This is Post 2 of 8. 

Join us exclusively on ZOOM for the next hour as we enjoy a little live sci-fi improve poetry!

Untold Scenery, Decoded Imagery

By Kofi

Worlds intertwine

As the words do in these lines

Combine at will

Even if time were to be still

What may occur, who really knows?

Can these words and aura be the hidden device

That brings the surprise to a world never told

Where the colors are smell by the nose

Where the occurrence of the unknown

Is part of the times

Consider it commonplace

Part of being regular,

Actions aren’t seen in singular

Join us in the journey, to see what comes across our face

In this phase

Would it be familiar?

Or a whole different pace

This is the first of eight related posts constituting our June 2022 MonSFFA e-meeting.

1) INTRODUCTION

Welcome to MonSFFA’s 27th virtual meeting!

Most everyone has, apparently, concluded that the pandemic is over. A few excessively nervous, or maybe remarkably prescient souls suspect the virus is likely experiencing another summertime lull, and may well return to vex us come fall and winter, if past experience is any guide.

Let’s hope not!

In any case, most Canadians are fully vaxxed and thus should be able to weather any returning storm. We remain optimistic that everything will be fine, just as long as the monkeypox virus doesn’t mutate!

So while we can, let’s take a few hours to enjoy our passion for all things sci-fi and fantasy…

This MonSFFA e-Meeting will unfold both on ZOOM and right here on the club’s Web site over the course of the afternoon, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 2:45PM, 3:00PM, 4:00PM, and 4:30PM, with a final post at 4:45PM. All posts will 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.

We cannot quite yet assemble in person, face-to-face, but are told that time is nigh. In the meantime, this June 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, enjoy, and contribute your thoughts on what we’re presenting by way of each post’s “Leave a Comment” option.

At the end of the day, let us know of your opinion regarding 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 more robustly, 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, 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: 874 7989 1524
Passcode: 706282

3) MEETING AGENDA

In This Afternoon’s Virtual Meeting:

4) TRAINS IN SF/F!

With our field trip to the Exporail train museum in South-Shore St-Constant on track to unfold in just two weeks, we got to thinking about trains in science fiction and fantasy. There are many; here are but a few:

Le Monde Tel Qu’il Sera (1846), by Emile Souvestre, imagines a dystopian, year-3000 future and a steam locomotive that journeys through time and space. Similarly, Michael Coney’s The Celestial Steam Locomotive (1983) features a time- and dimension-jumping train, while the manga and subsequent animé Galaxy Express 999 showcases a space-faring train that travels from the Milky Way to the Andromeda Galaxy.

Titanic victim John Jacob Astor IV’s A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future (1894), meanwhile, correctly predicted trains propelled by magnetic levitation by the year 2000!

Hugo Gernsback’s novel Ralph 124C 41+ (1911) was the genre’s first major work to feature trains, notably a subterranean maglev express between North America and Europe.

Both Christopher Priest’s The Inverted World (1974) and China Miéville’s Iron Council (2004) feature societies on rails, with the need of constantly pulling up behind and re-laying track ahead of the trains upon which are built cities.

Perhaps the best-known genre train of recent years is the Hogwarts Express, transportation for students of the famous school of witchcraft and wizardry in the Harry Potter books and films. Another is the Snowpiercer, continually circling the globe with the remnants of humanity aboard in the wake of a failed attempt at climate engineering which has resulted in a snow- and icebound Earth.

Spy-fi fans of the late-1960s tuned in weekly to the James Bond-like adventures of Secret Service agents Jim West and Artemus Gordon, who travelled the Wild Wild West aboard the Wanderer, their specially equipped train. The series was a forerunner of today’s “steampunk” sub-genre, and a 1999 feature-film adaptation emphasized in earnest the steampunk motif.

Doc Brown, meanwhile, modified a steam locomotive for time travel in Back to the Future III (1990)!

Hapless commuter trains are often featured on screen, from New York’s Elevated, smashed by an angry King Kong (1933) to the zombie-infested Train to Busan (2016). Spider-Man 2 (2004) features epic action atop and aboard a speeding commuter train. And, a harried advertising executive escapes to a simpler, idyllic time aboard a commuter train that stops at Willoughby in a classic 1959 Twilight Zone episode.

Hammer Horror icons Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing co-starred in Horror Express, a sci-fi/monster movie set aboard the Trans-Siberian Express.

Terror Train (1980) is a Canadian-made slasher flick involving a killer stalking medical students aboard a New Year’s Eve party train. Jamie Lee Curtis stars, fresh off her break-out role in John Carpenter’s original Halloween.

A train derailment is the catalyst for the sci-fi/monster-movie thrills of Super 8 (2011). Small-town kids shooting their own, amateur zombie movie for a film contest witness the crash and become embroiled in the mystery of that wrecked train’s otherworldly cargo.

In both children’s book and film, The Polar Express (2004) is a Christmas train en route to the North Pole.

Supertrain (1979), about a nuclear-powered, high-speed passenger train, was an expensive TV flop. The failed show had aspirations of becoming a Love Boat on rails!

Feel free to add any examples of your own; type these in using this post’s “Leave a Comment” option.

This is our meeting-closing post.

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’s the title of that recent television comedy series about two cops who investigate preternatural incidents, kind of like The X-Files but played entirely for laughs?

Wellington Paranormal (2018-2022), produced in New Zealand and set in the Kiwi capitol, has now completed its final of four “series,” or seasons; overall, 25 episodes were made. The show was a spin-off of the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows (2014).

Wellington police officers Minogue and O’Leary, our protagonists, originally appeared as minor characters in What We Do in the Shadows. The duo have also starred in a Wellington Paranormal Christmas special, and a number of road safety and COVID-19 PSAs produced in cooperation with the actual New Zealand Police service.

Currently, the show can be viewed in Canada on Bell’s Crave streaming service.

2) What was the name of that sci-fi series about the U.S. Air Force’s exploration and development of space? It was set in the not-too-distant future, and aired on CBS around about the dawn of the real Space Age!

