Newsletter

As a kid I dreamed of a science fiction future bright and shiny and now… well, I guess we are living it.

Looking at some of the things we take for granted now – it would have blown my mind as a child. Now… it’s, dare I say it, almost mundane. We can watch TV on the train from our smartphones. I can video call family and friends from all over the world and from the same train, and see and hear them live. We have electric cars. I have a coffee machine I can start and stop from the other side of the world. I can turn my home heating up from my phone. And the biggest bit of tech I love: I can run StarShipSofa!

I can talk (and have now for ten years!) about science fiction, and you can listen. Just how cool is that? You hear me from wherever you are, whenever you want! I have friends who listen from the other side of the world… some of them listen the moment a show goes out and email me straight away to say they loved it!

And.. there are many who listen. Our George R R Martin show has hit 22 thousand people who havedirectly downloaded it and listened to it. 22 thousand people! That’s staggering.

And.. that particular show was covered on YouTube by someone who has nearly 100 thousand subscribers!

Ok, I’m getting carried away here – I need to go lie down!

But… yeah it’s the tech – that is a big part of what still gets me excited.

And if there’s an app I can use to help me with DoW, then I’m all over it. Apps are the shining light of the tech world. I love them. Here are a few that I really love:

Evernote – one of the best places now where I store my digital Life.

Pocket – I love Pocket. This is where I keep all the really cool and intresting posts I want to read later. Here’s the thing: I could use Evernote, but I always believe an app should have a single purpose. And Pocket has this covered. I collect all the web posts by people who write up super cool articles and read them later in a “lovely to read” experience. Brilliant app.

Flipboard – This is the app that finds all those super cool articles on the web and puts them in a nice to read format for me to look at. I could read them all here but I like to save them to Pocket to read them later.

Quip – Oh I love Quip. This is a very basic Word kind of app. Actually, the word “basic” is wrong here. It’s so much better than Word. Again, it does one job, and it does it just great. Everyone should have Quip on their phone.

Timely – best clock app I have ever found.

Audible – goes without saying… just brilliant.

Sonos – I love my Sonos, and the app is brilliant.

And… get ready.. here is my pick for Best App Ever. I use it to capture all my ideas. If it wasn’t for this app I wouldn’t be able to do half the stuff I do for District of Wonders. Sure, I’d think about it, but then I’d forget it and then I’d be back to square one. The app is called…………………………….er………………… well, it’s called………………. how to put this…. lets try again……….. the best app out there by far is…………er…. a note pad and pen!

Afraid so. Bugger… that can’t be right can it?

Yes, it is.

With all this tech in the world, all these apps, and my best thing to capture ideas is a simple, real world, hard copy pen and paper.

Simply 14cm by 9cm, of 12 sheets of lined white paper, wrapped in brown card dust jacket. Oh and don’t forget the biro. These little notebooks are, just as we say, the bees-knees. I have tried all apps that say they are the best at collecting your thoughts and ideas. Trust me – there isn’t one better than my notepad and pen. It beats all tech hands down.

And… I think there is something really central to my being when I get an idea and I can jot it down in my notepad. I use it for all ideas. Nothing is sectioned or filed. I have an idea, I jot it down. Simple. Shopping lists will sit next to a Partreon idea, Anniversary poem for Mrs. StarShipSofa sits next to an author’s name that I’ve just discovered.

It’s true. Everything just gets thrown in very random-like with no specific organising going on. As long as it’s “wrote down” then I can relax and move on, ready for the next spark of genius to hit!

There’s a true story there, actually… It was our wedding anniversary in December, this December in fact. I remember the time – it was 2am in the middle of the night, a week before the special day, and I’m lying there in bed. My mind is wandering all over… skipping and jumping from one idea to another. I tell myself to get to sleep. Then it hits me. Out of some recess at the back of my mind… I have just thought of a poem! A poem already fully-fledged and done, ready to put on a card. It’s there right at the front of my mind, bright and shining. This is a gift! I have to remember it! It’s right there… Oh, it’s perfect… I have to remember it. It’s perfect. It’s only a little one but… it’s there. It’s complete. I have it…….. just there and….

(You think I’m going to forget it don’t you? hell, no. I have my notepad).

I grab the little paper miracle and stagger out of the pitch black bedroom, muttering I need to go to the toilet. Flick the light on in the bathroom and capture the poem. It’s like a little moth… fleeting in the ether… And I have caught it! I’ve caught the thing!

