The Ennis Science Fiction Society owes its existence to the fact that as four of us were sitting in Mrs. Lucas' salubrious establishment in a drunken haze with the conversation veering wildly between subjects, we realised that three of us were, heretofore unbeknownst to each other, rabid science fiction fans...
By the time we were thrown out,(about twenty past one, eat your heart out), we were already organising ClareCon, never mind just the Society!
Now with its core membership well into double figures, (OK, so we count it in binary, and sure why shouldn't we?) and coming into it's fourth year of existence, it's time to let the world know of it!
The town of Ennis is a very special place these days, having been chosen by Telecom Eireann to be it's Information Age Town , meaning that it is now a test bed for every new development in electronic communication, from free voice mail to subsidised PCs being offered to households reprtedly for as little as £200. Amongst other things, all business's are to recieve ISDN connections and be fitted out for SmartCard e-commerce, while an optic-fibre ring is being laid around the town to cater for the huge increase in on-line traffic as each household is expected to be on-line soon, and each of the many schools have received up to 60 free PCs each so that all children from 6 years old onwards will receive intensive computer training. At least £15 million is earmarked already for this project!
As I live outside Ennis and won't benefit from any of this, I reckon it's the least that anyone would need to compensate them for having to live there... Sour grapes? I'm sure I don't know what you mean...
Ennis was chosen as a
result of a nationwide competition, with over 60 towns in the
running, but what most people don't realise, and what Telecom are
now refusing to admit, is that it was the presence of the Ennis
Science Fiction Society that finally swung the decision our way,
and of course the good vibes from MacCools Cybercafe, home of the MegaToastie (over
served)!
Indeed, although it has been privately admitted that without ESFS, the prize would have gone elsewhere, I prefer not to give credence to reports of a Killarney 'hitlist' of ESFS members, and intend to dismiss the hate mail with the Castlebar postmarks as the work of a crank. Though two of us having had our modems hit by 'lightning' at the same time seems more than coincidence, resulting in my own PC being burnt out for the second time in 8 months, I still believe the rumoured powers of the 'Ping of Death' to be still largely theoretical. And we can take no responsibility whatsoever for the subsequent unhappy events following the incident during the Clonmel entrants uplink to Mir. That computer was going to fail anyway...
Now with the untimely and sad demise of the Dublin-based Irish Science Fiction Association, it looks as if the ESFS may well be the largest SF fan organisation in the country outside of the funded University associations of Trinity College et al. We can only state categorically and for the very last time, that we most emphatically did NOT arrange that particular hit, the ISFA died of natural causes...
On a much more serious note, however, events that have forced the ESFS to assume a much lower than natural profile, have now culminated in our recent press release whereby we have revealed for the first time that it is to the ESFS alone that the Supreme Authority of the 1921 Dáil has now devolved through an intricate series of splits, assassinations, sell-outs, and the price of a pint to a certain Chucky R. Law who accosted us outside the off-licence last week...
More soon...
So e-mail ESFS with any old shite that comes into your head, or out of it!
Last revised: May 19, 1998.