Monthly Archives: March 2020

Comics / Graphic Novels

Asterix co-creator and illustrator passed away

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-52016721

Albert Uderzo: Asterix co-creator and illustrator dies aged 92

Albert Uderzo, who drew the Asterix comic books, has died at the age of 92.

He created the famous stories – about the adventures of Gaulish warriors fighting the Roman Empire – with his friend René Goscinny in 1959.

As well as illustrating the series, Urderzo took over the writing following Goscinny’s death in 1977.

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The series continues to this day under new ownership, with the most recent book, Asterix and the Chieftain’s Daughter, released last October.

“Albert Uderzo died in his sleep at his home in Neuilly, after a heart attack that was not linked to the coronavirus,” his son-in-law Bernard de Choisy told the AFP news agency.

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MonSFFA Website

DISPATCHES FROM A QUARANTINE

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In This Post:

  1. Cautious Optimism

  2. Critically Important That We Take COVID-19 Seriously, Act Accordingly!

  3. George R. R. Martin at Work During Pandemic!

  4. Things to do While in Quarantine

  5. A Light at the End of the Tunnel!

  1. Cautious Optimism   

As each day brings dire news of increases in the numbers of people infected by, or having succumbed to COVID-19 in Quebec, the rest of Canada, the neighbouring U.S., and overseas, local authorities seem cautiously optimistic about the developing situation. The “stay-at-home!” directive, “social distancing,” and the thorough and frequent hand-washing practice urged by public health officials in order to mitigate the rapid spread of the virus appear to be having the desired effect. We are told the coming few weeks will tell.

Our collective fingers are crossed!

However, we are cautioned that things will get worse before they get better. This trajectory is anticipated and should not cause undue alarm. It is vitally important that we all continue to follow stringently the public health guidelines outlined, even though it may seem at the outset that they are having no appreciable effect. Our collective action could, in the end, reduce by half the number of Canadians ultimately infected!

Should the virus spread through our population too quickly and widely, our health-care system is at risk of becoming overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who would be showing up at hospitals abruptly requiring treatment. Hospital beds and vital equipment like testing kits, respirators and protective face masks would suddenly be at a premium. Better that the number of sick persons expected in the weeks ahead be distributed in lesser numbers per day or week over a period of time, than in one massive grouping all at once certain to overload the system.

That’s why we’ve been asked to do our part by self-isolating, practicing social distancing—also referred to as “physical distancing,” that being the maintenance of a minimum two-metre separation between ourselves and others when we positively must go outside—and washing our hands often.

Our governments, for their part, are mobilizing resources, restricting unnecessary travel, implementing financial assistance programs for both employees and businesses affected by the curtailment of commerce—which is pretty much every business, and everyone!—updating the population with daily status reports, securing supplies of needed medical equipment, and tasking industry to ramp up manufacturing of same.

All fine and good, but!…

 

  1. Critically Important That We Take COVID-19 Seriously, Act Accordingly!

There are still too many instances of citizens ignoring the above-mentioned public health recommendations! Medical professionals and government officials continue to emphatically emphasize the gravity of the crisis, and remind us that we must all take the situation very seriously. Excepting for brief and focused excursions to buy groceries, medication, or other essential supplies, we absolutely have to all remain isolated in our homes in order to significantly slow the person-to-person transmission of this virus.

Even if you are exhibiting only mild symptoms, or none at all, you may be carrying the virus, and thus infecting others with whom you come in contact. Keep in mind that while you may well recover without need of treatment, some of those that you inadvertently infect may not! COVID-19 can and will result in acute illness for a sizable percentage of the population, and for some of these unfortunate folk, death! There is much about the behaviour of this coronavirus that we do not yet know, and every day seems to bring new and unsettling discoveries. So take note, younger cohort: you are not immune! There are more cases reported every day of young people contracting the disease and becoming dreadfully sick as a result, some of them fatally!

So let’s not be blasé about all this—follow the specified instructions! One of the lives you are helping to save just might be your own!

And anyway, if you venture outside your front door, where are you going to go, and what are you going to do? Everything is shut down! The restaurants, coffee shops, fast-food outlets, bars, movie theatres, and other entertainment venues are all closed. So are the museums, libraries, community centres, public parks and playgrounds, malls and large retail stores. Major and minor sporting events are all cancelled or indefinitely postponed. Industry has largely shut down, and most employers are instructing their people to either stay home or, if possible, work from home. Schools from kindergarten to university are all closed for the foreseeable future. Inter-provincial, and even inter-regional travel is now strongly discouraged. The aim of authorities is first, to deter people from venturing far from home and potentially spreading the virus around the province and country, and second, from gathering in large groups or small, and possibly contracting the virus or infecting others. Most recently, law enforcement has been authorized to intervene in cases of individuals skirting safety protocols.

