tomorrow, for my annual challenge to the electricity supply of England known as tech ops - if there are power cuts reported in the area you will know who is to blame.
I get to several conventions every year, and have been, not surprisingly, quite a few in my time, but this small annual event remains my favourite. This year the guests are author Christopher Priest, Rog Peyton, who has been selling sf books for longer than he cares to even contemplate at Andromeda books, and David Hardy, who has been painting sf-ishly for probably just as long.
They all know about sf. Compared to them I just read my first book and lurk on the perimeter with my nose pressed against the window. But we will all have a bit of fun and a bit of beer, so that will be okay.
I managed to persuade our FTL artist, Claire, to throw some of her work at the art show this year - for the first time the committee spent a small amount of money and is showing computer derived artwork via CD rom and a projector. Should be exciting and I will be lurking in the artroom in an editorial listening to what people say sort of way, when not attempting the disintegration of the National Grid.
All the details next week.

October 24

Not much going on really. I went away for a few days which was nice, but I caught a cold, which wasn't. Now I'm back, and the cold is better. Phew. Better sit down, life excitement overload.

October 10

This news just in: the director of the film, Titanic, James Cameron, has splashed out on a rather special present to himself, as he has booked passage on Mir.
Cameron has passed all the tests and completed the training programme at the cosmonaut training centre near Moscow and is now booked to fly to Mir for a long mission sometime soon, via Energia, the Russian Corporation that runs Mir as a commercial enterprise.
He does have some science in his background: he is a physics graduate and is currently working with NASA on a film project on a manned mission to Mars to be reality within about 15 years.
And I hate him. I am so jealous. Aren't we all?

October 3

Just a quick note to my nearest and dearest - if you are stuck for something to tuck into the editorial stocking this Christmas, please rest easy… and check out Databank. I would not say much beyond 'just what I wanted' for a Bondage teapot, as made by Robert Rankin (details from www.lostcarpark.com.) Thank you so much!
This is international space week. If someone, any PR or organisation had told me this a bit sooner I would have got more excited. And been able to get FTL excited too. But no-one did. Blame the PRs please, I can't cover everything all of the time. I got one press release this morning, the day before it all kicks off. Mind you, here in the UK they are releasing a film for schools. Phew.
Hope to get more for you soon from what does go on around the world - if someone will tell me. I have dispatched requests. -

September 16

Just a quick observation on the UK fuel shortages. About 150 cars queued for at least four hours outside the petrol station opposite my mother's house: no fuel even expected that day, yet still they stayed, parked, unmoving, reluctant to give up their place in the queue.
Today; curtains open betimes this morning to a mile long queue for the local gas station, which at least does have fuel. The queue is still there four hours later.
My good friend Col and I agreed earlier in the week that it was beneath our dignity to spend hours in a queue for petrol. We decided we would both rather run dry than sit in our cars for hours on end, that humanity had to be more than that. (yes, I know that this is the pretentious moral high ground, but honestly, if we cannot manage without cars for a couple of days then we are indeed very sad and need to walk off in search of a life)

September 12

Remembering what subject I teach for the day job, please note: there is no way the bods selling acreage on the moon can so do. The moon is not for sale. Land there is res communis - land held in common for all, and by all, by UN treaty (The Outer Space Treaty) which, in 1967, stated that all land on all celestial bodies was not subject to national appropriation or sovereignty by means of occupation or claim. In other words, it is held in exactly the same way as is the Antarctic. Do not line the already inflated pockets of certain people who are getting publicity for selling moon land. It just aint possible and maybe a fraud - authorities please investigate.

August 25

Look, don't you think it is getting seriously spooky - I mean that so much which a couple of years ago was a mere gleam in an SF fan's eye is about to become reality. The latest thing to spark this millenium-ish mood in me is the news that the pointers for life on Europa just got a lot bigger. Woah! Coupled with slow light and work on anti-gravity and antimatter it is all getting very, very,very the future is sooner than we expected (but in no way sooner than we have hoped). The job now is to make sure that the human elements in that future are as close to what we want, so that we don't blow it by blowing it all up before it all comes to fruition.

August 18

It seems as if summer is very nearly over, and I don't seem to have accomplished half or even a quarter of my 'to do' list. Where did it all manage to go? Never mind, there is still stuff to anticipate, such as conventions to attend, books to read and all the exciting science news which seems to be arriving daily in tune with the excitements of the coming of the millenium in only a few months now (yes, pedantic me holds to 2001)
This is a holding entry really to say I'm still here and Ian is still here and so are everyone else, it is just that while everything is very busy it is not particularly diarisable (now there is a word to turn the underlining in word red!).

August 4

Isn't it ironic that just when they want to axe Jodrell Bank, all the world's astronomers flock to Manchester?
I'm not going to say any more, just…isn't it ironic?

August 3

Ooops, its August already - where did the last couple of weeks go? My apologies for my absence from this diary. It seems I have spent the time driving round sorting out housing - both my kids have moved and I am finishing off clearing out their homes, dealing with removals and all that sort of stuff - It feels like I have been driving round with cars full of left behind stuff, shoving it into any available space in my house, for the last few days, non-stop. But guilt seized me this morning so here I am, abjectly grovelling.
One left-over which has been taking up much of my attention is my daughter's cat. She has moved into a house-share for the next few months so I get the cat. Dillon is a lean and muscled streak of black cat who is totally bewildered at present. My old and calm cat just watches politely, with the wisdom of age, as he yeowls and careers around the house (I'm keeping him in for the time being). It all suffices to keep me very busy. Back to normal soon, I hope Note also from Databank the important new research results coming from Jodrell Bank. And the quango men in suits want to drop its funding. Phfhahhuh.

17 July

The threat posed by the quango funding body PPARC (Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council) to the world-famous Jodrell Bank telescope complex is surely remarkable for its stupidity. If Jodrell Bank, a centre of excellence since its foundation as the world's first in 1945, was no longer one of the major radio telescopes in the world then no argument, funds might well be diverted to other projects. But that is not the case. World class research is still being done there, and the next generation of astronomers are training and learning there right now. To close this telescope would be arrant stupidity.
The quango wants to spend £60m in capital and £12m pa thereafter to join the European Southern Observatory , itself a project of huge importance. But it will go on without that funding from the UK. Once lost Jodrell Bank will never be regained. Sometimes we should go forward with European partners, to be sure, But sometimes the UK should be proud to stand alone, when doing what we are good at, And the history of Jodrell Bank shows that we are very good at radio astronomy 20 miles south of Manchester.
I very rarely get political in this column - indeed I don't think I ever have, but I am going to urge all UK readers to contact their MP and protest at this, and/or write to local newspapers. I shall. This facility should not be lost.
Databank also reports that a parliamentary committee has said that the government's commitment to space is ..well…pathetic (my word). Yes it is, when we cannot cough up enough to put into the ESA pot to pay for one astronaut in training. Apart from anything else what sort of message does this send to the young who might aspire to space. It sends the message ' forget it' that's what. While having one's nationals whizzing round in space just for the hell of it is not cost effective per se, surely in terms of motivation for any and all who would aspire to be that astronaut it is a jewel beyond price.
Just as with Jodrell Bank…pathetic.

July 13

And it's a happy 60th birthday to Patrick Stewart, gorgeous captain of the Enterprise, actor in X-Men movie and lots of other thesping, including Dune ages ago. Hard to believe that the actor with the highest phwah factor (at least as far as I am concerned) (that voice!!!) is all of 60 years old. He looks fabulous for it, anyway! Good news too that the next Trek film is in early developmental stages after a time of quiet when one began to wonder if rather than when.
Things starting to get moving on the Space Station is good news with the successful launch of the Pizza Hut en-logo-ed Proton rocket putting the living quarters and flight control systems where they belong.
On the editorial grumble front, why on earth cannot these film companies leave well alone? Heard that Fox is planning a hiphop version of The Wizard of Oz, to be called O.Z. Dorothy becomes a successful but lonely music producer in Los Angeles who is transported by a massive earthquake called the Big O.Z. Fox is seeking a writer and musicians to compose original music and songs for the production. Huh!

July 7

Pardon me if I seem in smug mode today. Doubly so in fact. For a: I attended my daughter's graduation yesterday and b: FTL had the best month yet in terms of how many of you read us, where you came from, and how much you read. I am having a slight difficulty getting through doorways at present, my head is so big!

July 4

Roy Gray has been emailing with a fabulous idea – I quote: ‘Get 13 M SF fans to put in £1 (or $1 or one euro (no symbol for euros on this keyboard)) a month. Run a lottery on it for a trip to Mir. Do it via FTL web site for extra publicity for site. Once a month someone wins the trip of a lifetime. It would be a good idea but for the problem that employees, such as yourself, aren't allowed to win…There’s always a drawback to my ideas.’ I wish also that we had 13 million readers…

July 3

For the last several days I have been chatting by email with author Tom Holt. You will be able to see the result of this chat in the features section.
Other than that, while these are exciting times as detailed below and in the news section, there doesn't seem to be much for me to record in the diary. And yet I seem to be inordinately busy all the time. I am beset by stuff, I suppose. There is always stuff. Stuff crowds upon moi. And yet, I am a glutton for stuff. While committing ironing this morning I contemplated that the room needs redecorating. So there you have it. All my own fault really. As if I do not have enough to do with all the stuff, I have to factor in sticking strips of paper and applying as yet unselected pigments to the walls of the spare room.(sigh) Of Course Michael Oates clearly does not waste his time ironing, dealing with stuff or redecorating the spare room. As reported in databank, he is out doing much more interesting stuff. Finding comets. Indeed h e is finding so many comets that finding comets is becoming the norm - banal - humdrum - routine - for him. His friends say to him 'whatcha do last night Mikey?' and he replies 'oh just 20 comets previously unknown to man last night'. Hurray for you Michael (I'm really simply jealous!)

June 29

So, we are half way through the first year of the not-new-millenium or, six months to go to the new millenium, depending on how you view the calendar, (or of course the millenium is a few years and months old, or whatever you r particular take on the calendar is) (and if you follow a different calendar entirely, please forgive me, I'll get there sooner or later. Where was I? Oh yes, well, whatever the time, it is a remarkable time. Consider the news of the last couple of months, faster than light speeds recorded and now water found on Mars. It all brings the worlds of space science and SF so much closer together. I am reminded of a comment from one of the production designers for Star Trek which went something like: "We design and make some futuristic thing for an episode then when it is transmitted someone phones and complains that we have pinched their idea which is about to go into manufacture or something. It is very hard to make the future."
Clearly the future is not nearly as distant as we all thought only a few months ago. Let's hope it's a good one!

June 21

Caught the news that billionaire investor Dennis Tito has started training and assessment at the Cosmonaut Training Centre, in advance of his trip to Mir next year.
Tito, who is 59, has had his first weightless experience in a Soviet version of the vomit comet and looks to be very healthy. So I was disappointed to see in the paper a doctor banging on about all sorts of gloomy ageing stuff, apparently all designed to be an obstacle to his trip into space - which he commented, would be of interest to gerontologists.
Now space travel is not that big a thing these days. While, obviously, the very unfit will not be able to travel, however many £13million fares they stump up, at 59 he is far from being decrepit.
Indeed I felt sore tempted to contact the newspaper doctor and point out that fast jet test pilots can pursue their careers at massively higher g and stress until the age of 50 (medical permitting obviously). Suspect the doctor was a bit jealous?
I admit that I am incredibly jealous - if only I had a spare £13m!