Scribbled it down in the notepad and wobbled back to bed content in the thought that I had just earned so many ‘brownie points’. And just to prove it – here is the little ditty, captured on the 27th December 2015.

(You can use it if you like – give a little wink to your partner and say you just thought of it.)

Melanie you are the woman of my dreams,

Who was… back then…

Who is now…

And who will be in the future…

Well yes, granted I’m no Shakespeare… but I got it! And, like I say, I was walking around all day ten foot tall after I handed Mel her anniversary card.

Capture those ideas… life is too short to let then slip away!

Speak soon!

As ever,

Tony

I wanted to talk about this subject today because it’s something that is close to my heart, and a number of you out there have been and are affected by it.

But first, I hope you’ll come with me on a little bit of a journey through our District of Wonders.

Have you ever wondered what the District of Wonders actually looks like? For me, the District of Wonders is just a simple tent seen from the outside – picture the one in Harry Potter, its door flapping gently in the breeze allowing glimpses of the wonders within. Peeking inside that tent – that’s where the District of Wonders is for me.

And what is actually in there? Oh the wonders of it, to be sure! Aliens, demons, rockets, monsters, goblins… all of them and more are right there inside, in the District of Wonders.

I also picture Clive Barker’s magical carpet in Weaveworld and all those truly bizarre wonders. Barker was one of the first writers that brought those universes of just rich delight to my imagination. For me, still to this day, Weaveworld is a space where dreams live.

I hope that the District of Wonders is a place like that for you.

But, looking around the District of Wonders, our three podcasts and websites, our “place” is so much more than a just the stories and articles. The way this all started… the way we have grown as a community… the District of Wonders is about us, just as much as it is about the stories and the shows. The dreamers are as important as the dream. No, more important. The District of Wonders is us.

That is the reason… you are the reason, I have carried on running the shows. That’s why I care so much to keep them going. For ten years now, the most frequent response I get to the shows, special events, projects – all of it – has always been that StarShipSofa or Tales to Terrify or Far Fetched Fables has helped people… you… through difficult times in their lives.

Hand on heart, if the District of Wonders helps even one person in a dark time, then it has achieved everything and more than I could ever hope for.

I will tell you a bit of my own story, here. As some of you may know, StarShipSofa has carried me through some difficult times in my own life.

I’ve found working on StarShipSofa to be a great antidote to anxiety – that nasty stuff that has been wrapped around me since…ooooh well… since about 1992. When that took hold… it was only when I started StarShipSofa that I found any real relief.

Throwing myself full into work I love really does cast out a lot of my hang-ups. Sure I can hear it -the anxiety – laughing at me from time to time, scraping at the door, trying to escape and taunt and tease me, but most days I have it locked deep in a basement somewhere here in the District of Wonders.

I know the anxiety is there, but I mostly ignore it. I find, for me, that is the best treatment for anxiety – ignore it. Know it’s there, live with it, but carry on with your life. Sure, from time to time I find it’s there, but I’ve learned how it works and become used to its tricks and taunts. I now live life to the full and, for the most part, it can’t touch me. That’s thanks in a big way to the District of Wonders.

Thinking of how The District of Wonders has really come through for me… You may remember there was the time I fell at work and smashed my skull… quite badly, actually. Put me off work for three months. All this time… my recovery… played out over StarShipSofa. Again, our community’s response was truly life changing for me. If it hadn’t been for all of you, my life would have honestly been so very much different from what it is now.

If this resonates for you… if you live with any of this… be it anxiety or whatever it is… I want you to know that the District of Wonders is here for you. Know that all you have to do is move aside the tent door and come in. Come in… lose yourself in the wonders, the stories… and get in and be a part of the community that’s there.

In the short ten years I’ve been doing this, I’ve heard from so many of you as you negotiate your own bumps in the road of life. Sometimes it’s easy for you, sometimes not so… and again I hope the District can help in it’s own small way.

And I mean this from the bottom of my heart – The District of Wonders will be here for you. We are going to bring out a new ‘thing’ in 2016, all aimed at supporting us when we’re going through difficult times. It might manifest as a blog, or a podcast, maybe just a newsletter, or maybe all three. I would hate to know you are out there suffering with your own physical or mental illness and we didn’t know, listen, or help. Sure there’s no professional medical experience here… but I have been to my own cliffs of despair like so many of us have, and we can share what we have seen and felt, and learned.

