This is Post 8 of 8, marking the official close of today’s virtual meeting. But feel free to continue taking part in our Zoom chat for a while longer, if you wish.

11) ANSWERS TO QUICKIE QUIZ

Here are the answers to the Quickie Quiz we posted at the outset of today’s meeting (see Post 1 of 8). How many titles did you remember correctly?

1) What was the title of that old science fiction show? You know, the one that showed an undulating line at the beginning of each episode and told you there was nothing wrong with your television set, and not to adjust the picture!

The Outer Limits (1963-1965), an anthology series created by Leslie Stevens and broadcast on the ABC network, often featuring bizarre or frightening aliens and monsters. Eschewing fantasy or the supernatural, the focus of the show was science fiction, and horror writer Stephen King has described Outer Limits as “the best program of its type ever to run on network TV.”

Revived under the same title in 1995, this second version ran for seven seasons.

2) What was the title of that X-Files episode? You know, the one where Mulder and Scully are dancing together at a Cher concert in the closing scene.

“The Post-Modern Prometheus” (1997), a quirky fifth-season episode written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, who had wanted to pen an episode inspired by Mary Shelley’s seminal SF horror story Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, and in particular, by James Whale’s 1931 film adaptation of the tale. The episode was filmed in black and white as an homage to the Whale classic.

Cher, an X-Files fan, turned down the offer to cameo in the episode—an imitator was employed in her place. “I wanted them to ask me to come on and act,” she recalled. “They just wanted me to come on and sing.” And the superstar chanteuse wasn’t interested in making such an appearance.

But then she saw the episode! Suitable impressed, she quickly changed her tune, explaining that had she anticipated the exceptional quality of the finished piece, she “would have done it in a heartbeat!”

3) What was the title of that old sci-fi flick? You know, the one where Frankenstein races against Rocky Balboa!

Death Race 2000 (1975) stars David Carradine as a masked race car driver dubbed “Frankenstein,” and features soon-to-be Rocky star Sylvester Stallone in an early role as rival driver “Machine Gun” Joe Viterbo. B-movie impresario Roger Corman is one of the film’s producers.

In the dystopian future of the year 2000, Frankenstein, Machine Gun Joe, and other colourfully named drivers race cross-country in souped-up cars equipped to disable, maim, and kill not only competitors, but hapless pedestrians! Bonus points are scored for hit-and-run deaths!

Sponsored by a totalitarian U.S. government exercising martial law over a land beset by economic collapse and widespread civil unrest, the violent and bloody Transcontinental Road Race is staged annually as a bread-and-circuses distraction for an uneasy populace.

A group of rebels, however, plot against the government and plan to disrupt the race and kidnap champion driver Frankenstein so as to exercise leverage over the regime. But unbeknownst to the rebels, Frankenstein is of kindred thought and has his own plan to assassinate the president and end the carnage.

4) What was the title of that original-series Star Trek episode? You know, the one with the Mugato.

“A Private Little War” (1968), a second-season episode often interpreted as an allegory for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Gene Roddenberry would ultimately rewrite Don Ingalls’ original script, the first draft of which called the gorilla-like Mugato a Neuralese Great Ape. In later drafts the creature became a Gumato, and is so named in the episode’s closing credits.

5) What was the title of that old creature feature? You know, the one with the giant octopus that pulls down the Golden Gate Bridge!

It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), in which a titanic octopus is displaced from its natural deep-sea habitat by hydrogen bomb tests in the area. The colossal cephalopod terrorizes the Pacific, finally arriving in San Francisco to destroy the Golden Gate Bridge.

The film was a showcase for the stop-motion animation talents of Ray Harryhausen, fresh off the success of his influential 1953 giant-monster movie, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. In order to save time and money, Harryhausen’s monster octopus sported only six tentacles, rather that the requisite eight!

It Came from Beneath the Sea marked the beginning of his decades-long association with producer Charles H. Schneer.

6) What was the title of that old Lost in Space episode? You know, the one with the giant talking carrot!

“The Great Vegetable Rebellion” (1968), a third-season episode considered by many SF TV fans as one of the most ridiculous ever produced.

Actor Stanley Adams played Tybo, the famously campy carrot-man and ruler of a planet dominated by intelligent plant life. Trek fans may recognize him as Cyrano Jones, vendor of tribbles!

Writer Peter Packer apologized to series star Jonathan “Dr. Smith” Harris for his story, saying “I didn’t have another damned idea in my head.” He wrote over 20 scripts for Lost in Space; this was his last.

7) What was the title of that old Twilight Zone episode? You know, the one where the Penguin survives a nuclear war, finds piles of books to read in the rubble of the town library, but then accidently shatters his glasses so he can’t read any of them!

“Time Enough at Last” (1959), an early first-season episode and one of The Twilight Zone’s most celebrated. The teleplay was written by series creator Rod Serling, adapting a short story by Lynn Venable originally published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction.

The episode starred Burgess Meredith in his first of several Twilight Zone appearances. He later played arch villain The Penguin in the popular 1960s Batman TV series.

8) What was the title of that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode? You know, the one where they take aboard Seaview some kind of plankton that keeps growing and growing out of control!

“The Price of Doom” (1964), a first-season episode written by a displeased Harlan Ellison under his pseudonym Cord Wainer Bird.

On top of dealing with the danger to Seaview of this rapidly growing and ever-expanding, bulkhead-buckling plankton, the crew must contend with an enemy agent aboard ship!

9) What was the title of that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode? You know, the one where the aliens speak in metaphors!

“Darmok” (1991), a fifth-season episode considered one of TNG’s, and indeed, the entire Star Trek franchise’s very best.

The aliens in the episode are called Tamarians and the Federation’s previous attempts to establish relations with them have all failed due to neither side being able to understand the other. The Enterprise is tasked with making contact with a Tamarian vessel in orbit around the planet El-Adrel IV in a fresh attempt. But as the Tamarians communicate their thoughts and emotions through allusions to their history and mythology, Picard and crew are unable to decipher their language any more than the Tamarians are able to comprehend Picard’s entreaties.

The episode’s title refers to the Tamarian phrase “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” which references a Tamarian tale of two warriors who met on the island of Tanagra and united to battle a deadly beast, thus forging a friendship through shared adversity. The orchestrated situation in which Picard soon finds himself with the Tamarian captain, Dathon, on the planet’s surface is similar, and Picard begins to understand how the Tamarians communicate.

When Dathon is wounded battling their shared beastly adversary, Picard tends to his injuries and is eventually able to communicate with Dathon by recounting to him the Epic of Gilgamesh, an Earth legend not unlike the Tamarian captain’s own Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

Dathon, unfortunately, succumbs to his wounds and Picard returns to the Enterprise just in time to avoid sparking an unintended war with the Tamarians. Dathon will be remembered by his people as the first to successfully establish communication with the Federation in what they will henceforth term Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.

10) What was the title of that old dinosaur movie? You know, the one on an island where the guy fights a Tyrannosaurus rex with a mechanical excavator!

