TC10 was available from Fantasy Inn, Top 10 and Psychotronic Videos in London, Trick or Treat (Alun Fairburn’s mail order weird stuff company), and Videodrom and Michael Dericks in Germany. It was not available from Forbidden Planet, as they took phenomenally long to stump up the money for TC9. I’ve since heard they went near-bust in October, which explains some of the delay, but otherwise, well…

WHY IT TOOK FORBIDDEN PLANET 141 DAYS TO PAY FOR TC9.

1. “Your invoice has been passed to the Accounts department”
2. “You’ve just missed this Friday’s cheque run”
3. “We do our cheque run on a Thursday and you’ve just missed it”
4. “I’m afraid the person dealing with it doesn’t work here any more”
5. “If you don’t hear from me, the money’ll be in the post”
   [I didn’t, it wasn’t]
6. “I’ll just find the invoice and call you back”
7. At 3:30 – “Call back at 4 o’clock”
8. At 4:00 – “He’s gone home for the day”

Narrow escape of the past quarter. Went to the King’s Head theatre to see an adaption of Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’. However, a cock-up in Time Out meant it should have been the previous Saturday, and I came within inches of having to sit through an evening of feminist comedy. Fortunately it was “wimmen only”, as I found out when I tried to buy a ticket. I’ve never been so grateful for reverse sexism, as it would probably have been as enjoyable as root canal work without anaesthetic.

Apologies to Dean Heathcote and Tony Lee for failing to credit them last issue for the ‘Violent Anime’ and ‘Aliens III’ pieces respectively. Thanks this issue got to Spencer Hickman, Dan Pydynkowski, Stefan Kwiatkowski, Anthony Cawood, Steven Cremin, Alun Fairburn, Lino (who’s got to buy a copy now!), Andy Waller, Peter J. Evans, Tom Edge, Tim & Karen, Rick Baker, Dean Heathcote, Brian Bower, Jason Parker, Steve Moss, Kevin Haney, Trevor Brown and Ken Miller who gets the TC Cool Dude award this issue, for co-organising the show at the Scala (one of the best days I’ve had in a long time), fixing me a chat with Jorg & Mannfred, lending me his cassette recorder and generally being a nifty guy.

This issue is brought to you under severe pressures of time, thanks to the approach of Christmas, leading to a maelstrom of holidays, Xmas parties and other, just as vital, activities. Any errors you may see are a) my fault and b) not surprising in the slightest.

Finally, subscribers should check the envelope (yep, the one you just threw away) – due to a hard-disk error, I lost the subs list and had to recreate it from a backup and two issues worth of letters! Any complaints, let me know…