Christmas Term 2002 - Event Reports

This term has seen many weird and wonderful events. Here are a resume of a couple of the slightly stranger events ICSF has brought you. Remember keep eye on our website for more intesting events in the term to come.

Magic Sealed Deck Tournament

Postponed from the previous week, Thursday 11th November saw the Magic sealed deck tournament finally played out.

For anyone not familiar with Magic: The Gathering, it is a highly addictive collectable card game (CCG) where each player has a deck of selected cards, which represent evil creatures, vicious spells and land, and with these decks the player attempt to defeat all his/her opponents. A sealed deck tournament requires each player to bring along an unopened pack of random cards (hence sealed) and then to construct a deck from those cards with which to play. This tries to ensure that everyone begins on an even footing.

Due to the postponement and the resultant clash with the Ton trip the number of players competing was well below expectations. The eventual winner was Alex Robinson, with a total of 15 points, beating Eemeli into second, who finished with 12. All in all it was a highly enjoyable evening of magic, people and cookies!

Next Term may see a return of the Magic Sealed Deck Tournament. If you are interested, keep an eye on your e-mail or on our website for details.

Simon Matthews

Visit to the Darwin Centre

As a SF society, unspeakable horrors in glass jars have a certain institutional appeal to us. Now the Natural History Museum has removed many of these from its shelves in modern times (something to do with small children and nightmares... no stamina, kids nowadays...). So it was with great interest, not to mention a mad scientist's glee that we heard about the new Darwin Centre, where the NHM has now put its 'wet collections' on display.

In order to get to the Darwin Centre, you have to head down a corridor that is painted industrial grey with yellow handrails. It is the sort of corridor that screams for flashing orange lights, and possibly a squad of colonial marines being pursued by the ravenous Xenomorphs... an auspicious start. Once we were there, things got even better: glass cases with weird and less weird animals (Norwegian Rat - found dead on Darwin Centre building site...), and even a fullyfledged interactive multi-media presentation. Someone in the audience was asking some very intelligent leading questions... it had to be a plant! Indeed, crack undercover ICSF operative Matt Kaplan was the questioner. In his official capacity, he managed to get us a special tour...

Imagine a *really* *big* mini-bar made of grey steel. Now imagine that instead of spirits, each bottle contains a fish, or a sloth, or carp or anchovies or orangutans... Now imagine the MDH filled with these. You start to get the idea: the collections rooms are big. They are also chilly, as temperature is kept below the flash point of alcohol, so the specimens don't go up in a fireball (aw...). We were then taken down into the basement, past the specimen preperation rooms, where our guide described in great detail and with great relish how easily you could hide a murder in the Darwin Centre: Put the body in the boxes with the flesh-eating beetles until only the bones are left, cover in dust, put in a box and mark "Anthropology Collection - Origin unknown"...

Finally, we were taken through the so-called autopsy room - say what you like, stainless steel tables in the basement suggest alien conspiracies - and into the large specimen room. The shark's head and some of the deep-sea fish were especially cool. By now, the alcohol fumes were overpowering even the most hardened drinkers, so we headed up to the fresh air.

The trip was good fun, and we can recommend the Darwin Centre - go on the free tour as well for behind-the-scenes fun. And if you go, see if you can't sneak a Cthutulu into one of the jars...

Jakob Whitfield