Dinosaurus! (1960), in which a Brontosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus rex, preserved for millions of years in icy suspended animation, are uncovered at the bottom of the harbour bay that a construction crew are dredging on a remote Caribbean island. Pulled up onto the beach, a bolt of lightning during a nighttime storm reanimates the prehistoric titans and they are soon roaming about the island wreaking havoc, culminating in the dinosaur-versus-excavator duel on a cliff side.

The team of producer Jack H. Harris and director Irvin Yeaworth, who had made The Blob two years earlier, offered the lead role to their Blob star, Steve McQueen, but he passed on the opportunity to, instead, appear in a Western, The Magnificent Seven.

Stop-motion and puppetry were employed to bring the dinosaurs to life on screen.

11) What was the title of that original-series Jonny Quest episode? You know, the one with the prehistoric Pteranodon!

“Turu the Terrible” (1964), in which a wheelchair-bound villain has trained a living Pteranodon called Turu to terrorize and kill. He has tasked the creature with guarding a group of Amazon-jungle natives he has enslaved to mine what he believes to be silver, but which is actually a high-grade deposit of the rare metal, trinoxide. According to Dr. Quest, trinoxide is essential to the space program.

While the natives call the Pteranodon “Turu,” meaning “bird,” the name given the creature by its master is, in fact, “Tulu,” the “L” being a sound the natives cannot properly pronounce. The region in which Turu roams, and trinoxide is to be found, is referred to as “The Land of the Turu.”

The villain and his pet flying reptile meet their end in a tar pit, but Turu lives on, in a manner of speaking, appearing in each episode of the series during the opening-titles montage and closing-credits sequence.

12) What was the title of that Wonder Woman TV episode? You know… The show starred Lynda Carter… It was the episode that introduced Wonder Woman’s younger sister, Wonder Girl!

“The Feminum Mystique” (1976), a first-season two-parter, is notable in that it introduces Diana Prince/Wonder Woman’s younger sister, Drusilla, who arrives from Paradise Island to visit Diana in Washington and becomes entangled in a Nazi plot to steal the U.S. Army’s first jet fighter, shortly to be unveiled.

Drusilla assumes the mantle of Wonder Girl and in Part II, helps her big sister thwart a Nazi invasion of Paradise Island in order to compel the Amazons to mine Feminum ore, the metal used to fashion Wonder Woman’s bullet-proof bracelets. Then the two return to Washington to foil the theft of the new jet. All in a day’s work for these two Amazon princesses!

In one of her earliest roles, newcomer Debra Winger played Drusilla/Wonder Girl. The character appeared again later that same season in “Wonder Woman in Hollywood.”

13) I remember this one episode of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV series… There was a spaceship that looked like Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, flipped over! And Catwoman was the villain! What was the title of the thing, again?

“Flight of the War Witch” (1980), a two-hour adventure, capped the series’ first season and featured Julie “Catwoman” Newmar as the titular War Witch.

Travelling through a mysterious vortex to another universe, Buck and Princess Ardala form an uneasy alliance in order to defeat the pitiless War Witch, Zarina, she the evil Zaad ruler threatening the helpless Pendarans, who have appealed to Buck for help.

Zarina’s flagship is a Zaad Battle Cruiser, the design of which was clearly inspired by Montreal’s Olympic Stadium and Tower, turned upside down!

12) THANK YOU!

We hope you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, we thank you for dropping in, and we ask all of you to check in regularly here at www.MonSFFA.ca for additional content during this continuing-but-seemingly-winding-down pandemic, and for any updates as to when the club expects a return to regular, face-to-face meetings. Thank you for your interest and attention, and don’t forget to comment on today’s e-meeting!

We’d like to acknowledge the efforts of Keith Braithwaite and Cathy Palmer-Lister with regard to today’s programming, and thank, as well, all supporting contributors to what has been our March 2022 e-meeting.

13) SIGN-OFF

 And so, farewell until we meet again right here at www.MonSFFA.ca on Saturday, April 9, for another in our ongoing series of MonSFFA e-meetings! Peace.

The bracket cards we’ve used this meeting illustrate the show of support expressed by cities around the world for embattled Ukraine.

Slava Ukraini!

This is Post 7 of 8.

10) Sci-Fi Balderdash, Kinda, Sorta

We’ll be on Zoom for the next half-hour playing a sci-fi version of Balderdash, kinda, sorta! For you non-Zoomers, here’s a taste of what we have planned in the coming months:

First of all, we’re working on booking a couple of guest speakers, one who will talk astronomy, the other speaking on selling your SF/F “fancraft” on Etsy. We’ll confirm dates as soon as we have that all figured out.

Also, we have a presentation planned on the brief Hollywood career of artist and sculptor Paul Blaisdell, fondly remembered by fans of mid-century sci-fi cinema for his memorably outlandish B-movie creatures.

In the mid-1950s, Blaisdell earned a reputation among independent genre film producers like Roger Corman for quickly designing and cheaply fabricating movie monsters, leading to his rapid rise and brief reign as the go-to monster-maker among Hollywood’s low-budget sci-fi/horror filmmakers. Often donning his monster suits to play the beasts on screen, Blaisdell’s special effects work was too frequently uncredited, and just as quickly as he rose within the industry, the rapacious nature and changing fortunes of the movie business conspired to drive a disillusioned Blaisdell entirely out of the entertainment field by the early 1960s, never to return.

Today, his then-largely unsung contributions to the field are acknowledged and heralded by modern Hollywood.

We’ll examine, too, the brief history of Canada’s own weird fiction/sci-fi magazine, Uncanny Tales, not to be confused with the American periodical of the same name.

During World War II, the Canadian government introduced the War Exchange Conservation Act (WECA), restricting trade in non-essential goods in order that, as much as possible, Canadian dollars be held in reserve within Canada to support the war effort. Among the products barred from importation were the popular American comic books and pulp magazines of the day, prompting Canadian publishers to seize an opportunity and fill suddenly empty newsstand shelves with homegrown alternatives.

Birthed during this period were a cavalcade of Canadian comic book crime-fighting adventurers and superheroes like Canada Jack, Nelvana of the Northern Lights (pre-dating Wonder Woman), Iron Man (pre-dating by more than two decades the Marvel Comics character of the same name), Captain Wonder, Cosmo, and many others.

Most notable of the science fiction and fantasy pulps resulting from this unique Canadian publishing phenomenon was Uncanny Tales, boasting not merely the reprinted stories of American and British writers, but fresh fiction penned by Canadians.

A colourful, Toronto-based middleweight-boxer-turned-scribe named Thomas P. Kelley, who fashioned himself “King of the Canadian Pulp Writers,” was the most prolific of these authors. Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, he would, aided by his wife, Ethel, regularly write a couple or more stories per day, some 100,000 words a week! He provided almost all of the content featured in the early issues of Uncanny Tales!

Uncanny Tales and its contemporaries flourished but their success was short-lived, most of the magazines folding when the trade embargo was lifted after the war ended and American titles returned to newsstands. History has been kind to the Canadian superhero comic books that the WECA era spawned, not so much the pulp magazines, which were not as well regarded. Today, surviving copies of these so-called “CanPulps” are rare and greatly valued among collectors.