June 18

Interesting flush of articles in the papers today on how the massed population of Britain is spending its life in front of the Box. A survey found that Britain tops the international stakes when it comes to couch spudding - 60% of us spend more than two hours a day watching. The survey concluded that this was a terrible thing and something must be done, of course. And so, in some ways it should. But hang on, which two hours. Were we watching two hours of news, or sport, or decent drama - and in that I count some soaps - plus of course, it would be very easy indeed to clock up two hours of SF or science with selecting viewing. And what is the harm in any of that?
I grew up as, I would guess, one of the first children of the TV generation. I can remember the coming of commercial TV, the first episode of Dr Who, and the first time I ever saw Star Trek. I was there, willing Neil Armstrong to walk in safety, live and awake through the night, and I defy anyone to accuse me of having a mind filled with pap. These things have educated me, opened up my mind, helped form a tolerance which I have passed on to my children, who were sat in front of Star Trek from very young and are both the most tolerant and unbigoted of adults now.
My character as a feisty woman was probably shaped more by Mrs Peel of the Avengers than anyone else. I longed to be her when a teenager. Science programmes allow the finest experts in the world to teach me directly all that they know - what more could I ask?
The survey, by the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) further links our shameful couching with failing literacy. We come 13th in a chart of people aged between 16 and 65 who read a book once a month. Australia comes 5th, by contrast. But hang on, the report omits to mention which books. Surely it is again quality which counts. Is there more merit in the worst sort of Mills and Boon tosh than in a Royal Institution Christmas Lecture broadcast. Pshaw. Of course not. And I do not mean to decry Mills and Boon either. They are literary soap operas really and as such fulfil a need.
I could rant on for a lot longer, but you get the idea…

June 4

Phew - news just in, sent by coded light beam from either yesterday or tomorrow - the light barrier is looking about as unbreachable as the sound barrier was in its time.(see databank)
For many years science - taking its lead from Einstein - has taught us that the light barrier was unbreachable, that science fiction, with its faster-than-light spaceships was just fiction and quite impossible. Indeed some even said that humanity would never voyage to the stars. Those sort of scientists give science a bad name. They should really be called scientific paelentologists - old fossils. It is not their fault that they are, with their brothers in business, arts and in just about everything. They reach heights in their fields, to be sure, but their ascent is on the shoulders of others' innovations. They merely imitate (good example Hollywood's habit of bandwagoning a hit film, or remaking past hits. This never works but they always do it)
They are like buses. They all come along at once.
So I hope that every reader of the err- presciently? - named FTL will stand up and cheer the achievement of Dr Lijun Wang. We are one small step nearer the stars.

June 3

Regular diary readers will be familiar with my aged and eccentric cat Dyfed. Today's anecdote. He likes curry. I have just had some chicken curry for lunch and to my surprise he leapt on the finished plate and has licked off all the sauce. I didn't know cats ate curry.
Mind he is now sitting on the table, washing and looking rather surprised.

May 31

For the last few days I have been Wend the gardener, rather than Wend the Editor, outside, green of finger and black of muddied foot, fighting my way through the overgrown jungle and home for snails and slugs which should be a garden. I have hacked my way to the end now, turned and fought back to the keyboard and here therefore I am. En route I even turned my compost heap. Now there is a phrase you don't get to write very often. And my still aching back agrees that it should not be done very often, either. Still, all decays well and aromatically again now. The snail and slug holiday resort has been caused by my organic wish to provide a haven for hedgehogs, but since the slimy things just ate the tops off all my nice young runner bean seedlings the pellets may well go down.
This is examination season for schools, colleges and universities around the world and since there are many students among FTL readers, we wish you all well.

May 21

I see that the Hitchhikers Guide film is 'on' again, according to Douglas Adams, creator of the two decades ago story of galactic eccentricity.
Adams was in the UK to plug the film of the book of the radio series of the tv series of the towel of the computer games etc - a cinema film is just about the only medium as yet un-plundered by Adams, who really hasn't had a big hitting concept since, but who strangely is, apart from Brian Aldiss, just about the only SF writer beloved of the luvvies of the literary establishment.
Adams was script editor on Dr Who also, during the brilliantly dotty and creative Tom Baker era, before John Nathan Turner got his hands on the series and spent money not on scripts but costumes and guest actors, forgetting that the story was always the thing with the Doc, and who cared if the sets wobbled a bit, the Daleks were still the scariest things on the tele if you were under ten years old.
Adams was also plugging his website, h2g2, which is a sort of realcyberlife version of The Book, where unpaid contributors can log on and add entries on anything. He has plans to develop the site as a money-making dotcom venture and is looking for advertising and financial backing of, reputedly, several million pounds.
I have never understood why Adams is so popular with the literary critics, who take the written word far too seriously and probably have very little fun in their lives. He, along with Aldiss are the accepted ones. Perhaps your surname has to begin with A to be 'in'…?
Finally, I note that the paperback of Science of Discworld is at number two in the Sunday Times Bestseller list for non-fiction. Quite right too!

May 14

Who among the readers of FTL would not like to have their last resting place on the moon? It is an appeal to the poet in us all, to finally make it out there, for the rest of time, with no grave to be ignored on Earth, but to be remembered each time those left look up at night. Wonderful! And yet, I can't help but think… what an indignity for our nearest celestial neighbour. In these polluted times we think of throwing our waste at it. More mess. Better to be fired into space, or into the sun to really be cremated. Now that would be a real finale!
Does any reader have any idea of how I could get hold of a set of VHS tapes of a 1980s SF-ish series, The Greatest American Hero. It was, unsurprisingly made in the USA by the same people who made the ATeam and is apparently to be remade by Disney (a remake is 95% of the time not as good as the original [and I know the grammar in that sentence is awful. I just split two infinitives too, but I'm the Editor so hah!]). Anyway, if anyone knows where I can get a set, please email me - my video can cope with Pal and NTSC VHS, clever device that it is.

May 8

Latest in an occasional recommendation series for other websites - there is one for the Clangers - www.clangers.co.uk/home
And finally: Check out the first ever radar images of an asteroid as obtained by NASA, and in the latest Databank update. They are the silliest shape - a real dog biscuit . Much too corny to be real.

May 5

Couple of interesting items to throw at you today: firstly the news just in from Our Very Own (as they say) Ian Stewart that Science of Discworld is one of the nominated books for a Hugo award. The Hugos are the SF equivalent of the Oscars and Science of is one of five books listed in best related book category.
Full listings are at : http://www.chicon.org/hugos/nominees.htm
Also heard from Roy Gray about a UK science group - PAWS (Public AWareness of Science. This UK based group holds regular meetings and at a recent one at Manchester University one of the speakers was Patrick Titley, Deputy Controller Children's Programming, Granada Media Group. He spoke about and showed examples of the use of Science on TV and the difficulties of funding such minority interest programmes. Writers need 'High Concept' ideas, a young male lead, (boys won't watch without such a character) and no expensive situations, locations or casting numbers. High Concept is a short phrase relating your idea to a previously successful programme. E.g. "The film 'Alien' was sold as 'Jaws' in space."
One of PAWS's aims is to get more programmes with a science content, or basis, on UK TV. They organise events such as this to stimulate writers, interest them in science-based themes and enable them to meet and question working scientists. PAWS will provide grants (up to £2000), and advice, to writers who are developing drama with characters, plots or situations using real science.
Coals to Newcastle department - watch out for this latest horrid virus email 'I love you' Hit delete and shift keys simultaneously to purge.

April 29

Today is no joking matter for us at FTL - for today we are all a-singing (not a pretty sound in the editor's case) Happy Birthday to us. For today FTL is a modest one-year-old.
From a modest few pages a year ago we have grown into a bit of a read, thanks to our band of contributors, and thanks to you, gentle readers from over 50 different nations around the world. This latest statistic has me seriously chuffed…to the point of smug in fact. Add to that that in March we had more hits than ever before and FTL is becoming a bit of a fixture.
In our second year we hope to become bigger, and brighter and prettier (thanks Claire). More features, more interviews, more news.
Much has changed during the year. We quickly became a leaner and meaner operation, with a core double act of me and Ian J, and abandoned any idea of a print publication. This decision was an easy one to make, once I had discovered the immediacy and flexibility offered by publishing on the web.
I could communicate directly with the readers, without the twin obstacles of time and too many other people (printers, distributors, newsagents and retailers et al). As a professional journalist, to be able to 'own' what I was doing was, and still is, heady stuff.
I would like to also split my infinitive in time honoured fashion and thank the contributors of the last year - Ian Stewart, Nic Farey, Andy Nimmo, Dave Langford, and Neil Christianson and Michael Dodd.
Occasionally editing FTL has been a bit of a pain, but mostly it has been tremendous fun. I hope you have enjoyed our efforts as much as we have enjoyed the process of bringing it all to you.

April 27

Haven't as yet caught the film but have to confess that the plot of Galaxy Quest, as described in reviews I've seen, resembles a long-running theme of Star Trek fiction. I recall a story, though I can't pull it off the shelf right now, called something like 'visit to a weird planet' which dealt with much the same theme of actors in a tv sf series (in this case Shatner et al) being transported to a real Trek enterprise, and how they coped. It was funny and provoking at the same time, and also beautifully pointed up the blurring of the lines between the two for some fans.
This new film, starring Tim Allen carries much the same theme. Sigourney Weaver takes the Uhura role, but is white. That's a shame.
My daughter points out that I have mentioned Col and his new car many times and her only once. Col drove his car at the weekend, while towing a caravan. It was indeed gallons per mile, but at about 80mph if he had wanted (which of course he did not, since the legal limit on towing vehicles is 60mph)
I apparently mention my cat more than her too. Mention Dyfed more often. Surely not?

April 19

I have been having a bit of a re-read of some early Robert Rankin, this past day or so. It is always a good and renewing thing to revisit some of the favourite fiction of the past. A comfortable thing, which makes one feel happy again with the world. Such is the emotion evinced by Mr R.
However, a cloud on the editorial horizon: I felt great and irredeemable sadness for one thing. I was not born and raised and yeah do not now live in the world capital city of Brentford.
My birth certificate proudly proclaims that I debuted in Chiswich, close, so close. I was raised in tender youth in Whitton and Twickenham (school right next to the world famous Rugby ground) and one of my closest friends now attempts to maintain the flag by living in Ealing. But of Brentford there is none. I feel that this summer I must make pilgrimage. I will eat sprouts tonight. Mayhap it will help.
[And if you have not read any Robert Rankin you will no doubt be doubting the editorial sanity right now. Instead go read Rankin].

April 18

Just to update you on the continuing story of Col's car…you remember, the new thirsty (think Kalahari Desert thirst) Range Rover. Latest theory from Col is that he was warned: "See those numbers on the tailgate?" he inquired tremulously a couple of days ago, of me. I carefully admitted that I could see a 16 and a v. "What do you think they represent?"
"Errrr - 16 valves?"
"No, MPG!"
"Ah" the penny dropped "16 mpg on motorways and five in town traffic"
"That's the one" said a sadder and much poorer Col, who has had to take formal employment and wear a suit to sustain this vehicle.
More as it develops…

April 17

Travelled by train to Birmingham to meet with Alastair Reynolds, author of Revelation Space, at the Britannia Hotel (where the beer is but £1.25 a pint!). On train got talking to a university lecturer on way to Wales to give talks on smoothing techniques in statistics. The first talk kicks off with slides illustrating the worms which infest humans in China. "Am I squeamish?" he asks. "No, but yuck!!!" The day was uphill from then on, although I now also know lots about interpreting statistics (and worm infestations) too.