Men into Space (1959-1960) was produced by ZIV Television Programs, creators of first-run syndicated TV series, and initially aired on CBS, later rerun in the U.S. under the title Space Challenge. Over the course of 38 half-hour episodes, the show focused on seasoned, top-flight astronaut Col. Edward McCauley, played by William Lundigan, and dealt with the trials and tribulations of the American space program in the near future, circa mid-1970s through mid-1980s.

Moon missions occur regularly in this imagined future, and a Moon base and space station have been built, with manned flights to Mars attempted. One episode depicted a U.S.-Soviet space race to the Red Planet, with the Americans aborting their undertaking in order to rescue the Russian crew, whose spacecraft had malfunctioned. Stories often involved astronauts applying innovative solutions to technical problems, and several episodes touched on the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Men into Space anticipated such disasters as the Gemini 8 and Apollo 13 missions, with episodes that paralleled those real-life emergencies. Among other spot-on predictions like the search for frozen water on the Moon, the program accurately foresaw women astronauts and married couples in space!

The series fairly hewed to science and was authentic in depicting not only successful missions, but failures, as well—sometimes, astronauts died! But the show was, at the same time, unrealistic, with roaring rocket engines, explosions, and even footfalls on the Moon heard in the vacuum of space.

A novelization of Men into Space was penned by noted SF author Murray Leinster and published in 1960, and the Ideal Toy Company marketed a version of Col. McCauley’s space helmet.

3) What was the title of that Time Tunnel episode where hostile space aliens are first injected into the storyline?

“Visitors from Beyond the Stars” (1967), the 18th episode of the series and first of several involving extraterrestrials. Until this point, the show had been strictly a time-travel adventure, with our protagonists bouncing uncontrollably back and forth through history, lost in time!

Project Tic-Toc is a top-secret, U.S. government effort to build a time machine. But the initiative is a massive, multi-billion dollar experiment and after 10 years of careful testing with only “mice and monkeys” sent back in time, continued funding is threatened when a senator determines that with little to show for the effort, the cost is not worth the expense. Unless a man can be successfully sent through the “time tunnel” and returned safely, the senator intends to cut Tic-Toc’s financial umbilical cord.

Against Tic-Toc director Dr. Doug Phillips’ directive, the project’s headstrong number-two, Dr. Tony Newman, leaps into the tunnel in a bid to meet the senator’s ultimatum. Phillips soon follows after him in a rescue attempt and the two become trapped in time, with the Tic-Toc team in the control room monitoring their coordinates within the timestream and attempting to retrieve them.

With this episode, a new sci-fi angle was introduced, that of extraterrestrials with sinister plans for Earth!

Despite respectable ratings, ABC executives dropped the series after a single season of 30 episodes in favour of a controversial show about cavalryman George Armstrong Custer.

A 1967 promotional novel, The Time Tunnel, was written by Murray Leinster, not to be confused with his own 1964 novel of the same name, unrelated to the series.

4) What was the title of that old sci-fi sitcom starring Catwoman as a beautiful female robot?

My Living Doll (1964-1965) was a short-lived, CBS science fiction situation comedy about a top-secret, lifelike robot woman, designated AF 709. Jack Chertok, who had produced the popular My Favourite Martian (1963-1966), was behind the show. In formulating the series outline, he was apparently inspired by the mythological tale of Pygmalion and Galatea.

AF 709 is an advanced robot designed for the space program by scientist Dr. Carl Miller and assembled in secret as a working prototype. But she slips out of Miller’s lab and frantic to find her, he enlists the help of his friend, Dr. Robert “Bob” McDonald, a consulting psychiatrist with the Space Research Center. McDonald soon finds her wandering the streets clothed in but a bedsheet and takes her back to his apartment. Dr. Miller learns that he’s been unexpectedly and suddenly reassigned for a few months to Pakistan and entrusts McDonald with her care. Miller is adamant that her real nature be kept a secret and McDonald comes up with the cover name Rhoda to that end.

Intrigued with the opportunity to teach Rhoda how to become “the perfect woman,” which McDonald defines as one who “does as she’s told” and “keeps her mouth shut”—not a particularly enlightened viewpoint by modern standards—the set-up is in place for the show to follow.

Many episodes dealt with Rhoda’s fish-out-of-water dealings with human foibles and, as the series progressed, her gradually developing, or at least emulating, human emotion.

Comedic actor Bob Cummings played McDonald but was unhappy with the show’s focus on Julie Newmar’s Rhoda, and left the show after 21 episodes. The series lasted only another five episodes, and Newmar would shortly take on the role for which she is most famous, that of Catwoman in the first two seasons of TV’s Batman (1966-1968).

Rhoda’s designation, AF 709, was purportedly the inspiration for the so-named Seven of Nine, introduced to Star Trek canon in Voyager’s fourth-season premiere!

5) What was the name of that low-budget, sci-fi/comedy movie about a voluptuous female android? You know the one… The film starred 1980’s Playmate of the Year, a young, novice centerfold model and actress from Canada!

Galaxina (1980) stars Vancouver-born Dorothy Stratten, Playboy magazine’s August 1979 Playmate of the Month, later selected as 1980’s Playmate of the Year. The 20-year-old blonde beauty’s acting career had just begun when Stratten was murdered by her estranged husband only a couple of months after Galaxina’s release. Her tragic story was told in the subsequent TV movie Death of a Centerfold (1981) and feature film Star 80 (1983) with, respectively, Jamie Lee Curtis and Mariel Hemingway playing the ill-fated Stratten.

For the most part panned by critics, the movie was a fan favourite on the fantasy-film festival circuit of the day, though not necessarily for reasons having anything to do with quality. Something of a comical science fantasy/western, the film pays parodic homage to sci-fi franchises Star Trek and Star Wars, among other properties. Objectively, Galaxina is a laborious, silly sci-fi B-movie that likely acquired cult status largely as a result of the shocking real-life fate of its star.

6) What was the title of that original-series Star Trek episode, the one where the Enterprise first time-travels?