At some point, we expect to return to our regular, in-person meetings, but at the moment, we don’t know when that will happen. Note that we do plan to continue with these online gatherings in conjunction with the eventual resumption of our live-and-face-to-face get-togethers.

Coming up momentarily at 4:45PM is the final post of this virtual meeting; answers to the opening Quickie Quiz will be revealed, and our next e-meeting date announced.

This is Post 6 of 8 today.

9) YOUR SF/F TOP-TEN LISTS 

We’ve asked folks to prepare a SF/F top-ten list on any science fiction, fantasy, or horror topic—for example, top ten classic Star Trek episodes, or top ten genre novelists, or top ten sci-fi film sequels; it’s your choice as to the specific topic.

While we’ve included a few sample lists below, this portion of the meeting will take place largely on Zoom, where each participant will have opportunity to present their list. Include, perhaps, a few illustrative photos which can be shared with the group as you impart your top ten, and be prepared to field questions and/or, perhaps, defend your choices!

Those unable to join our video chat today can still submit in writing their own SF/F top-ten list via this post’s “Leave a Comment” option. So, again, we’re looking for your sci-fi, fantasy, or horror top-ten; could be, for instance, top ten space operas, top ten time-travel stories, Hugo-winning novels, classic sci-fi films, genre TV shows, spaceships, movie monsters, scariest horror movies, comic book superheroes, etc.

Include a quick description or outline of each of your entries and explain why you’ve included each, and why your fellow genre fans might also enjoy the selections you’ve listed.

My Top Ten Dinosaur Movies

By Keith Braithwaite

I’ve been interested in the prehistoric world since childhood, and was always thrilled to take in a dinosaur movie whenever possible. The two essential criteria I employ for evaluating what makes for a good, enjoyable dinosaur flick are, first, that the story be an entertaining, high-concept, quality adventure worthy of my time, and second, that there be featured a fair number of dinosaurs brought to life on screen by, preferably, top-notch, but at least respectable visual effects wizardry.

Of course, that the characters have appeal and the cast deliver, at minimum, competent performances is also important, but not essential; I’m here for the dinosaurs! Getting the science right is near-impossible, so I don’t worry too much about that, quite prepared as I am to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the show.

1) Jurassic Park (1993)

This Steven Spielberg-directed blockbuster gets top marks from me in all categories—story, characters, cast, special effects, musical score, even the science, which sounds almost possible—and ushered in an amazing new method of convincingly bringing dinosaurs to spectacular life on screen. It’s an exhilarating adventure and the dinosaurs are awesome to behold.

2) The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Set at the turn of the 20th century, a time when such wonders as lost worlds and forbidden valleys still seemed plausible, this one’s a rollicking ride pitting cowboys against dinosaurs brought to life on screen by the late, great Ray Harryhausen, who was, and remains the unrivaled master of stop-motion animation. His titular Allosaurus is one of the finest Hollywood dinosaurs ever created. The sequence in which cowboys on horseback surround and attempt to rope Gwangi is, alone, worth the price of admission!

3) King Kong (1933)

While Kong, a giant gorilla with a thing for blondes, is the star of this iconic monster movie, half the story takes place on the big ape’s Skull Island home, a tangled-jungle wilderness populated by numerous dinosaurs. Stop-motion pioneer Willis O’Brien and sculptor/model-maker Marcel Delgado delivered the goods with special effects trickery that holds up quite respectably even today, almost a century later! Kong’s jaw-dropping wrestling match with a Tyrannosaurus-rex and his clifftop fight with a Pterodactyl are highlights.

4) Jurassic Park III (2001)

This Jurassic Park sequel has its creative flaws, but the fast-paced story isn’t half bad and the dinosaur action superb. I rank it this high on my list purely on the strength of the star dinosaur, a massive Spinosaurus that provides plenty of thrills. Jurassic Park’s Dr. Alan Grant is back, joined by fresh faces who acquit themselves fairly well.

5) One Million Years, B.C. (1966)

Harryhausen again, who was hired by London-based Hammer Film Productions to animate the dinosaurs for this tale set in a prehistoric past of dubious veracity. The story follows the adventures of Tumak, banished from his Rock tribe, and the beautiful Loana, of the Shell people, who meet and enjoy something of a stone-age Romeo-and-Juliet kind of thing, with each drawing suspicion, jealousy, and fear from the other’s clan. Stills of Raquel “Loana” Welch wearing her famous animal-hide bikini soon became an emblematic image of the swinging ’60s. And while I give the producers points for taking a swing at it, creatively, I’m not sure if the made-up cave-people languages spoken throughout the entire picture quite work.

But never mind all of that; there’s lots of cool dinosaur encounters to relish, including Tumak’s fight with and impressive spearing of a young Allosaurus that attacks the Shell people’s village, and an epic square-off between a Ceratosaurus and a Triceratops.

A volcanic eruption in the closing reel wipes out almost everything and everyone, leaving survivors Tumak, Loana, and a handful of other members of both tribes to forge a new future together.

6) The Lost World (1925)

From the silent-movie era comes this magnificent adaptation of the celebrated 1912 Arthur Conan Doyle novel about an expedition to a South American plateau where living dinosaurs are believed to roam. Before they brought King Kong and the other denizens of Skull Island to the screen with their ground-breaking movie magic, the above-mentioned Willis O’Brien and Marcel Delgado created for this film a sweeping prehistoric mesa on which ranged multiple species of stop-motion dinosaurs—carnivores Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus-rex, herbivores Stegosaurus, Agathaumas, Triceratops, Trachodon, Brachiosaurus, and others. Easily the best and most memorable early example of outstanding cinematic sci-fi adventure, with dinosaurs playing a prominent part.

7) When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)

The success of One Million Years, B.C. resulted in more such films from Hammer, including this title, practically a carbon copy of its 1966 forerunner, right down to the use of a concocted prehistoric language throughout! Actress and Playboy model Victoria Vetri stepped into the Raquel Welch role for this one, and stop-motion animators Jim Danforth and David Allen handled the dinosaur action, delivering excellent results. Dinosaurs featured included a Plesiosaurus, a charging Chasmosaurus, a quadrupedal Megalosaurus, seemingly patterned on the mid-19th century Crystal Palace Park sculpture created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, and a giant Rhamphorhynchus.

8) Cesta do pravěku, or, in English, Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955)

This is a Czechoslovakian science fiction film about four boys boating on a river that mysteriously draws them progressively further back through time the more they row upstream, affording them a fantastic opportunity to observe the prehistoric flora and fauna of Earth’s different geological time periods.

I remember watching an English-language dub of this film many moons ago in my elementary school classroom; there was a distinct documentary feel to the piece as the boys appeared to know a lot about the various dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts they came across along their way. The animals were depicted behaving naturally in marked contrast to most dinosaur films, which cast their prehistoric stars as movie monsters and placed them in contrived situations for dramatic purposes.