What will this new place be? Lets call it the Sanctuary for now. This will be a part of the District of Wonders – a place where respite is offered and support is shared. Yes… there are other places you can get support and discussion like this out there, but the Sanctuary will be our own little haven. Your emails over the years have brought me to this place. It’s there. We need to look after our own.

As we build up the Sanctuary, you may just pop by for a quick pick-me-up, grab information from a blog post, listen to a show every now and then – but anything you find that helps when you are feeling low… that’s what the Sanctuary will be here for. No one in the District of Wonders should feel alone in dark times.

Loneliness is a real plague in this day and age, and I want the District of Wonders to be a place where no one needs to feel alone.

Let me know what you think. If you have a skill that might help us build up the Sanctuary in the District of Wonders, or if you’ve been through the dark yourself at some point in your life – would you want to step into the Sanctuary and help? Please, let us know. If you want to support the District financially – boy that helps as well!

Tony

Hello
Ok, so I’m going to get this off my chest. I’m going to spill the beans on my childhood. Give you a little glimpse into how I grew up and what I got up to.

The first thing you need to know… books and me don’t go that far back. I was twenty before I read my first book!

When I interview writers it’s nearly always the case that they were reading before they could tie their shoelaces. Well, not for me. School and books and reading were so far away from what I wanted to do as a child. All I wanted to do was skip and whoop with delight – as we called it – ‘playing out’.

I love Dylan Thomas poem Fern Hill and the first line Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs. That was my life to some extent – playing out, swimming in lakes, climbing, running.

Now I’m painting this as a little too idyllic… reality was we were ‘naughty’. Best way to describe me and my friends would be ‘little rips’. Another would be ‘bloody nuisances’. Yeah… maybe that is a better description. We were forever getting into trouble.

It was what you did as a child – it was a given that you were going to be trouble. Not trouble like fighting or stealing, but enough to have people chase us all over the place.

And fires! Oh fires were the magic that drew us all out into the open. We set so many things alight when we were young. You name it… corn fields, sheds, straw bails, other kids camps – all were targets for us. Fires really were the essential playthings of my childhood.

Throughout the year, all our fire lighting was training for the ‘big day’. The one day where lighting fires in the UK was ok. I’m talking about Guy Fawkes night on the 5th of November. This was our day!

It was a given that you build your bonfire the biggest you possibly could the week leading up to Guy Fawkes night, and it was also given that you would try to burn down everyone else’s bonfires before the glorious 5th! We would always have two kids guarding our fire against rogue ‘starters’, and the rest of us would be away hunting through the estates for other fires to burn.

The sheer excitement I felt then scrabbling over garden fences is coming back to me now. Yes… it was wrong but it was also… so exhilarating. All fires were game. It mattered not if it was a big gang fire like our own, a public display fire, or even a little fire in someone’s garden. If our pile was standing up and ready, we would, armed with our bottles and cans of petrol, go marauding for fires to start. If we hit lucky and set a hold of another villages fire or gang fire, we had to be especially vigilant of our own in case of reprisals.

I will always remember one fire we lit. Looking back it was silly me and, trust me, very dangerous – but the thrill then outweighed the risks. It was a week before Guy Fawkes Night, and we had traveled far, much further than usual. We’d taken our bikes, and if memory serves we had gone about seven or eight miles to our target. We had discussed at school that we would hit this particular fire. It was big. The gang was big. The town it was in was big!

Now, when I say gangs here it is nothing like what we now think of as gang culture. This was just groups of kids growing up in the countryside. I think we were (and my memory of this is sketchy)… I believe there must have been ten of us that night. It was around 7pm – an ideal time for the thrills to begin.

Now… this is no word of a lie: our little ‘thing’ was to totally demolish an opponents fire. Our mission was not a success if the pile was still even partially standing – if it wasn’t completely destroyed, we had failed.

One of the ways we would make sure the fire was destroyed – really destroyed – was to blow it up as well as burn it to the ground. Blowing it up involved lighting it up with petrol, but also putting in a small gas camping bottle. When the fire took hold, the gas bottle would explode and blow the fire out!

I remember this fire we’d picked for that night’s target was huge. We didn’t know any of the kids who’d built it… we were, as I mentioned, quite a long way from home. And this was a big fire.. really big. So we needed a *big* gas bottle!

