Daily Science Fiction

Transcription

I'm Alexandra Westbrook, I'm a junior at MIT, and I'm currently the Lady High Embezzler of the MIT Science Fiction Society, and that is our Treasurer position. We aim to have 100% of all speculative fiction written in English—however, in reality we probably have around 90%. Speculative fiction includes science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and forms associated with these. All together we have 65,000 books, and this is not including magazines, media, and fan zines. We're looking to see if we can get more space, because as you can see from a lot of the books put in front of other books, we are out of space. Favorites, um... there's so many awesome books. Jhereg is a short light fantasy novel by Steven Brust; it has a lot of popularity with the people around here. It's about an assassin and his pet jhereg; the jhereg is on the cover. Another one of our favorites is The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. It's about a con man basically; set in a fantasy series. Charles Stross is a computer scientist turned science fiction writer, and the Atrocity Archives is a book of his about a computer scientist turned Lovecraftian magician. The society was originally formed in 1949, with just a few students, and all they had was a crate of books. But, today in 2012, we have 300 members and 30 librarians. So, this is the original library at MIT. Our original collection lived in it; it was stored in students' dorm rooms and moved around from dorm room to dorm room until we actually got a physical library to store our books in. It currently exists as a time capsule only to be opened at the appropriate age. Our gavel block, the thing we bang the gavel on in front, is a solid piece of titanium, and it was found in MITSFS and used for that for a while and some professor took it to Congress and used it to show off, 'hey this is what the Russians are making their submarines out of,' and then brought it back. MITSFS meeting called to order, Friday, April 20, 2012, at 66.6 kiloseconds SST. P. Weaver, President/Skinner, presiding, Lemur, OnSec, recording; Lemur will now read last week's minutes [Lemur reads minutes]. We run meetings and our meetings are more like, science fiction fans come together and talk about geeky stuff. Business doesn't take care of there, business happens in a smoke-filled room other times. All for? All against? Chickens? Motion passes 9-0-2 plus Spain. [bangs gavel] And the meeting is adjourned at 68.4 kiloseconds SST. We have a complete obsession with bananas. There's a banana shark and a banana mole, and a banana egg above you, and there's a banana colored couch. The circulating banana. You can check it out if you want. It was covered in armor, to protect it. Every once in a while we grab a bunch of nerf weapons and attack HRSFA—or they attack us— which is the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. So, Psi Phi is actually the sorority associated with the MIT Science Fiction Society. We're not an official sorority, but every once in a while we'll show up to the Greek Griller, and confuse lots of people. Especially because they originally look at us and they're like, "Psi phi...? Ohhh."