I know now that this movie was not a documentary, per se, but its unusual narrative style made it seem so, and the production has apparently influenced such natural history documentaries as the BBC’s 1999 Walking with Dinosaurs series.

An American version released in 1966 replaced some sequences with newly filmed footage and cut the movie into chapters for serialization; this is probably the film I saw in school so many years ago. My boyhood self was struck by the wonderful imagery, which was inspired by the paleontological paintings of eminent Czech artist Zdeněk Burian. Director Karel Zeman recreated for the screen some of Burian’s depictions using a combination of 3-D models, stop-motion, puppetry, full-sized models, animated 2-D “profile models,” and painted backdrops and matte paintings—essentially, the filmmaker used every technique available to him at the time to realize his vision.

The movie offers not only numerous dinosaurs, but prehistoric mammals and birds like the Mammoth and the Phorusrhacos.

9) The Land That Time Forgot (1974)

Based on the 1918 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of the same name, this movie delivers on story but largely fails on the presentation of the featured dinosaurs, which are hand puppets and string-operated marionettes, stiff and not remotely convincing.  Thus, while my above-outlined first criteria is sufficiently fulfilled, here—you can’t beat a grand, old-fashioned Burroughs fantasy/adventure tale, after all—my second is most definitely not!

10) Planet of Dinosaurs (1977)

Survivors of a spaceship crash must survive on an Earth-like planet populated by dinosaurs in this low-rent sci-fi actioner. Producer/director James K. Shea spent almost all of his meagre budget on the stop-motion dinosaurs of the piece, and came away with pretty good results that won the film awards based on the quality of that animation. But the rest of the movie—script, cast, props, etc.—is weak, at times laughably so. And so this final entry on my list is the opposite of the previous one, with my first criteria unmet and my second satisfied.

My Top Ten Ray Bradbury Short Stories

By Keith Braithwaite 

One of the first genre writers I read as a youngster was Ray Bradbury; I’ve always enjoyed his evocative, poetic prose and turn of phrase, and he came up with some interesting and uplifting, weird and sometimes terrifying ideas for the 600 or so short stories he wrote over his lifetime. If not all, I’ve read many of them, and it’s hard to boil my favourites down to just 10, but below are those that came to mind as I was pondering which to include for this exercise.

The best of Bradbury’s short-story oeuvre can be found in such collections as R is for Rocket, S is for Space, The October Country, The Machineries of Joy, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, and others. Many of these books have been in print in various editions for decades.

For those who haven’t read these stories, spoilers, of course, are inevitable, here, so proceed accordingly.

1) “A Sound of Thunder” (1952)

A time-travel classic about a hunting expedition to bag a dinosaur, and in which the consequences of even a minor change accidentally made in the prehistoric past—in this case, treading on a butterfly after inadvertently stepping off of a special protective path used by Bradbury’s group of time-traveling safari hunters—ripple through the millennia to manifestly change the world from which the group have come.

Plus, there’s a T-rex, which my dinosaur-crazy boyhood self found pretty cool!

2) “Boys! Grow Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar” (1962)

While I first read the story under this title, it was originally published as “Come Into My Cellar” in Galaxy Science Fiction. Without giving too much away, this is a subversively clever alien-invasion story in which the extraterrestrial threat comes in the mail! A slow-burning dread permeates the piece, building to a chilling climax.

It’s been adapted several times for the screen, most effectively as “Special Delivery” in 1959 for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

3) “The Fog Horn” (1951)

Originally published as “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” in The Saturday Evening Post, this story was the inspiration for the 1953 Ray Harryhausen monster movie of the same name. The two Rays, by the way, were fast friends for much of their lives.

This is a story of loneliness, that of the seasoned keeper and his apprentice manning an isolated lighthouse, and of the ancient sea monster which responds to the sound of the lighthouse’s fog horn, thinking it the call of another of its kind. The keepers speculate on whether the animal is the last of its species.

Human or beast, we all need companionship, love, and suffer to the point of anger without it, as does the sea monster when the keepers switch off the fog horn, enraging the tormented creature, which then destroys the lighthouse.

4) “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” (1949)

Originally published as “The Naming of Names” in Thrilling Wonder Stories, this is the story of colonists sent to Mars during a war on Earth to establish a settlement there. Gradually, they change, slowly becoming Martians, quite literally, and finally deserting their homes for the ancient Martian villas in the mountains!

Five years have passed, the war has ended, and an Earthship arrives to recover the colonists. The crew find the settlement abandoned, but encounter a community of Martians in the mountains who exhibit a remarkable command of the English language.

5) “The Dragon” (1955)

Originally published in Esquire, this is an odd little fantasy piece about a pair of knights on a mission to slay a dragon. It is nighttime on a seemingly timeless moor, and the two men sit at their campfire fearfully anticipating what is to come, a hulking, shrieking behemoth belching fire and smoke. Convinced of certain failure, for this monster has killed all who have faced it before, they nevertheless ready for battle, strapping on their armour. The dragon’s wail can be heard as it thunders closer and one of the knights charges at the quarry, lance striking, and buckling, just under an “unlidded yellow eye,” while the other knight and his mount are flung fatally against a rock as the dragon shoulders past.

The scene shifts to the cab of a steam locomotive, where the engine crew are both excited and bewildered by what looked for all the world like a charging knight-in-armour on the tracks. “We hit him!” one man exclaims. “You goin’ to stop?” The other replies, “Did once; found nothing. Don’t like to stop on this moor. I get the willies. Got a feel, it has.”

6) “The Long Rain” (1950)

First published as “Death-by-Rain” in Planet Stories, which kind of suggests the outcome of the tale, this one is set on Venus. Four men whose rocket has crashed are trekking through the jungle in the incessant rain—it’s nearly always raining on Venus—attempting to reach a “Sun Dome,” one of over a hundred dry, warm shelters lit by a miniature sun and stocked with provisions. The indigenous Venusians, however, take every opportunity to destroy these structures.

“It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping in the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains,” Bradbury writes, establishing the deluge as an ominous force. The constant, unrelenting drumming of raindrops against one’s head and body is enough to drive a person insane and in the finale, as the sole survivor of this ordeal finally finds safety, we are unsure if he has, in fact, lost his mind and is hallucinating.

7) “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950)

The title of this story was taken from a World War I-era poem by Sara Teasdale—Bradbury was a lover of poetry—dealing with nature’s indifference to the outcome of the war, and to the survival at all of mankind.

After a nuclear war has obliterated the town of Allendale, California, an automated house stands still, having survived the conflagration, and continues to function. A morning alarm announces that it’s time to wake up, and provides the date, August 4, 2026; breakfast is automatically prepared, toast, eggs, bacon, two cups of coffee and two glasses of milk; outside, the lawn sprinklers are activated.

But the house is empty. The family that lived here was vapourized in an atomic blast. All that remains of them are the silhouettes of very their last moments—mowing the lawn, gardening, tossing a ball in the yard—visible against a wall the paint on which has otherwise been burned off. Tiny robotic mice scurry about, attending to cleaning chores. The family dog has somehow survived the blast and, starving and suffering from radiation poisoning, whines at the door and is let in. The animal searches the house for the family, soon dies, and is whisked away to the incinerator in the cellar by a phalanx of the robot mice.