 

  1. George R. R. Martin at Work During Pandemic!

Now on a more positive note, the Habs haven’t lost a game in almost three weeks, and fans of George R. R. Martin have fresh smiles on their faces. The author of the Song of Ice and Fire cycle is spending his time during this pandemic holed up in an isolated location at work on completing the long-awaited final book in the series, Winds of Winter. Yay! A Song of Ice and Fire was adapted for television as the popular, long-running HBO series Game of Thrones. Haven’t seen it? There’s a quarantine on; now’s your chance to binge the series!

 

 

  1. Things to do While in Quarantine

How are you passing the time in quarantine?

We imagine many of you have a queue of sci-fi television shows and movies as yet unwatched. Now is your opportunity to binge them. Same with that stack of unread genre books. Those of you who purchased bags and boxes of hardcovers and paperbacks back in November at the club’s used book sale will certainly have more than enough material to peruse.

Maybe you have a genre story idea rolling around in your head. If so, get to writing it! Make it a work of fanfic, or a conventional short story. We hope this quarantine doesn’t last so long as to allow enough time to pen a novel! When you’ve completed your story, submit it to Warp, the club’s fanzine.

If you’re looking for inspiration, try spinning a tale from one of the brief taglines/synopses immediately below, randomly selected. Your fellow MonSFFen came up with these during one of our sessions of BluF/SF, the parlour game we play on occasion at our meetings in which players try to bluff each other with fake summaries of actual published fantasy or science fiction stories:

  • Aliens threaten humanity with death, until they are made to understand love.

  • A Satanic couple take up competitive boxing!

  • Hikers are put upon by a Sasquatch!

  • The Bearded Lady has new competition at the freak show, which has just introduced androids!

  • A unicorn composes classical music!

  • Sulfur mining on the moons of Jupiter goes horribly wrong!

  • A walrus floats on radioactive waste in Miami Beach!

  • A sentient octopus wants to roller-skate!

  • British go-go dancers take over London!

  • Society invents a way to publish minds, but there are privacy concerns!

  • In a futuristic world, aliens charged with reading the minds of humans mysteriously begin committing suicide!

  • The last man on Earth dies of the flu!

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Or, you may wish to get started on that cool costume idea you recently came up with, or that scale-model spaceship kit you’ve been meaning to build. Or maybe get out your art supplies and render as a pen-and-ink drawing or full-colour painting that futuristic vision you’ve been picturing in your mind for a while, now. Maybe you’ll even scan your finished piece and submit it to Warp as potential cover art!

By all means, exercise your creativity while in isolation—good for you, keeps the mind sharp. And listen to your favourite sci-fi soundtracks or podcasts while you work.

In general, reach out to folk by telephone or online. Keep in touch with family and friends—also good for you. Drop the club an e-mail and let us know how you are doing, and what you are doing to pass the time. And keep well!

 

  1. A Light at the End of the Tunnel!

Finally, encouraging news comes out of Wuhan, the Chinese city that experienced the initial outbreak of the virus. Wuhan went into lock-down two months ago and is only now beginning to slowly return to some semblance of normalcy. Reports are that the city has not in the last five days reported any new cases of COVID-19! This is, perhaps, the light at the end of the tunnel for Wuhan, and the rest of world.

Further, the use of chloroquine, an existing drug used to treat malaria, has apparently shown some promise in application against the COVID-19 virus. Clinical trials are now underway to determine if this antimalarial could be an effective cure, but it’s too soon to draw any conclusions, so for now, we’ll just, again, cross our fingers.

 

Events and Conventions

Scintillation Update

From Jo Walton, an update on Scintillation.

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So surely surely by October everything will be all right again, civilization will arise again, there will be lemon scented paper napkins, and you’ll all come to Montreal and hug each other and eat in restaurants as in the halcyon and lovingly remembered past?

We really hope so, and we hear good things about vaccines and so on.

Meanwhile, we have reviewed our contract with the hotel, and fortunately we can get out of it with no penalty up to 30 days ahead. So we will continue to plan for Scintillation happening as intended, and make a final decision depending on the state of the world in September. If we should have to cancel we will run the convention as planned but a year ahead in 2021, all memberships will stay valid for that. If we can’t run it in 2021 then civilization has worse problems than Scintillation.

Meanwhile, stay well, and keep up your spirits as best you can.