I know… I know… As I type this now at the age of forty-nine I’m slightly staggered at the level of danger we put ourselves in, and others. Honestly… now that I’m writing it down I’m having a hard time putting this in here!

Anyways… we had to get over a large area of waste ground to get at their pile. Luckily no one was guarding the fire, and it was a clean sprint to the target.

I remember to this day the size of the gas bottle – it was so big it was made out of iron and not aluminium! The flames shot into the air as we all throw our bottles of petrol on. I’m not sure why but anyways setting it a light was easy, and no one from their gang came.

We scrabbled back to a safe distance to watch her ‘go up’. And up she went! When it did blow, it was literally like a small atomic bomb going off. I can still see the mushroom cloud going up with the explosion… It was a big fire when we got there… and then that big gas bottle… The explosion was so huge it put out a couple of house windows in the area! The fire was completely destroyed, and all the night sky was awash with tiny fire embers. They flickered to earth like tiny shooting stars.

It really was one of those eerie moments deafened by silence. I think we were all stunned by what had happened. It really was a spectacular sight…

But, we all knew this was one explosion too much for us. At that age, we had never for one minute contemplated the risks. I’m really not sure if we’d have listened if someone had tried to tell us before that our little game was dangerous, and that one of us could have easily been killed by flying shrapnel that night. But, once that fire went ‘up’, something changed in all of us.

We heard later that it had blow a three foot deep hole in the ground! The sight of all those amber specs of fire filling and floating in the sky has stayed with me all these years. I can even recall the concussion of it hitting my chest as the explosion ripped through the fire.

It was the last stunt for us, but the memories have never left. We never did go back and start any more fires. It was the last time our little gang would peddle into the night looking for rival piles to burn. Yes… we still had our own fire each year, but even that was somewhat staid by what we had done that night.

It really was such a silly stupid thing to do and now, if I was to find out my son was doing the same thing… Well… I would bring a whole load of trouble down on him. Funny though… I feel when I was a kid – we really knew how to live our little lives to the full. Now it’s very rare my youngest son goes out. The lure of Xbox has a bigger pull on them these days.

Still… I have the memories. Yes it was a silly thing to do, really silly but… how easy and carefree our lives were back then.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs.

Would I do it all over again?

You bet!

There you go. A little trip down the misbegotten adventures of my youth. It’s great being able to share it with you here in the District of Wonders. I still get excited when there’s a fire these days – it’s still there within me, the thrill and excitement of those carefree days. They were good times, if not terribly wise, and I can still get the thrill of the fire and no one worries unless I burn the burgers on the barbie!

Take care,

Tony

Hello,

This is Tony from StarShipSofa and the District of Wonders Network. Have you forgotten me? I hope not. Listen… I want to say two things. The first one is a huge thank you. Somewhere in the past you gave me a donation to keep StarShipSofa running. That show and Tales To Terrify and Far Fetched Fables would not be here today if it weren’t for you. Period. No question about it. The wheel falls off at least four times a year as I try my best to keep the shows going. From the bottom of my heart… I can not thank you enough. But I’ll try – THANK YOU!

In 2016 StarShipSofa will have been going TEN years – how cool is that? Again… I’m under no illusion you made this possible – you turned my hobby into something that has given so many people a little bit of escapism in their lives and I truly thank you for that. Did I mention – ten years :0) I always want StarShipSofa and Tales and Far Fetched to be FREE – that is my no one goal…

The second thing is I want to ask you if you might be kind enough to consider our Patreon Page. This is now my way of trying to raise funds to try and keep StarShipSofa and the other two shows going. I want to keep StarShipSofa and the District of Wonders network going another ten years and ten years after that and hell… ten more after that. We have already hit the first Milestone – we keep the shows running throughout 2016 – that in itself is totally amazing.

So I really hope you can help… it doesn’t have to be much… you can do as little as $1 a month to as much as $30 a month. A little monthly donation just means the shows ticks over and we can just focus on bringing great free science fiction, horror and fantasy to you each and every week. Always :0)

Please make 2016 the year we hit our goals and give something back to all those writers who donated their stories over these ten years.

And… if you did pop over to our Patreon page – you get to see all of us! Warts and all! There’s a few now who help run the network and it’s down to me to make sure the wolves stay away fro the Network’s door :0)

Again…. no word of a lie… if it wasn’t for you – honestly I wouldn’t be here asking to last another ten years… :0) So again… thank you thank you THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart!