At 9:05PM, the lady of the house is asked which poem she would like to hear this evening. No answer. After a moment, the house randomly selects Sara Teasdale’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” and begins to recite the rhyme.

The house is finally destroyed that night when a fire breaks out in the kitchen and quickly spreads throughout the structure. The following morning, only a single wall remains standing, and the house’s malfunctioning electronic voice emanates from a speaker box announcing, over and over and over, that the date is August 5, 2026.

There were two versions of the story, one published in Collier’s magazine, the second as a chapter of Bradbury’s fix-up novel The Martian Chronicles. The dates given differ between the Collier’s and Martian Chronicles versions; with the latter, definitive edition, Bradbury wanted to commemorate the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which took place on August 6, 1945, local time, or August 5 on this side of the International Date Line.

8) “Kaleidoscope” (1949)

Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, the story involves the aftermath of a rocket explosion which has scattered the crew out into space in all directions. Safe for the moment in their spacesuits, the men know they are all, in the end, doomed. They have about an hour during which time they’ll be able to communicate amongst themselves as each drifts further away towards his ultimate fate. Each man looks back on his life, and each handles his impending death differently—disbelief, madness, resignation.

Reflecting on his abysmal and unfulfilling existence, lead protagonist Hollis is jealously resentful of fellow crewmember Lespere’s life of wild abandon, many women, and good times. For his part, Lespere is pleased, as the end nears, to have his memories of a satisfying life well lived, whereas Hollis laments that he’s only ever dreamed of such a life as his colleague’s. There is in his attitude, now, a meanness towards Lespere, and he is taken aback by this realization. He had never been a mean person, had never dared. By tomorrow night, he expects to fall into Earth’s atmosphere and burn up “like a meteor,” and he wonders what he might do, if there is anything he can do at this point, to make up for the appalling and empty life he has lived.

In his final moments, Hollis wonders if anyone will see him. Far below, on a country road, a young boy spies a shooting star and excitedly alerts his mother. “Make a wish,” she tells her son.

9) The Smile (1952)

Originally published in Fantastic, this one appealed to the artist in me. War has decimated nearly all vestiges of civilization and in the rubble of this post-apocalyptic future, remnants of pre-war times are disdained by the ragged survivors, who hate anything connected to that past, a past which wrought the deplorable misery of their present.

Tom is a young boy who lines up early one morning to take part in one of the periodic festivals dedicated to desecrating traces of the past, like a book-burning or the recent destruction of the last motorcar by sledgehammer. Today, people are lining up to spit on a painting that has been set up in the town square.

But when Tom’s turn finally comes and he stands before the work of art, he stares transfixed at this exquisite portrait of a young woman—the Mona Lisa. He has heard tell that she smiles, and finds his mouth dry and unable to yield any spittle. The crowd urge him to get on with it, but all he can articulate is that the subject of the painting is beautiful.

An official on horseback approaches with an announcement, which he reads aloud for all to hear: it has been decided that the portrait be handed over to the gathered populace so that they may participate in the destruction of—

Before he can finish, the crowd surges forward, Tom carried along in the melee of people grabbing at the painting, ripping and shredding the canvas into confetti, splintering the painting’s frame. In blind imitation of the mad throng, Tom tears at the painting and comes away clutching in his hand a small scrap of the canvas. He runs home with it and later, in the quiet of nighttime, lays awake, still clutching his tattered prize. The rising moon casts a cold light upon him, and he sees what is painted on the piece of torn canvas he holds in his hand: the smile, the lovely smile, warm and gentle.

With a bit of dialogue, Bradbury does address the fact that the Mona Lisa was painted on wood, not canvas; the crowd is lining up to spit on a copy, the characters conclude, but no matter.

10) “The Murderer” (1953)

First published in Bradbury’s short story collection The Golden Apples of the Sun, this one appeals to me even more today in this age of social media than it did when I first read it in the early 1970s.

Told through the literary device of a psychiatrist’s interview with a prisoner, the story involves the virtual assault of technology on a near-future society where people are under a constant barrage of communication by phone, intercom, radio, and other gadgetry. Sound familiar?

As the prisoner, who calls himself “The Murderer,” lists and details his various massacres of noisy, incessantly nattering machines, we learn that he was driven to extreme action against the offending contraptions because he found himself unable, ever, to escape the ceaseless demands of a world addicted to communication. Simply desiring a little peace and quiet, the man rebelled and violently smashed to pieces the machines that rang and buzzed and questioned and advised and babbled and never left him alone for so much as an instant. In the end, he is quite content to remain in the care of the state, freed as he is, now, from the burden placed upon him by communications technology and a society obsessed with it.

Before returning to his cell, the prisoner predicts that a revolution is coming, that his actions were just the beginning. “I’m the vanguard,” he states, “of the small public which is tired of noise and being taken advantage of and pushed around and yelled at, every moment music, every moment in touch with some voice somewhere, do this, do that, quick, quick, now here, now there…. It was all so enchanting at first. The very idea of these things, the practical uses, was wonderful. They were almost toys, to be played with, but the people got too involved, went too far, and got wrapped up in a pattern of social behavior and couldn’t get out, couldn’t admit they were in, even.”

Noting that the man seems strangely happy, the doctor exits the room, reports that the prisoner is convivial but out of touch with reality, and returns to the familiar, cacophonous environment of unremitting electronic blather.

My Top Ten Comic-Book Superhero Sobriquets

By Keith Braithwaite 

Just as Habs great Maurice Richard was dubbed “The Rocket,” or master Hollywood make-up artist Lon Chaney “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” so too are many superheroes bestowed with descriptive tags, sometimes several. Here are my favourites:

1) The Dark Knight—Batman; Gotham City’s guardian boasts numerous appellations—Caped Crusader, Cowled Crime-Fighter, World’s Greatest Detective—but this one, I believe, paints the definitive picture of the character.

2) The Children of the Atom—mutants; collectively, the mutant community in Marvel’s X-Men universe.

3) The Man of Tomorrow—Superman; a difficult choice, but I picked this one over The Man of Steel and The Last Son of Krypton because The Man of Tomorrow has a positive, hopeful, optimistic ring to it, as befits the character.

4) The Sentinel of Liberty—Captain America; a tad jingoistic, perhaps, but given the character’s origin story, appropriate.

5) The Sorcerer Supreme—Doctor Strange; actually, this is his formal title as Earth’s protector against threats magical and mystical.

6) The Emerald Archer—Green Arrow; a classy label for this guy, and a nice bit of alliteration.

7) The Scarlet Speedster—The Flash; basically, that’s him in a nutshell, and there’s that lyrical alliteration again.

8) The Amazing Amazon—Wonder Woman; an apt description of this princess of Themyscira, and still more lovely alliteration.

9) The Antlered Avenger—MooseMan; okay, no more alliteration… I promise! But allow me to pat myself on the back, here, as I came up with this tag in the process of developing a star character for MonSFFilms’ 2005 superhero spoof, and I think it’s a pretty good one!

10) The Ghost Who Walks—The Phantom; with one foot in pulp magazines and the other in superhero comics, he was so named because he seems never to die and has been around for hundreds of years. In fact, generations of crime-fighters have assumed the Phantom mantle. He was the first costumed crime-fighter to don a skin-tight suit, which subsequently became standard apparel for superheroes.

This is our meeting’s Post 5 of 8.

8) WHAT ARE YOU READING/WATCHING?

Exclusively on Zoom, we’ll be asking “What are You Reading, or Watching?” Give us your quick book report, or your brief review of a film or TV show you’ve recently been enjoying!

For those not participating in our Zoom chat, today, you may still contribute by submitting your brief book reports or movie and television-series reviews via this post’s “Leave a Comment” option. We welcome your thoughts.

Get your green bheer and chips! It’s time for the break!

Catch up on club news and view the display table and raffle prizes.

NEWS

MonSFFA has learned of the passing of Maureen Whitelaw, a long-time member. She has not been well for a very long time. My only good picture of Maureen shows her sitting beside Alice, another member that we lost to Covid.

DISPLAY TABLE

Click to view Wayne’s models full size

The Raffle Prizes (Click to view full size)

This is Post 3 of 8.

6) SHOW-AND-TELL

Exclusively on Zoom, we open the floor for the next 15 minutes to club members who have “fancraft” projects to showcase. 

For folk not on Zoom with us, today, we take this opportunity to remind you of our ongoing Writing Challenge, launched last month. Here, again, is what we outlined during February’s e-meeting:

Barring the emergence of another dangerous variant, Public Health restrictions will finally be lifted for good at some point soon, and with most of us having been largely relegated to our homes for almost two years, now, we’ll be itching to travel as winter recedes and with it, we hope, COVID-19. Below are listed a dozen possible Canadian destinations for your consideration, singular, curious, unusual, and otherworldly places likely to appeal in some way to SF/F fans.

We’ve added a little something extra, too, to the mix, here, in the form of a writing challenge to occupy you during the remaining weeks of winter. We’re looking for original short stories or works of fan-fiction, between roughly a thousand and three thousand words—science fiction, fantasy, or horror; your choice! With the weird and wonderful destinations below, we hope to inspire you to author a fantastic, fanciful, frightening, or funny tale. Each entry includes a story prompt designed to get your creative juices flowing, but feel free to ignore our suggestions and go your way.

So have fun with it, and we look forward to reading your stories in a future issue of Warp!

And here are those Canadian otherworldly sites and attractions, and story prompts, as presented last month:

Devon Island and the Haughton Impact Crater, Nunavut 

Devon Island is the world’s largest uninhabited island and part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It is located in Baffin Bay north of Baffin Island. So otherworldly is Devon Island’s landscape that the Mars Society there established the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in order that scientists may simulate missions to the Red Planet.

Formed some 39 million years ago when a meteor about two kilometers in diameter slammed into what was then a forest, the Haughton Impact Crater adjacent the station is considered the best Mars analog on Earth. NASA’s complementary Haughton-Mars Project is also in operation at the crater during the summer months.

This landscape may well inspire a science fiction story about a mission to Mars, or another planet having a similarly hostile environment. What might the explorers from Earth find there, and what perils might they face?

The Cheltenham Badlands, Caledon, Ontario

Situated between the villages of Inglewood and Cheltenham in the primarily rural municipality of Caledon, the Cheltenham Badlands are an exposed and greatly eroded section of the Queenston Formation, which formed during the mid- and late-Ordovician Period, between roughly 470 and 443 million years ago. Characterized by rounded hills and gullies, this terrain is composed chiefly of brick-red shale, interlaced with layers of green shale, sandstone, and limestone. Representing probably the best example of badlands topography in Ontario, the area easily suggests the strange landscape of an alien world on which a tale of the far-flung future might be set.

The story could begin with the crash-landing of a spaceship on this world and detail the efforts of the crew to survive until a rescue mission arrives from distant Earth. Having salvaged from their wrecked craft what equipment and stores were not irreparably damaged or destroyed in the crash, they are faced with a dearth of vital supplies. Their first priority is to locate a source of water and find a way to farm the harsh soil, perhaps employing vegetable scraps and seeds derived from their remaining onboard food supply to cultivate fresh and progressively more produce. They spy in the distance a herd of large, centipede-like animals foraging on the scant indigenous flora. These beasts may well offer a supply of protein-rich meat.

But there’s something else out there, amid the knolls and furrows; something primordial and predatory, lying in wait, still and patient, the natural colouring and texture of its skin perfect camouflage for these surroundings, rendering the enormous, snake-like creature effectively invisible—until it moves to strike!

Hopewell Rocks, Hopewell Cape, New Brunswick

The Hopewell Rocks, also called the Flowerpot Rocks, are the principal tourist attraction of the village of Hopewell Cape on Shepody Bay, part of the greater Bay of Fundy. A geological formation composed largely of dark sedimentary conglomerate and sandstone, the Rocks have been eroded by the famous Fundy tides. With glacial retreat after the Ice Age, surface water seeping through cracks in the shoreline bluffs, over time, separated the Rocks from the cliff face. Further, tidal waters, rising—by up to 16 metres—and falling twice a day, have worn down this collection of towering pillars, most acutely at their base. Visitors are able to descend to the beach at low tide for a closer look.

A fantasy story is evoked by this landscape, perhaps involving a local fisherman assisting a beautiful mermaid who has come ashore one morning to escape a ravenous sea serpent. Not a one of his family or friends believe his yarn, of course, known as he is for spinning such tall tales over a pint or two!

The Crooked Bush, Alticane, Saskatchewan

Also called the “Twisted Trees” or the “Crooked Tress of Alticane,” this copse of hideously deformed aspens can be found near the abandoned village of Alticane, Saskatchewan, today considered a ghost town. Prominent in the province’s folklore, the existence of the trees is sometimes attributed to paranormal forces.

Genetic mutation is offered as the scientific explanation for this botanical anomaly, the aberration likely originating with a single tree as aspen’s propagate through a shared root system to form large, clonal groves. A cordon surrounds the warped thicket for purposes of protection, and to contain any further spread of the malformation to other, bordering aspens, which stand straight and tall.

A Lovercraftian horror story, perhaps, may emerge from the fevered dream provoked simply by having gained knowledge of these accursed aspens, for one can scarcely comprehend what blasphemous monstrosity long ago may have marred this small patch of wood, leaving trunks and branches gnarled and bent. Ever are these blighted trees a reminder to the multitude and variety of life which teems over this inconsequential globe of the paltry place we denizens of planet Earth hold within a universe ravaged by outrages evil, dark, and unimaginable!

Le Grand rassemblement, Sainte-Flavie, Québec

On a rock-strewn beach overlooking the St. Lawrence River stand some hundred strange stone and wooden figures, arrayed so as to appear a column of people wading ashore. The creation of Quebec artist Marcel Gagnon, these figures are simple in design, carved heads atop a post or pillar, some hunched, exuding a haunting quality, all worn by the weather and tides, those farthest out on the beach disappearing and reappearing with the ebb and flow of the great river.

The artist initially began carving the effigies as figure studies for his vivid impressionistic paintings but eventually repurposed them as an art installation, which can be viewed at his Centre d’Art Marcel Gagnon in Ste-Flavie, a small town on the Gaspé Peninsula.

Some kind of ghost story, perhaps, or dark fantasy involving a curse long ago cast upon the local townspeople suggests itself, here.

The Enchanted Forest, Revelstoke, British Columbia

A family-friendly roadside attraction in the Monashee Mountains some 30 kilometres west of Revelstoke, The Enchanted Forest places over 350 kitschy, handcrafted figurines of faerie folk and storybook characters amongst the towering cedars of an old-growth forest. The roster includes Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Three Little Pigs, Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends, Humpty Dumpty, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, the Tooth Faerie, the Pied Piper, along with mermaids, gnomes, a dragon, and many more!

Folk-art sculptor Doris Needham and her husband, Ernest, built the attraction largely by hand as a retirement project, opening their wonderland to the public on July 1, 1960. The Enchanted Forest has since expanded to encompass eight acres of fun for the whole family.

Faerie folk and the like can make for an inviting fantasy tale, maybe involving the many characters, here, magically coming to life so as to uplift the spirits of a traumatized and forlorn child.

UFO Landing Pad, St. Paul, Alberta

The east-central Alberta town of St. Paul built the world’s first UFO landing pad in 1967 as part of Canada’s nationwide Centennial Celebrations. Paul Hellyer, then Canada’s defense minister, flew in by helicopter to officially inaugurate the structure.

A plaque put up beside the pad reads:

The area under the World’s First UFO Landing Pad was designated international by the Town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. That future travel in space will be safe for all intergalactic beings, all visitors from earth or otherwise are welcome to this territory and to the Town of St. Paul.

Hellyer, who died last year at age 98, publicly announced in 2005 that he believed in the existence of extraterrestrials, that he and his wife had once seen a UFO, and that at least four species of aliens from other star systems have been visiting Earth for thousands of years, some of them now based on Mars, Venus, and the moons of Saturn! He also urged governments around the world to help solve the global climate crisis by employing the alien technology they have secreted away all these years.

So what if a UFO actually touched down in St. Paul one day? What would be the reaction of local, national, and foreign governments, the military, the scientific community, religious leaders, and the ordinary people of the town? And would the extraterrestrials share the sentiments inscribed on that plaque?

The Moonbeam Flying Saucer, Moonbeam, Ontario

Speaking of UFOs, the small northern Ontario town of Moonbeam has erected a flying saucer monument next to the town’s visitor centre. With the National Transcontinental Railway providing access to the agricultural land and natural resources of the environs, the town was founded and settled by Quebecers from the Laurentians and Montreal in the early 1910s and ’20s. French is spoken by almost 80 percent of townspeople.

The slogan “Where the moonbeams blend in with the Northern Lights” is used to promote tourism and while no documentation exists as confirmation, the town’s name is attributed to early pioneers who often reported flashing lights falling from the sky near area creeks and ponds. They called these mysterious lights “moonbeams.” That’s a potential sci-fi story right there!

Spotted Lake, Osoyoos, British Columbia

Northwest of the Okanagan town of Osoyoos in B.C.’s Similkameen Valley, the endorheic Spotted Lake, rich in salt and various minerals, was historically and is still revered by the territory’s First Nations people as a sacred site thought to proffer therapeutic waters.

In the summer, evaporation exposes concentrated deposits of calcium, magnesium sulfate, and other elements and compounds, which, combined with seasonal precipitation, form small, colourful pools of water, lending the lake its distinctive spots. Also formed around and between these spots are natural hardened-mineral pathways.

A medieval fantasy story could be conjured up around such a lake, the waters of which an evil sorceress might exploit to brew her magical potions.

Abraham Lake, Kootenay Plains, Alberta

When the Bighorn Dam was built in 1972, a sizeable tract of land was flooded to create Abraham Lake, Alberta’s largest reservoir, situated on the North Saskatchewan River in the Kootenay Plains area of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Tourists and nature photographers are drawn to the site by a bizarre phenomenon.

Rotting vegetation at the bottom of the lake releases methane gas which coalesces into bubbles that, in winter, become trapped in ice as they rise towards the surface, creating weirdly beautiful columns of globules beneath the frozen lake surface.

Consider a story that serves as an allegory for climate change: on an icy planet or moon in some distant solar system, perhaps a similar wonder occurs, and maybe within each ice-encased pocket of gas thrives a completely alien civilization populated by exotic miniature beings! But what would happen to those beings if that frozen world began to warm?

Bear Rock and the Bear Rock Sinkhole, Sahtu Region, Northwest Territories

The Sahtu Region includes Bear Rock, an outcropping considered hallowed ground by the Dene people. It is said that in ancient days, when giants roamed the Earth, fabled Dene law-giver Yamoria slew a trio of enormous beavers that had been drowning hunters, and that Bear Rock was the mountain over which he draped their gargantuan pelts, leaving the dark, reddish stains which distinguish the rock to this day—a bit of Beavra fan-fiction can certainly spring out of all of that!

Characterized by underground waterways and the gradual dissolution of soluble rock like limestone and dolomite, the karst landforms of Bear Rock and the vast surrounding domain include numerous pinnacles, poljes, turloughs, caves, and sinkholes.

Of the many sinkholes pitting this pristine and remote wilderness, the largest and most remarkable is the Bear Rock Sinkhole, likely the result of a cave-in and one of North America’s finest examples of a vertical cover-collapse event. Inaccessible by road or trail, the ovate Bear Rock Sinkhole lies between the towns of Tulita and Norman Wells and is roughly the length and width of a football field, its vertical walls plunging some 40 metres to the pool of cerulean blue water below.

But what if beneath the surface of that water was discovered a portal to the past, or to another dimension? Or, if supernatural satanic horror is your groove, a portal to hell?

Akshayuk Pass, Baffin Island, Nunavut

Appropriately dubbed Land of the Gods, Akshayuk Pass is an ancient river bed and traditional Inuit travel corridor bordered by towering granite peaks, among them imposing Mount Odin, arrowhead-shaped Mount Loki, and other summits the names of which derive from Norse mythology—though unverified, it is believed that the earliest European exploration of the region was by Norse adventurers in the 11th century. The area, today within Canada’s Auyuittuq National Park in northeastern Baffin Island, draws first-class mountaineers from around the world.

Of note is Thor Peak, also called Mount Thor, dramatically thrusting skyward, a sheer precipice, offering rock climbers one of the world’s highest vertical drops! The spectacular vista surrounding Thor inspires a fantastical winter realm populated by Ijirait (shape-shifters), Chenoos (cannibalistic ice giants), the Qiqirn (a dog spirit), and other mythological creatures of the north to be found in aboriginal legend. One imagines a hero embarking on a precarious trek to the mountain in search of his or her destiny.

