Cirrus@Austlit

'The Aussie Spec Fic Snapshot has taken place three times over the past eight years. In 2005, Ben Peek spent a frantic week interviewing 43 people in the Australian spec fic scene, and since then, it’s grown every time, now taking a team of interviewers working together to accomplish! In the lead up to Continuum 8 in Melbourne, this team, consisting of Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, Helen Merrick, Ian Mond, Jason Nahrung, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Tehani Wessely and Sean Wright, blogged interviews for Snapshot 2012.'

Source: Australian SF Snapshot Project.

'This story is told as a series of reports and interviews. It is an investigation into a company called Planetary Conversions which specializes in 'bloodless' invasions. The investigation is carried out on behalf of the Department of Auditing and Accountability. It is chiefly concerned with a project run by Planetary Conversions on behalf of the Doctor on Trycos 3; the planet has descended into a state of barbarism which threatens to wipe out more than two billion inhabitants. The Doctor offered up mining rights in the northern hemisphere for a valuable mineral called Jethryk in return for the deployment of a pacifying drug that would make the inhabitants susceptible to re-education by teams of automatons. When the directors of Planetary Conversions realised that the best deposits of Jethryk were on the rest of the planet they decided to portray the Doctor as a terrorist and have him assassinated. This would nullify the contract and allow the company to assume control of the planet for themselves. The Doctor survived the assassination attempt and put his own retaliation in place: extracting a coded password from the subconscious mind of a low level employee and gassing the board of directors with their own pacification drug, thus causing them to confess their own activities and effectively putting themselves out of business.'

[The Doctor is the Seventh Doctor.]

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip28.htm). Sighted 20/5/11

'The Doctor has been helping a group of revolutionaries fight against the repressive regime of their planet. His allies have been killed and he is taken prisoner and driven to the Malamud, who is waiting for him. The Malamud leads the Doctor to House Osmo, a palatial structure that contains hundreds of thousands of books. In the course of their conversation it is revealed that everyone on the planet has a book which accurately foretells the events of their lives. The revolution which he has been aiding is an attempt by the Doctor to free the people from this apparent tyranny: it is seen as blasphemy to attempt to break from the path predicted by the books. The Malamud explains that every inhabitant, building, garden or visitor to the planet has their own book, but even the busiest only generate around twenty five volumes or so, and the record was thirty-four. Then the Doctor's books began to arrive, appearing overnight as if from nowhere. No-one on the planet knows the origins of the books. It gradually dawns on the Doctor that House Osmo is solely the collection devoted to his life and is told that it extends to a massive 750,000 volumes. By their count the Malamud and the archivist of the library think that the Doctor is over 20,000 years old, a point which the Doctor does not contradict. Instead he retorts that the volumes merely recount his adventures and do not foreshadow them. The Malamud disagrees and says that the final volume arrived three years ago. The Doctor scans this volume and sees that it predicts he will be dead within two days.'

[The Doctor is the Sixth Doctor.]

