This is Post 6 of 6 this afternoon and will bring to a close our August 2021 virtual meeting. If you are just now joining us, scroll back to today’s Post 1 of 6 to enjoy the whole meeting, start to finish.
10) ANSWERS TO OUR AUGUST QUIZ (See Opening Post 1 of 6)
In honour of Team Canada winning 24 medals at the recent Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo, we challenged you to correctly match story synopses to titles containing the word “summer” for 24 science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, these being novels, graphic novels, short fiction, films, or television shows!
How did you do? Compare your answers to these:
1 = Q
Synopsis: 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.
Title: The Door into Summer (Robert A. Heinlein; Novel, 1957).
Originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1956, the story’s title was suggested by Heinlein’s wife. While living in snowy Colorado, Heinlein’s cat was crying to be let outside, but when the author opened a door, then another, and another, his pet refused to step outside into the snow. Heinlein was puzzled as he knew the cat had experienced snow before. “Oh, he’s looking for a door into summer,” offered Heinlein’s wife by way of explanation. Taken by her phrase, Heinlein wrote the story in 13 days.
2 = G
Synopsis: 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.
Title: The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay; Novel, 1984)
His first work of fantasy, this is Book One of Canadian writer Kay’s acclaimed Fionavar Tapestry, the second and third books of which are, respectively, The Wandering Fire and The Darkest Road (both 1986).
3 = X
Inspired by the urban legend commonly known as “The Hook,” a group of friends harbouring a terrible secret are terrorized by of a mysterious rain slicker-clad, hook-wielding maniac.
Title: I Know What You Did Last Summer (Movie, 1997).
This is the first installment of a three-film franchise that has now expanded onto television, with an Amazon series pending. The movie’s cast included Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Ryan Phillippe, and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Genre fans will recognize Hewitt as the star of television’s late-2000s supernatural drama Ghost Whisperer. Prinze, Jr. and Gellar both starred in two early-2000s live-action Scooby-Doo movies, and Gellar remains a genre favourite for her turn as TV’s vampire-slaying Buffy Summers. She also appeared in the slasher flick/“whodunit” mystery/horror movie satire Scream 2, released in same year as I Know What You Did Last Summer.
4 = J
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Summer Knight (Jim Butcher; Novel, 2002).
This is the fourth book in Butcher’s prolific contemporary fantasy/mystery series The Dresden Files, which mixes fantasy with hard-boiled detective fiction. Private investigator/wizard Harry Dresden is the chief protagonist of these stories.
5 = F
Synopsis: 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 allies stand between ruin and salvation!
Title: A Shadow in Summer (Daniel Abraham; Novel, 2006).
This is Book One of The Long Price Quartet. Abraham has also authored The Dagger and the Coin fantasy series, and with Ty Franck under the joint pseudonym James S. A. Corey, The Expanse science fiction series.
6 = U
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Black Summer (Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp; Graphic Novel, 2007-2008).
Ellis is the writer, Ryp the artist of this eight-issue limited series. Of his so-called “Superhuman Trilogy,” Ellis says: “Black Summer was about superhumans who were too human,” No Hero (2008-2009) “about superhumans who were inhuman,” and Supergod (2009-2010) “about superhumans who are no longer human at all, but something else.” He recently faced multiple accusations of sexual coercion and manipulation, and has become something of a pariah within the industry.
7 = L
Synopsis: 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.
Title: The Summer Witch (Louise Cooper; Novel, 1999).
A prolific writer of fantasy for both adults and children with over 80 books to her credit, British author Louise Cooper began writing stories while in school to entertain her friends and became a full-time professional in 1977, shortly after she’d moved to London. Sadly, she died of a brain hemorrhage in 2009 at age 57.
8 = W
Synopsis: 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 self-confidence to make his day turn out for the better.
Title: The Last Day of Summer (TV Movie, 2007)
Having something of a Groundhog Day-like plot, this TV movie was produced for the Nickelodeon television channel and aimed at a pre-teen audience.
9 = C
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Helliconia Summer (Brian W. Aldiss; Novel, 1983).
Preceded by Helliconia Spring (1982) and followed by Helliconia Winter (1985), these three books make up the Helliconia Trilogy, which recounts nothing less than the rise and fall of a civilization.
10 = N
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Skirmish on a Summer Morning (Bob Shaw; Novelette, 1976).
A sci-fi/Western!
11 = S
Synopsis: Eerie and terrifying events are unfolding in an old school and five pre-teens 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!
Title: Summer of Night (Dan Simmons; Novel, 1991)
First in a series of horror novels.
12 = D
Synopsis: 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!
Title: Six Moon Summer (S. M. Reine; Novel, 2011)
First of four books in the Seasons of the Moon YA series, this novel’s author collects swords, typewriters, and cat hair. “It’s a good day when those three things have nothing to do with each other,” she says.
13 = V
Synopsis: 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 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.
Title: “All Summer in a Day” (Ray Bradbury, short story, 1954)
In this quintessential Bradbury story, first published in the March 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the children’s teacher asks them all to compose a poem about the sun; the girl writes “I think the sun is a flower/That blooms for just one hour.”
14 = H
Encourage your partner to wake 30 minutes before the deeprootsmag.org viagra viagra online love making begins as this is the average time for the Sildenafil to dissolve in blood. With no side effect, the product generic cialis cipla will cause no harm. But cialis soft uk since, stress can get into the blood which would later on show the best results in bed. Visit doctor immediately and buying tadalafil online start taking proper treatment asap. Synopsis: 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.
Title: Dinosaur Summer (Greg Bear; Novel, 1998)
You know Keith was going to find a way to somehow mention Harryhausen!