April 13

Am off to Birmingham tomorrow to meet Alastair Reynolds, author of the newly published Revelation Space (see readout). Will get the result to you as soon as poss.
Betimes it seems the times they are not a changing, since very little has been happening in the news department, so much so that Ian occasionally has been emailing chiding notes, or directing my attention to a site. He was particularly taken with one, carrying an item of news which we had had at least six months ago. When I pointed this out the note came back 'but it was a very nice picture…'

April 10

Ian, our FTL webmaster takes me to task today, pointing out that I have been absent from this diary all this month. I apologise, but I had not realised that it had been so long - where did the last couple of weeks go? Who sneaked away with them when I was attending elsewhere?
I think we should be told!
That being said this is a remarkably quiet time. There is a bit of space weather, nothing remarkable, and the BBC has just noticed what we all knew last year, that Blake's 7 is to be revived
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_705000/705922.stm
I forced myself to read the whole item - it uses the word wacky in the first paragraph. I don't remember Blake's ever being particularly wacky. But then this is the BBC and it is sci-fi (yes I know) As FTL told you last year, Paul Darrow is due to reprise the role of Avon, and the story will pick up in real time, some 20 years on. No info on whether other cast members will return, but I cannot see it being anything worthwhile without Michael Keating as Vila and Jacqueline Pearce as Servalan also on board.
All too often these revivals or remakes think that they can do so much better than the original, but they fail miserably, because they fail to capture the first time around magic and creativity. Off the top of my getting rather indignant editorial head - failed revivals include: The Avengers Movie - honestly who else but Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg could be Steed and Mrs Peel? The Wombles - Bernard Cribbins missing as voice over, plus political correctness in the Burrow. Captain Pugwash - again, no Peter Hawkins to do the voices, it just didn't sound right. Dr Who - Kissing a girl????????? honestly. Not on.
Randell and Hopkirk Deceased- too much special effects and an atmosphere of ' oh we are so clever to be making this new version' ...answer, 'no you are not'
Right..I'm off to be cross now, and have a right old grump! Catch you soon - Promise!

March 29

For centuries Great Britain was one of the world leaders in exploration of this planet. British men and women travelled the globe for many reasons, but they travelled, conquering the geography to visit where none from Europe had gone before. While their reasons for so doing may not now be politically correct - or even morally correct - they went, surmounting all sorts of privations.
Now it seems that the UK government is wimping out of such explorations in the 21st century. In a written answer to a Parliamentary question Department of Trade and Industry minister Patricia Hewitt said "the provision of an astronaut does not best meet our priorities".
Sorry and all that, but really. Since when did travel into space really have a cold analytical priority assessment. President Kennedy had it right. Space needs exploring just because it is there. And the shame of it is that the UK will not be a part of that exploration for the foreseeable future now, even though our aerospace industry is second to none in the world - vide MUSTARD and Hotol concepts to name but two.
In these soundbite days doubtless one astronaut - quite cheap as part of the ESA programme - does not stack up against so many kidney machines or hip replacement ops…fair enough, but what would an astronaut going into space do for national pride?

March 20

Fun site to check - http://www.aero.org/cords Covers the mess which is accumulating in space - chronicling all the litter circling above us, and the problems it can cause!

March 12

Hope you have caught the new index/home page for FTL - Claire and Ian have done a superb job.
Saw from my paper yesterday that Terry Pratchett is the number three favourite author in the UK, as voted in a poll to mark National Book Day. In the section of top adult authors he came in at number two. Other SF authors in the top 50 include J R Tolkein (11), Iain Banks (30), Anne McCaffrey (34) and George Orwell (44).

March 9

Latest on the thirstmobile (Col's new car) Phone call this morning "I was setting off to come round to you, I did set off, then I ran out of petrol and walked to the garage and got some and now I am on my way"
Nasa says that the South Martian polar cap looks like Swiss cheese. Nah, from the photo in Databank, it's rather naff embossed wallpaper. Very 70's. Very unchic.

March 4

Just thought I'd show you a quick pic of my cat-who-thinks-he-is-a-changeling, snapped in both my wastepaper basket and another basket recently. As I said, how he straightens out afterwards is the real mystery.
Just to update you, by the way, the latest on the Colin Range Rover saga - he has taken to taking off the lid on the petrol cap every time he gets out of the car - it needs that much petrol!
Spring update: birds gathering nest building materials and frisking.
None of this has any relevance at all to anything to do with FTL stuff, but there you go.
Please note the big push for science and technology education which is being launched - it seems remarkable that at my school, an all-girls school, fewer students now study physics than did when I was there (and did, much to my continuing satisfaction)
I received an email the other day all about a petition calling for exploration of Mars - if you are interested in signing or otherwise getting involved details are at http://thinkmars.net/

February 29

Search engines are remarkable things. Here at FTL it has been interesting to watch the way the myriad of engines have begin to pick up on the site and go through it, during this first year.
Usually I can figure out why they have delivered FTL as a hit to some searcher - a request for Nicholas Parsons refers to the Rocky Horror feature, such things as the International space Station, or Roton, are pretty obvious, but I thought I might pass on to you some of the ones which have caused my editorial eyebrows to elevate ceilingwards over the last few days. I have no idea whatsoever what the reasoning is behind these:
Weymouth email addresses
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party
Waterloo Ontario check eyes
Funny and unusual corks
How fast is Concorde
Cure for piles
Bondage sculpture
Women karate
Balloon and neck near seal
Business switch systems
Photograph of a housemouse
Bondage shops UK
17 camels
Bedouin camel nose tent
Kissing Sphere
I have absolutely no idea…
There are all manner of bulbs a-blooming in my garden. Happy spring, northern hemispheric readers.

February 22

Just a quick update on my cat, who I think I told you, has taken to sleeping in the wastepaper basket under my desk, and therefore by my feet as I write this. Dyfed (named thus since his mother came from that Welsh county) is a bit of a Star Trek fan, as any cat in this house should be, particularly partial to Next Gen, (especially when Spot makes an appearance) and generally DS9'
A friend commented: "Clearly thinks now that he is a changeling." Why not? If Snoopy could think he was a World War One Flying Ace, why should my cat not think he is a changeling, and sleep in my basket when there is no appropriate bucket around?
Mind it is such a squash I do wonder how he manages to uncurl and walk around after a few hours in there since it is only ten inches in diameter!

February 18

Some times a piece of news comes through which means you just have to check the date isn't April 1. Such a piece features in databank today, with the news that a consortium is planning to lease Mir to turn it into a holiday resort and film lot. Now is this lot serious or is this just a publicity wind-up?
Would you want to holiday on Mir (respect due for 14 years service but not exactly five star luxury potential) if you were going to throw huge amounts of money to be the first space tourist? No, of course you would not, you would want to be aboard the shuttle, or roton, or something modern, comfortable and very very safe (imagine the travel insurance policy necessary!!!)
And would it not be far easier to build a duplicate film set of a space station and do the weightlessness via special effects?
On the whole do we take the news seriously…Nah.
These have been a couple of those days when one begins to believe in astrology (whisper it quietly). Yesterday was my day for setting up all sorts of arrangements for meetings, good, bad and stupendously-yes-please. Today all those arrangements have fallen through. Oh, and the stupendously-yes-please person also once drove a Discovery, but I forgave him. (see a few days ago for a bit of a rant about Land Rover Discoveries). For those of you who asked, Colin now has a new to him Range Rover, which at present has a V8 engine. Colin is the person crawling along at 20 mph throwing £1 coins out of the window until he can change the engine for a less thirsty beast.

February 15

Good and bad today. Who could dare to write about a date with something called Eros on Valentine's day, and expect to get away with it? Who would guess that the computations for putting the NEAR satellite into orbit around Eros, a mere 160 million miles from Earth, would throw up a Valentine date, and who would then dare to predict a sort of heart shaped feature spotted on the first pix beamed back. Pshaw, the stuff of very bad fiction..oh, hang on, it's true.
Okay so who at NASA planned all this? I think we should be told.
Today my diary notes with sadness the death of Charles Schulz. While strip cartoons are not the stuff of FTL (neither are toothbrushes etc, but this is my diary) Schulz's fifty year long stint drawing the Peanuts cartoons, each and every one, merit a respectful good grief. Here at FTL we always salute genius in whatever form.

February 11

Nothing, absolutely nothing, will induce me to pass on to you today the news that my computer business associate, Colin, has been driving a Land Rover Discovery for 24 hours. He has made many excuses about his car being off the road (he had just bought it and managed to blow up the engine within 50 yards of leaving the vendors); has taken to wearing a not very convincing false beard as a disguise; and to phoning up and telling me that he has found another new button to push, lever to pull or switch to depress but these are a mere smokescreen.
I know that this has nothing to do with anything covered by FTL normally and will confuse the search engines and anyone doing a search for Land Rover, but I feel the world should know that (I'll just repeat this for you, in case you didn't pick up on it the first time) Colin Eley has been driving a Land Rover Discovery for 24 hours.

February 5

Congratulations and best wishes are most definitely due to actor James Doohan, who has just announced that he and his wife are expecting a new baby. James, at age 80, remains one of the icons of SF on TV for his role as Chief Engineer Scott aboard the original Enterprise.

Gives a whole new meaning to the classic misquote "ma wee bairns"!

Still no news on the fate of Mars Polar Lander. Interestingly, several news programmes, both local and national, picked up the story yesterday that the world-famous Jodrell Bank telescopes were joining in the search, almost as it that was to be the end of the matter and it would now be sorted out.

February 3

This has been one of those few days. One of those lots of stuff going on few days but when there is pretty much nothing to report.
Only real item of interest is the continuing saga of the Mars Polar Lander. Is there a plucky little spacecraft still out there, bravely beeping feebly with its last volts to try to contact home. It is a very children's book anthropomorphic sort of notion, but irresistible too. We hope it is out there!
The only other thing of interest is that I broke my toothbrush clean in half this morning. Never happened before. Snapped clean in two just by the bristles. Gave me quite a start.
Told you - quiet few days….

January 27

Not a lot to report in the science or SF fields. Indeed the only fields I've seen recently were the ones I was chasing my cousin's escaped cockerel around the day before yesterday when it abandoned all its ladies and flapped off into the wide blue yonder of Wiltshire. It took the three of us (cousin, me and my son) all sentient, intelligent human beings about an hour to recapture this errant feathered thing as it resisted all attempts to curtail its new found-liberty in favour of constraint (and safety). This, I mused later, certainly showed where humanity really is in the scheme of things.
The weather conspired to make the end of the day memorable too, since the normally about four hour drive home took about six hours through thick night-time freezing fog. So cold was it that screenwash on the car was u/s due to the cold and visibility was down to the white line on the road about a couple of yards ahead in places. One strange moment was driving along under the fog, which floated suspended over us like a ceiling, just about brushing the roof of the car. Son and I both ducked, which again shows how silly we can be. But it was a very weird feeling and sight. By the end of the drive my eyes felt as though they were whirling round like ones belonging to some cartoon character!

January 22

Hands up all those who are surprised that your editor did not see the eclipse a couple of nights ago….I see….you're all new readers then. Regular readers will not be at all surprised that everyone but me saw the lunar eclipse in the early hours of Friday.
This eclipse I was quietly confident. Betimes I went to bed, the sky was cloudless, the moon was full, the stars they were a-twinkling. Come 4am, full of optimism if not my full portion of kip I leapt from my bed to view and, was it cloudy, raining, or generally precipitating. No. Nothing so mundane this time. Thick fog this time to prevent me from seeing an eclipse. Skies clear again by morning, I should add.
It is all a sinister plot, I am sure, since on checking locally this morning, no-where but very locally was there this obscuring blanket of stuff.
It shouldn't happen to an editor. Exit sulking petulantly.