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip26.htm). Sighted 20/5/11

'It is 1915 and Edward Grainger is fighting a bigger boy and winning. Unbeknown to him he is being filmed by a cameraman from the future making a biopic, Edward Grainger: A Man for Peace. The cameraman, Jack Holbine, is told that he is actually meant to be shooting a sequence on Edward's father, Lawrence. Jack is disappointed because Captain Lawrence Grainger is overweight and ageing, a man with an honorary rank due to his political position. Jack transports himself to Grainger's cabin aboard The Queen Elizabeth, holographically disguises himself as a general and instructs him to go to Cape Helles on a mission. Grainger is suitably scared, this is one of the most dangerous battlefields of the First World War. Jack surrounds Grainger with invisible cameras for his beach landing. Despite coming under heavy fire Grainger makes the beach and kills two Turks, though he is horrified by the dead ANZAC soldiers that litter the beach. Jack is pleased with the footage he is getting but realises he will need to edit out the bullets bouncing off Grainger's force field. Jack's intention was to film Grainger in a prison camp but now, believing God is on his side, Grainger is marauding across the landscape slaughtering Turks. At this point the Doctor appears, offering Grainger a jelly baby. He identifies the force field around Grainger then causes Jack and his cameras to become visible. Jack has no option but to knock Grainger out. In the ensuing conversation it becomes apparent that the Doctor is unaware of the activities of the time-active film makers. He is, however tracking a temporal tsunami created by the misplacement of Lawrence Grainger. The aftershocks of this (which occur first) disable Grainger's force field and he is shot in the leg before being taken prisoner. Using his holographic projector Jack impersonates the Turk, Captain Kemal, at the Doctor's suggestion. Just as he is about to retrieve Grainger from the Turks Jack's disguise fails but he is rescued from being killed when the Doctor explodes all of the cameras. Jack explains that he has to rescue Grainger; if he dies Jack will have to replace him for the rest of his life so that Edward will become the peacemaker. The Doctor contradicts him, saying that Lawrence Grainger had a leg amputated, became an alcoholic, never saw his son again and died in 1924. He implores Jack to leave before the temporal tsunami hits, explaining that its effects are totally unpredictable but Jack decides to carry Grainger to safety. He returns to the war as the Australian soldier, and war hero, Jack Holbine. This is who he always was.'

[The Doctor is the Fourth Doctor.]

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip20.htm). Sighted 20/5/11

'Bev wakes up one morning to find that most of the Collection has disappeared, and it's Jason who points out that the only items that remain are the ones that weren't quantum-tagged by the Chester Industries inventory drones. While Jason puts about a temporary cover story, Bev contacts Lord Chester and is invited to a meeting of the Collectors' Guild, obsessives who have taken offence to the fact that Braxiatel entrusted his Collection to someone who doesn't place collecting above all other priorities. The Guild's chairman, Ori, gives Bev an ultimatum: the Guild also have a mission to taste the flesh of rare and exotic creatures, and unless Bev delivers one of the Quire to the Guild so they can slaughter and eat him or her, she'll never see the stolen artefacts again. Bev returns to the Collection, but Dorso realises that she's plotting something and confronts her, using specialised hands with stinging tentacles to get her point across. Bev and Dorso come up with an alternative plan, and Bev returns to the Guild with one of Dorso's hands, claiming that she cut it off and has brought it to bargain with. Ori agrees to return 30 percent of the Collection in exchange for the hand, but once the Collectors have sampled it, he reveals that they've already inoculated themselves against all known poisons in the Universe. He admits that they had no intention of going through with the deal; rather, they intend to capture the rest of the Quire, eat some of them and sell the others on the open market. But Bev then reminds the Collectors that she's from 2,000 years in the future, and that Dorso is from even further ahead -- and they've developed a semi-sentient type of poison that even the Guild isn't protected against. Bev causes two of the Collectors to explode from the inside out simply by speaking a command to the poison now in their bodies, and orders the terrified Ori to return the stolen artefacts within six hours. He does so -- but Bev hasn't forgiven him for what he did, and once the Collection is back in place, Bev opens her communicator and speaks a single word. She also hasn't forgotten how Dorso got the drop on her, and thus has the Collection's security system adjusted to alert her if any of the Quire go near the dangerous specialised hands again...'

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/bs_n16.htm). Sighted: 19/5/11

'Irving Braxiatel is a human scientist with two children, Ben and Caroline -- until one night, his alien doppelganger steps out of a mirror to deliver a warning. This version of history is not real, and the human Irving must destroy it in order to prevent the timelines from fracturing further. Irving is unwilling to destroy everything that he knows, but Caroline overhears their conversation, understands that what Braxiatel has said is true, and kills herself so that her father won't have anything to live for. Irving doesn't tell his wife and son the real reason for Caroline's suicide, and they blame him for her death and for his subsequently leaving them. Eight years later, Irving approaches Ben to try to make amends, but Ben refuses to believe his outlandish story and storms off to join the Coalition and fight the Fifth Axis. Eventually, he meets his father again while on a mission to destroy an Axis laboratory, but Irving claims that he hasn't been working for the Axis -- he built a time ring and travelled here to see his son one last time. Ben still doesn't believe him, at least not until he turns to leave the laboratory and finds that nothing else exists any more; Irving was telling the truth, and he's detonated his reality bomb. Irving claims that none of this was real anyway, but Ben knows that if he really felt that way, he wouldn't have bothered trying to reconcile with his son. Nevertheless, he holds his father's hand as the end comes.