“The Naked Time” (1966), an early season-one episode in which the climatic full-power restart of the Enterprise’s warp engines is attempted in order to yank the ship out of spiralling orbital decay and certain doom! However, the cold-state mixing of matter and antimatter so as to produce the required controlled implosion is a risky procedure based on an unproven theory. The wildly desperate gamble works and the ship is saved, but in the process, Enterprise is propelled at impossible speed through a time-warp three days backwards in time!

A means of time-travel having now been successfully demonstrated, notes Spock, intriguing prospects are opened. “We can go back in time, to any planet, any era.” Kirk nods and replies, “We may risk it someday, Mr. Spock.”

This story was originally intended as a two-parter, with the events of “Yesterday is Tomorrow” to have constituted the second half of the narrative. But in the end, “The Naked Time” was scaled back to become a standard, single-hour, stand-alone episode, with “Yesterday is Tomorrow” later produced as a stand-alone, too.

7) What was the name of that monster movie with a giant, stop-motion, dragon-like creature that nests in the art-deco spire of the Chrysler Building and preys on the citizens of New York City?

Q (1982), also called Q: The Winged Serpent, was written, directed, and co-produced by Larry Cohen.

Reports of a monstrous flying lizard that attacks and devours people on the rooftops of New York City perplexes two NYPD detectives, who are also dealing with a spate of ritualistic murders linked to a neo-Aztec cult.

Meanwhile, a petty criminal has stumbled upon this flying lizard’s nest and demands a million dollar ransom from the city to reveal its location, in addition to his receiving immunity from prosecution for his crimes. He leads police to the nest, atop the Chrysler Building, but the creature—apparently, the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl—isn’t there. An unhatched egg, however, is machine-gunned and the infant lizard that emerges from the fractured shell is killed. When the adult creature later returns, police open fire with everything they’ve got and the monster is bloodied, and finally succumbs to its wounds, falling to the streets below.

The film ends in a derelict building across town, where another of the winged serpent’s eggs hatches!

The film received mixed reviews at the time of its release and failed to recoup its production costs. It has since gained an audience appreciative of a good old-fashioned monster movie in the tradition of King Kong (1933), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), The Giant Behemoth (1959), and Jack the Giant Killer (1962). Randall William Cook and David Allen were responsible for the stop-motion work that brought Quetzalcoatl to life.

8) What was the title of that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode where Quark and company, en route to Earth, end up travelling back through time and crash-landing their shuttle near Roswell, New Mexico?

“Little Green Men” (1995), a season-four episode in which Quark and his brother, Rom, are transporting Nog, Rom’s son, to Earth, where he will attend Starfleet Academy as the first Ferengi cadet. Quark has loaded aboard ship a quantity of the volatile and illegal substance kemocite, his intention having been to take advantage of a smuggling opportunity and thus turn the trip into a profitable venture.

But as they approach Earth, a malfunction prevents their shuttle from dropping out of warp. Rom, the engineer in the group, comes up with the solution of flooding the cargo hold with plasma, which reacts with the unstable kemocite and causes the warp core to shut down, allowing the vessel to return to normal space. The gambit works, but also has the effect of flinging them backwards in time to July of 1947, where they crash-land near Roswell, New Mexico. They awaken from their ordeal in the custody of the U. S. military, earning them an important entry in modern UFO mythology!

9) What was the name of that short-lived TV series about a pair of Air Force officers assigned to investigate UFO incidents? It aired on NBC not long after the theatrical release of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Project U.F.O. (1978-1979) tapped into the revived interest in unidentified flying objects generated by Steven Spielberg’s 1977 blockbuster.

Dragnet producer and star Jack Webb co-created the show, pouring over genuine Project Blue Book files to find story ideas for the series. Often, episodes offered an open-ended denouement, suggesting in the closing minutes that the conventional explanation put forward for a given flying saucer sighting was, perhaps, not the truth of the matter, but that the UFO in question had, in fact, been the real thing.

The series’ exceptional UFO miniatures were fashioned from a variety of store-bought scale-model kits.

10) What was the name of that old sci-fi/horror TV movie about a construction crew who find themselves stalked by one of their earth-moving vehicles, which seems somehow “possessed” by a strange, malevolent, otherworldly force?

Killdozer! (1974), an ABC made-for-television movie, was based on Theodore Sturgeon’s 1944 novella of the same name.

A construction crew is building an airfield on a remote, uninhabited island. While operating a bulldozer, one of the workers unearths an ancient meteor, from which a weird, ethereal aura is emitted, seemingly “inhabiting” the earth-moving vehicle, which soon takes on an inexplicable “life” of its own and begins attacking and killing the men!

Most critics panned the film for its outlandish premise, finding that the menacing bulldozer came across as more silly than scary. While performances and production values were fairly good, the movie’s pacing was described by one modern reviewer as “sluggish,” and the whole exercise was gauged as largely absent tension and thrills for a film marketed as an “ABC suspense movie.” Nevertheless, over the years, Killdozer! has become something of a sci-fi cult classic!

11) What was the title of the seaQuest episode that marked the final appearance of Roy Scheider’s Captain Nathan Bridger?

“Good Soldiers” (1995), a season-three episode of the show in which Bridger, Commander Ford, and several other seaQuest personnel infiltrate a former UEO base, now controlled by the fascist Alliance of Macronesia, in search of top-secret data crystals containing information on certain crimes against humanity committed 20 years earlier, to which Bridger and Ford were connected!

Series star Roy Scheider was bitterly unhappy and quite vocal about what he felt were the more gimmicky, monster-of-the-week, ridiculous sci-fi plotlines of seaQuest DSV’s second season. “Childish trash,” he called the stories. “Old, tired, time-warp robot crap!”

Scheider asked that he be released from his contract, a request agreed to by producers with the proviso that he make several appearances as Bridger in season three, which saw the series jump ahead ten years into the future. Renamed seaQuest 2032, Bridger retired in the season premiere and was replaced by a new captain. His later appearance in “Good Soldiers” was the character’s last, not only of the season, but of the series, which was shortly thereafter cancelled, having produced over its run a total of 57 episodes.