January 20

Well, so far this year has been electronically jovial - my email is not yet fully up to speed and Ian has also had computer problems. However, hopefully we will both be back firing on all cylinders soon, and this update is brought to you by Acme String and Whotsits Ltd, in a round-the-houses sort of way.
Nevertheless, we are achieving communication, so hello out there!
Check out databank for details of tonight's lunar eclipse. Regular readers will know that I will not even attempt to see the eclipse - there is a conspiracy to prevent your editor ever seeing anything she writes about, if it is even vaguely astronomical…(it's okay to be sympathetic here)
That being said, there isn't much to report. Life goes on much as usual. Stuff happens. Always out of sight. Catch you all soon.

January 13

At last, good greetings to you all. I have been stuck in an electronic limbo these last few days - some twerp hacked into my ISP, which promptly and rightly decided to block access to the affected emails and issue new passwords.
This was all exactly as should be, but on the ground that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, their system then decided not to accept my new password and I have been stuck, while Ian webmaster and I worked out a circumnavigation to this glitch. We have a temporary line of communication, but a few days of news and copy for FYL is still locked up in the old system and the one we are using at present is not satisfactory since I will have to troop off to somewhere else to access my email (and where I am has poured with rain continuously for the last few days)
Emails to editor@ftlmagazine will now reach me (eventually) though. But if you did email me at the beginning of this week, would you re-send, as that part of my life is presently inaccessible.
I know that hackers think that they are the clever bees knees of the computer age, but to me this one is simply a ****nuisance who has disrupted me, disrupted Ian and disrupted smooth FTLing.
Thanks are due to those of you who have bought books by accessing the Amazon site via FTL. Amazon rewards us by throwing a few pence a time at us, which will go some way towards offsetting the costs of webspace rental and general costs of production. If you are minded to buy any books through Amazon please continue to do so via our books section - just click on the general Amazon logo to order any book - or if you want to order a book which we have reviewed, click on that logo to be taken directly to the ordering-it-through-Amazon page. Couldn't be easier! (Could it?).
Finally, Happy New Year to the few residents of the Gwaun Valley, in southwest Wales. The tiny welsh community never adopted the Gregorian calandar, and still therefore is stubbornly thirteen days behind the rest of the western world. The few residents of the beautiful and isolated valley will be celebrating New Year today, with welsh language carols and visiting eachother.

January 12

Our illustrious editor has been struck by the current problems being suffered by her ISP, Virgin. Normal service will be resumed.......... (Ian the webmaster)

January 1, 2000

Pretty impressive dateline, huh? Well, I had to make an entry for today, just to use it, and to say hello to all who have survived the (non)millennial whoop-de-doo and bugs. Just to cheer you on, there are more problems ahead with a non-romantic date bug on February 29 of this year, because most computers, so I am told, will not believe that such a day exists. Apparently computers (or rather their programmers) didn't cotton-on to the fact that while years ending in 00 don't have a leap day, if the year is divisible by 400, they do.
On a more cheery note, today I welcome lots more stuff from the prolific mathematical pen of Dr Ian Stewart. Ian has thrown at FTL (and we have delightedly caught) some of the material from the Mathematics Awareness Centre at Warwick University, of which he is the director.
If you are not great at sums-type maths, do not be put off by Ian's material. It is not necessary to be able to add and subtract to understand what he is writing about. It is only since I took the plunge into mathematics that I realised that while I am not great at sums, I can see the patterns and systems of mathematics fairly well, and can usually follow what he is talking about, even if I couldn't follow the calculations which eventually prove whatever it is, even if life itself depended on't.

December 31, 1999

Today I wish all readers a happy New Year, and a smooth Y2K transition to the year 2000. Who knows what this next year will bring? If it brings all of you some fun then that's as okay as I could want.
The most recent update on who is reading FTL is a bit of a gazetteer. We have had readers from: The United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Canada, United States of America, Slovenia, Taiwan, Australia, Netherlands, Greece, Spain, India, Saudi Arabia, Finland, France, Turkey, Romania, Estonia, Hungary, Belgium, Argentina, Denmark, Austria, new Zealand, Norway, Hong Kong, Singapore, Yugoslavia, Canada, Israel, Poland, Japan, Venezuela, Norway, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Hungary, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Portugal Czech Republic, Chile, Belgium, Malaysia, Ukraine, Russian Federation, Switzerland, Taiwan, Indonesia, Slovak Republic, Cyprus, Iceland and Estonia. Phew! Call me a bit e-naïve but I think that is pretty remarkable, and I will sit here for a few minutes feeling a touch smug.

December 30

Forgot to mention the best pressie I received - a Clangers Video. Lots of episodes of the short stories about the knitted pink mice who live on a small, pockmarked and mined planet.
Now if you have never experienced the Clangers before, well, let me continue to tell you about them. This family of creatures, as at home under, on or in space above their planet, eat soup which is supplied by the Soup Dragon, from the soup wells which she minds. Most of the soup is green but you can, as a treat, get blue and white pudding soup. Tiny Clanger has a friend, the Iron Chicken, which lives in space on an iron nest, and Tiny visits her, and sails through space on a small open boat powered by a round cheese stuck on a mast, fired up by playing the musical notes stuck to the outside of the cheese. (The notes, of course {you knew this, didn't you?) came from an egg laid by the Iron Chicken after she had crash landed on the Clangers' planet and eaten lots of coppertree leaves)
Oh, and Clangers don't talk. They whistle.
What is so amazing about all this, is not the sheer inventiveness of the stories, told with a naïve charm for youngsters, but the underlying commentry from writer Oliver Postgate, about the dangers of space debris and the way we on Earth are messing up our bit of the Universe. All this in the 1970s. Magic!
Video two is on the Editor's meta-wants for my birthday (along with the second volume of Bill and Ben)

December 28,1999

Nearly new year - but, we emphasise again, not the Millenium. That is next year. Either next Christmas, or next New Year, or sometime about six years ago or some time. Any time but this time in the next few days. At any rate that seems to be the concensus of opinion of anyone except governments, which are getting all over-excited about this New Year which isn't the Millenium.
However, one thing which seems to be about the only thing which seems to be a good idea is the proposal that the electronic world takes its time from Greenwich in the next century as it has given time to the world in this.
Greenwich has set the world's time standard since 1884, when Greenwich Mean Time was established as the baseline for time measurement around the world.
Initially the need for a time baseline was set by the railways - before 1840 in the UK each town and city calculated its own correct solar time, which made for very complex rail timetabling. At noon on November 18 1883 telegraph lines transmitted GMT to every town and the authorities synchronised their clocks for the first time. In the USA there were 300 different time zones - consolidated into four. Last to fall into line were the French, who insisted on Paris as 0degrees untill in 1912 an international conference. As a compromise the first worldwide time signal was transmitted from the Eiffel Tower.
With the advent of atomic clocks and the need for greater precision than this wobbly old planet can give, we now calculate time by Universal Time, as co-ordinated by many atomic clocks in (surprise!) Paris. Greenwich remains the base line for longitude.
However, the reason for this discourse is that on January 1, 2000 London Internet Exchange (Linx) will go live with an atomic clock which will set internet time for the UK and Europe in line with GMT, and this new standard is expected to set the baseline time for all internet transactions in the future (The lawyer in your editor could give a long lecture on the need for precision in knowing exactly at what time a contract is formed, and at present this is difficult since different countries even different time zones all show time differently - as do different mail systems). End of lecturette!

December 25

December 23

Well, here we are at Christmas - and today is also the anniversary of the birth of my eldest child, my daughter, Laura Jane, who is 23. Happy birthday sprog of mine.
Happy 1999 birthday also to Our Saviour. It is not the millenium, we emphasise. That happens either next Christmas or next new year, depending on your religious outlook.
Anyway, what ever your religious inclination, this is a special time of year, and seasonal greetings to all of you, from we few us at FTL.

December 22

What is the irrisistible attraction of a computer keyboard for a cat? As I write this I am attempting, unsuccessfully, to divert my cat, Dyfed, away from the delights of paw-typing and curser-chasing into something much more his style, such as sleeping. Dyfed is old - he is now 15 and a half years - which is a lot translated into human, but still his daily round includes a spell bouncing around on my keyboard - usually with a broad grin on his face. And then he goes to sleep for the day curled up in my 'in' tray. I am always reminded of the delightful scene in an episode of Next Gen Trek where Data has the same problem with his cat, Spot. Whoever wrote that clearly had a cat. Dyfed, by the way, got his name from the Welsh county where his mother, a stray, found me and took me in.
Today comes this year's seasonal explanation for the star of Bethlehem. This year's theory is that the star was a lunar eclipse of Jupiter. Jupiter rose in the East, in the sign of Aries on April 17, 6BC and there were two lunar eclipses of the planet that year, on March 20 and on April 17.
Throw in that Jupiter is King/ruler of the planets and the Gods, and that Aries represented Judaea and the theory starts to hold a small amount of water. Especially as it seems likely that only astronomer/astrologers might have been aware of such an event, while whooop-de-doo explanations such as supernovas or comets are missing from the records for around the right time.
The theory comes from Dr Michael Molnar, an astronomer at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA, and the research which led to it was sparked off by the purchase of a Roman coin for his collection of coins with an astronomical theme (know that sort of theme collection well - your editor is anyone's for anything with bees on it).

December 21

I note that the BNSC wants more co-ordination amongst experts in what it thinks it has discovered, the new science of astro-biology, which most of us have been calling exo-biology for years. If the BNSC had a website which worked, and even had email for its press office I might be impressed, but it doesn't and I'm not.
At the same time, at least the UK is throwing £1.4m via ESA at the ISS for research into life in space. What a pity that at the same time we don't pay enough to have our own astronaut in training with ESA. I have long since given up hoping that my own government would back space research, remembering when politician Michael Heseltine announced the founding of the BNSC and at a local press call the next day, refused to answer my questions on the subject, preferring to concentrate his soundbites on the local TV. Since I had risen from my sickbed, I managed to give him flu' however, as a sort of poetic exercise.
If you happen to be outside tomorrow night (December 22) and have the idle thought "Hmmm, the moon looks very big and bright - I wonder why", there is a reason. What is that reason, I hear you ask, of me, your editor, to whom you look for all wisdon (hmmmmmm?). The reason, dear readers is that this aforesaid bigger, and brighter (sounds like an advert for a soap powder) full moon heralds the beginning (the beginning?) of northern winter on December 22 as lunar perigee, the winter solstice, and the full moon all happen within a 10 hour period.

December 8

Those of you who are regulars to this diary will know that rain has stopped observation twice this year already for your Editor: It poured down for the eclipse and again was total cloud for the Leonids. And guess what is the local forecast for the next few days for the Geminids…? What a surprise. Rain, Storm, snow, gales. cloud. Every sort of 'don't even think about bothering to consider even looking out of the window at night never mind getting your coat on on the off chance of seeing something sort of weather'. Is this a conspiracy, I wonder to myself.
I was taught many years ago by my English teacher, Mrs Davies, not to whine, "it's unfair", but rather to say, "It is unjust". Well, I reckon that this is both, and I might just have to go off somewhere and have a thorough sulk…Well, I would if I wasn't quite so busy with wood, hammer, nails and plane, building this boat-thingy…just on the off-chance, you understand.

December 6

The final instalment of Neil Christiansen's series, Cosmic Cookbook, should be posted today. What have you all thought about it - please let us know. Do you agree or disagree with Neil's theories, or what?
One has to sympathise with NASA about the latest Mars satellite loss. Of course since this is the third such satellite loss some will be saying that the martians have clearly shot it down like the rest. Some might say that, I couldn't possibly comment (snigger snigger!).

