Every year Edinburgh University Science Fiction and Fantasy Society used to produce a year book filled mostly with questionnaires answered by members and hangers on. Here are my answers for the last two year books printed, plus those for 1994-95, which never made it into book form, but which I was so hacked off by having done and then not seeing used that I thought I'd put them here anyway. Click on the links to find clarifications and changes - or remain in blissful ignorance if you prefer, and remember, everything I wrote was true - if a little twisted...

Yearbook 1992-93

What is your name?

Now you know I can't tell you that.

What is your quest?

I seek sexual enlightenment and an unrivalled collection of zodiac mugs.

What is your favourite colour?

Purple

What is your hair and eye colour?

Purple

Are you left or right handed or do you use pseudopods?

Yes

What Mister Man or Little Miss do you most resemble?

Little Miss That's-Ms-To-You-Fuckhead.

What sort of animal would you like to be?

A human being (for a change).

Why did you resign?

In order to spend less time with my family.

What is the nature of your eye defect?

A regrettable blind spot concerning SFSoc questionnaire compilers, especially when driving along dark roads late at night.

What is your favourite slogan?

Preserve the generation gap.

If you were a major deity, what would be your worshippers' emblem?

A nutmeg.

What are you the patron saint of?

Abandoned cups of coffee

If you opened your front door to find "Sapphire and Steel" standing there, what would you do?

Say "No thanks, I'm a pagan."

Which majority would you most like to persecute and how?

Married people, with a plague of fitted kitchens with evil intentions.

What is the question you would least like to be asked? Answer it.

Are you telling the truth? Seldom, if ever.

What is your favourite joke?

Parliamentary democracy.

Who to your certain knowledge, is in secret control of the world?

I have no idea. It merely pleases me to behave in a certain way to what appears to be a cat.

What is the eleventh commandment?

Thou shalt buy now, pay later.

Whatever did happen to spangles?

The Clangers probably ate them.

And now for the big one. Your spaceship is crash landing on a desert planet. As you fall you have the opportunity to burn one message into the continents. Given that rescue is highly unlikely, what is it?

Free beer this way!

You have the opportunity to save three books, three records and three films. What are they?

• Books
• The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin
• Fourth Mansions by R A Lafferty
• Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers
• Records
• The Power Of Pussy by Bongwater
• Ziggy Stardust, the Motion Picture by David Bowie
• A Pagan Place by The Waterboys
• Films
• Prospero's Books
• The Wall
• Twin Peaks, the series.

What would be your luxury object?

A cat

Your food replicator is broken and can only produce one meal. What should it be?

Deep fried Camembert with raspberry sauce, steak, chips, mushrooms and salad, lemon sorbet, Stella Artois.

Who would you have the computer to replicate for company?

I take the fifth on that one.

Yearbook 1993-94

What is your full given name, and any common or amusing contractions or variations thereof?

Alison Rowan - it's not my given name, but I picked it specially and it's all you're going to get. I do not answer to "Ali".

Where and when were you born?

2nd October 1966, Sutton, Surrey, 8:24am, I can give you my birthchart if you really want to know.

Pick five words to describe yourself.

Angry, Antimonogamous, Anarchistic, Ambisexual, Anthropomorph.

Why did you join SFSoc?

I didn't, and anyway, I was on holiday at the time.

What's the first thing you do when you wake up?

Smell the coffee, check the post for any large sums of money, have a wank. Not necessarily in that order.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Keep away from small children - advice so valuable they feel the need to write it on random household objects.

What is your most treasured material possession?

Probably my pointed stick, but if I ever lost everything in a fire and was left with only my pointed stick I'd turn into a demented New Ager and go round waving it at people and talking about "the Craft", so I'll have to settle for the money I'm going to find further down the page.

What do you most like about yourself?

My haircut, and my piercings. The one is shrinking and the others are due to be added to.

What do you least like about yourself?

Whatever it is about my personality that makes other people think I'm touchy - I can't imagine why.

What is your greatest ambition?

To find two million pounds in used Bank of England notes in the back of a taxi.

What is your greatest fear?

That people will find out what I'm really like.

What are you like when you're drunk?

Either bitter and twisted, or stupidly happy and randy. The snag is that you don't get to know which it's going to be before you offer to buy me a drink.

What is your favourite chat-up line?

I've had some success (and a lot of fun) with Valentine cards, but it's a bit of a problem having to wait until February 14th just on the off-chance of a shag, so I usually just ask.

What is your favourite put-down line?

"I used to tell people like you to fuck off and die, but these days I just can't be arsed."

What is the most bizarre thing to ever happen to you?

I suppose until I find the two million pounds it will have to be the time I had the official Church of England exorcist called out on me. Apparently there are only three in the country.

Where would you most like to live?

I'll have Katie's old house. All of it please.

What was the last thing you dreamt about?

My last dream that was both interesting and repeatable had Nik, dinosaurs, and Jon Shapcott as a little gargoyle sitting on a shelf. There was also a lot of Harrison Ford swinging over canyons type stuff in it and plenty of opportunities to kick people in the head - typical SFSoc, really.

Choose a record to listen, dance, and shag to.

Patti Smith - Horses for all three.

Sum up your philosophy in one sentence.

1. Read the instructions.
2. Try to have a nice day.

Is that it?

Yes. Liberating isn't it?

And now this year's biggie... The film of your life is going to be made. If you could pick the cast and crew from any time and place:
Who would play you?

Annie Sprinkle, infamous bisexual porn star.