12) What was the name of that cool but convoluted sci-fi series? You know, the one with these pale-skinned, bald dudes in black suits called “Observers,” and a parallel universe, plus an alternate timeline, and this team of special investigators trying to figure out WTF was going on!

Fringe (2008-2013) was part police procedural, part mind-bending sci-fi/fantasy and was built upon an arcane and complex mythology. The story arc followed the Fringe Division’s investigations of unusual incidents related to highly speculative, avant-garde science.

Included on the team was an archetypal “mad scientist,” Walter Bishop, played by John Noble, who had been institutionalized for 17 years, and who, with his friend William Bell, had earlier discovered the alternate universe at the center of the series. Most of the principal cast also portrayed their doppelgangers in this more technologically advanced alternate universe, and Bell was played by recurring guest star Leonard Nimoy.

The series was created by genre heavyweights J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci, who have been involved in several high-profile SF/F projects over the years, including the rebooted Star Trek. The show ran for five seasons, producing a total of 100 episodes.

13) What was the name of that cult sci-fi/horror series about a teenaged boy who finds weirdness afoot in the small town to which his family has moved? There were inside-jokes and references to the horror genre in particular worked into each episode!

Eerie, Indiana (1991-1992), a clever, bizarre, wryly absurdist, sci-fi/horror series, was well-received by critics and boasted a crisp cast and the occasional directorial talents of B-movie fan Joe Dante, who also served as a creative consultant on the series.

Dante, a co-creator of the Trailers from Hell web series, launched in 2007, has helmed such films as Piranha (1978), The Howling (1981), Gremlins (1984), and Matinee (1993), directed a chapter of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and sequences in Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), as well as episodes of Amazing Stories (1985-1987) and, more recently, Masters of Horror (2005-2006) and Salem (2015-2016).

Despite the above-average quality of the show and stacks of positive reviews, Eerie, Indiana failed to attract a sufficient number of viewers to prevent NBC from cancelling the series after just 19 episodes.

However, the show captured the imaginations of a fresh audience when it was rerun Saturday mornings on Fox Kids a few years later, prompting the network to greenlight a sequel, Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension (1998), which was produced and filmed in Toronto.

12) THANK YOU!

We’d like to thank Keith Braithwaite, Joe Aspler, and Cathy Palmer-Lister for their contributions to today’s programming. We also wish to thank all supporting contributors to this, our May 2022 e-meeting.

And of course, to those who visited with us this afternoon, and took in our online get-together, thank you for your interest and attention, and don’t forget to comment on today’s virtual meeting.

13) WRAP-UP (SIGN-OFF) AND CLUB’S NEXT ONLINE MEETING DATE

We sincerely hope you have enjoyed your time with us these past few hours, we again thank you for dropping in, and we ask that you pop in regularly here at www.MonSFFA.ca for additional content. Check, too, for any updates as to when the club expects a return to regular, face-to-face meetings.

We will again convene at www.MonSFFA.ca on Saturday, June 4, for another in our ongoing series of MonSFFA e-Meetings!

Note that we are assembling a week earlier than usual next month in order to avoid conflicting with the local Scintillation SF convention (June 10-12; www.scintillation.ca), and also because we are organizing a field trip for late June, details to be announced next month.

This is Post 7 of 8.

10) ABSENT FRIENDS: REMEMBERING THE MonSFFen WE’VE LOST

The ravages of COVID-19 have been distressing for many, but most shattering for the families who have suffered the loss of loved ones to the contagion. Persons who became infected but survived, owing in great part to the vaccines, include some who continue to experience the effects of what has been termed “Long COVID,” a protracted physical and/or cognitive impairment associated with the virus.

The WHO estimates a global tally of over 517,000,000 cases of COVID to date, with some 15 million people having died during the course of this pandemic. Canada reports over 3,700,000 cases to date and just shy of 40,000 deaths, while Québec has recorded more than a million cases and over 15,000 deaths, the worst record of all Canadian provinces and territories! Neighbouring Ontario, with more than twice Québec’s population, lists about 13,000 COVID deaths.

Each of those statistics represents a person and within our small cohort of MonSFFen, we have grieved the loss of two current club members to the virus. Further, several of us have lost family members to COVID.

This got us to thinking about those members of our club, current and former, and other fannish friends we have lost, not only to COVID, but in general, since MonSFFA was formed in the late 1980s.

And so, as the pandemic seemingly wanes, we take this time to memorialize those dear departed MonSFFen and fannish friends we have lost, recently and over the years since our founding. On ZOOM for the next half hour or so, we will eulogize fellow club members, and other local friends-in-fandom, now departed but fondly remembered.

MonSFFen not able to join us on ZOOM today may reminiscence in writing by using this post’s “Leave a Comment” feature.

Membership records, while imperfect, tell us that seven MonSFFen, have passed away since the inception of the club, most departing before their time. Let us begin with these, our “Magnificent Seven.”

Baird Searles

Baird was a bona fide science fiction professional, the author/co-author of several non-fiction books on the genre and a long-time reviewer for Asimov’s Science Fiction and other SF magazines. For years, he managed The Science Fiction Shop, a SF/F bookstore in New York City’s Greenwich Village.

Baird moved to Montreal circa 1990 with his partner, Martin Last, and became involved with this city’s science fiction and fantasy fandom, including MonSFFA, which he readily joined. He was friendly and, not surprisingly, very knowledgeable about the genre. He often allowed book reviews he’d written for Asimov’s to be published in Warp, some of these appearing in our humble fanzine first!

Baird succumbed to lymphatic cancer on March 22, 1993. Martin passed in 2006. 

Oran Gleason

Oran joined MonSFFA not long after the club was established—at the time it was called MonSTA, the Montreal Star Trek Association—and became a fixture at our regular monthly meetings, until the mid-1990s, when we began to see less of him. We learned he had cancer. He passed away on August 9, 1997.

