Welcome to the March Newsletter

Hello, and welcome to what was to have been the February newsletter, but is now the March one! I'm really going to have to do something about how I go about identifying the issues of this NL, especially on the archive, as they don't come out on an exact monthly schedule, although that's roughly the plan. Having said that, the sun is shining outside my window, and I can't see the rearrangement of the NL archive stopping me from taking a long walk into town and eating some sushi in the company of the lovely Deirdre, just as soon as I finish writing this. The month of March is upon us, hurray!

We've been at the Mind Body Sprit Festival in the RDS. This has roughly equal proportions of charlatans and the genuinely enlightened at it, and you can't beat the atmosphere, thick with incense smoke and chanting. More witches and tarot readers than you could shake a big stick at, and anyone from Buddhists Monks to Scientologists trying to sell you their wares, not to mention the super cool bellydancing demonstration we saw just before we left.

I'm especially fond of the stuff on the stand run by World on Wheels, who have a website at www.worldonwheels.co.uk. Magical stuff, and highly recommended if you have an interest in that kind of thing

SF Table Quiz

We had the first ISFNews Table Quiz on Wednesday the 26th of February, and it seemed to go down very well. So well, in fact, that I've decided to hold another one in two months time. But first, a few thank yous to all the people who helped out. Firstly, I must thank Deirdre for correcting all the score sheets, and generally making it easy for me to carry on with the business of asking the questions, while she took care of everything else. Also, I am indebted to the various other people who helped out: Eimear Ní Méalóid, Liam Donnelly, and especially Ruth Cassidy, for selling vast quantities of raffle tickets. Everyone who was there genuinely seemed to enjoy it, and the hotel were also delighted with the busy crowd at the bar, and have offered to throw in a meal in the restaurant as a prize next time. Thanks must go to Paul Crosby of the Central Hotel, for all his help, as well as to Richie Lawlor of SubCity for pointing out the venue to me in the first place.

Most importantly, a sincere thanks to all the shops who donated things as prizes, and obviously all the people who came out on a wet and miserable February evening. The people who gave things are: All Models, BlackFort Organic, Christy Flood, Crazy Dog Audio Theatre, Crow Corner Comics, Dandelion Books, Forbidden Planet, Reckless, Sub City, Third Place and Yellow Brick Road, as well as a few private donations.

The winning team was a team consisting of Caitriona Hamman, Rory Lennon, David Stewart & Julian West, although they only established themselves in the lead at the 7th round, and before that it was anyones guess as to who would win. The details on the next quiz are:

What: The 2nd Irish SciFi News Quiz
Where: Back Bar, Exchequer Bar, Exchequer Street, Dublin 2
When: Wednesday 23rd of April at 8.00 PM
How Much: €24 per Team of 4 people
Anyone interested in seeing the questions for the last quiz can find them here

Dominicon

Dominicon, the joint SF & Gaming convention, takes place next weekend in Maynooth, at the National University of Ireland campus there. The Guest of Honour is Harry Harrison, and other guests are Michael Carroll & John W Sexton. Good men all.

Also present will be those most consummate and professional of second-hand booksellers, Slovo Books. Well, actually, that'll be me and a table of stuff, but it'll all be good! Lots more information from the freshly updated Dominicon website

P-CON

The P-CON website has had a facelift, too, with a super-duper new logo courtesy of Donal Casey, originally from Athlone, but now living in Spain. There's more stuff going up on the site regularly, so its worth having a look if you haven't in a while.

There have been a few more guests added to the line up, too, with John Courtney Grimwood, Ian McDonald, John Meaney, Colmán Ó Raghallaigh & Steve Westcott accepting invites to the con. You can sign up for the P-CON newsletter (which is getting written as soon as I finish this one!) on the P-CON website, where there is a handy-dandy sign-up box.

SciFiClub

There have been a few changes to the schedule for the Dublin-based SciFiClub. The meetings are held on the first Tuesday of the month in Bowes pub in Fleet Street, but the much-postponed meeting about Freemasonry having been postponed yet again. The March meeting had to be rescheduled suddenly, as Frank Darcy had to be elsewhere, and the powers-that-be decided not to go ahead with the SciFiClub Awards without him, so a Show and Tell meeting was organised at the last minute, and run by myself, ably assisted by James Bacon & Eoin Meehan.

All in all, I think the meeting was a success, and will crop up again at some stage in the future. However, The Awards night is now scheduled for the May meeting, which was to have been the Masons.

The April meeting is still as planned, however, with Michael Carroll giving a talk of Conspiracy Theories and Hoaxes, as the meetings date falls on the first of April, All Fools Day. More information at the SciFiClub website

MeCon

The lovely Deirdre and myself were in Belfast last weekend for MeCon, the annual SF con of the Queens University Sf society. The attendance was somewhat sluggish, never seeming to rise above about 40 people, and all in all the con seemed a lot slower than in previous years. Perhaps they should consider being a bit more aggressive about their advertising next year, as well as tracking down a few more of the locally based writers, as MeCon has always had a lot of promise, which it is a shame to see go underused.

I'm hoping to go again next year, anyway, as I really like the opportunity to visit Belfast. Next year we might take a few extra days to finally get to visit places like the Ulster Museum, which is just across from the con site. Thanks to David Stewart for giving us a lift to the con. He's even volunteered to give us a lift to Dominicon next weekend, although he doesn't actually know it yet!

Finncon X

I am the very recently appointed Irish agent for Finncon X, which is being held in Finland, as the name might suggest Here's the official bit I wrote about it:

So now you know

DMZ Events

Those lovely people at DMZ Events, who run the Buffy/ Angel/ Smallville one-day events, are moving their regular location from Wynns Hotel to Chief ONeills Hotel in Smithfield Village for their next scheduled event, which is on the 13th of April 2003. More information about this is on their website at www.dmzevents.cjb.net

Also, they have a major event coming up over the Halloween weekend. They have yet to announce guests or prices, as the second is very much determined by the first, but what we have so far is this (which is directly quoting from the information I received from them):

Monthly Quiz

As I had a lot of stuff accumulated for prizes, I'm giving something to everyone who sent in a correct answer last time around! I asked what year we had just started in the Chinese calendar, and the correct answer was The Year of the Ram (or sheep or goat) Seven people sent in right answers, and next time around I'll say who got what. I may even get to putting them in the post, which is really the bit that always seems to take me *ages*. Still, I'm caught up on all the prizes to date, as far as I know.

The competition question for this month is: Which TV programme featured the characters Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky? Just write back to me with the answer, and your name goes into the hat.

Gaming Clubs

SubCity tell me that

More information from SubCity on Exchequer Street.

Also, The 3rd Place is starting a gaming club. They tell me

More information from The 3rd Place on Crow Street.

Royal Astronomical Society meeting

The Royal Astronomical Society are having their annual bun fight in Dublin this year, it seems.

This is the National Astronomy Meeting & UK Solar Physics Meeting, to be held in Dublin Castle over the week of 7 - 11 April 2003. It's mostly a fairly heavy professional meeting, but there is a public lecture.

Steven Beckwith, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute is giving a talk in the Edmund Burke Hall, Trinity College Dublin on Wednesday, April 9 at 7.30 on the subject of The Beginning of Time: Looking Back With the Hubble Space Telescope.

More on the R.A.S. at the R.A.S website and more information on the meeting is available on the Armagh Planetarium website at http://star.arm.ac.uk/nam2003 while the public lecture is covered here.

The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish

The Ark, which is the childrens cultural centre in Dublins Temple Bar area, is having a performance run of a play based on Neil Gaiman's book The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish from the 15th of March until the 17th of April.

Most of the shows are schools performances, but there are a few public performances, on Saturday the 22nd & 29th of March and 5th & 12 April at 1.30 PM & 3.30 PM. If enough of you are interested in going, I'll look into a group booking. Let me know. Otherwise, you will find information at the ARK website

Pádraig's Virtual Science Walk of Dublin #1

In what may or may not become a regular feature, I'm hoping to feature some of the major scientific figures who lived in Dublin at one time or another. If this goes well, I may even turn it into a real science walk, as well as put it on the website. Firstly, though.....

Erwin Schrödinger, the discoverer of wave mechanics and Nobel Prize-winner for physics, once lived at 65 Merrion Square. He came to Dublin at the invitation of Eamonn De Valera, to work in the new Institute for Advanced Studies he was trying to set up. Schrödinger arrived in Dublin in the autumn of 1939, where he studied electromagnetic theory and relativity and began to publish on a unified field theory. He remained in Dublin until he retired in 1956. Perhaps Schrödingers most memorable contribution to popular awareness of science is the Schrödingers Cat Thought Experiment.

Schrödingers house was just a few doors away from William Butler Yeats, the poet and fellow Nobel Laureate. The story is told of the two of them that one day they set out to visit each other, but walking in their own worlds along the same sidewalk - Yeats with his head in the clouds and Schrödinger with his eyes cast to the ground - passed without seeing each other, only to be disappointed when they arrived at the other's empty house. More on Schrödinger at here

In Brief

• Any of you who are wondering if the Pádraig Ó Méalóid who is appearing in upcoming episodes of TG4's Irish language soap opera Ros na Rún is me, it isn't. It's my father, with whom I share a name. Good man, Da!!
• The Forbidden Planet have a big sale on all their back issue comics every Sunday, with all the issues in the back boxes on the ground floor at €1 each. Tell them I sent you.
• Ian Sheppard, who does wonderful work making all this information look appealing to the eye on the ISFN site, has his own column running down the right-hand side of the site, which is quite possibly called Ian's Asides. Funny stuff, although his decision to feature a link to Lonely Astronaut the same week that the shuttle blew up shows a fine sense of no timing whatsoever.
• I've found a flyer for Cosmos 2003, which is Tullamore Astronomical Society's 11th Annual Astronomy Weekend, which looks interesting... More on that at Cosmos 2003 website
• I've had a mail from Ronan O Donoghue of Adare Productions, who says
  "I am the producer of a TG4 TV show called Amú, which trots the globe seeking out the most interesting aspects of worldwide culture. In a couple of weeks, on the 28th-31st of March, we will be covering the Annual Sci-Fi summit in Pasadena, Los Angeles. I am trying to get in touch with any Irish fans that may be attending this event. If you know of anyone that might be attending, or could point me in the direction of somebody else who might I would be extremely grateful."
  
  If any of you are going, just get back to me, and I'll put you in touch with one another.......

Regards,
Pádraig Ó Méalóid