Who would play your love interest?

The young David Bowie and the young Patti Smith

Who would direct?

What do you think I am, a film studies student or something? Probably a complete newcomer that everyone would call the new David Lynch.

Who would write the script?

A combination of whoever wrote The Lost Boys, Highlander, and Edge of Darkness.

Who would supply the soundtrack?

Bowie, Patti Smith, NiN, Bongwater (including unnerving non nursery rhyme version of the title track).

Briefly describe the high concept of the film.

When her kid brother disappears in mysterious circumstances our heroine scoops up her two nearest lovers and sets off in search. Following a series of near fatal accidents, twisted up cigarettes with all the tobacco taken out of them and extremely broad hints they rapidly realise that he was on the track of a shadowy organisation behind the campaign to criminalise a new drug. Further investigation reveals that their leader (who is also the gay lover of a top Tory MP) closely resembles a certain Elizabethan court astrologer, who was rumoured to be a hermaphrodite, and of whose death there is no record...
The film also contains a chase scene with cars apparently held together with sticky tape, a knife fight in virtual reality (i.e. the BBC warehouse in Islington), and the ritual sex killing of the MP's personal assistant. But absolutely no vampires.

And what would the film be called?

The Nutmeg Tree

Yearbook 1994-95

(the unprinted one)

What is your name?

I am the one that is called Alison Rowan

In what region of the universe do you live?

Well, this one, usually. Except when I'm on that plane with all the twinkly lights. And in an alternative Universe I live in a van which is currently (I think) parked in a forest near Avignon.

Describe yourself in a manner which you deem fit

Oh her. Well, if you don't know already you'll find out soon enough...

Are there any more at home like you?

People used to say that my brother was a lot like me, but I think I can safely say that I have never allowed anybody to set fire to me, jumped out of a first floor window or driven my bike into the back of a car. So, no, not really.

What is your security clearance?

I actually managed to get a job in the civil service once. But after I refused to sign the official secret act I don't think they'd have me back. On the other hand I don't think that my phone is being tapped or that I am being followed by trios of men in dark glasses with suspicious looking bulges under their jackets, so I'm probably fairly invisible from a security point of view. Which is exactly how I like it.

Who (or what?) whould you like to be reincarnated in the form of?

As me, with all my memories (but possibly a slightly healthier body) and at about the same age so that I don't have to go through all that tedious childhood shit again. Otherwise I just can't see the point frankly.

What would you name your first born child?

There are three alternatives:

1. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
2. I would leave that kind of decision to its adoptive parents.
3. an abortion

What would you name the planet that you colonised?

Ah, that's more like it. That's the kind of immortality I can handle. How about Annarres? No, that's probably cheating, so I'd go for Astarte, who is one of my favourite goddesses and hasn't had any celestial objects named after her yet, to my knowledge.

If you had to chose one luxury item and lead a sparten existence otherwise, what would it be?

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and a thou. Or an endless supply of hallucinogenic drugs, much diet coke and a vibrator. In both cases I think the second two could be said to come under the heading of essentials even for a spartan existence, and I've been signing on for seven years, so I should know.

What world conspiracy are you certainly not in sole charge of and what would its insigia be if it were to have one?

I am certainly not on the soc.bi c*b*l. Which doesn't exist. And neither does any other conspiracy for bisexuals to take over the world, feed its children to the slithy toves and force feed everyone Nutella. If they did exist I very much doubt whether they'd get around to designing themslevs an insignia, but I would choose a Feynman-type diagram of person A converting person B to bisexuality, often just slightly before they actually met.

Who put the bop in the bop-shoo-wop-shoo-wop?

The same guy as put the ram in the ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong.

How many roads must a man walk down?

I reckon its all one road when you get right down to it. So probably about three.

Which Golden Age science fiction writer do you most despise and why?

I make a point of not despising dead people because it's such a waste of energy. But I really can't see the appeal of Isaac Asimov.

What pseudonym have you most prolifically used?

The whole point of using pseudonyms is (a)not to give your real identity away and (b)to make people believe that you are more than one person. These days I chose unremarkable names that would be of no interest to anybody reading this and which would quite possibly get me in real trouble if found out. When I was young I wanted to be called Elna for a bit, but gave it up because people kept assuming it had a middle 'e' and also didn't immediately see me as the tall thin goth with red hair that I then logically ought to have become.

What soundbite would you sample?

We fight on, we fight to win.

What is in room 101?

Nothing. It's just very, very small.

Currently residing in the where-are-they-now file, whatever did happen to Pam (Mindy) Dawber?

Do I look to you as if I give a shit?

Aren't you looking for a one-armed man?

No, but I'd be grateful if you could direct me to Sherilyn Fenn.

What question would it have been logically been best to ask?

What are you, one of those ball breaking feminists or something?

Answer it?

Yes.

What is your problem anyway?

1. People are not born with souls... [this is a quote from the B movie to Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - if anyone can complete it for me I'd be very grateful...]
2. People think that wearing a hat automatically makes them dead alternative.

And at last the (by now surely) infamous theme question:
If you had to compile a list of your favourite ten items of any single nature, what would they all be?

Crimes.

And what are your top ten items fitting that description and why?

• Sex.
• Drugs.
• Rock 'n' Roll.
• Squatting.
• Fraud.
• Libel.
• Soliciting for immoral purposes.
• Publishing obscene material.
• Plotting the downfall of the State.
• Engineering the downfall of the State.

Not necessarily in that order.

Last updated 21st November 1999