Category: News

Back in the latter years of the twentieth century, SpockSoc was founded, as UNSW’s Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Anime Club. We don’t currently know who founded it or when that was – the records of the Student Guild (one of Arc’s predecessors, which looked after clubs and societies at the time) are long lost, and SpockSoc’s own records consist of a shabby suitcase full of loose papers which were occasionally “tidied up” by successive generations of club executives – but we do know the club already existed in 1992, because that’s when the Anime Society split off to strike out on their own.

Thirty years ago, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy world was a fairly different place – in 1992, Star Trek: The Next Generation was in its fifth season, Doctor Who was three years into what would become a fifteen-year hiatus, and the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer film (starring Kristy Swanson) would come out in cinemas in July. But, for us here in Australia… well, if we wanted to watch sci-fi or fantasy, we could either wait several years for things to air on free-to-air television (usually very late at night), or else perhaps maybe they’d come out on VHS a little sooner. The internet was still in its infancy. Modem speeds were still measured in baud, Netflix wouldn’t be launched (as a mail-order DVD rental service) for another five years, and the only way to pirate something was if you had a cousin whose friend had an older brother with an Nth-generation VHS copy who wouldn’t mind making you an Nth-plus-one-generation copy if you provided your own blank VHS. And however you watched it, your average family TV back then was tiny – if the screen dimension made it into the double digits of inches at all, the first digit would always be a one. But most importantly, it simply wasn’t cool to be a sci-fi or fantasy fan. If you admitted to it in public, you were branded a geek, or a nerd, or worse, forever relegated to the stereotype of coke-bottle glasses and pocket protectors.

And that, as I see it, was the appeal of SpockSoc. Every Friday night, you could watch stuff that would be hard for you to find otherwise, you could watch it on a far bigger screen than you had at home, and most importantly, you could watch it with YOUR people. It was a time each week when sci-fi fans could just BE sci-fi fans.

Since then, well, the times they are a-changin’. The internet has become ubiquitous, streaming commonplace, and piracy… it’s become easy. The practice of airing shows in Australia on the same day as they aired in America or the UK (or anywhere in the world) went from being unheard-of, to being an amazing special offer, to being the expected norm. TVs have ballooned in size – while paradoxically, watching on your phone or tablet has also become common.

But more importantly, it’s once again become cool to be a sci-fi or fantasy fan.

And a great as that is, that, as I see it, has been the downfall of SpockSoc. No longer are we the sole source of the newest shows for most people, and though the campus projection screens are still bigger than home TVs, they definitely don’t hold a candle to the typical picture quality. And SpockSoc is no longer the place to be with YOUR people – YOUR people are now everywhere.

While overall membership numbers for SpockSoc have remained pretty constant over recent years, actual attendance at screenings and other events has dwindled. And then COVID became the final nail in the coffin. Since the campus first went into lockdown in 2020, we’ve seen zero new regular members. And as the last members of our current executive are graduating this year, we no longer have the ability to form a new executive, which means we no longer meet the requirements to be an Arc student society. We can’t even assemble the quorum necessary to formally dissolve the club. Tragically, it’s become time to call it a day.

We’ve had a good run, I suppose. We’ve been around longer that most current UNSW students have been alive – and even some of the staff. We’ve taken a club trip to New Zealand for the second Hobbit movie premiere (and saw Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, albeit from ten metres away), members of the exec have attended either the media preview screening or the world premiere of all three Chris Pine Star Trek movies, and we even almost got sued by MGM one time.

Nothing to do now but say Live Long and Prosper, May the Force be With You, and So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish.

A tentative S1 schedule is now up.

http://www.spocksoc.com/schedule

 

Founded a little over one-hundred years ago, the University of New South Wales’ Science Fiction and Fantasy club was short lived, when the founders, a motley collection of scientists, occult figures and specialists in the weird realised that science fiction was not, at that time wide spread enough to really form a club around and that the university did not yet exist. Undeterred, these brave pioneers built a time machine and got ready to travel into the future to see what the club would be like then. Reasoning, perhaps optimistically, that there would be a place for science fiction and fantasy in any place of higher learning that was worth a damn, they set off into the great unknown that is time and space…

Sadly their attempt failed, and while we may never know for sure what happened to these brave men and women who dared to dream, we do know that we cannot let their sacrifice be in vain. For it was only recently that their notes and plans we’re rediscovered, leading to the creation of SpockSoc, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Club.

In this emporium of delights and wonders, we attempt to capture the magic that drove our distant forbears to meddle with things that man would have done better to have left untouched. We watch shows that may not yet be available on these antipodean shores, or indeed available anywhere in space and time.  We watch them in the presence of some truly remarkable (and occasianly terrifying, it must be admitted) people, who enjoy science fiction and fantasy as much as you yourself surely do.

To take part in this, all you have to do is sign up, at the cost of five dollars for a whole year, you must agree that this is quite a bargain.

Then, every Friday you come along to a lecture theatre put aside for our needs, where you can watch TV shows and movies, enjoy pizza taken out, at five dollars a half and a drink for free! You can chat and meet new people who share your likes (and possibly dislikes) and generally have a fun time.

 

Movies and TV shows that we plan to show are laid out in our schedule, but we welcome any suggestions that you might have, and we’d love to see you at our stall signing up (the members there are the ones who don’t bite, so don’t be afraid!)

Thank you for reading and I look forward to meeting you at any one of our sessions,

Jamie Heron
President of SpockSoc, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Club

Yesterday The Hub Productions hosted a Stargate convention at the Sir John Clancy auditorium. I advertised it at the O-Week stall all through the week, though I think most people were turned away by the price tag. SpockSoc member Bethany and I were there, and we also bumped into former president Dallas towards the end of the day. We had heaps of fun. I made a write-up with lots of pretty pictures:

http://users.tpg.com.au/adsl4vhb/Stargate2010/Stargate2010.html

About a thousand funny things happened that I didn’t put there because I didn’t remember them at the time I wrote it, but I figure it’s long enough already – if I keep adding things I remember, I’ll be editing it forever. I just wish I could have recorded the whole thing so I could play it back.

In any case, go read. Let me know what you think. =)