As ever,

Tony

PS… please by all means if I’m the last person you want in your inbox… I won’t be offended if you unsubscribe. Gutted but not offended :0)

District of Wonders

Hello,

Yes… I bet that got you wondering. But we are going naked – that bit is true. We are now naked with our newsletters. What did you think I meant? No more images going forward 2016 with the newsletters. I want to concentrate on content and not just a flowery magazine style feel. We were spending loads of time tweaking images and layout and that’s not what I want… I want to provide you with great information and content. So let’s pretend there’s sprigs of holly pasted around this email and you can hear very subtle sleigh bells in the background! Imagination is what the District of Wonders is all about!

Speaking of: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from ALL of us at the District of Wonders. I hope you will have a great time over the festive season. No word of a lie… we have had the Christmas decorations up since the 11th November at District HQ, I kid you not! May I also say a massive thank you to all who have signed up to the newsletter lately? It means a lot. Thank you all.

A little technical news now. We are in the middle of transitioning our newsletter from Mailchimp to Convertkit. I’ll be asking you some questions now and going forward in order to make sure you receive the articles and resources that are most helpful to you. I’ll be writing and delivering material about few different topics, and we have eBooks and courses developed that are geared toward certain interests. To make sure you get just the material you want, I’m now inviting you now to join this list.

This is what it’s about:

All of you out there who want to grow your audience (for any creative ventures – Writing, Podcasts, Kickstarter campaigns, etc) and Make Money from your content, CLICK THIS LINK to join this Newsletter. Here’s what it will get you: Whether you are a writer, blogger, podcaster, Kickstarter or Patreon client, etc., I will be sharing my experience of how to build an engaged audience that want to support your work, and invest in your products and campaigns. I’ve been doing this for ten years and have had over 7 million downloads of my shows in that time – not to mention building an amazing supportive community who have put their time, dollars, blood, sweat, and tears into loads of successful projects and events. This is your chance to find out how. If you’re a writer, I have loads of advice for getting out of the slush pile and onto an editor’s desk. We will have guest editors here sharing valuable tips on what you can do to improve your chances to get your work published. Plus, you will be invited into the Submissions Desk Club House. This is a place where you can chat with fellow writers, and share your experiences of the highs and lows of marketing your stories. And that’s just the beginning! My goal is to make this “new” newsletter your gateway to loads of information and material that will really help you on your way in this world of online engagement. Please please please click on the link to be on this email list… and let us know what you think!

So… on with the show – enjoy.

Tony

Rcommended Book: Roboteers by Alex Lamb
Human embryos were “edited” in China this year, and the scientific world is up in arms about it. CRISPR and Cas9 technologies allow DNA to be manipulated in a fashion analogous to the way script-kiddies download and stitch together blocks of code to create new applications; for example, creating designer micro pets. This was controversial, but prepared no-one for the furore which broke out in 2015 over the possible creation of viable human embryos in Chinese laboratories. Disputes over the nature of “purity” of human beings will be more multi-faceted than the simpler pro-life/pro-choice debates of the last fifty years, but probably just as heated. How will different societies respond?
Alex Lamb showed uncanny timing when he released his Hard SF novel Roboteer under the tagline, “One species. One Universe. Two Sides.” He projects the dilemmas that genetech will create into our futures. The background to the book is a familiar conflict: Mother Earth wants her errant children to come back to her arms. Momma knows best and the kids have been so terribly naughty. Lamb’s future Earth is ruled by a tyrannical zealot who employs science, religion and warfare to bring former colonies to heel. Unlike the Earthers, the colonials adapt to their environs with genetic and cybernetic mods to make them faster, stronger, tougher and networked. They are heavily outnumbered, and the real story begins when they find a sublimed gardener civilisation and its deadly weapons.
Colonial Roboteer, Will Kuno-Monet and his people will be OK because the sublimed want to prune only those civilisations who do not wish to improve and grow. Does Will owe his oppressors any protection from the judgement of the sublimed?
Lamb’s writing is solid, and the range of character types allows his novel to comfortably fall into the category of Space Opera. Although the book is Hard SF, the science leans towards “conveniently magical.” An interesting feature of the story is the descriptions of ships as complex leviathans with only tiny pockets of crew space. Military buffs with an eye to the Cold War will recognise weapons platforms where the crew were annoying biological afterthoughts. Similarly, the book takes us to conceivable scenarios for the effects of automation on economies and societies. Ultimately, the book can be recommended for the typical Sofanaut as it’s chock-full of compelling baddies, light years of space chases and buckets of derring-do. In particular, ‘Roboteers’ would find a home in the Chrimbo stocking of any Space Opera or Military SF fan.

