Welcome again to Ibn Qirtaiba. This issue well and truly straddles the ever-present distinction between literary and media SF; which is one of my main aims for both the magazine and the SF SIG. SF is composed of so many sub-genres that it seems impossible to keep up with all angles of it, and consequently many fans tend to restrict themselves to one of these two areas or the other (and sometimes only one area within these, such as gaming or Star Trek). One of the ways in which I hope IQ can counteract this tendency is through the regular Worlds of Fandom column of the magazine. I encourage readers to use this column to share their specialist areas of fandom with the rest of us. Any SIG members who would like to organise events with other members in their area to the same end are also encouraged to do so, by writing to me for the addresses of any members in their area. (If you would rather I didn't disclose your address in this way, please write and tell me).
Before moving on to a feature on everybody's favourite science fiction TV show Doctor Who, we begin with a much abridged version of Frank Herbert's series of six Dune novels. Admittedly, if you haven't read any of them, this summary probably won't make too much sense to you! Moreover, it doesn't even begin to give an idea of the intricate cultural and ecological detail with which its author endowed the series. But if you haven't read the books and this summary excites your interest, you could probably do worse than starting with the first, third, fourth and fifth in the series (Dune, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, and Heretics of Dune).
If you haven't sent in an entry for last issue's competition yet, you only have another month or two to do so. The winning entry will appear in the next issue, and its author will receive the SF paperback, magazine or comic of their choice (list a few options in case I can't find (or afford!) your first preference). For those who missed the last issue, the question was: Write an SF short-short story of 200 words or less ending with the sentence "As the door closed in front of them, they knew it would be a long time before they needed to worry about that". Send entries to the editorial address below. Contributions of articles, letters and artwork are more than welcome at the same address also!
Synopsis of the Dune
Series
Jessica Atreides, a Bene Gesserit has a male child, contravening her instructions to produce a daughter. Nevertheless, the result, Paul, is the Kwisatz Haderach, the Bene Gesserit superman aimed for by the breeding programme. House Atreides gains control of Arrakis, a desert planet and source of the addictive spice Melange, but Harkonnen troops are there waiting to regain control. They take over using a traitor, Yueh, but Yueh gives Duke Leto a poison tooth to use to kill Baron Harkonnen. This tails. Paul and Jessica are kidnapped, but they escape with water-conserving stillsuits left by Yueh. They find the Fremen, fulfilling a Fremen prophecy in which Paul becomes their leader Muad' Dib. Paul leads them to overthrow the Harkonnens and stop Spice production. Jessica takes the Water of Life, turning her and her unborn child, Alia, into Reverend Mothers, with memory-lives of all their predecessors inside them. Paul takes the Water and gains the power to see into the future. The Emperor comes to Arrakis, but the Fremen overthrow him and Paul becomes the new Emperor by marrying his daughter. Later, with Paul as Emperor and Alia a goddess, a plot to kill him is devised. A ghola (clone) is made of Duncan Idaho, a friend of the old Duke, but he is programmed to kill Paul. The plotters set off a bomb which blinds Paul, but he can still see with his mind. Chani, his concubine, dies giving birth to twins. The ghola Duncan Idaho regains his old identity after overcoming his programming, and the plotters say they will do the same to Chani - if Paul relinquishes his throne. He refuses, but has now truly lost his sight, and gives himself up to the desert, as the Fremen law requires.
Later, Alia is the ruler as Jessica returns to Arrakis. The Preacher keeps causing a stir at the capital Arrakeen; many believe him to be Paul Muad'Dib. Ghanima and Leto II, Paul's children, embark on the "Golden Path" plan, to stop increasing water-richness from the killing off the sandworms, and therefore the spice. Alia becomes possessed with the memory-life of Baron Harkonnen. On Salusus Secondus, Farad'n is the new leader. Unknown to him, his mother has sent tigers to kill Leto and Ghanima. They escape, but, in accordance with the Golden Path, Ghanima hypnotises herself into believing that Leto was killed. She can remember the truth on hearing a catch phrase. She is captured by Alia, and Leto rides a worm to legendary Jacurutu, but he is captured by Gurney Halleck to be tested for abomination. Gurney also has orders to kill Leto, not from Jessica, as he believes, but from Alia. Idaho kidnaps Jessica and takes her to Farad'n. Farad'n displaces his mother, and Jessica teaches him the Bene Gesserit way, turning him into an Atreides. Leto escapes from his training, and, having taken the spice essence, is now prescient, like his father. In a spice trance, he covers himself with sand trout, which gives him superhuman strength and a living stillsuit, but it also changes his structure so he is no longer human, and will live 4000 years. Alia arranges a marriage between Farad'n and Ghanima, after which Ghanima will kill him. Leto finds the Preacher, who is revealed as Paul Muad'Dib, still alive. Duncan provokes Stilgar to kill him, so Stilgar, Ghanima and others flee into the desert. Alia sends men to find him and capture Ghanima. The Preacher is stabbed after condemning Alia. As Farad'n is ready to be wed, Leto and Ghanima (who has regained her memory) come in, and after Alia's abomination takes over, Leto kills her with his new powers. Leto is now Emperor, Farad'n (who gives the former his troops) is his scribe.