Oran was a devoted fan of Star Trek, Doctor Who, and many other sci-fi TV shows. Anyone who spoke with him could not but know of his passion for these shows; he knew every character’s name and that of the actors who played them, every episode title and plot detail. He found in these series a delight akin to that of a child, and he was always eager to share with his fellow club members the joy his favourite programs brought him. He never had anything bad to say about “his” shows, and while some of us were often ready to slam a series or an episode that we didn’t like, Oran never joined us in our rants. It wasn’t in his nature to tear things down. He was that kind of person, choosing to see the best in things rather than the worst.

In all of fandom, there are few who were as genuinely amiable, of good spirit, and as warm-hearted as Oran Gleason. 

Leslie Lupien 

Les moved to Montreal after retiring as a personnel administrator for Los Angeles County, and joined MonSFFA in 1999. He enjoyed writing science fiction and a few of his short stories saw publication professionally. He was soft-spoken and attended club meetings with some regularity, taking part in our occasional writers’ workshops and playing a Canadian senator in the club’s 2003 fan-film, Beavra!

His advancing age eventually caused him mobility issues; in his final years, he was no longer able to make his way downtown for club meetings.

Les lived a good, long life, passing away on October 25, 2016, at the age of 95. 

Alice Novo

Alice and her brother, Fernando, “Fern,” joined MonSFFA at about the time the club was occupied with shooting Beavra and immediately jumped in to help. Alice was impressed with our low-budget, cardboard-set creativity and said as much to writer/director Keith Braithwaite. When she heard that we were in need of an actor to play a boy playing street hockey as our titular giant monster beaver attacks, she suggested her son. Young Alex proved an inspired choice and was just as enthusiastic about making a silly, sci-fi fan-film as were his mother and uncle.

Alice was a steadfast booster of MonSFFA and pitched in often to help with meeting room set-up, special projects, and fund-raising bake sales and book sales. She enjoyed our regular post-meeting dinners at a downtown restaurant and attended as often as she could.

It was heartbreaking when we heard that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. But Alice was determined to beat the disease and braved her treatments resolutely, as draining as they were. The untimely arrival of COVID-19, however, was simply too much for her to handle in her weakened condition.

Alice passed away on May 19, 2020 at the age of 62, leaving behind her devastated family and many friends at MonSFFA.

Sylvain St-Pierre 

Sylvain’s tragic passing last year came as a shock to his fellow MonSFFA club members. He had been a scrupulous observer of COVID safety protocols as he was caring for his elderly mother at home. Not yet officially a senior citizen and seemingly in good health, Sylvain was fully vaccinated and exceedingly careful about avoiding as much as possible unnecessary contact with others. He kept outings to an absolute minimum, wore his mask when in public, practiced social distancing—he followed to the letter the edicts of Public Health authorities. He was the last person you’d think would fall victim to the virus so suddenly, so unexpectedly.

About mid-March, 2021, Sylvain reported that he and his mother were both experiencing flu-like symptoms. He shortly thereafter tested positive for COVID. At the time, he was working on content for both Warp and the club’s upcoming April online get-together, and was in touch with other principals within the club as the e-meeting was planned and put together.

Then, eerily, communication ceased and we were unable to reach him via any channel. We soon learned that on March 25, he apparently slumped over in his armchair while reading and died. His mother passed away just a few days later.

Sylvain was a long-time, long-serving member of MonSFFA. He was the club’s Treasurer for too many years to count, and a tireless contributor to meeting planning, group projects, fund-raising campaigns, the club’s fanzine, and so much more. He shared with fellow MonSFFen his passion for SF/F through his wonderful A/V presentations, covering a wide variety topics. These were meticulously researched, fascinating, informative, augmented with countless illustrations, and unfailingly entertaining and fun!

The man himself was a warm, sociable fellow with a generous heart, creative mind, quirky sense of humour, and ready smile, sadly, one that will never again greet us as we gather for another MonSFFA meeting.

Chris Daly

Chris was sitting on the dais for the inaugural public meeting of MonSTA, the Montreal Star Trek Association, later to evolve into MonSFFA. The fledgling club, however, was not his primary focus. He was excited and enthusiastic about the ambitious Star Trek fan magazine he was working on as publisher during those formative days, and the effort was, objectively, quite respectable. Called Final Frontier, the magazine ran for three issues before money issues ended Chris’ hopes of going pro with the publication.

We lost touch with him thereafter, and only recently learned that he had, some years ago, relocated to the U.S. More recently, we heard that he contracted the pernicious virus about October of 2021, became very sick, and subsequently passed away. MonSTA’s founding vice-president, Geoff Bovey, who himself had moved to the U.S., confirmed that Chris, indeed, was felled by COVID.

Maureen Whitelaw

Maureen’s health markedly deteriorated in recent years. She had been living in an elderly care home and was, in her final months, bedridden, reportedly on heavy doses of morphine for her pain. She died in her sleep during the night of February 20-21, 2022. We were never certain of her age, but believe she was 81 at the time of her passing.

Maureen had been a MonSFFAn for many years and regularly attended club meetings. She liked to draw and was a fan in particular of Star Trek, and Disney’s animated films. She appeared in our 2005 superhero spoof, MooseMan, playing the part of an aged mugging victim who is saved by the Antlered Avenger. She thoroughly enjoyed her many years as a member of MonSFFA, and we are glad that the club provided for her happy times.

We remember Maureen as invariably cheery and genial, until she lost her mother a few years ago, and more recently, her brother, who succumbed to COVID at the outset of the pandemic. These terrible losses seemed to hit Maureen especially hard, and she was never again quite the sunny, upbeat individual we’d all come to know. But she always asked club president Cathy Palmer-Lister about MonSFFA during their regular phone conversations, and she looked forward greatly to receiving and reading her copy of the club’s fanzine.

Maureen, it seemed, missed her friends at MonSFFA, and we can now only hope that she knew how much we all missed her.

Join us, now, on ZOOM, to remember these MonSFFen departed, as well as fans from other local organizations like ConCept, taken from us far too soon. Share your stories of these people, and any photographs you may have of them.

Again, those of you not able to join us on ZOOM may reminiscence in writing by using this post’s “Leave a Comment” feature.

Post 5 of 8: Time for the Break!

Club news, raffle prizes, display table

Get yer bheer & chips,  it’s time for the break!

Why do fen spell bheer with an “h”? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bheer

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CLUB NEWS

We have a MonSFFA meeting on the 4th of June, and a Field trip to the Rail Museum, Delson, on the 18th of June.

Danny is looking for your submissions to WARP! Send in your art, stories, photos, puzzles, etc! <warp@monsffa.ca>

Got an idea for a future presentation? We need your input!

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THE VIRTUAL DISPLAY TABLE

Wayne has built 61 scale models in the past year. Even Covid has a silver lining! On display we see his latest, more can be found on the MonSFFA website, under the tab Activities/scale models/Wayne Glover.  (Click to view full size)

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RAFFLE PRIZES 

Click the thumbnail to view full size

 

Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) was not the first time travel story. However, it was probably the first in the subgenre of the person transported to an earlier era, who decides to bring his new home “up to date” as part of his survival plan. 21st century inflation has brought us from one individual to entire islands, fleets, and towns.

We  invite people to discuss their favourite time travel stories of this genre. We’ll begin with the following.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain (1889)

 Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp (1939)

 Nantucket, series, by S.M. Stirling (1998 – 2000)

Axis of Time, series (aka World War 2.0) by John Birmingham (2004 – 2007, plus short fiction)

1632 series (aka Ring of Fire), started by Eric Flint; expanded into a shared universe with many contributors, many novels, much short fiction. Their online magazine also features non-fiction articles and discussions of how to adapt 21st century technology to the 17th century. And it’s still going strong.

 

This is today’s Post 4 of 8.

7) SHOW-AND-TELL

For those participating on ZOOM, today, we open the floor to any club members who have “fancraft” projects to showcase—sci-fi scale models, SF/F woodworking or needlecraft, whatever genre-themed, hands-on project it may be that you are working on at present, or have recently completed. 

Those not able to join our ZOOM chat for the show-and-tell may contribute by using this post’s “Leave a Comment” feature to type in a quick description of any such project on which they are currently working.

This is Post 3 of 8.

6) WHAT ARE YOU READING/WATCHING?

On ZOOM at this moment, we’re 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 concise book reports or movie and television-series reviews via this post’s “Leave a Comment” option. We welcome your input.

This is Post 2 of 8.

5) THE TERRORS OF TOPANGA CANYON, PART I

The chronicle of unsung artist, sculptor, and Hollywood monster-maker and prop fabricator Paul Blaisdell is a bittersweet tale. Blaisdell’s career in motion pictures was brief and, in the end, disillusioning for the man, who walked away from the industry bitter for the experience. It was only after his untimely death of cancer at the age of 55 that he began to gain recognition and appreciation for his imaginative contributions to the then-nascent independent sci-fi/horror film scene.

For a mere half-decade during the 1950s, ably assisted by his devoted wife, Jackie, Blaisdell worked out of the garage of his Topanga Canyon home on the outskirts of Los Angeles creating a succession of memorable beasts, mutants, and aliens that have since become iconic science fiction B-movie monsters. This is the story of Paul Blaisdell and his Terrors of Topanga Canyon!

Born in Newport, Rhode Island, on July 21, 1927, Blaisdell grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. As a young boy, he often spent Saturday afternoons at the neighbourhood movie theatre, where he enjoyed the spooky cinematic offerings of the day, including Universal Pictures’ “classic horror” releases. He also saw many an aviation film in the company of his father, an airplane buff, who took young Paul to see just about every movie produced having to do with planes and pilots.

An imaginative youngster, Paul demonstrated an above-average faculty for drawing while in grade school. He sketched space monsters and, with an innate gift for visualizing objects in three dimensions, fashioned for himself homemade kites, marionettes, and other such playthings. He assembled model airplane kits and later, as a teenager, progressed to blueprinting and building from scratch his own designs.

As his artistic proficiencies developed, Paul’s simple toolkit of pencils and pens grew to include charcoal, pastels, and paints ranging from watercolours to acrylics to, eventually, oils.

After graduating high school, Blaisdell served in the military and upon his discharge, took advantage of the G.I. Bill to further his education, enrolling in Boston’s New England School of Art, today known as the New England School of Art and Design. Here, he honed his skills.

And here, too, did he meet fellow student Jacqueline “Jackie” Boyle. After graduating college in 1952, Paul and Jackie were married and moved west, to Los Angeles, California, where he took a job with the Douglas Aircraft Company as a technical illustrator. They settled into a house in Topanga Canyon.

During his lunch breaks, Blaisdell would commandeer an office typewriter and develop ideas for science fiction short stories. In the evenings after work, he relaxed by sketching and painting, and before too long, sold one of his works to Bill Crawford’s science fiction pulp magazine, Spaceway. Crawford subsequently bought more of Paul’s paintings and eventually hired him as the publication’s art editor.

At this time, Crawford was also purchasing articles penned by a local science fiction fan and collector covering the latest science fiction and horror movies. His name was Forrest J Ackerman.

Ackerman, credited with coining the term “sci-fi,” was one of the initiators of science fiction fandom and an originator of what is today called “cosplay.” He was a friend of both writer Ray Bradbury and filmmaker/stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, whose respective careers in the field had just begun in earnest. Ackerman later became a science fiction celebrity himself when he teamed with publisher James Warren to turn out Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine beginning in 1958.

Acting as an agent for many of the science fiction authors and artists with whom he was acquainted, Ackerman was suitably impressed with Blaisdell’s artwork, and took him on as a client, leading to book-jacket art commissions and cover illustrations for magazines like Other Worlds and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as overseas publications like the Swedish science fiction magazine Häpna! and the German digest Utopia.

But it was Ackerman’s recommendation of Blaisdell to film producer/director Roger Corman for a special assignment that offered the artist an unexpected opportunity.

Corman was working uncredited on a film for James R. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff’s American Releasing Corporation, soon to become American International Pictures, and found himself in need of a monster for the project. This picture, The Beast with a Million Eyes, was to be the fledgling company’s first foray into science fiction; it was typical, second-rate, drive-in fare aimed squarely at the lucrative teen market. Released in 1955 to generally poor reviews, the film nevertheless returned about $100,000 at the box office, roughly four times its cost of production.

