From The Editors:
Happy Fourth Birthday!

This month, the club "Spaced Out" celebrates its fourth birthday. We have achieved a great deal for a humble little club. Any glance at previous issues of our newsletter, or at the "Starchives" pages on our web site, will give an ample demonstration of our somewhat startling achievements – the web site itself, club meetings and social calendar, newsletters, anthologies, guest speakers, donations to charity, media appearances, a Ditmar Award, and many other accomplishments.

Indeed, since our last newsletter, Spaced Out received another accolade: six nominations for the 2003 Australian Ditmar Awards. Our members Dick and Miriam were both nominated for Best Australian Fan Artist; another member, Bill, and his fanzine "Interstellar Ramjet Scoop" were nominated for Best Australian Fan Writer and Best Australian Fanzine respectively; and our club website was nominated for both Best Australian Production and Best Australian Fan Achievement. Sadly, we lost in the final count, but to be nominated is an accomplishment worthy of pride, especially as this is our second year in a row.

Closer to home, the club receives a great deal of support from our members, friends and supporters. So many people have contributed to our efforts! Without this ongoing support, the club could not continue to function. Thank you to all.

Even more excitingly, we believe that Spaced Out is a club with the potential to achieve even greater objectives.

We are not specifically a fan club for "Star Trek" or "Dr. Who" or "Buffy"; nor for the writings of Ursula Le Guin, Isaac Asimov or Theodore Sturgeon. We do not focus specifically on astronomy or the space program. We do not prefer either media SF or literary SF; nor do we focus on theatre nights compared to running writing workshops.

Our group is specifically a science fiction club for GLBT fans and supportive friends, in all their varieties. This means that we can actually touch upon all the science fiction interests from the previous paragraph, plus much, much more. The sky is the limit.

This club is a pioneering effort of sorts, and this allows us to attempts things which might not have been done before. One example is our recent effort to gain a regular appearance on "Bent TV". Another example is in front of you: some of the articles in this newsletter range from a fiftieth anniversary commemoration of a classic queer SF story; to a possibly gay reinterpretation of a classic SF TV series and a pair of reviews ("for" and "against") examining a modern-day television SF program. We also feature new artwork, poetry and fiction, some from new contributors. We owe our thanks to these people.

Happy Fourth Birthday! But perhaps we should be saying, "Four and Counting". As Gene Roddenberry once came close to stating: the Homo Adventure Is Just Beginning.

-The Editors.