1995 - 10/1995 Meeting

Page Created: 09/25/10. Last Updated: 10/26/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 02/26/08.

CHARLES PELLEGRINO

Novels:

Dust

The Fallen Sky

Flying to Valhalla

The Killing Star (with George Zebrowski)

Selected Non Fiction:

Ghosts of the Titanic

Ghosts of Vesuvius

Her Name Titanic

Return to Sodom and Gomorrah

Unearhing Atlantis

The author's website is: http://www.charlespellegrino.com/.

MEETING SUMMARY:

Meeting Date: October 14, 1995.

Meeting Site: Saddle River Valley Cultural Center, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Official Attendance: 46.

Meeting Program: Talk by Science / Science Fiction Writer.

Notes:

Meeting Memories:

Newsletter Account:

The October 14, 1995 meeting of the Association was again held at the Cultural Center in Upper Saddle River. Our guest was the hyperenthusiastic science and science fiction writer Charles Pellegrino.

Mr Pellegrino's talk was a sort of stream of consciousness monologue on Atlantis, dinosaurs, life on other worlds, New Zealand, the space program, the Titanic, and any number of interesting topics which captured his fancy. He was intensely animated and entertaining, shifting topics at the drop of a hat.

Memorable bits included things the insurance companies forget to ask you. For example, they inquire if you skin dive or parachute, a pair of hobbies foreign to the author. They don't ask if he goes on mini-subs to the bottom of the ocean floor, pokes around in live volcanoes, or jaunts around the burning oil fields of Kuwait.

He also talked about how Nixon deliberately chose an inferior space shuttle design from Rockwell because that company was in California while Grumman was in New York, and how the return of the Canal to Panama caused changes which made a bad design worse. He also said that he was under consideration to be one of a group of science fiction writers who were to be passengers on the shuttle before the explosion ended that particular program.

Other topics included his hobby of collecting last words from the black boxes of plane crashes, and being drunk with the pilot in a small two seater down under.

He talked about being wrong about finding oceans on one of the moons of Jupiter, but opined that most life in the universe would be found in methane oceans, and tied that in to the strange lifeforms which can be found on Earth around underseas hot vents, including metal eating bacteria like those at work on the Titanic.

he also talked about places he would like to go if he had a time machine, from the age of the dinosaurs to Woodstock to see Jimi Hendrix. And how people on remote expeditions tend to get real strange. And how he got into trouble with fundamentalists in New Zealand.

This account gives only a hint of what was covered in Mr Pellegrino's talk.

Our Animation Associates met for the second time and viewed episodes of CAPTAIN HARLOCK, SPACE PIRATE and DRAGONBALL and a RANMA 1/2 movie. Turnout was disappointing.

The Final Frontier was well attended. Tony Tellado had the October issues of SCI-FI TALK FREQUENCIES and the Final Frontier Newsletter, as well as the third volume of THE BEST OF SCI FI TALK about THE X-FILES on cassette. Roy Greenberg generously brought in his television so that we could watch the new episode of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE 9 at the Frontier.

We continued our Book Blowout Booksale before the meeting and moved around 40 titles, including door prizes to William Molendyk, Christopher Nash, Thomas Pope, George Thaddeus Smith, and Anthony Tellado.

Thanks go to Paul Dellechiaie for convincing the Horizon Diner to accommodate us in their other room, Angela Diadone for help with the booksale set up, Roy Greenberg for brewing tea, Christopher Nash for bringing the TV and VCR for the Anime group and opening up the building, Patricia Nash for giving directions to Steak & Ale to Charles Pellegrino, Pamela Webber for bringing the refreshments and handling the sign-in table, and everyone else who pitched in to lend a hand.