PLOKTA


Issue 14
Volume 4 Number 2
June 1999

In This Issue

 • Contents
 • Cover Illustration
 • Editorial
 • A Beginner's Guide to Self-Mutilation
 • "...And I Would Like To Spank Stephen Baxter..."
 • Gu*nness is Good For You
 • Shopping Habits of the Camiroi
 • Letters of Comment to Plokta
 • Vijay Pulls it Off
 • Everybody's Free (to send us letters)
 • Mind the Gap

Email Plokta
Send us your comments.

Plokta.com
The main index to all Plokta web projects.

Plokta Index
List of all issues of Plokta online.

PNN
The Plokta News Network. News and views for SF fandom

<plokta.con>
The Plokta SF convention, from 26-29 May 2000.


[Plokta Online]
 

Mind the Gap

Illo by Sue Jones NEW YORK is the first really big city I have visited since moving to London. So it came as quite a surprise to me that, whereas Boston, San Francisco and Trivandrum seemed quite alien, New York felt much more like home. And I knew what the New York subway was like, because I've seen lots of tv shows and films with scenes in the subway. Dirty, dangerous and run down, and that was just the passengers. So I was quite surprised to discover that it was clean, cheap and efficient, with a week's go-anywhere ticket costing less than I spend for three trips to London.

But nevertheless, the subway had the knack of reminding me of home. A voice came over the tannoy. "Please stand clear of the closing doors. There is another train right behind this one." Exactly the same words as in London, where the phrase "there is another train right behind this one" normally means "We are about to attempt to break the all-time record for longest interval between rush hour trains on the Victoria Line".

Tube trains have turned up on rec.arts.sf.fandom recently, as well. Complaints about the whimsicality and chaos nature of the subway led Avram Grumer to discover his inner poet.

Attention all passengers

The delay we are experiencing
is not the eternal delay.
The red signal ahead
is not the eternal red signal.

The train just behind this one is the eternally real.
The doors you are holding open have their origin in this particular train.

Free from the closing doors, you realize the mystery.
Caught in the closing doors, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source:
A train going out of service at DeKalb.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
Please use all available doors.

--Alison Scott & Avram Grumer


Previous Article
Previous
Article
Next Article
Next
Article