If a work of fan-fiction is your fancy, meanwhile, Mount Asgard is a twin-towered, flat-topped mountain of the type suitable for hollowing out by a Bond villain as his secret lair, or by the Rebel Alliance as a hidden base.

So with the starter pistol having been fired on this writing challenge, time to get going on your stories if you haven’t already!

Advertisements for mail-order novelty items were ubiquitous in comic books during, in particular, the 1950s and ’60s, and beyond. Magazines aimed at the youth market, too, often ran these ads. The hucksters who came up with this stuff preyed on the gullible by offering fantastical, amazing, stupendous—or so their ad copy claimed—toys, novelties, gag items, and other such flotsam. The products were designed, first, to remain affordable, in that the target customers were adolescents or teens, most often boys, who generally didn’t have a lot of money and even less judgement or self-control, and second, to relieve said kids of their allowances and hard-earned paper route money.

All of this miscellany was aggressively marketed with little regard for honesty and integrity; truth-in-advertising was most assuredly not a chapter in whichever sales manual was used by the people who pushed this paraphernalia.

Of the warehouses worth of cheap, over-hyped, and often fraudulently marketed product, Sea-Monkeys—Instant Pets!—is the unrivaled gold-medal winner in this category of merchandise. Harold von Braunhut was the inventor and master marketer who came up with Sea-Monkeys, inspired by a rival’s Ant Farm. Braunhut died in 2003 with close to 200 patents to his name.

On Zoom right now, we’re exploring some of those crazy, miraculous, impossibly astounding, and definitely not-as-advertised pop culture icons of a bygone era—monsters, spaceships, ghosts, dinosaurs, and more! To give credit where credit is due, most of the information we’ve gathered on this topic is contained in collector Kirk Demarais’ book Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic-Book Ads.

Do join us on Zoom for all the fun!

This Afternoon’s MonSFFA e-Meeting on Zoom

Join by phone (voice only); in Montreal, call in toll-free: 1-438-809-7799. Find your out-of-town Zoom call-in number here: Call-In Numbers

Meeting ID: 852 6845 9705
Passcode: 615915

This is the first of eight related posts constituting this afternoon’s MonSFFA e-meeting.

A couple of weeks ago, the Winnipeg Jets hosted our Montreal Canadiens and before puck-drop, the local Hoosli Ukrainian Male Chorus was welcomed to the ice and sang a stirring rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem to thunderous applause:

1) INTRODUCTION

This is our 24th virtual MonSFFA get-together—that’s a full two years of monthly online club meetings!

The afternoon’s get-together will unfold both on Zoom and right here on the club’s Web site over the course of the next few hours, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 2:45PM, 3:00PM, and 3:15PM, 4:15PM, with a final post at 4:45PM. All posts will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MonSFFA), however, note that the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.

As we cannot yet, with reasonable safety for all, assemble in larger numbers indoors, this March 2022 virtual meeting has been prepared especially for you, MonSFFA’s membership. Sit back, check out each of the afternoon’s posts, scroll down leisurely through the proffered content, and enjoy!

Don’t forget to comment on what we’ve presented. Let us know what you think of specific topics or the meeting overall. Your input helps us to tailor these virtual meetings for maximum interest and enjoyment.

And, of course, you can participate, as well, on Zoom!

2) JOIN THIS AFTERNOON’S VIDEO-CHAT ON ZOOM!

To join our Zoom video-chat, which will run throughout the course of the meeting in tandem with the Web site-based content presented, simply click here and follow the prompts: This Afternoon’s MonSFFA e-Meeting on Zoom

If you’re not fully equipped to Zoom by computer, you can also join in by phone (voice only); in the Montreal area, the toll-free number to call is: 1-438-809-7799. If you’re from out of town, find your Zoom call-in number here: Call-In Numbers

Also, have this information on hand as you may be asked to enter it:

Meeting ID: 852 6845 9705
Passcode: 615915

3) MEETING AGENDA

Here’s the agenda for this afternoon’s virtual meeting:

4) QUICKIE QUIZ!

We all, on occasion, have trouble remembering the title of a classic SF/F TV show or a particular episode, or that of an old sci-fi movie we haven’t seen since we were 11 years old! It’s on the tip of our tongue, but we…simply…can’t…recall…

Perhaps we’re telling a fellow SF/F fan about this really cool gem—a paragon of the genre, no less—that they absolutely must watch, one that we fondly recollect having thoroughly enjoyed as a youngster. Yet we can’t quite remember the pertinent details of the production, like its title!

We recall certain particulars, yes—a memorable alien or monster featured, a cast member or guest star, a specific scene, an unforgettable ending, details major or minor that, for whatever reason, have stuck with us all these years—but we just can’t quite put our finger on the exact title!

We stammer, we sputter, we cluck our tongues, and we finally utter something like, “It starred what’s-his-name, that guy who was in that other movie!” Or, “You know, the episode where they…” Or, “the one with the…”

Below are a baker’s dozen such paltry descriptions of an SF/F television series, episode, or of a film; can you extricate the exact title for each from the cobwebbed recesses of your mind?

Good luck, and, of course, play fair; no resorting to Google for the answers! You can ask a friend for help, however, as long as your friend’s name isn’t Siri or Alexa!

1) What was the title of that old science fiction show? You know, the one that showed an undulating line at the beginning of each episode and told you there was nothing wrong with your television set, and not to adjust the picture!

2) What was the title of that X-Files episode? You know, the one where Mulder and Scully are dancing together at a Cher concert in the closing scene.

3) What was the title of that old sci-fi flick? You know, the one where Frankenstein races against Rocky Balboa!

4) What was the title of that original-series Star Trek episode? You know, the one with the Mugato.

5) What was the title of that old creature feature? You know, the one with the giant octopus that pulls down the Golden Gate Bridge!

6) What was the title of that old Lost in Space episode? You know, the one with the giant talking carrot!

7) What was the title of that old Twilight Zone episode? You know, the one where the Penguin survives a nuclear war, finds piles of books to read in the rubble of the town library, but then accidently shatters his glasses so he can’t read any of them!

8) What was the title of that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode? You know, the one where they take aboard Seaview some kind of plankton that keeps growing and growing out of control!

9) What was the title of that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode? You know, the one where the aliens speak in metaphors!

10) What was the title of that old dinosaur movie? You know, the one on an island where the guy fights a Tyrannosaurus rex with a mechanical excavator!

11) What was the title of that original-series Jonny Quest episode? You know, the one with the prehistoric Pteranodon!

12) What was the title of that Wonder Woman TV episode? You know… The show starred Lynda Carter… It was the episode that introduced Wonder Woman’s younger sister, Wonder Girl!

13) I remember this one episode of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV series… There was a spaceship that looked like Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, flipped over! And Catwoman was the villain! What was the title of the thing, again?

The answers will be revealed at 4:45PM, in the final post of today’s e-meeting!