Page Created: 09/25/10. Last Update: 10/26/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 02/25/08.
JEFFREY DUNN
Books:
Days of Cain
Full Tide of Night
This Side of Judgment
Author Bio/Bibliography: http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/dunn/dunn_bio.html.
MEETING SUMMARY:
Meeting Date: February 11, 1995.
Meeting Site: Saddle River Valley Cultural Center, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Official Attendance: 34.
Meeting Program: Talk by Science Fiction Writer.
Notes:
Meeting Memories:
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 1995 Philip J De Parto:
Author Jeffrey Dunn was the featured speaker at the February 11, 1995 meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County. The meeting was conducted at the Saddle River Valley Cultural Center in Upper Saddle River. The newsletter was distributed at the meeting. Its lateness may have depressed the turnout.
The usual game of AD&D was held beforehand at the Game Master in Fair Lawn. Philip De Parto, Charles Garofalo, Igor Goldberg and Scott Schmitt were on hand to try to amuse Gamemaster William Molendyk.
Anthony Tellado ran the meeting of the Final Frontier which began at 6PM. The main topic of discussion was the new STAR TREK: VOYAGER show but, as usual, the conversation wandered around a bit.
Jeffrey Dunn is the author of about twenty stories and one novel, THIS SIDE OF JUDGEMENT. Mr Dunn is a commanding figure with a military air. His manner may have given a certain amount of substance to the rumor that he had showed up at a convention to kill someone.
After a spectacular debut (Algis Budrys wrote that one of his early tales would be read for a hundred years). his writing career fizzled. He could still sell short fiction, but it wasn't getting the same response. So he began to write a novel.
THIS SIDE OF JUDGEMENT is near future anti-cyberpunk. Although he is willing to play with some of their toys--cyber implants, for example--he finds many of the cyberpunk motifs, like the street criminals always having the latest equipment which always works perfectly the first time you use it, ridiculous.
We weren't able to get too many details about JUDGEMENT other than complaints about editors who don't know science and publishers who have bowed to political correctness (you cannot us the word, "girl," even if you are referring to an eight year old female).
He is currently working on a novel in which a woman from our future travels to the past to rescue the inmates of one of the concentration camps. This led to a discussion of time travel stories and attempts to change the past. The two stories most cited were Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," in which a time traveler steps on a butterfly and changes history, and Fritz Leiber's "Try to Change the Past'" which says that temporal inertia is amazingly difficult to overcome, and that a one in a billion coincidence will occur to thwart a change.
Mary Ann Denny, Charles Garofalo, Joan Hardy, Thomas Purdy, and Taras Wolansky won free books. Thanks go to Sharon Roberg and Christopher Wamsley (by way of Beth Grout) for donating books to the group.
The post meeting diner crowd consisted of Sharon Archer, Paul Dellechiaie, Nancy Denker, Mary Ann Denny, Philip De Parto, Elizabeth Donahue, Brian Gonigal, Joan Hardy, Ernest Lilley, Robert Pinkus, Thomas Purdy, Carol Smith, Pamela Webber, Taras Wolansky and Matthew Marcus (according to memory).