15 = P
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Haunted Summer (Movie, 1988)
While readily recognized as a work of Romantic literature as well as a gothic horror story, the influential Frankenstein is often cited by scholars and critics as one of the earliest examples of science fiction.
16 = M
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Without a Summer (Mary Robinette Kowal; Novel, 2013)
Award-winning author Kowal served as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) in 2020 and 2021. This is the third in her five-book Glamourist Histories series and as an avid Doctor Who fan, she has worked secret cameos by The Doctor into each of these books as an inside gag for the benefit of readers who might recognize science fiction’s famous Time Lord.
17 = I
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Engine Summer (John Crowley; Novel, 1979)
Said SF/F writer Frederik Pohl in praise of this book: “Mr. Crowley presents his society from the inside, yet his point of view is off‐center, so that the reader learns slowly and never feels secure enough in his knowledge to reduce everything to a glib formula or two. Far from being a didactic social treatise, the novel has strong, believable characters, an ingenious, well‐made plot, and a resolution that is intellectually and dramatically satisfying.”
18 = K
Synopsis: A series of strange occurrences convince counsellors that supernatural evil haunts their seemingly idyllic summer camp.
Title: Dead of Summer (TV Series, 2016)
This was a short-lived, supernatural horror television series from the writers/producers of the ABC genre shows Once Upon a Time (2011-2018) and Lost (2004-2010).
19 = E
Synopsis: 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.
Title: The Sword of Summer (Rick Riordan; Novel, 2015)
This is the first book of a YA trilogy by Riordan, who is perhaps better known for his Percy Jackson and the Olympians books, which spawned two feature films that have collectively grossed over $428 million worldwide. Riordan’s various YA book series, inspired by the world’s major ancient mythologies, are all interconnected.
20 = A
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Kingdom of Summer (Gillian Bradshaw; Novel, 1982)
Preceded by Hawk of May (1980) and followed by In Winter’s Shadow (1982), this historical/fantasy trilogy was written for the YA market and constitute Bradshaw’s earliest published novels.
21 = R
Synopsis: 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.
Title: The Summer Queen (Joan D. Vinge; Novel, 1991)
Part of a cycle that includes a novella linking the Hans-Christian-Andersen-fairy-tale-inspired first book, The Snow Queen (1980), with this second.
22 = O
Synopsis: 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.
Title: Summer and Bird (Katherine Catmull, Novel, 2012)
A dark and lyrical YA story reviewers called “languorously beautiful,” a “haunting fable,” further noting a work “rich with the familiar shimmer of folklore and drawn with the elegance of a Russian ballet,” an “atmospheric adventure” that “thrills with complex storytelling, carefully threaded with bits of foreshadowing and overflowing with poignant imagery.” High praise indeed for writer and occasional actress Catmull’s debut novel!
23 = B
Synopsis: 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!
Title: Summer of the Unicorn (Kay Hooper; Novel, 1988)
A cursory glance finds a good deal of wanton rogering going on every few pages, presented in that breathlessly candid and lustful language characterized by fulsome descriptions of ample, heaving bosoms, throbbing spears, sweet blossoms, and achingly virile swordplay—this is the kind of stuff usually reserved for the letters column of a gentleman’s magazine! At about 300 pages, this all amounts to a lot of arched backs and moist, parted lips. There’s hardly room enough left for the palace machinations and frolicking unicorns!
24 = T
Synopsis: 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.
Title: After Many a Summer (U.S. Title: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley; Novel, 1939)
Penned soon after Huxley had left England and relocated to California, this novel examines what he saw as America’s narcissistic and superficial culture, a society obsessed with youth. The Hollywood millionaire of the story, living in his opulent estate with his beautiful young mistress surrounded by his collection of objets d’art, is based on real-life newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst.
11) THANK YOU!
We hope you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, and we ask all of you to check in regularly here at www.MonSFFA.ca for additional content during this continuing vaccination push/gradual reopening, and for any news 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 meeting!
We’d like to thank our presenters this afternoon, Joe Aspler, Quizmaster Keith Braithwaite, and Meeting Coordinator Cathy Palmer-Lister for putting this August 14, 2021 DIY, Virtual MonSFFA e-Meeting together, with a nod, as well, to our supporting contributors.
Until next month, when we will gather virtually once more on September 11, please continue to exercise all recommended safety practices, and if you haven’t yet, get your shots as soon as possible!
12) MEMBERSHIP RENEWALS
We remind club members that MonSFFA has resumed the collection of annual membership fees. Note that every active club member has benefitted from a full year of fees-free membership.
For most MonSFFen, our 2020 renewal dates became 2021 renewal dates. So if your annual membership fees were due in August 2020, that’s been bumped up a year to August 2021. If your fees were due last September, they are now due this upcoming Sptember; October 2020 shifts to October 2021, and so on.
But what about those few MonSFFen who had, in fact, paid their fees last year, most prior to pandemic lockdowns going into effect and our suspension of in-person meetings? These folk, having paid last year’s dues, will not miss out on the fees-free year enjoyed by their fellow club members! Those who fall into this category will see their annual fees next become due beginning in 2022.
Of course, we welcome back any former members who may have let lapse their memberships, and we invite to join our ranks any prospective members who may have discovered the club via our virtual meetings.
Note that there is no change to our fee structure. A standard one-year membership is still only $25; the premium Platinum Level membership, $35; a family membership (up to four people, single postal mailing address), $40; and the Platinum Family Level, $50. Make your cheques or money orders out to “MonSFFA” and mail to our new postal mailing address:
MonSFFA, c/o
125 Leonard
Châteauguay, Québec, Canada
J6K 1N9
To those MonSFFen who have recently renewed their memberships, we thank you for your prompt attention and patronage of this club.
Until next we gather, then, enjoy the summer…
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