Life is always about perceptions. Every day colors your view of the world you knew before, and what you've learned.
     September 11, 2001 certainly was no different.
     I'd fumbled the snooze button on my clock radio, shutting down the alarm in hopes that the 6-minute lull would translate into some deep restful sleep. But the LA radio station went to a news bulletin. Sleep-fogged, my brain still caught the basic story.  A plane had crashed into one of the two towers of the World Trade Center. "Wow!" I thought, "That's just like the time the US Army bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in the 40s." I crawled out of bed and shambled into the living room, clicking on the TV.  After making a cup of tea, I sat down intending to watch a few minutes.
     They were showing the tower that had been hit. I was impressed with how much smoke was pouring out of the building. And here my first perception came to life. Amazing how a small plane could cause all that damage and smoke. Of course it was a small plane. One of those 4-passenger prop jobs. Someone with only a couple of dozen hours of solo stick time. Yeah, they could really screw up and slam into a big building.
     But I'd forgotten the time I'd walked through the lobby of the WTC North Tower, the sense of weight, of imposing mass, the ever so slight fear of being under something that couldn't possibly stand up. Forgotten the size of the thing. That was critical. Had I remembered the true size of the building, I would have known that no small plane could have possibly started such a large fire and done so much damage. 
     Twenty years in the military, six working with a trained bomb sniffing police dog, five pushing papers with an Artillery Battalion and just over eight as an Intelligence Analyst, I learned things about explosions and their effects on people and things. When I saw the explosion, the sky covering sheets and walls of flame spurting out from the building, old facts and training suddenly fought for first place in my thoughts. There was information missing. This wasn't right. An accident rarely goes this badly unless it's a military jet with weapons.
     About then the voices of the TV anchors settled into understandable words, instead of noises competing with my own thoughts. 
     "My God, that was another jet!"
     "It just flew into the second tower!"
     "Rewind the video, rewind the video!"
     Another jet? What? I didn't see it. NBC had the lower quarter of the screen covered with advertising. On the far right of the screen was the Channel 4 logo. There was another jet? Huh?
     "Hurry -- rewind it."
     "Did you see it -- oh my God!"
     "Its still burning -- get that video on!"
     The TV image froze. The banners disappeared. The reporter was saying something and a dark outline flew onto the screen from my right hand side. I could see the two huge engines, since the plane was banked onto its port side. It just moved across the screen, from right to left. A brief moment and then it disappeared behind the smoking tower. A pause, quicker than the onset of pain from a match, faster than the tingle of the first hint of true love.
     And on the far left side of the building, the flare of hell fires.
     "The World Trade Center is under attack!" That's what one of the talking heads is yelling. 
     Can't be.  That's something you'd see in a really bad movie. This is a lot of things, but it's not a bad movie. If it were, my set would be showing something else. Anything else. The remote is almost broken by my thumbing as I'm slamming through all the channels. Something else. Even a commercial for Monday Night Football. But no, the same two buildings are leaking smoke. Planes don't attack buildings. Aliens from space do. I could believe it was a UFO more easily than what I was watching. 
     Now, there's just a pillar of smoke rising up, polluting the sky. I should feel something. Some emotion. And I do.
     The number of times I've felt it is less than five. That shifting of your soul that always seems to start in your belly and then rush all through you. Electric in speed, warm in an unhealthy way, bringing me as close to those ancestors who lived in caves as I'll ever get. Fear as plain and raw as we ever feel it.
     I'd just watched the start of an attack on America. I'd just watched thousands of people die.  What the Hell is going on?
     There aren't words to describe anything about what we've just seen. For all our growth and civilization, the Human Race is incapable of conveying emotions like these in words. 
     What would these people have said when Mount Vesuvius exploded above them? How can anything noble and important be said walking through the killing fields of Cambodia?
     If professional reporters are reduced to fumbling for the right words, what about someone like me? What about the millions of us who sat and stared at the television? We also are struck mute. But now, I understand the emotions of a lone reporter who one night in Lakehurst, New Jersey watched an airship burn and crash. "Oh the Humanity!" he cried. 
     Now, I not only understand his emotions, I share them. And his tears.

The United States Naval Academy Foundation has announced that Vincent L. Pisacane Ph. D. will fill the first endowed chair in aerospace engineering at the Naval Academy. The Robert A. Heinlein Chair in Aerospace Engineering was established with an anonymous gift of $2.6 million in honor of the renowned science fiction author and graduate of the Class of 1929.
     Dr. Pisacane comes to the Naval Academy from the Space Department of the Applied Physics Laboratory of John Hopkins, where he has been a staff member since 1962. In this position, Dr. Pisacane did  fundamental work in astronautical engineering and development of space instrumentation, and small and large spacecraft. His involvement as Associate Director of the Maryland Space Grant Consortium gave him the opportunity to help direct an undergraduate satellite development program. In addition, Dr. Pisacane teaches masters level courses in spacecraft systems at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Whiting School of Engineering and courses in space system design and engineering at the Applied Technology Institute. He most recently served as the Director of the Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in Medicine (IASTM); Assistant JHU/APL Director for Research and Exploratory Development; and Assistant JHU/APL Director for Biomedical Programs.   