December 3

I caught the first episode of a new SF series from Jim Henson's lot. Oh deary deary me. I managed five minutes or so and want a medal.
Farscape is the title of this flashy but trashily written sloppy SF. The thing is set some years into the future and yet the hero gets into space aboard the Shuttle. Now I have nothing against the shuttle, But it will not be flying in twenty years. Nasa and other agencies are starting to flight test second generation reuseables even now. This is sloppy writing and production. The hero is supposed to be a brilliant scientist or engineer as well as an astronaut, but when faced with materialising in the middle of a space battle clearly not above Earth he continues to call Nasa and his daddy (also an astronaut, I believe and capcom today). The experimental ship which he invented and is flying (oh yes?) has nifty rows of lights all around the cockpit. They flash alternately red and green all through the flight, no matter what happens, so they are a lot of use.
Continuing to chat to dad, our hero is sucked into a really big spaceship. He lands in the ship, deploying his retractable landing carriage (handy thing to have in a spaceship!) A fire breaks out in his ship. There is no automatic fire suppression. He pushes the button right in front of him which blows out the front glass panel of the cockpit. Now that is a really useful (?) button to put right at the most important part of the instrumentation, where it could be pushed out in space and then he would be in trouble. He jumps out of the ship through the hole and squirts in a fire extinguisher. Good job that there was breathable air. The blown out cockpit panel has landed on a cute droid and bent its arial feeler. It beeps cutely. Your editor switches off.
Now maybe I was just a touch less tolerant of stupidity than usual (see last entry) but really. All these things could have been so easily fixed. They reminded me of the attitude which was prevalent in the UK in TV SF in the 80s - that those who watched SF were pretty stupid and would accept any old tosh as long as it wore a silver one piece jumpsuit. Bah humbug! (Seasonal comment now that it is December)
Finally, during my absence I note that Ian Stewart and Ian Jeffery have colluded to post a piece called "Why have Sex" in the features section. This has absolutely nothing to do with me.

November 25

I hope FTL readers will forgive me if I don't update for a few days - my father died this morning.

November 16

Well, it has finally happened - see today's databank and gaze in awe at the first ever image of another planet. When this picture appeared on the front page of my daily newspaper yesterday morning I was mesmerised for many minutes.
Somehow, maths, radio telescopy, computations from wobbles or above or below human sight remote sensing are not the same as a straightforward honest-to-goodness sighting, which is what this represents.
Even though the planet could not, obviously, be resolved by the human eye, through the telescope, the sensing of the diminution of light from its star as it transits is good enough to equal a sighting, at least as far as I am concerned.
We, planet Earth in the insignificant Solar System, are not unique. There are other planets. The likelihood of other life-forms surely just took a huge leap into more probable and man's vision of everything has expanded.
This beautiful, wonderous image has made me reflect on how lucky I am to be living at this time. I remember hearing the first beebs from Sputnik and Telstar, tuned into with help from my father, the first man in space, the first woman in space, staying up all night for Armstrong walking on the moon, Shuttle flights, Skylab and Mir making living in space seem routine and now this, confirmation that we are not alone in our planetaryness (yes I am well aware there is no such word, but there should be). I have lived in interesting times, and I don't regret one moment, except in that I am not up there.
It has been a wonderful time for someone who loves SF too - the UK TV station BBC2 celebrated their prodigal child Dr Who's anniversary this last week end with what they called a Dr Who night but which was in reality three hours. I've seen some better programmes on Dr Who, but at least there was some acknowedgement of the mistakes made with the character which led in part at least to the series being cancelled - a remarkable bit of honesty really in a TV station. I liked best however the BBC2 station identifiers turned into daleks which preceded each item.
Still on Dr Who it seems the British post office is issuing a 44p stamp featuring a Dalek (as photographed by Lord Snowdon no less) as part of its icons of the millenium series. Did I say interesting times, I meant amazing, remarkable times.
I wonder what is still to come in the thirteen months till the millenium?

November 10

So, how was Novacon this year? The following diary entry is the edited highlights…overall your editor had a great time. The tech kit had not arrived when I got to the convention hotel, in Birmingham, but then did and the tech set up was straighforwardly. Even more surprisingly, most of it worked first time.
The first day of any SF convention is pretty much the same, you spend the day catching up with see lots of old friends as they arrive and call at tech ops (at back of hall, cunningly close to bar).
Saturday - did lots of tech stuff during day. The radio mikes went down, with thereceiver showing an intermittant fault ( we think that is what it was, It worked for a few seconds every time I wacked it anyway, then it would cut out again). Ops supremo Chris reported that the equipment suppliers were on answerphone so we were stuck. Still, we coped with just stand and lapel mikes.
For Ian to do his talk on the Sunday about his series of Royal Institution lectures nearly two years ago we had to get TV onto couple of beer crates on top of stand (beer good- £1.50 a pint, although hotel would not open bars till 11)so
everyone could see the out-takes from the BBC broadcasts.. Chris and four beefy gophers could not lift it then Matt K wandered over, simply cleaved this huge TV (About 30in screen) to his bosom and up it went.We prayed for no earthquakes as it trembled atop the beercrates and over-extended stand.
In the evening your editor turned DJ when the professional chap (I use the word professional in its loosest sense) failed to materialise. Mark and I perfected a technique for quick change of CDs on our one player, after sending out an urgent appeal for decent music (all we had were a couple of my Beatles CDs and Nic's turgid C and W stuff).
We cadged a torch from the hotel which made pretty spiffy disco lighting, At the dead dog party on the Sunday evening, at about 3am. Steve starts throwing paper airoplanes, one, aimed across the room, went six inches "I've run out of weak" he cried plaintively.
And so about 280 tired, hungover and thoroughly partied out sf-ers scatter to the winds, till we do it all again next year.Indeed next year's guest will be Christopher Priest, so join early (see coming events for details).
Mindful of my reason for being there (not of course the beer) but as your representative, I will be telling you in the next few days of some exciting new stuff for the pages of FTL, once we have it all sorted out.
Watch, as they say, this space!

November 4

Tomorrow I'm off to Birmingham, for Novacon, the 29th annual convention of the Brum SF group. Guest of Honour is our own writer Professor Ian Stewart, and, as well as doing the Tech ops with our own Nic Farey, I am moderating the first panel, on "where's the science in Science Fiction". If I find out tomorrow, I'll report back with the info. Also going to be at Novacon are our owns Jack Cohen, Rog Peyton, Andy Nimmo and some other folk who I have my eye on as contributors. I have a feeling that, tech ops beer supply aside, I will be consuming a pint or two over the weekend. There is, in fact only one thing wrong with Novacon, and that is that it happens only once a year.

October 30

Another listing of favourites has arrived, from Darren. His comments on the Tracy family's capacity for useless flying around (Scott) echoes something I have long pondered. Why did Scott actually have to zoom off to the incident - As Daz comments, he never did do anything much once he arrived except hang around for Virgil, who actually did the rescuing.
Change of subject and an ooops back in time, Nic Farey sent me a particularly sarcastic email pointing out that I had called Susan Calvin of the Asimov Robot books Susan Oliver. I have no idea where the Oliver came from, and can only plead in self-defence that I was incubating a particularly nasty cold at the time (yesterday, while febrile, I missed a door and walked into a wall) and during neither incident was I practicing my drinking skills for Novacon, now only a week away)

October 27

I'm trying to track down the name of the author of an SF book (title unknown) published in about 1974-ish, by a mathematician who was doing a PhD at York University in the north of England a couple of years before - does anyone have any idea who this might be - or does he recognise himself? Please email me with a name if you can help.

October 21, 1999

A couple of you have sent in your top ten TV character listings, and they will be posting on the letters page - communications bank - at the same time this appears.
It seems that nearly everyone rates Tom Baker as the Doctor.Also highly rated are Avon and Servalan of Blake's 7, and, (bit of a surprise this to me) Dr Smith from Lost in Space, (which series I would put on worst ever top ten, no question). There are a couple of votes for Professor Quatermass too. When a few more votes are in I'll get a bít more efficient and do some sort of collating of this.
Meanwhile, if you count Twin Peaks as SF add Agent Cooper to my list (And Bob - there was a man who looked just like Bob working in my local tyre repair depot at the time it was first shown - very scary indeed!)
Meanwhile I've started a list of book and film top tens
So far…books:
Susan Oliver - the Robot series - Isaac Asimov
Gorden Krantz - The Postman - David Brin
Granny Weatherwax - Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Killashandra - The Crystal Singer - Anne McCaffrey

And films…
Frank - The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Richard O'Brien
Paul Atriedes - Dune - Frank Herbert
Data - Brent Spiner - Star Trek
The Borg Queen - Star Trek First Contact
Rick Dekard - Harrison Ford - Blade Runner

October 18, 1999

After writing the last entry about top ten character lists, I popped an email off to some FTL contributors asking them for their favourite TV, book and/or film characters. Nic was first to reply with :

Kerr Avon (Blake's 7)
Dr Who (Pat Troughton, with Tom Baker a close second)
Gary Seven (Star Trek)
The Hood (Thunderbirds)
Ed Straker (UFO)
Olga Vukovitch (7 Days)
The Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)
Worf (Star Trek: TNG DS9)
G'Kar (Babylon 5)
Delenn (Babylon 5),

Then Dave Langford's list of book characters arrived:

Ten favourite SF book characters in no special order. In a different week it might be a different ten.
Gully Foyle from Alfred Bester's=The Stars My Destination=(UK title=Tiger! Tiger!=). The best obsessed antihero in SF, modelled on but in the end morally surpassing the Count of Monte Cristo.
Ari II in C.J. Cherryh's=Cyteen=, a cloned recreation of a bio-engineering outfit's appalling female ruler, who grows up both like and unlike her ruthless original.
Severian in Gene Wolfe's=The Book of the New Sun=-- a narrator whose eidetic memory and apparent devastating candour promise a transparent story which in fact is crammed with artful booby-traps and time-bombs.
Rydra Wong in Samuel R. Delany's=Babel-17=, an exotic far-future poet and linguist whose skills (as is so rare in SF) are wholly believable.
Slippery Jim diGriz, title character of Harry Harrison's=The Stainless Steel Rat=, a wisecracking adventurer -- reminiscent of Leslie Charteris's "The Saint" -- who's simply fun to be with, though diminishingly so in the later sequels.
The title character and her granddaughter in Jerry Yulsman's fine but too little known alternate-world novel=Elleander Morning=, who each shape history -- Elleander by killing Hitler.
The Great Lorenzo in Robert Heinlein's=Double Star=, the vain actor who's lured to Mars to stand in for a kidnapped politician of major stature, and ends up playing the part for life and steadily growing into it.
Helva the lady cyborg spaceship in Anne McCaffrey's=The Ship Who Sang=-- a story-sequence which later went downhill but has unforgettable early episodes like "The Ship Who Killed".
Roderick, the Candide-like robot in John Sladek's satirical=Roderick=and its sequel -- whose tragedy is that he's far more human than 90% of the humans he meets.
Peter Sinclair, who narrates Christopher Priest's=The Affirmation=... not a likeable character but a deeply fascinating one as his persistent self-delusion carries the reader through unreality to rude awakenings on the far side.

Those are just the first two replies - I'll keep you posted as more come in - and I am working on my top ten book and film characters. Send in your lists too!
As a footnote, after watching DS9 the other day I'd have to add Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien to my TV list, simply for the way he has developed the character from the early days of twiddling a few switches in the Enterprise transporter room, to a married man with a two children, a bit of a beer belly and an ability to repair anything rivalled only by Montgomery Scott's.

