This is post 1 of 6 related posts which together make up our August 14, 2021, DIY, MonSFFA e-Meeting!
1) ZOOM CHAT OPENS RIGHT NOW!
Welcome to our August 2021 MonSFFA e-Meeting!
We are officially opening today’s Zoom chat right now, at 1:00PM, the exact same moment we’ve put up this first post of the meeting. Our Zoom will run throughout today’s meeting, in parallel to the Web site-based content that will be presented on a roughly hourly schedule throughout the afternoon, and will afford MonSFFen and friends opportunity to catch-up, discuss today’s presentations, and offer opinion on the latest books, movies, and TV shows in sci-fi that they have recently enjoyed.
To join our Zoom session today, click below and follow the prompts: This Afternoon’s MonSFFA 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: International Call-In Numbers
Also, have this information on hand as you may be asked to enter it:
Meeting ID: 885 2213 2905
Passcode: 196580
2) TODAY’S MEETING: INTRODUCTION
As we gather online for this month’s virtual club meeting, we take a moment to encourage all MonSFFen, if they haven’t already, to get themselves vaccinated as soon as possible, and to continue with all necessary precautions in order to keep themselves and others as protected from the virus as can be.
This is our 17th virtual MonSFFA meeting. The afternoon’s get-together will unfold 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 2:00PM, 3:00PM, 3:30PM, and 4:00PM, with a concluding post at 4:30PM. All content 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 complete safety for all, assemble in larger numbers indoors, this August 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! And join our Zoom chat this afternoon, as well (see first item for details)!
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.
3) MEETING AGENDA
In This Afternoon’s Virtual Meeting:
1:00PM, Post 1 of 6 (Introduction, Zoom Opens)
1) Zoom Chat Opens
2) Today’s Meeting: Introduction
3) Meeting Agenda
4) Are You Vaxxed to the Max?
5) August Quiz
2:00PM, Post 2 of 6 (WTF Were They Even Thinking?)
6) Presentation: Invention is a Mother
3:00PM, Post 3 of 6 (Break)
7) Mid-Meeting Break (Display Table, Raffle, Zoom Continues, What Are You Reading?)
3:30PM, Post 5 of 6 (Your Input Wanted!)
8) Programming/Planning Session for Upcoming Months (Zoom Discussion)
4:00PM, Post 4 of 6 (This One Might Bug You!)
9) 10 “Big Bug” Movies to Watch!
4:30PM, Post 6 of 6 (Wrap-Up)
10) Answers to August Quiz
11) Thank-You!
12) Membership Renewals
3) ARE YOU VAXXED TO THE MAX?
It’s summer, and we are all enjoying the sunshine, warm weather, and especially, given the last two years or so, the opportunity to again see family and friends in person! Society is reopening, many of the Public Health restrictions we’ve been living with all these months have been eased or lifted altogether, though not all it’s important to note—some social distancing and mask-wearing remains necessary.
A majority of the general public have had their second jab and are now fully vaxxed, which is the good news. But the bad news is that COVID-19 case numbers are beginning to rise again, prompting worries of a fourth wave, although importantly, hospitalizations seem more or less stable, unlike in previous waves, so there’s some good news, then, mixed in with the bad. Also under the heading of “Bad News,” there remains a sufficiently large cohort of the unvaccinated and only partially vaccinated—roughly 30 percent, nationally—keeping us from achieving those herd-immunity levels the experts say are vital to seeing a complete return to normal. Until enough of us are vaxxed to the max, the virus will continue to circulate throughout the population and mutate—as is the nature of viruses—possibly into even more dangerous, vaccine-resistant variants, which is the solemn concern now preoccupying authorities. We are already seeing that this Delta variant seems to cause greater sickness in children, for instance, than did the original virus of a year ago.
So short of requiring mandatory vaccinations for all, the Quebec government is trying everything the politicians and bureaucrats can think of to convince, pressure, coerce, and finagle folk into getting or completing their regimen of shots. The latest tactic is to wave money in front of people with this month’s Lotto Vax prizes!
Bottom line: if you are still not fully vaccinated, it’s time to get with the program! By holding out any further, you are, frankly, endangering our collective future and contributing to the delay in all of us getting back to the way things were before.
Sermonizing over; on with the meeting:
4) SUMMER QUIZ
Team Canada has won a record 24 medals at the just-concluded Summer Olympics in Tokyo! Congratulations to all of our country’s athletes! In celebration, Keith Braithwaite has devised the following quiz:
Below are listed 24 brief story synopses, one for each of the medals Canada’s Olympians brought home. Represented here are a mix of novels, graphic novels, short fiction, films, and television shows.
Following this first list is a second of science fiction, fantasy, and horror story titles, all of which include the word “summer,” a nod to both the season and the Tokyo Games.
Your challenge is to correctly match each synopsis to its corresponding title!
Answers will be given both live on Zoom just before 2:00PM, and on the club’s Web site (www.MonSFFA.ca) in the meeting’s closing post at 4:30PM.