Tom Filer’s script, written as The Unseen, featured an invisible monster, which perfectly suited the budget-conscious Corman, for here was a monster movie that could be shot without need of ever showing the monster on screen! He anticipated savings galore.

The story involved a metaphysical lifeform from outer space bent on conquering Earth, capable of observing our world through the eyes of lowly animals—hence, The Beast with a Million Eyes—and compelling animal assaults on people! In one scene, a flock of birds under thrall of the Beast attacks a man, predating by almost a decade Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Nicholson, ARC’s marketing man, had come up with the film’s hyperbolic title and pre-sold the movie to exhibitors based on a publicity poster he’d commissioned depicting a fanged, tentacled, multi-eyed monstrosity. This was standard operating procedure for ARC: first produce a slick, promotional package to drum up interest in a film, then solicit a script and shoot the picture! But as was so often the case with such penny-pinching sci-fi productions, the monster or alien depicted in the film poster looked so very much better than the creature that ultimately appeared on screen.

In this case, however, there was no on-screen monster at all, only the disembodied voice of the titular Beast! The film had been shot in eight days and a special screening was set up for exhibitors, who were left perplexed: where was the monster promised by the sensationalistic poster art? Nicholson and Arkoff insisted that additional scenes be shot showing a monster. It was at this point that Corman turned to Forrest J Ackerman for help.

At first, Ackerman suggested his friend Ray Harryhausen as most able to craft a quality monster for Corman, adept as the talented animator was at bringing to life on screen fantastical creatures on a limited budget. But the exceedingly frugal Corman balked at Harryhausen’s fee, worrying, too, about the protracted timeframe associated with the stop-motion technique. Another of Ackerman’s film-industry friends, Jacque Fresco, who had executed the special effects for Project Moonbase (1953), was then proposed, but again, Corman balked at the price. He was looking for someone who would work cheap—really cheap—and fast! His budget was a piddling $200, a bemused Ackerman finally ascertained, an amount clearly preposterous. No self-respecting, professional special effects artist would ever entertain such a pittance!

Ackerman finally endorsed Blaisdell for the undertaking, knowing of the illustrator’s love of science fiction, fertile imagination, and boyhood talent for building aircraft models and homemade puppets. Blaisdell, who had no experience whatsoever with motion picture special effects, was game to try his hand. He read the script and telephoned Corman to discuss details, wanting to fully understand what was required before committing to the task. Corman explained that the monster need only appear for a few seconds, opening his spaceship’s airlock and pointing a ray-gun at the off-screen protagonists before slumping over when shot dead with a rifle! Blaisdell took the job and a quick negotiation saw Corman relent to an additional $200 for materials.

The being Blaisdell created for the film was a finely detailed, 18-inch-tall puppet with the visage of a devil, insect-like antennae protruding from its forehead. Leathery, bat-like wings extended from the creature’s back. A sparkling, high-collared garment and wrist shackles with attached chains completed the alien look. He nicknamed his miniature articulated doll “Little Hercules.”

Because the monster of the movie’s title had been established as some kind of invisible energy-thing, Blaisdell reasoned that such an entity would require a corporeal servant to do its bidding. His winged devil, then, was not the Beast, but the Beast’s slave, as suggested by its manacles and chains. That it was clothed in a uniform of sorts, was obviously familiar with the operation of the spaceship, and brandished a weapon inferred advanced intelligence. Blaisdell saw Little Hercules as unwillingly under the control of the Beast.

The sequence showcasing the novice monster-maker’s puppet was hastily filmed and, indeed, ran for but a few seconds. “Artistically” superimposed over the footage in the final print was a huge eyeball amid a hazy, swirling vortex, which obscured most of Blaisdell’s fine detail work and hardly satisfied the exhibitors’ want of a monster appearing in the movie.

Before Blaisdell could lament the disappointing end result of his labours, he was again called into service by Corman for another sci-fi flick, Day the World Ended, also released in 1955. Corman was now working with more than three times the budget of Beast and Blaisdell’s assignment, here, was to create a complete, head-to-toe monster suit.

The monster of the 1970-set story is a three-eyed mutant born of an apocalyptic atomic war. The creature stalks a group of survivors sheltered in a house situated within a valley protected from nuclear fallout by the surrounding mountains and prevailing winds.

Paul and Jackie spent a whole week just tearing up sheets of foam rubber into small, irregularly shaped pieces, these to form the mutant’s scales. All of these little bits of foam rubber were then glued to a pair of long-johns coated in a layer of latex rubber, and dyed with ink washes.

In the absence of an actor yet cast as the mutant, Blaisdell made the suit to fit his own five-foot-eight frame. He would end up stepping before the camera to portray the monster he had dubbed “Marty the Mutant.”

A large foam-rubber breast plate covered in “scales” wrapped around his torso and snapped firmly in the back. Tiny, stunted arms jutted out from each shoulder. First sculpted in clay, then coated in liquid latex rubber, once set, the little arms were gingerly peeled off of the clay master, stuffed with cotton, and glued into place on the suit. The hood-like headpiece was sculpted with plaster and resin over the liner of an army helmet. Painted up as eyes were plastic balls, with teeth and horns completing the detail work. Blaisdell’s line of sight when wearing the suit was through the open mouth; he wore dark sunglasses to mask his presence.

During the shoot, Blaisdell struggled to walk and maintain his balance while filming scenes in which the mutant recoils at, and is finally felled by a simple rain shower, a plot point being that fresh, pure water is lethal to a mutant adapted to survive in the toxic atmosphere of this irradiated, war-ravaged world. Because the foam rubber suit absorbed some of that practical-effects rain, the get-up became burdensomely heavy and uncomfortable!

The stout, conical Venusian creature from 1956’s It Conquered the World, a static prop built on a wooden platform and operated from within, is one of the era’s most recognized, and ridiculed, movie monsters. Corman’s thinking was that a creature from Venus would have evolved to withstand the tremendous atmospheric pressures of the Veiled Planet, and so physically, its body would be short, squat, and robust.