Much later, sand worms are becoming rare due to the increasing moisture engineered by Leto, who has mutated into a half-worm. He rules the universe and controls the spice with an iron hand. The daughter of his aide Moneo Atreides, Siona, leads a rebellion against him. The last of many gholas of Duncan Idaho attempts to kill him, but fails and is killed by Leto. The new ghola ordered by Leto has no memories since his original incarnation died. Nayla is a spy for Leto in Siona's group of rebels, whom Leto wants to mate with Duncan. Discovering that the last Duncan's assassination attempt was planned by the Ixian ambassador who supplied him, Leto replaces Duncan with Hwi Noree, a perfect woman created to seduce Leto and lead him to ruin. Face Dancers (who can change their appearance) launch an attack on the city. Leto marries Hwi, and Duncan, who also loves Hwi but can't have her because of Leto, rebels against him. The Bene Gesserit unsuccessfully attempt to kill Leto with spice essence. Leto takes Siona into the desert and gives her the spice essence so that she will become one of his "Fish Speaker" army and, like her father, understand Leto's Golden Path (which is simply the survival of the human race). However she still wants to kill him. Duncan, Siona and Nayla (whom Leto has made take a vow of obedience to Siona) plan to kill Leto as his royal cart passes over a bridge to his wedding. This succeeds. As he dies in the water, sand trout go out from his body to renew the spice cycle.
Much later, Dune (now known as Rakis) is desert again. The Bene Gesserit are raising another Duncan Idaho ghola on Gammu, after the others were assassinated by the Tleilaxu who made them. He has not regained him old memories yet, and has been changed in some unknown way by the Tleilaxu. Sheeana, a girl who can command sandworms, is taken by Rakian priests into their care. The Honoured Matres, who cultivate sexual powers (and who formed after the Scattering caused by Leto's Golden Path) are returning. Teg, a retired commander, is training the ghola. The Tleilaxu attack Sheeana and Duncan, but the former is rescued by the Bene Gesserit, and the latter, with Teg and Lucilla, escapes to an old Harkonnen no-chamber where he regains his memories.
Lucilla's task is to "imprint" Duncan sexually to control him, but he won't let her. Reverend Mother Odrade and Sheeana ride a worm to where Odrade discovers Leto's spice hoard with a message to the Bene Gesserit. Teg, the ghola and Lucilla are ambushed leaving the no-chamber, but all but Teg escape. Odrade forges an alliance between the Bene Gesserit and the Bene Tleilax. Teg's interrogation by Honoured Matres sends him into a trance, whereby he attains superhuman speed and semi-prescience, and escapes. Lucilla planned to meet up with Duncan on Gammu, but instead meets him after both of them are captured by Honoured Matres. Honoured Matre Murbella tries to imprint Duncan, but he imprints her too- this is what the Tleilaxu had secretly engineered in him, to use on Lucilla. He escapes. Teg is taken to Honoured Matre HQ, but kills them all in his state of super-speed. He gets a force of former colleagues to capture a no-ship to take a worm and Duncan to the Bene Gesserit planet of Chapter House. After they, Sheeana and Odrade (whom Teg predicted were coming by worm) leave, Rakis is destroyed by the Honoured Matres in an attempt to kill Duncan.
Later, a ghola of Teg is made by the Bene Gesserit, as Odrade (his daughter) is Mother Superior. Duncan and Murbella are sexually addicted to each other and must stay in the no-ship. Honoured Matres are taking over the universe, but Chapter House is yet undiscovered. It is being turned into a desert planet to house the sandworms. A new Scattering is planned to save the Bene Gesserit from extinction. The Honoured Matres have a secret weapon they can only use once. Lucilla is in their hands, but is eventually let off at Gammu, where she Shares with Rebecca, a Jewish Reverend Mother. Since a whole Bene Gesserit planet was destroyed by the Honoured Matres, only these two retain their memory lives. Lucilla is killed by Honoured Matres and Gammu is destroyed, but Rebecca hides in a no-shelter underground. Odrade decides to talk with the Honoured Matres at Junction about a surrender, while in reality attacking them after a feint at Gammu. The Teg ghola regains his memories after imprintation by Sheeana, and Murbella becomes a Reverend Mother. She, Sheeana, Odrade and others Share for fear of death while on the Gammu feint/Junction attack, for which purpose they are dropped off at Junction. Rebecca is rescued from Gammu as it is attacked, thus saving the lost memory-lives. The Honoured Matre weapon is used as Junction is attacked, killing many, but Murbella kills the Great Honoured Matre, assuming that position herself, and also assuming the position of Mother Superior after Odrade dies. She takes the Honoured Matre Supreme Council to Chapter House to re-educate them in Bene Gesserit ways as she was, and to integrate the two factions. As some Bene Gesserit don't like this, they, Duncan, Sheeana and Teg lift off in the no-ship to begin a new life.
