By all accounts, January is when gym membership peaks as many of us struggle to regain our pre-festive season waist lines! While there are no gym facilities at the BIS, I’d like to think that membership of the Society offers a different type of work-out, namely exercise for the mind. A full and energetic detox was provided by the recent symposium on Olaf Stapledon and by last week’s lecture on the life and work of Arthur C. Clarke.
An opportunity for further cognitive exercise is provided by this month’s newsletter, which contains an interview with one of science fiction’s most respected authors, Gregory Benford.
We also hope this month’s issue will get your cerebral pulse racing with a virtual trip to Mars, courtesy of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Bruce Pennington.
The notice board is particularly packed this month, reflecting a busy time in the BIS events calendar and further activity in the regions.
We are keen to start a letters page in the newsletter, so please let us have feedback on an Odyssey-related themes, or suggestions for future articles.
Lastly, to really stretch the muscles of the mind, we have assembled all the interviews we have done with leading writers of speculative fiction into one compendium entitled Cosmic Castaways, available only to BIS members through the Society’s website.
Enjoy the work-out!
The Odyssey Team: Mark Stewart, Adrian Mann, John Silvester, Martin Postranecky and Mel Hacker.