Blaisdell speculated that a being from Venus might be more vegetable- than animal-like and he designed something as far removed from any kind of animal as he could imagine—a heavy-set, pear-shaped brute with textured skin akin to a cucumber’s and long, branch-like arms. His original take on the creature had it smaller and of a more squat stature, in accordance with director Corman’s vision, but when star Beverly Garland first saw the prop, she quipped sarcastically, “That conquered the world?” Corman realized a larger monster would be more effective and Blaisdell beefed up the design.

Well versed in science fiction literature, Blaisdell spoke extensively with Canadian-born screenwriter Lou Rusoff before the script was written and contributed many of the most interesting ideas that Rusoff would incorporate into his screenplay, including the bat-like, biomechanical “control devices” Blaisdell called “Flying Fingers.” These were deployed by the Venusian to implant mind-control widgets in those key people it needed to influence in order to take over the Earth. When Rusoff left suddenly to attend a family funeral back in Canada, Corman brought in Charles Griffith to do a final polish of the script two days before filming was scheduled to begin. Griffith also appeared in the film as a scientist.

The Venusian creature, which Paul and Jackie called “Beulah,” was rigged with a pneumatic system of cables to manipulate the pincers at the end of the creature’s long, mobile arms. The creature’s fangs were carved of pine and its antennae made of latex rubber. Illuminated flashlights served as its glowing eyes. Blaisdell had designed and built Beulah in accordance with the demands of the script; the enigmatic monster was only meant to be glimpsed briefly, in part, in shadow, or surrounded by the billowing vapours of the hot springs within the dark cavern from which it launched its plans of conquest. An old horror-movie adage states that the less of a monster an audience sees, the greater an aura of mystery and dread is engendered in that audience.

On the first day of filming, an accident on set damaged the mechanism inside the Venusian’s arms. Because Corman did not want to waste time or money waiting for repairs to be effected, Beulah was wheeled into place and performed with inoperative pincers, which flopped back and forth randomly as the camera rolled, lending to the production an unfortunate shoddiness.

Another incident saw Blaisdell, operating his creation, escape serious injury only because Jackie insisted he wear an army helmet to protect his head during the shooting of a scene in which a soldier charges the Venusian and stabs at the creature with his bayonet-affixed rifle. Blaisdell emerged afterwards with a noticeable scratch across his protective helmet, the bayonet having penetrated Beulah’s flimsy foam-rubber hide!

But it was Corman’s reluctance to fall behind schedule when filming the climatic closing scenes that totally ruined for many an otherwise pretty decent sci-fi movie.

The scenes shot in L.A.’s Bronson Canyon were filmed in natural light, but as the day wore on and the light faded, it became too dark to film inside the cave location where was positioned Beulah. Portable electric lights were available but Corman didn’t want to take the time to fetch them and set up. He opted to simply have the creature move out of the cave into the brightness of day, where it would confront a squad of soldiers.

Beulah was not built to be ambulatory! And, revealing the Venusian fully in the stark light of day was in marked contrast to the script’s philosophy of keeping its monster in the shadows so as to maintain an unease.

Further, Corman decided the Venusian would fall over dying as it grappled with blow torch-wielding star Lee Van Cleef, dispatching him with its final breath. Such action was completely outside of Beulah’s design parameters, and the sequence ended up looking patently ridiculous, as confirmed by the premiere audience, who burst into laughter as the scene unfolded. Blaisdell walked out of that premiere certain that he would never work in motion pictures again.

Corman had veered off course by attempting that for which Beulah was not designed, and the film suffers as a result. The failure of that embarrassing finale was no fault of Blaisdell’s, who had produced what he was hired to produce, a memorable movie monster that, had the intended approach been followed, would have effectively delivered the goods.

It Conquered the World was released on a double-bill with Edward L. Cahn’s The She-Creature. Blaisdell’s She-Creature costume, dubbed “Cuddles,” rivals his It: The Terror from Beyond Space suit as his best work. Paul’s established method of making movie monsters was on exceptional display for this horror movie. The film explores the idea of hypnotic regression and was inspired by the best-selling book The Search for Bridey Murphy, about a woman who claimed to have lived a past life as a 19th-century Irishwoman.

Here, our heroine’s past life goes all the way back to prehistoric times, when she lived as the ancient aquatic humanoid creature of the film’s title.

While Corman did not suffer schedule or budget overruns gladly, and was wont to revamp on the fly, as he did on It Conquered the World, Cahn, who worked quickly and efficiently, pretty much stuck to the script. Blaisdell appreciated the time he and Jackie were allotted to construct the full-body She-Creature appliance—weeks rather than days! Blaisdell often commented, with regard to his monster suits, that he could have done better work with more time, not to mention money. As if to make that case, today, the She-Creature is regarded as amongst the best movie monsters of the 1950s.

At about this time, Blaisdell contributed to another hypnotic regression-themed project, Corman’s The Undead, released in early 1957. For this production, he modified a couple of his It Conquered the World Flying Fingers to double as bats, and also cameoed in the picture as a corpse! That same year, he appeared, as well, in AIP’s teen-oriented Hot Rod Girl, playing an accident victim.

Blaisdell was a busy man; his growing reputation for turning out good quality work on tight schedules, and even tighter budgets, had his services much in demand.

For Cahn’s supernatural magic/mad-scientist shocker Voodoo Woman, Paul stripped down his She-Creature outfit and wrapped himself in a sarong. The busy Blaisdell had agreed to take part in the production on the condition that someone else be found to design and fashion the headpiece. But when he saw what was presented—a simple, novelty skull mask topped with a blond wig—he couldn’t help but take the time to make a few quick improvements, building up the basic Halloween mask into something more respectable. But he was never entirely happy with this monster suit as it had been thrown together quickly, and wasn’t fully his own.

The best, and worst, was to yet come.

Join us again next month, on Saturday June 4, right here at www.MonSFFA.ca, for Part II of our look at the legacy of movie monster-maker Paul Blaisdell.