'Meanwhile, the "real" Braxiatel has been shifting between realities, trying to find a way to stop the fracture from spreading. While attending Benny and Doggles' wedding in one version of history, he learns from Benny that Doggles feels that the technology implanted in his body by the Fifth Axis somehow drove him to create the history machine. Braxiatel thus realises what must be done. The detonation of the reality bombs in the neighbouring timelines slows the spread and creates a temporary stable pocket of Time in the gardens, giving Braxiatel just enough time to explain what's gone wrong. The Collection's new defences are an extension of Braxiatel's time machine; in effect, the entire Collection has been removed from space and time and exists in its own pocket universe, and the history machine is interacting with that bubble of history, causing its reality to fracture. The effect is spreading out into the real Universe; already, the Martian Hass has become human. They have only minutes, maybe less, to stop the spread before this stable moment passes and all of space and time is destroyed -- and the quickest way to do that is to sever the machine's link with the technology in Doggles' body. Doggles panics and begs for his life; although Braxiatel insists that Doggles will survive when history resets itself, Doggles knows that he isn't really so sure. However, the assembled guests are starting remember fragments of the different timelines they've shuffled through, and are too terrified of letting this happen again to protest; Benny in particular remembers committing mass slaughter as a soldier, and being told that her son Peter was dead, and despite her reluctance she stands by and does nothing as Hass drags Doggles to the stage and Braxiatel cuts off the screaming Cahlian's head...'

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/bs_n14.htm). Sighted: 19/5/11

'The Eighth Doctor detects a temporal anomaly on Armstrong's World, centred around the manor house of Baron Denton de Kay Leigh -- and involving one of his previous selves. While Charley investigates the Baron, the Doctor sets off in search of his earlier incarnation and finds the Seventh Doctor investigating a temporal anomaly that has destroyed the party worlds of the Van Koll system. The Baron has found an Ikoran artefact that enables him to strip people of their memories and personalities; he has been using it for his own amusement, and when Charley is captured, he rewrites her personality into that of a mercenary named Venetia and sends her to steal the TARDIS tracker that the Seventh Doctor had given to Hex. When Charley touches the tracker, however, her old memories begin to return, and she follows the tracker back to the TARDIS -- thus leading the Baron's henchmen to it. Fascinated, the Baron decides to reduce Charley to the basic components of her self and learn all about her; however, he's unaware that she is a living temporal anomaly, and that placing her in the chair will cause the temporal distortion that destroys the Van Koll system. The Seventh Doctor has discovered the truth, and has turned the Baron's henchmen to his side, using a combination of bribery and threats; he now leaves the Eighth Doctor to lead them to the Baron's manor house and destroy the artefact. However, the Eighth Doctor refuses to bully the henchmen into submission, and he releases them from the Baron's punishment collars and gives them the opportunity to help him of their free will. They decide to do so, and while they are fighting the Baron's robot guards, the Seventh Doctor slips into the manor house and frees Charley. The Baron captures the Seventh Doctor, places him in the artefact and devours his memories -- but the Doctor's mind is more powerful than he'd expected, and by taking it into himself, the Baron gives the Doctor the ability to control him. The Doctor uses the artefact to reconstitute himself, forces the Baron to sit in the artefact himself, and rewrites his personality and memories to make him a genial old man who genuinely cares for the colony he rules. When the Eighth Doctor arrives, his previous self has destroyed the artefact, and Charley is just recovering -- but while the Eighth Doctor is grateful that Charley has been spared, he's aware that her underlying condition will only grow worse...'

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip16.htm). Sighted: 19/5/11