Fannish Hints and Tips

• Good spelling is important. Do not emulate the sad example of Pam Wells, who has spent her life pursuing erratic men.
• Do not spend the weekend before your convention working. Change pace, drink beer, eat good food, and look forward to the delights of conrunning that await you. [NB: If your convention is called Novacon, then you might try changing the pace by working instead.]
• Pay attention to justification in your fanzine. Blame everything on Ian Sorensen.
• Punctuation is important. Great fanzines have been ruined by misuse of punctuation. Nobody now remembers Willis Walters, editor of the fine fanzines Backslash and Em-dash.
• Staples are important. Do not try to produce a fanzine without a good supply of staples. The Plokta cabal recommends beer, strawberries, ice cream and chocolate. Make sure to eat these quickly, or John Dallman will complain that your staples are too far apart.
• Always make sure that there is an artist on your convention committee. But first ensure she can draw moose.
• Reproduction is important. If you want your baby to grow up healthy and well-adjusted, do not do it on the Critical Wave photocopier.

---

Truth Stranger than Fiction Dept.

After Wrath of Ghu made a wide variety of jokes about the safety of British moose at Easter, the Independent reported, on 30 April, that moose slaughtered in Saskatchewan have been found to be suffering from Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Moose Disease. Remember, we were there first.

---

Music of the Month

Having it Both Ways -- Tom Robinson

The title refers to Tom Robinson's famous bisexuality, but also to the fact that the album is both an audio CD and also a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM contains lyrics, background information on the songs and the musicians, interesting pictures of hermaphrodites for Sue and a lengthy explanation of why Mr Robinson is an anorak. Plokta approves of this approach, which we feel represents a step forward for the pop industry. Unfortunately, we've been too busy playing with the CD-ROM to actually get round to listening to the music.

---

Rat Inna Bun

In a fit of complete insanity, I agreed to go to the first Discworld Convention. 80% of the 800 attendees had not been to a convention before, and it was held in Sacha's Manchester, a hotel last seen hosting the excecrable Wolf359. As it happens, the convention went swimmingly. The banquet, however... well, put it like this. The massed ranks of fandom, on discovering that they planned to hold a banquet on the Saturday night, had muttered ominously, "They'll only do it the once." The hotel had told the committee that they could have as many people at the banquet as they wanted, and the committee were taking bookings up till the Thursday night before the con.

It was, as predicted, a disaster. The chef had no trouble coping with 350 meals, but the staff took an hour longer to lay the tables than expected, and the service was worthy of the Broken Drum. We had a table on which everyone was having tomato and pepper soup, apart from a lady who'd asked for melon. The soup arrived, and we all waited patiently and politely for the appearance of the melon. Time passed. The tomato and pepper soup began to congeal, and no melon was forthcoming. The main course was silver service. The tray with our dinners arrived. Half the meals were served, and it went away again. I provided comforting stories about previous convention banquets, and reminisced fondly about the airline trays at Conspiracy's masked ball. Again, we waited patiently while our food froze over. Dessert was a pale purple frummery looking suspiciously like the blancmange that is always served for school dinners on Wednesday. It had the weight and texture of Dune, complete with wriggling six inch long gelatin sandworms.

The coffee was cold, the fire-eater set fire to a chair, and the after dinner speaker was Terry Pratchett. So, all in all, everyone had a wonderful time.


---

Visit the Plokta News Network: News and comment for SF fandom