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Doctor Who's 30th anniversary falls on the 23rd of November this year. Its first episode was transmitted back in 1963 on the day after President Kennedy's assassination, and it is now by far the longest running science fiction TV series of all time. For those, if any, who are unfamiliar with the series, it revolves around the following main elements:
The Doctor: A Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. Time Lords are an elite group of Gallifreyans who have access to the secrets of time travel, and the ability to achieve great age through the process of regeneration (both abilities discovered by the ancient founding father of the Time Lords, Rassilon). The Doctor is over 900 and has regenerated into seven different bodies. Each had a somewhat different character, while retaining the Doctor's essential curiosity, eccentricity and sense of justice.
The TARDIS: The Doctor's time/space machine. He "borrowed" this from dry dock on Gallifrey when he decided to become a renegade from his own planet. Hence, it never really works very well. It is dimensionally transcendental (bigger inside than out), and can configure its outside dimension to blend in with its environment. However the Doctor's got stuck in the shape of a police box when it first landed in 20th century London. Given the dangers of time travel (which the Time Lords discovered the hard way), only renegades such as the Doctor actually use TARDISs to interfere in other planets' affairs.
The Companions: The Doctor has travelled with 29 companions (although usually only one at a time) in his travels through space and time. The first was his grand-daughter, Susan, when he fled from his own planet. Whether she was in fact his grand-daughter, and if so, what became of the rest of his family, why he fled from Gallifrey, and what is life was like before he did so, are just a few of the mysteries which have never been revealed in the course of the series. Although his companions have included a couple of robots, a Time Lady, a Brigadier and numerous humanoid aliens, most have been from Earth in some period of its history, and female.
The Villains: Include the Master (another renegade Time
Lord), the Rani (his female equivalent), the Cybermen (who
inhabited Earth's twin planet before it was wrenched out of orbit
and they were forced to cyberneticise themselves), the Daleks
(mutated life forms who can only survive inside metal killing
machines), Omega (a Time Lord who lost his life helping Rassilon
discover the secrets of time travel, and planned revenge from
another dimension), and the Sea Devils and Silurians (who
inhabited Earth before humans and preserved themselves in
suspended animation pending the Earth's predicted collision with
the body which would become its moon). 
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The street was a river of glittering black. A spectrum of shimmering neon mocked the serenely glowing moon as it weaved swirls of colour through the mist of rain. But above the blatant blare of car horns and the thundery torrent of rain, another more alien sound could be heard. A strange rumbling noise, trumpeting through the night as if to announce its presence to the world, then dying away until it seemed never to have been there at all. It was accompanied by the materialisation of a blue police telephone box, out of which an eccentrically dressed man stepped. Surveying his surroundings, he mouthed with some distaste the word "Earth", and retreated into the box to fetch an umbrella.
The Doctor had scarcely begun to explore his surroundings in what seemed like 20th century England, when he paused involuntarily in front of a television rental shop. He soon became transfixed by what he saw on the many screens. He hurried inside the shop and turned up the volume on one of the sets. As the images in front of him eventually faded to black and a starfield took their place, he muttered incredulously, "That's impossible. Absolutely impossible."
A man tapped him on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, sir, but we're closing now. You'll have to leave."
"What is this programme?", the Doctor demanded of the man, his mind whirling. "Do you know?" The shopkeeper, who had spent the last ten minutes pondering how to approach this strange man watching one of his TV sets, was unsure how to respond to this. "Oh, it's not perfect," the Doctor continued. Their character looks nothing like me, and he has a child called Ace. But a police box, bigger inside than out, that travels through time and space? Who makes this programme?"
"Er... the BBC, I think," the shopkeeper replied uneasily.
"Impossible", the Doctor repeated. The only explanation he could arrive at was that the repairs he had been effecting to the TARDIS had cause it to materialise in a parallel dimension. The Doctor had previously encountered people in parallel dimensions who were very different from other selves. But surely real characters in one universe couldn't be fictional in another...
"May I use your telephone?", the Doctor suddenly asked as he strode wards the back of the shop.
"No!", the confused shopkeeper objected. "I told you, we're closing - you'll have to go!"
"Much obliged", the Doctor called back absently as he flicked through the telephone book.
