SWILNEWS #0
                        for the week of Sept. 4-10, 1988

EVENTS:
   We will have our First Official SWIL Meeting of the '88-'89 school year
this coming Saturday, September 10th, at noon in our usual reserved room in
Sharples.  Immediately following it will be the now-traditional Crum Cleanup, 
which is of course not required but is a lot of fun.  We supply the trash bags; 
everyone goes down to the Crum and fills the bags with picked-up litter. 
   At the Activities Fair, 27 new folk signed a sheet indicating they were 
interested in SWIL, augmenting the four who had shown up to the zeroth 
meeting earlier that day.  Welcome, one and all; hope you enjoy SWIL.  
Unless anyone requests not to get it, anyone who signed that list will get 
the next several SWILnewses whether or not they come to meetings.
   Earlier that day, the Live Chess game went fairly well; the forces of 
darkness, led by the invincible Matt Ohland, did away with Leif 
Kirschenbaum's white team.  We had plenty of players and a fairly large 
audience, and if you missed it, just wait until Parents' Weekend, when 
we'll play again.  Special thanks to those pieces who never got a chance to 
move but who valiantly held their ground nonetheless; also, to Heather 
Rigney, diplomatic envoy extraordinaire, who took our sole magnetic chess 
set back and forth between the warring kings.
   The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society meets on the second Friday of 
every month on the second floor of the U.Penn International House.  Their 
business meeting starts at 8 PM, followed at 9 by a "program"; this month, 
they're bringing Philip Jose Farmer to speak.  That's THIS coming Friday, 
the 9th of September (and I apologize for giving such short notice).  I'll 
forward more information about future meetings as soon as I know it.

NEAR FUTURE EVENTS:
   The science fiction discussion group will be meeting every Saturday at 
roughly 5:30 in a reserved room in Sharples.  Topics will be posted on the 
SWIL board, though discussion is not restricted to the given topic.
   The Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire is open weekends until October 9.  
There will be a SWIL van going on September 24.
   The Pterodactyl Hunt will probably take place on October 7.
   As this year is SWIL's tenth anniversary, there will be a reunion/ 
anniversary celebration from October 20th through the 23rd.
   The Philadelphia sf convention, PhilCon, takes place the first weekend 
in November.  Again, there will be SWILfolk going all three days.
   Our annual Halloween Party will be a bit late this year; it's 
tentatively scheduled for November 19.
   At some point during the semester, there will be a filksing (at which 
people will gather to sing science fiction fannish folksongs, known as 
filks or filksongs), or possibly a story reading.  It's unscheduled as yet.

CONTACT PEOPLE:
   Laura Almasy is in charge of the SWILroom and George Hurliman Memorial 
Library (located in Hallowell basement).
   Michael Bernstein is the librarian of Cordwainer Bird Memorial Library   
(located, at the moment, on the second floor of Cornell Science Library).  
Birdwainer now has a small extension in the McCabe paperback shelves, 
thanks to the efforts of Stephen Soward, Humanities Librarian.
   Sally Carter is the Treasurer.
   Chris Cobb is in charge of the science fiction discussion group.  This 
coming Saturday's topic will be Really Alien Aliens.
   Wayne Finegar and Rick Post are the Official SWIL Drivers this year.
   Julie Love is in charge of maintaining the SWIL bulletin board (located 
across from the M-Z mail rooms) and putting notices for upcoming events in 
the Weekly News.
   Laura and Chris and Julie are also in charge of the on-campus end of our 
Tenth Anniversary Celebration.
   Kir Talmage is Editor-in-Chief of the Bug-Eyed Magazine (BEM).
   Alex Weirich is organizing the trip to the Rennaissance Faire.
   NOBODY has yet volunteered to run a Pterodactyl Hunt this semester.
   Contact Jed Hartman (that's me!) for anything else.

DISTANT FUTURE EVENTS:
   WorldCon '89 will be in Boston; tickets are $60 through September 15.
   An artificial habitat will be put in Earth orbit at the L-5 point.
   Humans will colonize the moon, and later other planets.
   True Artificial Intelligence will follow the development of 
nanotechnological "Universal Constructors".
   And so on (most of these events are also unscheduled as yet).
 
BOOKS:
   Over the summer, I got a chance to catch up on some of my reading.  
Among other things, I read Orson Scott Card's _Ender's Game_ and _Speaker 
for the Dead_, and William Gibson's _Neuromancer_, all of which I enjoyed 
immensely.  But enough has been said about these books; instead, I'll say a 
bit about an even BETTER book (in my humble opinion): _Rumors of Spring_, 
by Richard Grant.  Those of you to whom I've already enthused about it can 
skip this paragraph.  The basic plot is fairly simple (though fairly 
original): what would happen if the last forest in the world suddenly 
started to grow and wouldn't stop?  However, the characters, the dialogue, 
the narrative style, and the at times extremely subtle humor are among the 
most enjoyable I've ever encountered.  Well worth reading.  If anyone wants 
to borrow it, ask me (though it's out on loan at the moment).
   Have you read a good sf/f book lately?  A bad one?  An unknown one?  If 
you write a short review of it, I'd be happy to include it in SWILnews, 
though I'm beginning to think SWILnewses are going to be much too long.  
Perhaps I'll put news and essential information in the membership mailings, 
and a further page of miscellany on the bulletin board.  What do you all 
think?

ATTENDANCE:
   A new policy (or maybe a return to an old policy) on attendance at 
meetings: there will be an attendance list at meetings which everyone is 
welcome to sign (with any name) or ignore.  I just don't think keeping 
track of the attendance of those who are already non-members is 
important.  However, I will take real names of new folk (up to their 
first three meetings) in order to keep track of our membership.  I'll put 
any particularly interesting names in the SWILnews, as whimsy strikes me, 
in the ATTENDANCE section.  At our zeroth meeting this last Saturday, the 
following people seem to have been in attendance: 
Theresa Templestowe; Kir the Dragon; Jed the Obscure; Chris Cobb; Arthur 
Dent; Attila the Hun; Baba Yaga; Admiral Cook (member); Ryst-ham, of Brout-
Busters inc.; Lily Lace; Pearl Ironstone; Zeke the Greek; JrD; Robert the 
Five-Fingered; Ingrid the One-Headed; Sally Ann Carter Jr. William 
McGillicutty the 3rd; Gillian; Josh "Wargamers Wanted" Smith; Brout -- the 
original; Sara Rundle; Bic Pentameter; Jonathan "     " Wald; Peter Wagner; 
and MF.  Apologies to those who had interesting signatures; they're hard to 
reproduce in type.  Oh, yeah, and the Spanish Inquisition was there, too,
to everyone's surprise.

OPINIONS:
   Well, I don't want to bore you all with my opinions, but if anyone wants 
to send anything in (anecdotes, word games, limericks, or whatever), I may 
put them in a special EXTRAS section of SWILnewses (after the main section 
which will contain factual information).  

AND ONE MORE THING:
   If anyone has any comments, suggestions, or complaints (about SWIL, the 
SWILnewses, or related topics), please talk to me.  I will be spending a 
lot of time in Beardsley this semester as a Consultant; if you can't find 
me there, try College Mail or calling me at 543-4882, or talk to me at a 
SWIL meeting.  Communication is important; if there's something you think I 
should know, don't assume that I know it -- tell me about it.

                      Thanks for all the cards and letters,
                                 Jed the Obscure