I’ve been working on A New Decameron: Stories For a Plague Year .This was Maya Chhabra’s wonderful idea. As you probably know, Boccaccio’s Decameron was written in the 1350s and set during the Black Death of 1498 when seven young womena and three young men go into self-isolation in a villa in the hills and occupy themselves telling storeis. For our New Decameron, I’m writing a frame story and various writer friends are contributing stories — a story every day. This has also inspired Hannah Dorsey, who some of you met at last year’s con, to set up a Discord group for reading Boccaccio’s book one story a day. There’s also a group being set up to read Dante’s Divine Comedy by @danteinquarantine on Twitter. I strongly urge everyone working at home and self-isolating or in quarantine to get involved in something like this with a community or by Scintillation half of us will be gibbering and gnawing the furniture. Learn a language with Duolingo. Work on Zooniverse projects. But do try to have something that’s fun, also involves other people, and with a sense of progress.

And on those lines, I am setting up a Scintillation Discord group, for general hanging out with each other and chatting. If you don’t have Discord it’s free to join. I know we already have a Slack, but Slack crashes my browser and it has ads and it’s slow, while Discord works and has no ads. Fpr those who aren’t familiar with it, it works like usenet but with no threading. (That invitation will expire, if you want a new one, email me.) This group is for past and present or intending future members of Scintillation.

Stay safe, stay in touch.

MonSFFA Website

SOCIAL DISTANCING!

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Astronomy News

COMET ATLAS IS BRIGHTENING FASTER THAN EXPECTED

From Space Weather.com — CPL

COMET ATLAS IS BRIGHTENING FASTER THAN EXPECTED: Get ready for a wild ride. Comet ATLAS (C2019 Y4) is plunging toward the sun and, if it doesn’t fly apart first, it could become one of the brightest comets in years.

“Comet ATLAS continues to brighten much faster than expected,” says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. “Some predictions for its peak brightness now border on the absurd.”


Above: Comet Atlas (upper left) glides by spiral galaxy M81 on March 18th. Credit: Rolando Ligustri [more]

The comet was discovered in December 2019 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii. Astronomers quickly realized it might be special. On May 31, 2020, Comet ATLAS will pass deep inside the orbit of Mercury only 0.25 AU from the sun. If it can survive the blast furnace of solar heating, it could put on a good show.

However, no one expected the show to start this soon. More than 2 months before perihelion (closest approach to the sun), Comet ATLAS is already “heating up.” The worldwide Comet Observation Database shows it jumping from magnitude +17 in early February to +8 in mid-March–a 4000-fold increase in brightness. It could become visible to the naked eye in early April.

“Right now the comet is releasing huge amounts of its frozen volatiles (gases),” says Battams. “That’s why it’s brightening so fast.”

Can ATLAS sustain this crazy pace? If it has a big nucleus w ith large stores of frozen gas, then yes; we could get a very bright comet. Otherwise, Comet ATLAS might run out of gas, crumbling and fading as it approaches the sun.
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Current best estimates of the comet’s peak brightness in May range from magnitude +1 to -5. If Comet ATLAS hits the high end of that range, a bit brighter than Venus, it could become visible in broad daylight.

Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) performed that very trick 13 years ago. On Jan. 13, 2007, it swooped past the sun shining at magnitude -5. The absurdly-bright comet was visible at high noon with its tail jutting across blue sky:


Above: Comet McNaught in broad daylight on Jan. 13, 2007. Photo credit: Peter Rosen. [more]

Battams is not optimistic, though: “My personal intuition is that Comet ATLAS is over-achieving, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it fade rapidly and possibly even disintegrate before reaching the sun,” he says.

Come to think of it, that would be a good show, too. Fortunately, NASA has spacecraft with cameras that specialize in seeing things close to the sun.

“The Heliospheric Imager on NASA’s STEREO spacecraft will get a great view of ATLAS from mid-May through early June,” says Battams. “The camera is very sensitive, so we might be able to observe ATLAS’s tail interacting with the solar wind and outflows–as well as any potential breakup events.”

Stay tuned!

Fandom

From Locus: Various event cancellations

So far, Nebula Awards and CoNZealand are still on, but many large events have been cancelled.

COVID-19 SF Event Cancellations

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Numerous upcoming conventions and literary events have been postponed or canceled as part of efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes respiratory illness COVID-19. The situation remains in flux as the full extent of the pandemic remains to be seen. We will update this story and our convention listing with further information about cancellations and postponements as it becomes available.