October 16, 1999

In databank today we report on the most memorable TV characters of all time, as selected by America's TV Guide Magazine. This caused me furiously to think, as they say, and to begin to compile a list of my own SF TV top ten. Here they are, ordered only as I thought of them (and make of that order whatever you might):

• Mr Spock - Leonard Nimoy - Star Trek
• Dominick Hyde - Peter Firth - The Flipside of Dominick Hyde
• Seven of Nine - Jeri Ryan - Star Trek Voyager
• Jean-Luc Picard - Patrick Stewart - Star Trek Next Generation
• Dr Who - Tom Baker - Dr Who
• Vila Restal - Michael Keating - Blake's 7
• Servalan - Jacqueline Pearce - Blake's 7
• K9 - John Leeson - Dr Who
• Ralph Hinkley - William Katt - Greatest American Hero
• The Cat - Danny John-Jules - Red Dwarf
• Mrs Peel - Dame Diana Rigg - The Avengers
• John Steed - Patrick McNee - The Avengers

And, yes I can count, but I am the Editor, so there!
So, who - or what - would be on your list? Throw me an email.

October 13, 1999

Some days one finds oneself beset by stuff. There is really no other word to describe the collective noun which various individual activites and necessities of life can be grouped as. It is all stuff. And of course stuff has to be done. The letters offering credit cards must be opened and thrown away, along with the leaflets offering double-glazing and a cure for piles. The ironing and vacuuming must be done, shops must be negotiated, liaising with associates must be enabled, paperwork delved for, so that it can be waved at some official, the man to mend the washing machine has to be chased up since he didn't call when he said he would, my daughter, Laura (hello to all her friends who read this everywhere) has to be let in to her house with my key since she locked herself out, so I have to mooch up there. And that, dear readers worldwide, is why there were no updates done yesterday. Yesterday was the day when your editor (who sat down to do the updates betimes yesterday morning) was beset by stuff. Stuff attacked me from all directions and the whole day disappeared.
That said, I did sneak a couple of un-stuff days off last week to go to a lecture given by a friend in London. Hopefully I will be able to pursuade him soon to turn that lecture, or parts of it at anyrate, into a piece for FTL.

October 5

Seems like it is soon going to get much easier to get into space. Hot on the heels of the Japanese announcement that they are aiming to have a hotel operational within a couple of decades, the German industrial giant DaimlerChrysler has said this week that it is planning a space hotel to be open for business by 2020. The planned resort complex will boast a 490ft ring from which will be suspended sleeping chambers designed to sleep a maximum of four. The ring will rotate every 30 seconds, simulating one third G.
Kawasaki, the Motorbike people, are planning a space ferry which will be 70ft high and 500tonnes displacement, to transport tourists to the Shimuzu hotel which will accommodate 64 tourists at a time.
Six thousand Germans have reportedly already booked, at a cost of £180,000 each (deposit of £300 only handed over so far) and presumably they are developing special towels to take with them.

October 3

Many years ago (many many years ago) I struggled to study physics at O level - the requisite examination in the dark ages educational system for 16 year olds ( Yes, even I was once 16 years old) What was then a difficult task was made a little easier by our enlightened physics teacher, who decided that we would work in metric units, since the caculations were so much easier. That was long before the UK went European in most things, but even then in the science world the conversion to metric had been made, from Imperial, simply because working in units of 10 and 100 was so much easier than all those weird feet and inches, gallons, pints quarts, gills, pounds, shillings and pence.
What a pity that word has still not reached Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Colorado, USA, which calculated the burn data for Mars Climate Orbiter in imperial pounds of force, instead of Newtons. NASA assumed that the figures were in Newtons as they always had been in the past and simply bunged them into the craft. As you know by now, the rest, as they say, is history. History seared red hot and either burned up or in lost orbit around the sun, no-one is quite sure. The satellite cost $125m (£78m)
The whole thing is very serious and very sad, but also very, very funny.
Website:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
(Ps - I passed)

September 29

Sorry I've not been checking in with you as much as usual for the last few weeks - I can only swiftly pass the buck on to real world stuff which has kept me incredibly busy - you know, the money and everyday sort of stuff which keeps one away from SF. Indeed, if reality is crutch for those who can't hack Science Fiction, I've been limping recently, but all healed up, here I am back…err. With nothing really to report. It has all been pretty quiet. So it is surely your turn to talk to me. Time for some more letters. Hello out there?

September 19

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of…well, not the party, but at least to the aid of the UK's presence in space.
For too many years I have watched with disbelief as government after government in this country has taken us to the brink of being there with the best in space, and then pulled out…Blue Streak, Mustard, Europa, Hotol, some aspects of ESA (so that we do not have a British astronaut in training in the European programme)… are just some of the projects which one political party after another has ditched, and with it any chance of the UK being a space-faring nation. I make no apologies today for getting cross about this, or being anglo-centric, as I believe that this country, which is still the second largest aerospace industrial country in the world, but which spends 25% of its space budget on buying launch services from abroad, needs to commit finally to supporting the brilliance of its aerospace industry.
If the Skylon project (details in databank) is not supported - and it will cost a mere £1.2million over three years, nothing in national budgetry terms - it will send a clear message to the engineers, designers and technologists who now and in the future aspire to the sky and to space. 'Don't bother…or if you bother, you'll have to go abroad'. This message can not be right.
Lord Sainsbury, the science minister in charge of the decision on whether or not the UK puts money into the programme, has already said in the House of Lords that launch vehicles are poorly profitable compared with other space activities. That might be borderline true in terms of the bottom line, but what of the cost in terms of the message it sends about the government's position on innovation, and also in terms of the knock-on effect on other companies involved in anything to do with space, if their own government does not back this one project?
But what to do? It is really quite simple. If every UK reader of FTL wrote to their own MP, to Lord Sainsbury (simply write to Lord Sainsbury, House of Lords, London W1) and maybe to a national newspaper, then we might just make a difference - and wouldn't that be nice?

September 8

I reminded myself today as I cleaned my house, that it is possible to dignify this most tedious of processes. All of 15 years ago I decided that I would no longer vacuum and tidy, I would fight entropy. So this morning I battled mightily with the forces of entropy, and held my own. What more can an editor ask of life?

September 7

I have been reviewing the stats from our first few months of life, and wanted to pass on to you all the different countries where FTL has been read. In no particular order welcome to readers from:

UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Italy, Finland, Netherlands, Czech Republic, France, Russian Federation, Norway, Chile, Spain, Japan, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Belgium, Malasia, Ukraine, Argentina, Portugal, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Israel, Venezuela, Brazil, Greece, Turkey, South Korea, Mexico, India, Hungary, Taiwan, China, and Cyprus. I make that 38 countries. I sit here feeling just a bit chuffed, which is a local word, meaning pleased and a bit smug as well. Starting FTL Ian and I were throwing our words to the electronic winds, with no idea of whether they would be well received, or even if anyone would want to visit the site, but it seems that you do, with the daily hit rate creeping gently upwards, and the 'reach' extending to more and more of the world. It is very exciting for us, and thank you.

Those nice people at Quantum Muse have started a writer's contest. One of their most popular artists, Steve Munsinger, has donated an untitled painting as both the theme and the prize - Write a short story about the image in the painting, and you could win the original. details at http://www.quantummuse.com/contest.html

August 29

The big news today is the announcement of a competition, which we at FTL are running in conjunction with Andy Nimmo and Hogmanaycon which will allow some of you to send a message to space, and a sample of your DNA.
When I first heard about this I did comment that sending humanity's DNA into space was a bit like polluting Antarctica, but then I reconsidered - after all, if FTL readers are among the message and DNA senders, then we are clearly going to be sending some pretty special stuff - no riff-raff, as Basil Fawlty might say. You have plenty of time to think up your entry, but please have a try.
Did you know that plans are well advanced for a national space centre in Leicester, UK? No, neither did I! Apparently it will house a simulater based on the Challenger space probe (!) and will be the only NASA accredited centre outside North
America. It is to be partly financed by £23m from the Millennium Commission.
And finally, a respectful wave and a tip of a glass of something suitable (vodka?) skywards, as acknowledgement of the news that Mir has been mothballed. After achieving nearly three times its design spec lifespan, the space station has been left unmanned.
Life on board became less textbook and specification and more belt and braces and improvisation as time went on, but much of what we know today about routinely living and working in space came from the many cosmonauts who spent long periods genuinely living in space, rather than simply passing through. Many of those cosmonauts came from countries other than the Soviet Union, proving also that men and women of different nationalities can live and work together for long periods in harmony.
Perhaps future eons will consider Mir to be the time when humanity began to grow up.
(see also data bank for some facts and figures)

August 23

Millenium stuff: some pundits or whoever have drawn up a list of the 30 defining TV moments from the last near-50 years. The listings contain 10 each of drama, comedy and factual programmes, and the drama programmes are of interest - since the first defining dramatic moment on TV is Dr Who, the moment when the Daleks appeared. Remember that (errm I do, December 21, 1963), a Dalek slowly appeared out of the Thames, about a month into a new children's programme, and the world was never quite the same again for many of my generation - we started to be hooked on SF. Some SF purists, and there are many out there, would argue that TV SF isn't really SF or if it is, it just isn't worth anything except an aesthetic disdain. But I think that is an incredibly conceited attitude. Good fiction is good fiction whatever the medium if it moves or is memorable. Clearly Terry Nation's pepperpots have imprinted on at least my generation, if no other. And it makes one wonder why on earth the BBC is not doing more to bring Dr Who back into production. Star Trek has proved that good SF can sell globally, although for the BBC event hat should not be a consideration (and Dr Who still spins profit). What did for the Doc was the perception that SF fans were idiots (as per the original Trek, and still amongst the literai) and that the money was spent on glossy sets and costumes, guest stars and stuff, and they forgot to buy decent scripts. Catch the early Who again, if you can. The scenery all but shakes, the costumes are haphazard, the make-up frequently peeling at the edges, but oh, the scripts. The scripts are a joy. The stories sing off the screen. You never notice the wobbly bits because the stories are so great (on the whole, there were some clunkers even then). If you want to bring back Dr Who, you first have to find a script editor of the calibre of Terry Nation or Douglas Adams. Or don't bother.

August 21

Reading Nic's piece on the non-responsiveness of politicians who would be President, caused me furiously to think of two things - first of all, if you have a website you really should nurture it, make sure you have a good webmaster, and check your email often - otherwise you are going to look a total pratt and lose friends and influence no-one, sooner or later.
Secondly I was reminded of the time when Michael Heseltine, then Minister of State for Defence of the UK was visiting near me. He had just announced the creation of the UK space centre. He was visiting a manufacturer nearby. I had flu and was, I think, about eight months pregnant.
I went to the press call and asked him about the new centre. He, busy courting the TV cameras to the exclusion of the printed press, ignored me completely.
Never mind, I gave him flu, his under-minister flirted with me, (which cheered me muchly), and Hesletine never amounted to much after that. Thus the perils of ignoring the press (or at least me when I ask a question…).

August 19

It isn't that I have nothing to write about, you understand, but I thought that today I'd throw at you the problems of trying to write an entry when one's cat wants to get in on the act.
Thisnm jfeline beasie has been watching Star Trekasw with me a bit too often and taken to heart the behaviour of Data's cat, Spot. Spot, you will remember, liked to walk all over Data's computer desk and interrupt him - it was a great scene (not sure which episode) "Down is good Spif'ot" as Data puts him on the floor "Up is bad" as Spot jumps back up onto the desk.. Well………Immmmmmmmmmmleaving this bit exactly as my Spot - Dyfed - has adjusted it.x/nmcx cvxcvw qa Oh shoo cat.
If you have lingered over the home page recently you will have noted that not only do we now have music on't but that the scrolling new postings thingy has got bigger, and now each new listing is also a hyperlink. Personally I think that this is just Ian showing off even more -if you want to hyperlink to these items you have to move fast! Incidentally, had any of you noticed that the blue vortex-y thing is actually animated and goes around? No, we can't see it either - expect changes.
I just dug out my photocopy of the Outer Space Act 1986. Did you know that Her Majesty's Government took the time to enact such legislation. It regulates anyone moved to fire anything into outer space. Don't be tempted unless you have the requisite licence from the Minister. S1 says that activities to which the Act applies are launching or procuring the launch of a space object, operating a space object or any activity in outer space (which is defined to include the Moon and other celestial bodies) The Minister has to get details on everything you might want to do with your space object from launch to disposal and in between
Don't be tempted to launch something on a whimsy without a licence - the penalties are dire.
And finally (it has been an 'and finally' sort of day) a friend urges me to write about Star Wars. Okay. About Star Wars.

