Who He? (Ed.)

MALCOLM EDWARDS has (after years in exile) re-emerged at Helicon, puissant and handsome as ever. Rumours that this is connected with Worldcon committee meetings are ... aaarrrrgh!

DAVE LANGFORD denies everything, but would like you to buy his collected book reviews anyway. (Enquire at the Boardroom/Newsroom.)

CAROLINE MULLÅN at the Challenge Quiz: 'Where have my brain cells gone?' Audience: 'They're in the bar!'

MIKE CULE went to town and saw bins marked DOG WASTE ONLY. 'All very ecologically sound,' he nags, 'but imagine the life of the poor chap who has to clean them out....'

JOHN BRUNNER told his Hollywood agent that there ought to be a Euro-version of Baywatch set on topless beaches -- 'That'd get the viewers.' Our suggestion that it could be set in Wales and called Cwmwatch fell on deaf ears.Eve Devereux

PETER WESTON reports on diehard partyers: 'About 0325 Brian Aldiss staggered off to bed, and Chris Evans and I finally also decided to pack it in. Martin Hoare was still there too, actually, propping up the bar. He jeered at us as we left, "Fakefans!" The bar had closed by then.'

Attend and Listen!

VOODOO BOARD ... Please check for your messages! Important data for programme participants seems to be going unread. (In Registration.)

AWARDS ... remember the deadline for the Eastercon and Doc Weir Awards is 1800 (voting boxes at Registration).

BSFA AWARDS. 'Administrator Nicholas Mahoney wanted to give these awards at Jersey, but there appears to have been a unilateral decision by Kev McVeigh (the BSFA co-ordinator) that they should be held at Mexicon -- who are very unwilling, by the way....' (Jenny Glover) Ballot forms at the Information desk. All may vote!

RAFFLE. Win a 'Rosetta Stone 14-language "Holiday talk" thingy' (it says here). Grovel for your chance at the Con-Yak table, dealers' room.

CRASH SPACE? Alexander Korzhenevskji, Russian literary agent, hopes for a bed in London. Contact via Voodoo Board or dealers' room.

REVOLUTIONARY: you think Russia lacks capitalist acumen? Thanks to a certain table in the dealers' room, KGB membership has increased for the first time since glasnost at, shall we say, flexible prices. No hard feelings ... but the Cyrillic equivalent of Caveat emptor applies.

LOST! Foxy lost part of his earring (a crystal drop) in the Lido or hotel forecourt. If found please return to Sue Mason, who will express her gratitude in the usual way.

THE WOMEN'S PERIODICAL requested the loan of 'a suite with jacuzzi for our ever-so-genteel Tea Party.' Since none was available, members and other interested women are invited to meet in the Skyline balcony bar on Sunday at 1330.

FOODIES! Central Park Restaurant, 5 La Motte St: pasta/pizza/burger/veggie/Mississippi Mud Pie and fast service. Pizza Express (somewhere) ain't too bad either. (Chorus: 'Boo! Fakefan!')

CONFABULATION ... an abject retraction! Their logo depicting the great beasts native to Docklands is not a reindeer, it's a moose. They say.

RECOMMENDED: Mr Wonka's Chocolate Factory Tour. Visit the bowels of the hotel on an informal guided tour! Fascinating details of chocolate making are exhibited to an enraptured (nay, beatific) audience. Thrill as you dip your finger in a vat of chocolate and taste it. Boggle as you sniff the proffered bottles of flavourings used in some of the centres. Then go upstairs and buy hundreds of the things in the shop before they sell out. Tours start daily at 1100 and 0400, max 15 people/tour; assemble outside the chocolate shop itself. Pam Wells

The More Things Change....

VIDEO: WSF Annual Meeting China '91 by Thomas R.P.Mielke (Sat 1700 Basement): incredible adventures, starring Jack Williamson, Brian Aldiss, Frederik Pohl and the people of Chengdu, Szechuan. Special effects include a landslide in the panda reservation and the first pics of the Chinese space rocket Long March 3E....

ROMANIAN VIDEO A video of artwork by the Romanian artist Aurel Manole will be shown at 1900 in the Basement. If you can't wait until then, go and look at his display in the Art Show.

POMES. Monday's poetry whatsit (Golden 1100) will now be 'mostly a reading', with John Brunner, Joe Haldeman, K.V.Bailey, Peter Garratt and a taped simulation of Steve Sneyd.

OF COURSE: Friday's Crisis in Publishing panel was ... cancelled.

GIVE WARNING TO THE WORLD: a Certain Party was charged corkage of an undisclosed sum said to be in excess of £499.00. Be warned, fans.

EUROPEAN SF AWARDS Ballot boxes and voting slips for 'Spirit of Dedication' Prizes are at the Art Show and Information. Eurocon members, please do vote. Categories: Best Artwork, Best Fanzine.

JOHN BRUNNER'S TROUSERS vanished in the direction of the costume workshop for repair while JB cowered in his room. Rumour says that a gopher was despatched for a new pair. Jack Cohen comments: 'I always carry at least 4 pairs.'

Helicondom

OVERHEARD. To a con treasurer: 'You keep your money between your knees?' 'It's vitally secure there.' • In bar, 0900: 'Can we have an audience for the audience quiz?' • 'A survey: who would you most like to see dipped in chocolate for dinner?' • At end of 2001: 'OK, but what's all this got to do with French renaissance furniture?'

KEES VAN TOORN -- is he real? Sources close to our FGoH report stunned amazement at the factoids in KvT's programme book biography. 'This is the first I knew that Leiden was in the West Indies,' gasped Larry van der Putte on reading of his birthplace....

PC NOTE: certain fans from afar are what we call differently currencied and can't buy (e.g.) drinks. Remember this when buying a round....

10 APRIL BIRTHDAYS. Catherine Barnett 1951, Dave Langford 1953 (the Thunderbirds and Robert Maxwell birthday cards -- the latter personally delivered by Stupendous Man! -- were appreciated through clenched teeth by our fast-declining editor), Lenin 1870-1924, Ross Pavlac 1951. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari released 1921.

9 APRIL OMISSION. A certain scion of the HdF and chocolate shop secretly reached 30....

TRICENTENNIAL CYBERPUNK. In 1693 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of calculus fame invented the first mechanical calculator that could multiply and divide, thus heralding an exciting new era of arguments over the restaurant bill. ('Fie on you and your Engine, fir, I had only a fmall falad and a Pepfi.')

IF I RULED ... Paid advert: Ming for King! • The Jersey Operatic Society production of Turandot stars lead soprano Ming the Merciless. • We hear that one Mr Mittenshaw-Hodge will enter the hustings as Tinkerbell. •

CORRECTION TIME! Ron Bennett denounces 'the memories of Brian Campbell and Ramsey Aldiss' in Heliograph 2. 'Peterborough 1963, yes, but Harrogate in 1962 and Gloucester (the LXIcon, dammit) in 1961....'

MORE EASTERCON MEMORIES ... or in Chris Priest's case, amnesias: '1963 is before my time (my first con was the 1964 Repetercon). 1973 is in the thick of my time, but through drunkenness, satyriasis or general fannishness I can't remember a bloody thing about it all ... except I must have been there with Penny Grant, then just starting her career as news-page editor of SF Monthly, which was to wreak its havoc on Tynecon the following year. And 1983 (sodding hell) now turns out to be after my time! How short is our mortal span.'

QUATERCENTENARY. In 1593 Johannes Kepler drafted his space opera based on the hot new heliocentric theory and involving demon-powered travel to the Moon (hard science). It appeared as Somnium in 1634 and just missed a Hugo (but did well in the Eastercon Silly Awards).

EDITOR'S BIRTHDAY. As greetings poured in to the Heliograph office, busily typing Dave Langford was heard to use the famous Brian Aldiss Getting-the-Little-Swine-to-Bed technique.

The Einstein Intersection

How many fans does it take to change a slide carousel? Three, apparently -- and, in a triumph of British know-how over American ingenuity another to manually change the slides. It was interesting, after seeing the magic lantern projector outside the Lido Theatre, to return to those good old days.

The main message of the Intersection presentation, where this arrangement was witnessed, seemed to be that the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre is a very large place and all hands will be required to fill it. See your larger-than-life ideas implemented on a grand scale -- write in with your suggestions for functions, events, and programming, giving your name and address so they'll know who'll do the work.

One bright idea: using the dockside crane for a large, lightweight 'stereologo' for the con. The idea of using a giant, inflatable Dave Langford (à la 1987's Battlefield Earth promotion) was not resoundingly acclaimed, but neither was the thought of using the real one at much lower cost. Intersection may be oversized, but it is not cheap.

Heliograph 4, 10/4/93. Glimmung: Dave Langford. Kipple: John Grant. Conapt: Dave Clements, Chris Suslowicz, Bob Webber. Pink Beam: Amanda Baker, Caroline Mullän, Pam Wells. Vugs: Giulia de Cesare, Alison Scott.