Dear Jules,

Thank you kindly for the use of your time machine — Contemporary Society was quite the jaunt. I must say, there’s nothing better than a double-entendre, and by god did Seizure deliver with the launch of Sci-Fi at the New South Wales Writers’ Centre Speculative Fiction Festival. Aside from the impeccably designed cover art gracing every veritable surface, aside from the glorious weather and veranda sunset launch, I held excellent company; Literary Minded‘s Angela Meyer, Book to the Future‘s Michelle McLaren (those bloggers you so love, Jules! Yes, the very ones!) and crime fiction author PM Newton, whose oration of her foray into the Science Fiction genre launched the magazine. (In the name of thematically frightening futuristic foresight, you will note that in the above sentence I’ve suggested the blogs own these people. Orwell would be proud of my genre-appropriate attempt hyperbolic bleakness, don’t you think?)

The festive eating was both peculiar and delicious. Each guest was handed a pinstripe lollybag-esque ration portion containing the following items – I have hand-drawn the contents of the bag from memory as follows.

Oh Jules, I lie — I had someone run around and freeze moments in time inside picture frames so I could paste memory-bits inside this correspondence, though my free-drawing skills are rather improving. Allow me to synthesise the contents of the bag. Firstly, I withdrew from my bag a test tube containing a pale yellow liquid, and floating among the champagne-colour were what appeared to be frog eggs. The party called it, ‘soma-pop’ — wouldn’t Aldous Huxley be chuffed? I removed the lid and sipped the contents. Tomato water, Jules! A little on the cucumber-side, but there amongst the gentle sweetness stood a vague acidity. The eggs were in fact a tapioca-like substance. Quite delicious. Next, I poured the packet of loose yellow and red fragments — fittingly named phlogiston — onto my tounge. My mouth went mad; a pineapple sweetness accented by a popping sensation. Otherwise unheard of, I’d say.

Penultimately, I tried the brick of jelly labelled Soylent Green. I admit, I was a little frightened by the sheer thickness of the object, but it smelt rather unoffensive so I took a bite. The gel was soft and sweet — in fact, very like the desserts we enjoyed on that sabbatical to Thailand 1974. I was very fond of this particular ration, so I had a memory made.

Finally I tried the square silver packet called a protien pill. It was meaty and disc-like. I think it may have been chicken. Odd, really. When speaking of this meat-packet protein pill, the party continually referred to a Roger Ram-Jet. Though understanding the invention of the jet, I did not know of a jet that was a ram called Roger. I eventually resgined myself to the understanding that I had created an Adam from the limbs of many, ergo, a Roger from the limbs of creatures and technologies could surely not have been far off.

The Editor in Chief, Alice, did say she was terribly sorry not to have you there, too. I did explain you were spending another five weeks in a balloon for a sequel novel you were slapping together. We agreed you should have abandoned your efforts in the name of such a large, sunny party. I sipped an extra few blue drinks to compensate for your absence.

I have also, as you might say, ‘CCed’ the Seizure Editors into this little rave and shot it through the temporalescope.

Best wishes, Jules. I’ve left the time machine with Douglas Adams because he’s getting the Tardis serviced and I noted there were a few jolts while travelling over the latter end of the Twentieth Century. I admit I took a route over the collapse of the USSR this time, but usually when I go that way I’m as oblivious as Gorbachev.

Mary