August 16

Well, that'll teach me to have a hol and try to get closer to totality won't it? Headed south to just near Stonehenge and saw absolutely nothing except thick clouds and rain. It poured at totality. Your editor was under a tree trying hard to be overwhelmed by the mystery of it all and all I got was wet!
Anyway, at least no-one was blinded and one of the worst injuries apparently was a broken nose from someone who was looking at the eclipse, not where he was going and walked into a wall.
So, what's new in space? Nic has sent over a piece which is the fruit of his research into the attitudes of the Presidential candidates in America. Armed with his FTL accreditation he emailed them on their opinions - the results so far are in his section of the features pages. I like Nic.
Anyway, forgive me if I cut the diary lose so I can start catching up on the data bank news.

August 2

Out and about today, and on way back from Liverpool (nothing to do with FTL, was shopping for purple and pink glass) saw a church with a notice outside which read "The millenium is Christ's 2,000 birthday"…Deary deary me. You'd think they would get it right, wouldn't you?

July 29

Some good new stuff in the features section - check out Andy Nimmo's Rivers of Dust, a new posting from the always provocative 'leader' of my Glasgow gang. This is the first bit of a projected book which may appear first on the net, and I am working on persuading Andy that the part of the net in which the whole appears is FTL.
For those of you in the path of the eclipse I've put together a bit of a guide on what to look out for and how to look for it safely. Mind you in the last couple of days I've been very tempted to throw things at TV, radio and newspaper as this and that august and grim body solemnly warns us all of the dire consequences of looking at the sun during the eclipse - have these people not noticed that the sun is up there to some degree or other of brilliance just about every day most everywhere on this Earth and so far we have not all been struck blind like the aftermath of a Triffid attack. We can just about cope with looking around outside. However, if you are going to be looking at the eclipse do it properly, and do take care if there are children around - very young ones do have more vulnerable eyes and they can't be trusted to keep looking through even safe specs in the excitement.
And finally - Ha! department. When I declared FTL a Star Wars free zone a couple of people mocked your editor. Yes really. Even I have to deal with this sort of stuff from time to time. One person in particular, who has appointed himself the chap who runs beside my chariot reminding me I'm mortal (I'm not, I'm an Editor) was roundly critical of my decision. He went to see the film yesterday. 'How was it?' I enquired. 'When the ship whooshed through space at the beginning I started to be disappointed' he said 'The effects were fabulous but..'
'Repeat after me', I thought, 'The editor is always right, the editor is always right.' (And yes, I do know the Enterprise whooshes too, but it's allowed to, it's the Enterprise...)

Just to clear things up, since the papers have been full of even more contradictory, silly, patronising and downright unfathomably play-safe advice today in the UK - we have included the Royal Astronomical Society's statement on the matter verbatim on the features/eclipse page. Check with it.

ADVICE ON SAFE SOLAR VIEWING
A PERSONAL STATEMENT FROM B. RALPH CHOU, MSC, OD, A RESPECTED INTERNATIONAL AUTHORITY ON EYE SAFETY
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A safety code drawn up by the Solar Eclipse 1999 UK Co-ordinating Group, mentioned in Dr Chou's statement below and supported by the Royal Astronomical Society, may be found on the following web site:
http://www.eclipse.org.uk/safety.htm
Contact details for Dr Chou, and a biographical note are at the end of his statement.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Statement regarding solar eclipse eye safety
Recently the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), UK Department of Health, and organizations representing the eye care professions of optometry and ophthalmology have issued advice advocating only the use of indirect viewing methods to observe the solar eclipse of 11 August 1999. Several of these organizations have actively discouraged the use of solar viewers that enable observers to look directly at the sun during the eclipse. It is disappointing to me that these organizations have chosen not to co-operate with the Solar Eclipse 1999 UK Co-ordinating Group in presenting an unbiased, common message on how to observe this spectacular natural event safely.
While the intention of these organizations is to ensure public safety during the eclipse, they have ignored the scientific evidence that solar viewers are safe when used as directed. Indeed, an examination of the scientific reports on eclipse eye injuries published since the 1960s shows that the principal causes of eclipse-related retinal burns are (in descending order): 1. Viewing the partly eclipsed sun without protection; 2. Looking through the pinhole of an indirect projection viewer (sunscope); 3. Viewing the sun through sunglasses, photographic neutral density filters, or other inappropriate devices.
There has never been a substantiated or anecdotal report of eclipse-related retinal injury arising from the use of a mylar solar viewer.
Messages that discourage an activity or behaviour, particularly when they are intended for young people, can backfire. This is especially so when the warnings turn out to be inaccurate or wrong. The advice issued by health authorities around the world on the subject of eclipse watching is a case in point. Unfortunately, many of these messages are designed to scare people from seeing the eclipse at all. When people heed these warnings and later learn that others saw the eclipse safely by disregarding that advice, they may feel cheated out of the experience. How then will they react in future to other health- related advice on drugs, alcohol, AIDS, and smoking from the same authorities?
Despite their good intentions, these organizations are doing the public a disservice by continuing to advocate this extremely conservative position on watching the solar eclipse.
B. Ralph Chou, MSc, OD
Associate Professor
School of Optometry, University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519-888-4567x3741 Fax: 519-725-0784
e-mail: bchou@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca
Biographical note
Dr. B. Ralph Chou is Associate Professor of Optometry at the School of Optometry, University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Chou's research is in the area of industrial and environmental eye protection with special interest in the analysis of, and protection from, optical radiation and impact hazards. He currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Technical Committee on Industrial Eye and Face Protection of the Canadian Standards Association, and as a member of the Eclipse Information Committee of International Astronomical Union Commission 46 (Teaching of Astronomy).
An amateur astronomer for 30 years, Dr. Chou has observed 12 total and 2 annular solar eclipses and led 8 eclipse expeditions. He has lectured on solar eclipse eye safety in the Philippines, Canada, the U.S.A., Romania and the Netherlands Antilles. He participated in eye safety campaigns for the total solar eclipses in Canada and the U.S.A. (1972, 1979, 1984, 1994), Mexico (1991), Papua New Guinea (1983), India and the South Pacific (1995) and the Caribbean (1998).

July 20

Firstly, even though it seems to be everywhere else as well, FTL of course today acknowledges the anniversary of Neil Armstrong's small step. However, for perhaps some future small steppers, or bold goers, the degree that FTL wishes it could have done - the new BSc in science and SF at the University of Glamorgan. There are still places available, so course leader Mark Brake tells me, as they only received academic validation late last month. It looks brilliant.

July 18

The following anecdote arrives from Ian Stewart, to prove the amazingly pervasive power of narritivium:
"Jack [Cohen] and I have been pushing the idea that a lot of coincidences aren't, in the sense that they are embedded in a mass of near-coincidences that don't happen, so we don't notice them.
"Roughly speaking: if someone picks up a dart, throws it at the board, and gets a bullseye, that's surprising. But if you've watched them trying to do this for days on end, and finally they achieve it, that's NOT surprising!
"The golf-shot that would have been a hole in one if you'd played it the previous day (when the wind was different) or at the next hole, or at the same hole on a different golf-course: these 'coincidences' we do not perceive. But they surround the hole-in-one shot just like numerous failed attempts at
a bullseye. "I now give you one coincidence, one near-miss that debunks it, and one truly bizarre meta-coincidence that makes me think the guys who write the script for the universe have run out of ideas.
"Jack and I were on a trip to a conference in Lappland (including Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Gregory Benford, and Paul McAuley and organised by the mathematician and science writer John Casti) and Jack predicted we would experience a coincidence at Arlanda airport, Stockholm. Reason: they are all around you, and if you LOOK for them, you will see one. We got out of the airport to the bus-stop but no coincidence.
"However, we didn't know which bus to get (in the end we took a taxi) so he went in to ask at the information desk. Where he bumped into Stefano Luzatto who occupied the office next to Jack's. He was heading for some totally different conference in Sweden.
"On the way back, even though we were looking, no coincidences happened. "Two weeks later, my friend Ted Woodcock was visiting him from the USA and we mentioned our 'near coincidence' theory, pointing out that it was hard to test it because they were almost by definition impossible to detect. "Stockholm?" said Ted. "When?" It turned out that he'd been in the same hotel as us ONE DAY LATER, and also in the same Malaysian restaurant as us ONE HOUR EARLIER than we'd been.
"So if we hadn't met Stefano, we might have met Ted instead. OK, now for the real curiosity. Jack and I wrote this idea up for New Scientist (it later got modified into part of The Science of Discworld). And BBC radio got interested and we did a short interview about it all.
"Not long ago, I got a phone call from Ted, who said he just HAD to tell me what had happened. He had arrived home from a subsequent conference in Stockholm, turned on the radio (as he always does) to get BBC World Service (available in the USA). He heard 15 seconds of a news item, followed immediately by... Ian Stewart talking about the near-coincidence involving his friend Ted! He'd chanced upon the programme we made.
"That one is harder to debunk. I know how I might do that--- lots of other striking things might have happened instead, Ted goes to Sweden a lot, etc. --- but I'm not totally convinced myself."

Okay readers - have you had any such long strings of coincidences?
The only thing remotely like this which has happened to me recently (and which at the very least serves as a nice segue is that last week in the holiday recommended books section of my newspaper there were listed Science of Discworld and then Snuff Fiction by Robert Rankin. An interview by self is now to be found in the features section, after we spent a trio of delightful hours in Manchester chatting about all sorts of stuff (including bees and sprouts).
I know that purists will refuse to classify Rankin's work as SF, but I reckon he squeaks in, since he provides a deliciously astigmatic alternate universe view of our own world. And he made both Ian J and me laugh - good enough on its own as a reason!
Catch also an update to the ISS section in features - A European automated transfer vehicle project is set to rescue the project by supplanting the Russian craft in current use.
Finally it may all be academic anyway - oh joy - since bringing a new nuclear accelerator in Lond Island New York on line might cause us to all disappear up our own man-made-by-it-black-hole anyway.
Seems that this accelerator, eight years in the building by the Brookhaven National Laborator, and test fired last week, may cause the formation of a black hole by creating strangelets, a new type of matter made up of sub-atomic particles called strange quarks. These strangelets might just form an uncontrollable chain reaction which would convert anything they touch into more strange matter, or the colliding particles could achieve such a high density that they would form a mini-black hole into which we would all instantly pop.
A committee to investigate has been formed. Oh goody!