Please Help Us Keep The Shows Running

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From Tales to Terrify: The Most Horrible X-mas Ever” – Invader Zim

by Scott Silk

This holiday season, while many are snuggling up to watch Charlie Brown attempt to decorate an impotent evergreen, I will be enjoying my own favorite animated X-mas special which portrays a slightly darker vision of holiday cheer. I’m referring, of course, to “The Most Horrible X-mas Ever” episode of the Invader Zim television series.

In 2001, when Invader Zim first aired, I was already a fan of his more adult-oriented comic books like “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac” and “Squee!,” and I remember being somewhat awed that Vasquez had managed to maintain a style mostly unsuitable for children when putting together the series for the Nickelodeon network. The series is centered around alien invader Zim and his failed attempts to conquer Earth. To this end, he disguises his malfunctioning robot sidekick as a green dog and himself as a green-skinned, human schoolchild. He is recognized and often thwarted by his paranormal-minded schoolmate, Dib.

If you’ve never been exposed to the work of Jhonen Vasquez, it’s best described as dark comedic horror. The settings are frequently nightmare worlds which are parodies of our own, and the people who populate Vasquez’s worlds, especially the children, are frequently portrayed as revolting creatures. In Invader Zim, for example, the fast food “shakes” at MacMeaties are made entirely of nauseatingly processed meats, an obvious jab at McDonald’s french fries containing inexplicable cow flavorings, but the populous appears to love nothing more.

The scene of the X-mas special opens on Mr. Sludgy, the robotic snowman, 2 million years in the future. He’s telling a group of small, hideous children gathered around a fire the story of The Most Horrible X-mas Ever. That holiday season, Zim hatched a plan to impersonate Santa Claus in order to convince the entire population of Earth to build a space teleporter capable of sending all humans to their doom. One human asks, “Will being teleported to our doom be fun and X-masy?” Of course it will.

SPOILER ALERT As usual, Zim’s technology turns on him, and the Santa suit he created as a disguise gains a mind of it’s own and transforms into a horrifying X-mas monster. Thankfully, Dib, with the help of his sister and father, is able to subdue the suit and save X-mas by shooting Santa into space. Back in the future with Mr. Sludgy, Santa apparently lives on. Not in the hearts and minds of the children, but in space, where he rests and gains power in order to return to Earth for another X-mas attack.
COMMUNITY – JOIN IN THE FUN
I received another message by chronorobopigeon from 2005, back when I started StarShipSofa. See if you can make any sense of it, ’cause I’m b*ggered if I can!:

Dear Tony,
I can’t believe I’ve finally seen the last ever Star Wars movie – and it’s left me with so many more questions than I had when I saw the first one. Why does ObiWan Kenobi wear Jedi Uniform on Tatooine when he’s trying to hide and look after young Luke? Why doesn’t anyone recognise C3PO and R2D2? What is the point of the Jedi Academy if you can learn to be a Jedi in a week in a swamp? Why would Vader (or Palpatine?) let there be 3 Sith if they managed to turn Luke to the Dark Side? Someone would get killed! What happened to R2D2’s rockets? How did C3PO get built in the first place? How can Leia remember her “Kind but Sad” mum? Did George Lucas actually watch Eps 4 5 and 6 before making 1 2 and 3??? Well Tony, when you read this in ten years time, hopefully Star Wars will have faded from public consciousness along with the bad taste in my mouth. I hope they’re still making Science Fiction movies in the future. What’s the blockbuster this year? I hope it’s not some godawful rubbish from Disney.

Regards

Craig Napier, Gold Coast Australia, 12 Dec 2005.

And there you have it – all wrapped up for 2015. We will be taking a break over the festive holiday. The District of Wonders Newsletter will be back in January 2016. So… however you celebrate this time of year, have a great time over the holidays. Let me know what you get up to – I’d love to hear from you.

See you in 2016! Tony