Good luck!
1) By means of suspended animation and later, time travel, a despondent engineer and inventor travels forward in time and back again in order to alter his own history for the better.
2) A professor reveals that he is a mage from a magical land and draws five University of Toronto students into this realm, where they embark on adventures and discover their destinies amid an epic conflict.
3) Inspired by the urban legend commonly known as “The Hook,” a group of friends harboring a terrible secret are terrorized by of a mysterious rain slicker-clad, hook-wielding maniac.
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4) The continuing adventures of present-day Chicago’s only professional wizard, in which he is tasked with solving a murder and finding a changeling who has gone missing.
5) A powerful city-state’s economy depends upon a mystical spirit summoned by, then magically tamed and bonded for life to a poet-sorcerer, but this thriving center of commerce and culture is made vulnerable by a cruel scheme hatched in league with a tyrannical rival empire eager to overthrow the world’s last bastion of peace and progress. Only a woman from the slums who rose to prominence and her few cohorts stand between ruin and salvation!
6) An exploration of the consequences that ensue when the strongest, virtually invulnerable member of a righteous, technologically-enhanced team of superheroes kills the President of the United States and several of his advisors after discovering that they have committed war crimes.
7) Married off to an aging, widowed farmer for a tidy price by her greedy father, a teenaged bride must make the best of her situation and a tattered scarecrow becomes for her an imaginary lover. When Wayfarers afford her the chance to see her fantasy become reality, the temptation is too much to resist, but comes with consequences potentially soul-destroying.
8) The day before he and his friends are to start the sixth grade, a young boy who, among other missteps, has embarrassed himself in front of the girl on whom he has a crush, is struck unconscious by a wayward skateboard. He awakens to find himself reliving the day over and over again, until he understands that to escape this weird time anomaly, be must summon the confidence to make his day turn out for the better.
9) As the crew of space station from Earth observes from above, the high summer comes to a planet approaching the point nearest to the great sun around which it completes an orbit every 2000 years. Epic world-building is on display as we examine the grand kingdoms and lesser nations of this world during a time of great technological innovation, religious turmoil, political manoeuvrings, and military engagements occurring across the globe, all set against the backdrop of increasing temperatures and the subsequent effect on the planet’s ecology.
10) A farmer in the Old West rescues a strange and clearly pregnant young woman dressed in curious silver clothing from harassment by a pair of cowboys allied with the local strongman. The farmer had suffered brutal torture and injury in a past tangle with the strongman and his lackeys, prompting him to retreat to his farm and keep his distance, but on this day, against his better judgement, he stepped in to save the woman and offer her refuge on his farm, where she can give birth. He learns that she is under pursuit by the agent of an ancient enemy that has warred with her people for thousands of years. The woman supplies him with a gun from the future and the superior firepower afforded by this weapon might well allow him to best his enemy, and hers.
11) Eerie and terrifying events are unfolding in an old school and five pre-teens must face the many acolytes of a centuries-old evil striving for rebirth in their time, and in their town. The youngsters must band together to thwart this monstrosity, lest it annihilate them, their families, friends, and possibly, the world!
12) A teenaged city girl reluctantly attends summer camp while her parents finalize the details of their divorce. Walking alone in the woods one night, she is attacked and bitten by a werewolf and soon thereafter begins craving raw flesh and experiencing bouts of elevated rage. She meets a mysterious boy who knows a lot about werewolves and together they try to figure out how to stop her lycanthropic transformation. But they only have three months to find a cure, for by the end of summer, she will permanently transform into a monster!
13) On cloudy, rain-drenched Venus, the sun shines for just an hour once every seven years, and a class of students too young to have ever been bathed in sunlight listen while a girl who recently moved to Venus from Earth describes to them the brightness and warmth of the sun. But they disbelieve and antagonize her, and just before the sun comes out, lock her in a closet so that she misses the glorious event.
14) An alternate-history and sequel to Arthur Conan-Doyle’s The Lost World (1912), in which the events of that early science fiction classic were not fiction, but actually happened. Shortly after World War II, an expedition sets out to return to Conan-Doyle’s famous South American plateau living dinosaurs from the last of the dinosaur circuses. These circuses have fallen out of favour with the public due to a number of unfortunate deaths which resulted when some of the prehistoric beasts escaped their cages. Among this expedition’s compliment are Hollywood filmmakers Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen, whose skills at bringing dinosaurs to life on screen by way of movie special effects was unnecessary in this version of history, and who, here, are simply hoping the plateau will yield interesting subject matter for a film.
15) An imagined account of the philosophical discussions, drug use, mind games, and sexual escapades of leading Romantic poet Lord Byron and the guests he welcomed to a secluded villa he had rented near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, during the incessantly rain-soaked summer of 1816. Byron’s fellow Romantic writer Percy Bysshe Shelley, recent paramour, Claire Claremont, personal physician, John William Polidori, and Claremont’s stepsister, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin made up the small group, who, when the weather kept them indoors, would amuse themselves with ghost stories, prompting Byron to suggest a contest to see who could write the best gothic horror story. Godwin, shortly to take Shelley’s name in marriage, emerged with what would soon be expanded into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
16) Had Jane Austen inserted a touch of magical realism into her fiction, the result might resemble this story, in which magic, or “glamour,” is real in Regency-era England. It is 1816, the historical “Year Without a Summer,” and a husband-and-wife team of master “glamourists,” who manipulate magic to paint with light, creating beautiful visual illusions, have returned from their honeymoon on the continent. While visiting her parents and attractive younger sister in the country, they accept a commission from a prestigious family in London to craft a “glamural,” offering to have the sister travel with them to the city, where the prospects of finding her an available gentlemen suitable for marriage might be improved. There, they soon become involved in the growing unrest surrounding lower class magic workers able to effect thermodynamic transfers of hot and cold air, much as does a refrigerator. These “Coldmongers” are blamed for the unseasonable weather.
17) The lyrical story of a young man who travels far and learns much, forming an oral history of the post-apocalyptic world into which he was born some thousand years after the end of civilization. From his enclave of “Truthful Speakers,” where over the centuries, an exactingly accurate, transparent means of communication has been developed so as to leave no possibility of misunderstanding or deception, he ventures out into the larger world in pursuit of a lost love, discovering the dismal remnants of a civilization only dimly remembered, meeting people simply engaged in living their lives who have forged for themselves in strange and wondrous ways new societies. Ultimately, he becomes a “Saint,” one who speaks not only of his or her own life, but of the human condition.
18) A series of strange occurrences convince counsellors that supernatural evil haunts their seemingly idyllic summer camp.
19) It is revealed to a sixteen-year-old orphan living on the streets that he is the son a Norse god and must retrieve an ancient weapon hidden away, but he dies battling a Fire Giant and is transported to “Hotel Valhalla” by a Valkyrie, where he learns that as an Einherjar—a fallen warrior—he will join others like him in training for Ragnarök. A prophecy, however, confounds matters and with newfound friends, and the enhanced abilities of a demigod, he leaves the hotel to embark on a quest of discovery and adventure, finally returning after successfully restraining the dreaded lupine son of Loki and so thwarting the Water Giant’s plan to hasten the end of the world. Hailed as a hero by Odin, he is offered the chance to return to his mortal life, but declines.
20) A farmer becomes servant to Sir Gawain, renowned Knight of the Round Table, and tells the tale of legendary King Arthur’s ascendancy, of Gawain’s search both for a lost love, and for her forgiveness, and of the shocking discovery that Gawain’s own parents, Morgause and Lot, King and Queen of Orkney, and brother, Mordred, are among the forces gathering to oppose Arthur. The seeds that will ultimately lead to Arthur’s downfall have been planted.
21) A planet’s sentient, dolphin-like beings are hunted to near extinction for the valuable immortality serum in their blood, which is much desired by the off-worlders of the Hegemony, a grouping of seven civilized planets, all that remains of a vast interstellar empire. These aquatic beings prove integral to the maintenance of the fallen empire’s colossal and forgotten network of knowledge as a new ruler strives to unite the Luddite people of this world while advocating against tradition for a technologically advanced society in this multi-layered story of intrigues, betrayals, wonders, secrets, and love.
22) When their parents disappear in the middle of the night, two young sisters set out to find them, following a cryptic clue left by their mother, which leads them to a familiar gate in the woods. But familiar surroundings soon give way to a dark, entirely new world, one of talking birds and an evil Puppeteer Queen. Soon separated, each sister must follow her own heart in the quest to find their parents, vanquish the Puppeteer Queen, and discover the identity of the true Queen of the Birds.
23) Two princes—half-brothers—vie for both a crown and a virginal siren/sorceress born of myth who watches over legendary magical livestock in an enchanted mountain valley and is not averse to a little erotic bathing!
24) An aging Hollywood millionaire striving to discover the secrets of vastly extending one’s natural lifespan finds that an 18th-century English earl has so succeeded, and has been alive for over 200 years! But the method the nobleman employed to extend his life has caused him to devolve, over the years, into an ape-like creature. The millionaire is so desperate to stave off death, however, that he decides to undergo the same treatment regardless.
A) Kingdom of Summer
B) Summer of the Unicorn
C) Helliconia Summer
D) Six Moon Summer
E) The Sword of Summer
F) A Shadow in Summer
G) The Summer Tree
H) Dinosaur Summer
I) Engine Summer
J) Summer Knight
K) Dead of Summer
L) The Summer Witch
M) Without a Summer
N) Skirmish on a Summer Morning
O) Summer and Bird
P) Haunted Summer
Q) The Door into Summer
R) The Summer Queen
S) Summer of Night
T) After Many a Summer
U) Black Summer
V) All Summer in a Day
W) The Last Day of Summer
X) I Know What You Did Last Summer