July 17

I make no apologies for the fact that I will be a couch potato this week, glued to the box - because this week the UK's Channel 4 TV station has had the brilliant idea of re-broadcasting all the moon landing transmissions exactly at the same times as the original. Thus it really will be possible to evoke those of us antique enough to have been there first time around the same moods and emotions - and exhaustion - Neil Armstrong's small step took place in the small hours of the morning in the UK. Still a schoolgirl I tottered in dutifully the next morning, after about two hours sleep, but still euphoric with excitement.
Not quite so successful, but happening yesterday was an amateur attempt at rocketry in Yorkshire (North-eastern UK), which ended on the launch pad on the moors when the rocket's casing split.
The aim was for the White Rose 2000 rocket, built by Alan Bullock and Jago Packer, to ascend to 20,000ft and thereby break the domestic record. This did not happen.
However the two said afterwards that they knew what had gone wrong and the Mark II would be ready within months. Splendid stuff!
The latest estimate is that there are some 800million pages on the net, holding six terabytes of data, on three million servers. The estimate is that much of it is out of date. Hah - not so FTL - It is a rare day when something new does not get uploaded here.
The problem is apparently because search engines are failing to keep up with the huge expansion in the net and only about 16% is being indexed. How did you, yes you reading this now, find this page. Email me, I'd love to know.
And still on the subject of the net, the UK's data protection registrar has acted to close a legal loophole by issuing a code of practice which will stop employers snooping on their staff by intercepting emails or watching them with closed circuit TV. The new code will come into effect next March and employers in breach could be fined by the registrar or face action for damages from employees.

July 10

Only a month now to go to the big eclipse. While there is a lot of stuff already appearing on this solar show, I will be putting together a bit of an observer's guide. However, I think FTL's coverage will be mostly on what comes after, with the big programme of observations likely to produce all sorts of new information. That there is a lot still to be discovered about our sun is clear - see today's Data Bank for just one example - and FTL will be bringing you all the info as it comes out over the next few months.

July 6

Star Wars-o-mania seems to have arrived in the UK. I was in my local newsagents yesterday and glancing along the lines of magazines nearly all had a Star Wars cover. All the merchandising is in the shops too. At least the prices don’t seem as outrageously ridiculous as some souvenir stuff. Since we are already hip deep in coverage I hereby come all over editor and declare FTL a Star Wars free zone henceforth. As a carry-over from my time at a previous magazine it is also a trilogy-quest- free zone.
So far the feedback on the backgrounds for the features pages is about 60-40 in favour of the fancy stuff. Those of you worried about readability should have faith in the exacting standards of webmaster Ian, who works with a great deal of ingenuity to make the pages not only look good, but also be as accessible as possible for you all.
One area of coverage where I haven’t had any success is in modelling – would you like some stuff on model-making? And if so, is there anyone out there who would like to have a go at writing it up? Does anyone know where Wendy Ingle, who used to write about modelling for me, can be found?

June 30

At FTL we learned this morning of the death yesterday of our contributor Chris Boyce. Chris died at work at the Glasgow Herald. I hadn't known Chris for long, but he was one of my Glasgow gang, centred around Andy Nimmo, who introduced us. Please take a few moments to read his latest piece for us, posted still on the features section. Our thoughts are with his widow and two daughters.
Obituary

June 29

What fun news that finally someone is taking action to bring back Blake's 7. While it was never the greatest SF TV series in history, or even on the Beeb, it was, at its best, fun and a good intelligent attempt at domestic SF. Killed off one Monday night in November, by the simple expedient of shooting most of the cast in the last minute, it has, like Star Trek before it, taken on a new lease of life on satellite and overseas. Even many at the BBC at the time were unhappy at its end - my photo shows series four producer, the late Vere Lorrimer outside the TV centre in Wood Lane in 1983, joining in a protest by Blake's fans, who had left a convention to picket their protest. Vere joined the protest for about half an hour and for some years kept in touch with fans.
And finally - never let it be said that Ian is just showing off…3-D pictures of the International Space Station. I'll never let it be said. Not me. Never. No how!

June 27

Ian and I have been discussing (vehemently), about the background for the features pages. I think that the white background is boring and a nasty shock after the twinkly stars which we use on the other FTL pages. He thinks that paper effect is better as the stars make the text harder to read. You are the readers. What do you think? (Best to email me, as Ian probably won't tell me the result if it goes against him) [Oh yes he will. The ed thinks her decision is final, but truly it is yours, dear reader. Ian]

June 26

And a bright and sunny summer's morning greeting to you all. I've been absent from the diary for a few days (hangs head in abject shame) but not from FTL, as have been writing and editing stuff. So, you will find new on the features main index a piece starting to examine the International Space Station, what is happening with it, and what it will be doing (well, it won't be doing anything, it's a space station and inert), (but you know what I mean). I plan to keep updating this feature as more information comes in, so watch that space, and to do some stuff on the work going on with the European Space Agency in the next week or so (thanks to JT for the initial proper journalism!)
Also Nic Farey, who I have decided to title our North American Correspondent, has been watching the finale of Deep Space 9 for us. Carrying on with the fine and noble tradition of finishing Trek series just as they start to get really good, Paramount has thrown DS9 into the nearest TV blackhole. No announcements on movie plans either.
And incidentally, it occurred to me recently to raise my eyebrows to the writers who only kill off female characters. Thinking back, Yeoman Rand (dumped not dead, we know, but the first anyway), Deanna Troi (in one storyline), Tasha Yar and most recently, Jadzia Dax.
Just remind me, how many male characters have met the same throwaway fate? Errr…Conversely, Worf, the security officer who couldn't hit the side of a barn from the inside, has survived against all the odds and even got promoted to DS9 from Next Gen. I think I might just shout discrimination here.
Would you believe it is 30 years ago (minus only a month), since Neil Armstrong's most famous stroll on the Moon. With Buzz Aldrin, the first two humans to walk on another soil spent only a few hours in total on the Moon. After landing Eagle they rested (and how did they manage to do that - I would never make an astronaut, I would be out of that hatch in a couple of minutes, if not less) for some hours. Walked around for two and a half hours, grabbed some rocks, took some pix, got some data, left a flag and footprints, rested some more and pushed off home - bit like an overlong trip to a short bank holiday break away really!
It really doesn't seem possible that it really was 30 years ago. I still remember staying up all night, watching the live TV, excited beyond measure - and yes, Patrick Moore was there, commenting (Didn't think I'd finish up with Patrick as a correspondent for my own mag either). Perhaps the thing which surprised me most about it all though, was turning up very sleepily at school the next day to find that I seemed to be the only one who had stayed up. This only added to my early reputation for weirdness, although I thought that they were all the weird ones. Which only goes to show, I think, that FTL editors are a long time brewing.

June 17

It has only been a few weeks since we started FTL, but already I think we can claim to be truly global – our statistical analysis programme reveals that readers are coming to us from :
USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway, Poland, Finland, Japan.
In addition one reader contacted us via Arpanet – which is the founding father of the internet – we don’t know where this venerable net access resides but felt suitably honoured by their visit.
To me at any rate, this international readership is what it is all about – I could wax terribly lyrical and emotional about how FTL is circling this planet, but basically a rather ‘chuffed’ gosh probably suffices. If we do enough talking perhaps we won’t do so much arguing – that’s got to be good.
I would love to hear from all these people in foreign parts (as Granny Weatherwax would term them) please – how did you hear about us, what do you want to see in FTL, what are you interested in? I can only guess at what you all want to read until you tell me.
On a more domestic note, if you will, If you have internet explorer 5 and have already bookmarked FTL as a favourite (and if not why not for IE4, netscape or any other?) then please: 1 delete your favourites notation for FTL 2 re-select FTL as a favourite be amazed at the cute FTL icon which should appear in your favourites listings. Ian is inordinately pleased with himself for achieving this minor miracle of programming, which only works with IE5. At the same time, if you have netscape, be ashamed, as the new home page which we are designing (and which will remove your socks from your feet without disturbing your shoes or boots) promptly crashes on netscape since it can’t cope with Ian’s Java stuff…

June 10

Today, like a good politician I needs must declare an interest. If you go to the read out book review page you will there find a glowing-so-that-uranium-would-be-jealous review of a book The Science of Discworld. This is my honest opinion, reflected in the news that it is already at number three in the book charts. However. I have known all three authors for some years (TP since Colour of Magic was published and caused him to meet Neil Gaiman (Good Omens) too). But not only that, I had sight of the manuscript late last autumn in draft form. My only claim to fame today is that I called for a the insertion of a number of semi-colons, to which I have an ineffable fondness; and b the deletion of wasps and the inclusion of plenty of references to bees*. In the review I recommend the purchase of this book. Declaring another interest I hope you will buy this book by accessing Amazon from the FTL site, the icon for doing this being displayed handily proximate to the paeon. If you do, and continue to access amazon via the FTL site** we will receive a modest cut. This will enable us to start to pay our contributors for their contributions. At the same time I happened to note that SoD is much cheaper from them too. so everyone is happy.That is always nice. *Regular discworld travellors will already be familiar with the fondness TP has for bees, viz Death and Granny Weatherwax, but only a beekeeper will know that all the bee stuff is accurate. **if you bookmark amazon and go direct you pay the same price but amazon doesn't pay us anything. [A fondness for footnoting is an inevitable result of reading TP]

June 9

Since we started up FTL we have all been on an exponential learning curve, in terms of what we can do with a magazine which is published only on the web. As a journalist I have been fine about rebuilding contacts, starting to write copy, and putting pages together, but working on the web brings its own constraints, such as the layout for each page will change depending on what size screen the reader has - and it is a new concept to be grasped that page size differs from reader to reader - most magazines don't change page size from minute to minute.
Ian will cheerfully admit that a month ago he knew nothing about being a webmaster, but again, an exponential learning curve is producing the pages which you see before you. And that is the point of today's burble. You will perhaps have noticed a new logo on our home page. Ian, Claire and I have been playing with logo design for a week, the design has gone from blue to green, via yellow and pink (firmly vetoed by Ian), and black and blue, until I realised that the headings on all the pages are red, baulked at the finality when Ian said this has to be right because this will be permanent, and suggested we try red (tear down all the finished stuff in blue which was about to be uploaded). And lo, the red leapt to our eyes. We hope you like it too. We still have some messing to do with the layout and the background and I still think Jupiter looks a bit like a last year's fashion victim in brown, but this is it for the logo. The editor's decision is final...errr

June 8

Yesterday and today have been spent in that fine seasonal activity of all educators, invigilating students' examinations. You know, the weather is fine, warm and sunny, so it must be time to cram people in to rooms for hours and force them to write furiously.
And to cap it all today, for some mysterious reason the heating was on full blast. Of course it was. So we had the windows open. So the papers blew all over everywhere. Of course they did. It wouldn't be June without all this stuff.
The reason why I'm mentioning this is that today I spent my time reading a Robert Rankin book which had been sent to me for review - Snuff Fiction. I can't tell you lots about it as it isn't out till this time next month. But the description of the invention and naming of the yo-yo was enough to nearly get me into serious trouble with the board. Reader. Picture the scene. Rows of students scribbling away, stressed and bowed. Silence and erudition. And I couldn't help it. This particular bit of the book set me off, and I was about to laugh aloud. I had to run for the door and ask a passing colleague to take over for a couple of minutes while I finished laughing. Then I went back in, and professionally put the book away.
Later Ian, reading the paperback Apocalypso, confessed that he too had had to stop reading. So, there you have it. That's what the editor has been doing today, laughing inappropriately. Well, its gotta be fun!

June 5

Well, I still hate computers, after my nice new one decided to eat the first draft of today's diary. I seem to remember that in it I rather tempted fate and said that all our computational woes were behind us.
Ha, and Ha again. Still, these things are an exercise in patience, and I seem to have been getting plenty of practice in at patience recently. I grit my teeth and console myself with the thought that:

a. Patience is a virtue, as well as;
b. is its own reward and that:
c. very good things come to those who wait.

So, I wait. (Saying ‘Patience…Pah!’ occasionally.) On a brighter no