  • Emerald City Comic Con, scheduled for March 14-20, 2020 in Seattle WA, is attempting to secure new dates for the summer.
  • The 41st International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, scheduled to run March 18–21, 2020 in Orlando FL, has been canceled.
  • The Spectrum Awards ceremony was to be held at Planet Comicon Kansas City, March 20-22, 2020 in Kansas City MO, which has now been canceled.
  • MidSouthCon 38, scheduled for March 20-22, 2020 in Memphis TN, has been postponed to 2021.
  • The Outer Dark Symposium, originally to be held March 27-28, 2020 in Conley GA, has been postponed until August 14-15, 2020.
  • The Bologna Book Fair, first scheduled for March 30 – April 2, 2020 in Bologna, Italy, later announced a postponement to May 4-7, 2020, and then canceled entirely. The next event will be held April 12-15, 2021.
  • The annual Williamson Lectureship, planned for April 2-4, 2020 in Portales NM, has been postponed, likely to September 2020.
  • Norwescon 43 in Seattle WA, scheduled April 9-12, 2020 has been cancelled.
  • The 36th L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future workshops, and the gala event scheduled for April 3, 2020 in Hollywood CA, will be postponed until later this year.
  • StokerCon 2020 in Scarborough, UK, planned for April 16-19, 2020, is “exploring all options to postpone the convention until later in the year.”
  • Swancon, scheduled for April 25-27, 2020 in Perth, Australia, has been canceled.
  • The Edgar Awards banquet and symposium, planned for April 30, 2020 in New York, has been cancelled.
  • The Bay Area Book Festival, scheduled for May 2-3, 2020 in Berkeley CA, is skipping this year, and will next be held May 1-2, 2021.

Smaller events have also been canceled, like March “SF by the Bay” programs at the San Francisco Public Library, the March Writers with Drinks reading in San Francisco, and the March Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading in New York, though the latter is providing a livestream of readings by Daniel Braum and Robert Levy on March 18, 2020 at 7 p.m. Eastern.

Many events (mostly those planned for later in the year) are still scheduled, including Book Expo in New York (May 27-29, 2020); the SFWA Nebula Conference in Woodland Hills CA (May 28-31, 2020); the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle WA (June 26-28, 2020); and CoNZealand, the 78th World Science Fiction Convention in Wellington, New Zealand (July 29 – August 2, 2020).

We will update as new information comes to light. If you have information about cancellations, please write to locus@locusmag.com.

MonSFFA Website

A SPECIAL COVID-19 EDITION OF IMPULSE IS HERE!

ATTENTION MonSFFA MEMBERS!

We are living in unprecedented times! The world has not been so shaken by a global public health crisis since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-’19.

Find here as a PDF file for viewing or download a special COVID-19 edition of MonSFFA’s news bulletin, Impulse.

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e-ImpulseSpring2020SpecialEditionPDF

This was not a planned edition, but circumstances have unfolded that prompted us to put this issue out. It deals with the ramifications for our club of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Please read it. And remember to wash your hands thoroughly and often with soap and water. And keep well.

(This special issue of Impulse can also be found on this Web site under the “Impulse” drop-down menu.)

Astronomy News

New projects broaden the search for alien signals from space

1 Comment
New projects broaden the search for alien signals from space
A longer list of Earth-like planets, eavesdropping on radio waves and looking for laser light shows: All raise the chances of detecting E.T.

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By Tom Siegfried, Knowable Magazine,  |  Published: Thursday, March 5, 2020
RELATED TOPICS: EXOPLANETS | ALIEN LIFE
alienlife1600x600
Jupiter’s smallest Galilean moon, Europa, could sport the water, chemistry, and energy needed to form life. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI

Estimating the chance of getting a message from life beyond Earth, say within the next decade, isn’t easy. Even the best experts are reluctant to offer precise odds.

“Anybody who gave you a figure would be talking about religion, not science,” says Jill Tarter, the astronomer who has spent most of her life pursuing the quest to find signals from alien life.

And even if you did get an estimate for that probability, it wouldn’t mean much. (After all, the San Francisco 49ers had a 95 percent chance of winning the Super Bowl with under 8 minutes to go in the game — and still lost.)

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MonSFFA Field Trip

MonSFFA meeting is cancelled

All MonSFFA events are cancelled until further notice.

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When Montreal cancels hockey, can Armageddon be far behind?

Obituary

Max von Sydow 1929-2020

Max von Sydow, Star of ‘The Seventh Seal’ and ‘The Exorcist,’ Dies at 90

Although generally associated with his venerable performances in “serious” films, von Sydow periodically ventured into sillier fare, where he enjoyed playing against audience expectations. That included turns as Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon (1980) and as a sinister beer maker in the lowbrow Bob and Doug McKenzie comedy Strange Brew (1983).

It is important to note that any man-made drug effects are rare to happen but still you should be aware never to excess more than one dosage within 24hours as this may affect your safety. viagra tadalafil The food must be low in fat and cholesterol has been shown to improve erectile function as well as relieve pain and swelling of the generic prescription viagra without lips and face. These capsules restore cialis without prescription overnight unica-web.com hormonal balance, stimulate organs and finally improve area of focus that enhances the flow of energy. All the cost of the ads and hiring representatives goes from levitra tabs the pocket of the patients. More recently, von Sydow played explorer Lor San Tekka in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and the Three-Eyed Raven on HBO’s Game of Thrones — for which he received an Emmy nomination — and filmed Thomas Vinterberg’s Kursk (2018).

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