The Ignotus awards recognizing outstanding Spanish achievements in the field of fantasy and science fiction from the year 2000 were presented Saturday, September 29, 2001 in Zaragoza (Spain) Hispacon. Recognized were:   
     Best novel: Nuxlum, by José Antonio Suárez (Espiral)
     Best novella: "Rax," by Eduardo Vaquerizo  (Espiral)
     Best short story: "La canica en la palmera", by Rafael Marín (Artifex 2E)
     Best Anthology: Besos de alacrán y otros relatos, by León Arsenal (Metrópolis Milenio)
     Best related book: Paradojas: ciencia en la ciencia ficción, by Miquel Barceló (Equipo Sirius)
     Best Article:"Viajando hacia las estrellas, naves estelares en la CF", by Cristóbal Pérez-Castejón (BEM WEB) and "¡Bester! ¡Bester!", by Juan Manuel Santiago (Gigamesh)
     Best Illustration: Cover from Snow Crash, by Juan Miguel Aguilera and Paco Roca (Gigamesh).
     Best Audiovisual : El corazón del guerrero, by Daniel Monzón (film)
     Best Poetic:  Desert
     Best Magazine: Gigamesh, Alejo Cuervo Editor.
     Best Foreign Novel: Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson (Gigamesh)
     Best foreign short story: "Entra un soldado, después otro", "Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another" by Robert Silverberg (Gigamesh)
     Best Web site : Bibliópolis, crítica en la Red (http://www.bibliopolis.org"),  Luis G. Prado Ed.

It's official:  "Jedi Knight" is ON the list of religions for the 2001UK census. According to the BBC, a campaign to get people to write the entry on their census forms has succeeded in the term being included on the list of religions, alongside Church of England, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu.
     Sufficient numbers of people wrote the entry in for it to be allocated its own code for the census processing team to use -- but officials from the Office of National Statistics are keen to point out that just because Jedi Knight has been given its own code, that does not confer on it the status of official recognition.
     "We are not defining what a religion or a faith might be," a spokeswoman said. "We are recognizing what some may have entered on their census form and ensuring that our coding framework will cater for it."
     Other religions which are included on the list, alongside the better known cases, are the Church of Free Love, Wiccan, Divine Lightmission, and Coleraine Christian Centre. Also on the list:  Druidism, Satanism, Free thinker, Celtic Pagan.
     Shortly before the census last April, an e-mail was circulated in the U. K. stating that if 10,000 people put Jedi on the census form, it would become a "fully recognized and legal religion." A similar thing had previously happened in New Zealand, when citizens were led to believe they needed 8,000 signatures to make Jedi an official religion.
     It is not yet clear how many people will have written Jedi on their form, as the counting process is still going on. Results are to be published in Autumn 2002.

Charlotte in 2004's leader Irv Koch reports the group will bid for the 2005 NASFiC, led by a new chair. "It's all the Directors, Tracy Kremer, Mark Blackman, and Kathleen Meyer (awaiting her acceptance) as Chair. Based on what I understood when I phoned her, she's going to get a nationwide batch of BNFs or whatever for that committee."
     Koch expects to resign as chair and director of the bid's nonprofit corporation, SECFI. "That was due to my having only signed up, when I started this deal, for one project. However, the recent crash knocked me out financially so I've got to get a full time job and won't have time anymore. Probably at the IRS...."
     Charlotte will keep its Kitty Hawk mascot and probably use "The Kitty Pounces Back" as its slogan

Will Factsheet 5 ride again? Yes, says an authoritative e-mail (coff, coff) from "a new editorial collective" that expects to have the first issue out by the end of the year, and appear quarterly thereafter.
     If you have a little gray in your beard, you're old enough to remember that Mike Gunderloy's Factsheet 5 once printed hundreds of reviews of independent and unusual "alternative" publications. The new incarnation of Factsheet 5 will carry reviews, and also "informative articles on zine culture, independent publishing, lively columns, interviews with self-publishers, and an extensive news section."
     If you're interested in having your zine reviewed, send a copy to Factsheet 5, P.O. Box 4660, Arlington, VA 22204. The editors suggest that you "enclose a separate card clearly stating the sample price and subscription price. Also print the ordering address, email address/web site, the check endorsement name, and if you regularly review zines, books, videos, comics, or records. You can also tell us if you want submissions, if you require an age statement, if you regularly print reader letters,  if you offer free prisoner subs, and the page count for that issue. Feel free to state your preference on the card."
     A one-year subscription (4 issues) is $15.00 ($25.00 for first-class delivery).
     They also have a web page:
     www.factsheet5.com

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