After much telephoning on the Doctor's part, and much frustration on the shopkeeper's, the Doctor had found the person he had been searching for.
"Sydney Newman?", the Doctor asked.
"Yes", the man on the other end replied.
"The creator of Doctor Who?"
"Yes", the man replied a little more irritably.
"I have to speak to you about how you created the character of the Doctor."
"Who is this?"
"I'm the Doctor. But you know that, obviously. You must have met me before. Or perhaps somebody told you about me, and you decided to write a television series about me."
"I'm sorry," Sydney Newman replied wearily, "if you want an interview you'll have to make an appointment with my agent. I can't speak to everyone, I'm afraid."
"No," the Doctor interjected, "you don't understand. I must know exactly when and how you found out about the Doctor."
"I didn't find out about him, I made him up, OK? Now, I've got to go."
"Made him up?" The Doctor hadn't been expecting this. His mind spinning, the Doctor continued to think aloud. "But the psychic energy required to induce such an accurate representation of me in your mind must have been immense. You could only have experienced it as a flash of inspiration - or a dream, perhaps?"
"A dream, yes," the writer blurted out in spite of himself. Caught up in the memory, he continued. "I was working late at night, and I must have dozed off. I woke up suddenly - I thought I had heard a loud noise - and there was this strange dream still going around in my head."
"But how did it get into your head?", the Doctor took over from him. "The sleeping mind of a writer is as receptive as any, but even so, the psychic energy of my mind could never have induced your dream. The only time when I would have access to that kind of energy is... during regeneration."
The solution fell into place in the Doctor's mind. He had often wondered why almost every humanoid culture believed that one's life flashes before one's eyes at the moment of death. "At some time in this Earth's recent past," he intoned, "my equivalent died in the process of regeneration. The energy released at the moment of my death turned my dying thoughts into the inspiration for the creation of a fictional character based on myself."
There was silence on both ends of the line. Then, with a new urgency in his voice, the Doctor implored Mr Newman, "You must tell me the exact time when this happened."
The Doctor stepped out of the police box into the night, shining a torch onto the wall of a house behind him. It rested on a small brass plate bearing the inscription "S. Newman". A few minutes ago, but almost thirty years later, this man had named 11:00 that night as the time when he had conceived of the Doctor's character. It was 10:30. The Doctor scanned his surroundings and set out towards a brightly lit pub.
Even after over seven centuries of life, death was a stranger whom the Doctor did not wish to meet. He had decided that only he could save his counterpart in this parallel universe from extinction. He would search out his other self, and rescue him from the fate which the Doctor had predicted. The Doctor hoped that the strength of the inspiration meant that his death would occur close to the house.
It was 10:40, and the Doctor had found no sign of his other self. He set back in the other direction. The Doctor had an uncanny feeling that there was something important on the edge of his consciousness that he had not realised. He decided that it was only the knowledge that what he was doing was strictly forbidden by the Time Lords. But the petty regulations of his stagnant race meant little to him now, when, in a way, his own life was at stake. It was 10:50, and the streets seemed deserted. The Doctor wondered what on earth he could have been doing here when he died.
At 10:55, still having had no success, the Doctor began to walk back to the house. Then the thought that had been troubling him emerged fully and terribly into his mind. He stopped in the middle of the road. "I'm searching for myself," he said tonelessly, "in this dimension, at approximately this point in time and space." At that moment the Doctor knew that he could stop looking. He knew exactly where he was.
The blare of a truck horn pierced the silence, like a fanfare portending his doom. Too late, the Doctor tried to run. The truck skidded to an abrupt halt and the driver's door flew open. The tail lights of the truck spilled a pool of red light around the Doctor's face, making it seem as though it were somehow becoming fluid, and reforming. But when the driver reached the Doctor's crushed body it lay still on the ground, the face impassive and lifeless.
At that moment in the house behind the TARDIS, a man lay
slumped over his desk. Suddenly he woke and sat up straight. With
the light of inspiration in his eyes, Sydney Newman picked up his
pen and began to write. 
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Fandom is big. So big, that keeping up with every angle of it is a tough, time-consuming and expensive job. Here are some ideas on how to be in on the in, while still retaining sufficient funds for things like food and shelter:
1. Comics - Are of course no longer the kind of things to be ashamed of buying, but the kind of things to be ashamed of not buying. However, for those immersed in other areas of the genre, it is possible to survive on a bare minimum of half a dozen (look in your local specialty comics shop):
2. Role Playing Games - Are best played rather than bought unless you are really into them. If you insist on ignoring this advice:
3. Golden Age SF - So many SF books are coming out nowadays that it is a mind-blowing task just to keep up with, let alone read, them. But before that task can even be attempted, there are a bare minimum of SF classics which it is mandatory for every fan to own a copy of: