This is post 1 of 6 related posts which together make up our August 8, 2020, DIY, Virtual MonSFFA Meeting.

1) INTRODUCTION

It has been a decidedly strange summer to date. Without the energetic summer festivals, glut of visitors to our fair city, and teeming weekend crowds, downtown Montreal is spookily empty and quiet. Most of the city’s popular tourist sites are either closed or limiting access. We can’t even enjoy the latest Hollywood sci-fi movie over popcorn and a cola at our local theatre because the summer blockbusters that had been scheduled this season have all been pushed into late-fall, winter, or even into next year!

Pandemic-related constraints imposed at the outset of the coronavirus crisis are still in place locally and nationwide, while at the same time, mitigation measures designed to quell the spread of the virus have been loosened. Recent moves to relax certain restrictions were aimed at safely reopening society and getting us back to normal, or as close to normal as is possible under current circumstances. However, as we have observed these past few weeks, this insidious virus is quick to take advantage of any laxity on our part.

As long-standing retailers and other enterprises, one after another, filed for bankruptcy protection, the pressure on government to allow shuttered businesses teetering on the precipice of financial ruin to reopen has, perhaps, resulted in too hasty an easing of protocols. We had, for the most part, succeeded in flattening the so-called “curve,” but as the quarantine was cautiously lifted, COVID fatigue saw many of us dropping our guard. We were soon witness to a number of localized outbreaks directly linked to larger-than-was-prudent gatherings or instances of heedless social distancing practises, particularly in bars and restaurants, at summer and day camps, beaches, and at house parties.

News promptly came of a ballooning of coronavirus cases elsewhere, notably in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, and India, and of soaring numbers of COVID-19 fatalities! It seemed that in these countries, the proliferation of the virus was completely out of control! Canada fared better than many, here, but we by no means escaped the virus’ resurgence. It’s clear that whenever people gather together in too-large numbers, and especially when social distancing and other mitigation measures are eschewed, a flare-up of infections results. And it’s a younger cohort, the figures show, which are now contracting COVID-19!

Just a few weeks after reopening, many establishments were forced to close their doors once again as governments reinstituted lockdowns. Across the globe, the virus which many had thought finally on the wane is again gaining ground, even in countries that have managed the crisis well. Authorities are now faced with back-to-school uncertainties and the question of how to ensure a safe return to the classroom in but a few weeks for students, teachers, and staff. A second wave of contagion is now considered by doctors and scientists as almost unavoidable!

We are not yet out of the woods. Far from it.

Allow me a brief tangential meander: our family cat, two weeks ago, got hold of a length of thread, something that cats are apt to do, and before we could interrupt her frolicking, she swallowed the thread, which, unfortunately, was attached to a sewing needle! X-rays at a nearby emergency animal hospital revealed that said needle was lodged in her stomach and, long story short, a $2000 procedure later, the needle was safely removed, she’s recovering, and will be just fine. Cats behave as cats behave; they are curious, and playful, and blissfully unaware of the dangers of swallowing a sewing needle!

Like cats, human beings are animals. Social animals. There is no denying that fundamentally, we need the regular, face-to-face interaction with others that we derive from attending sporting events or live concerts, going to the movies with friends, or taking in a play, sharing a meal and drinks with each other at a restaurant or bar, visiting a museum or an art gallery, or getting together with fellow sci-fi fans at a MonSFFA meeting to share our interests.

But we are also (supposedly!) intelligent animals, self-aware and capable of understanding that we find ourselves in a unique and perilous situation right now, and that we dare not swallow our proverbial sewing needle. Each of us must find the fortitude to forestall our usual inclinations, for our own individual, as well as the collective good.

It remains vitally important, therefore, that we continue to follow best recommended safety practices—frequent and thorough hand-washing, use of a hand-sanitizer, social distancing, mask-wearing in public, the minimizing of contact with others outside of our “bubble” of quarantine fellows, etc.—in order to help minimize the spread of the virus. It has certainly been difficult to isolate ourselves, even if partially, but we all know that it is absolutely necessary if we are to triumph over the COVID-19 virus.

On a brighter note, while the WHO cautions that a “silver bullet” cure is unlikely to result, some 160 vaccines are in rapid development worldwide, with a number having recorded very promising results in late-stage trials. Optimistically, if one (or more) of these ultimately proves viable, we could have an operative vaccine by early next year. Of course, it would take two or three more years to manufacture and distribute enough doses to supply global demand, but the creation of a successful vaccine would be a huge leap forward in humanity’s fight against COVID-19. Treatments designed to prevent the virus taking hold in the first place are also showing much potential. All good; fingers crossed!

As always, to those of you deemed “essential workers,” and indeed, to everyone, please take all possible precautions in order to keep yourselves as protected from infection as can be! Don’t let up on those safety protocols prematurely!

This is our fifth virtual MonSFFA meeting. Today’s get-together will unfold 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, 3:00PM, 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, the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.

As we cannot yet meet face-to-face as we usually do, 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 do comment on what we’ve put up. Let us know what you think about specific topics presented or the meeting overall. Your input helps us to tailor these virtual meetings for maximum interest and enjoyment.

2) MEETING AGENDA

In This Afternoon’s Virtual Meeting:

1:00PM, Post 1 of 6

1) Introduction

2) Meeting Agenda

3) Opening Coronavirus Parody Song

4) SF&F’s Top Ten Cats

5) This Date in History

6) A Second Parody Song

1:30PM, Post 2 of 6

7) Mythology in F&SF

2:30PM, Post 3 of 6

8) Mid-Meeting Break (Display Table, Raffle, Zoom Get-Together)

3:00PM, Post 4 of 6

9) Communication in SF&F

4:00PM, Post 5 of 6

10) Sands of Dreams (Photo Gallery)

4:30PM, Post 6 of 6

11) Another Coronavirus Parody Song

12) Still Wanted! Sci-Fi Summer Drinks

13) Trivia Challenge Contest

14) Thank-You!

15) Closing Parody Song

3) OPENING CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG

The Internet is home to many very talented, witty songwriters/performers who have been providing throughout this corona crisis gentle comic relief to us all, filking well-known rock and pop hits. Whenever given, we’ve credited by name these creators. This afternoon, we begin with a show tune by Dovelybell (www.facebook.com/dovelybell):
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4) SF&F’S TOP TEN CATS

As it happens, today is International Cat Day! Terry Pratchett wrote this truism: “In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.” In honour of International Cat Day, and of my family’s own recovering kitty, here are SF&F’s Top Ten Cats:

1) Greebo, a denizen of Pratchett’s Discworld books introduced in Wyrd Sisters, is a filthy, nasty grey tomcat and familiar of Nanny Ogg, one of the witches of Lancre.

2) Jonesy, the mouser aboard deep space mining vessel Nostromo, and with Warrant Officer Ripley’s sacrifice in Alien 3, the sole survivor of that ship’s crew!

3) Pixel is Robert A. Heinlein’s Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and has the uncanny knack of being wherever the narrator happens to be. Pixel, it’s explained, is too young to know that walking through walls is impossible.

4) Larry Niven’s Kzinti are an entire race of felinoid alien warriors appearing in his Tales of Known Space stories!

5) Tweety Bird-chasing Sylvester is a favourite cartoon cat.

6) The cat came back in Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, that cat being young Ellie Creed’s beloved pet, Church.

7) H. P. Lovecraft’s avenging Cats of Ulthar, approved of by the most radical members of PETA.

8) Mr. Bigglesworth is Dr. Evil’s cat in the Austin Powers franchise.

9) Spot is a cat adopted by Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Lieutenant-Commander Data in the android crewmember’s continuing efforts to understand humanity.

10) Mrs. Norris is the mean-spirited pet cat of Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch in the Harry Potter books and films.

5) THIS DATE IN HISTORY

The emergence of the COVID-19 virus and subsequent global lockdown of society will certainly mark 2020 as a noteworthy year in history. Such globally impactful events as the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 don’t come along every other weekend! That particular plague resulted in some 500 million estimated cases and about 50 million deaths worldwide over four successive waves of infection. It erupted in the closing months of World War I, another of history’s big events, as was World War II, which broke out a little over two decades after the Armistice was signed and ended six years later, in the wake of the controversial atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6th and 9th, respectively. But what about this date in history, August 8th?

August 8, 2009: Many MonSFFen, were, on this date, anticipating (pun intended) the evening’s scheduled masquerade at the 67th World Science Fiction Convention—the Worldcon—held at the Palais de Congrès in Montreal August 6-10, the first time our city has hosted a Worldcon, and only the fifth time a Worldcon had come to Canada. Sébastien Mineau, a former MonSFFA vice-president, served as co-MC of the masquerade with SF/F writer Julie Czerneda.

August 8, 1989: Space shuttle Columbia was launched on STS-28, a classified mission for the U.S. military believed to have involved the deployment of a new generation of military communications satellite.

August 8, 1978: The Pioneer-Venus Multiprobe, also called Pioneer-Venus 2, or Pioneer13, was a spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas rocket. Part of NASA’s Pioneer program, the Multiprobe spacecraft, or bus, carried one large and three small atmospheric probes, each equipped with an array of scientific instruments, and deployed these probes a couple of weeks before reaching Venus. The bus was designed to collect and transmit back to Earth data on Venus’ upper atmosphere until it burned up due to atmospheric friction while the probes were built to return data as they fell through the lower Venusian atmosphere and until they crashed into the planet’s surface. All components performed within design parameters, with one of the small probes actually surviving impact and continuing to transmit data from the ground for over an hour. The mission delivered to scientists important information about the composition of the thick Venusian atmosphere, the characteristics of clouds, wind patterns, temperatures, radiation, and ground-level pressure.

August 8, 1929: The German airship Graf Zeppelin departed Lakehurst, New Jersey, on a flight around the world sponsored in substantial part by American newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who assigned two of his journalists and a cameraman to cover the journey, including Grace Marguerite, Lady Hay Drummond-Hay, the only female passenger aboard who, by virtue of this flight, became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air. Also along for the ride was Hearst-sponsored polar explorer Sir George Hubert Wilkins. Airship Captain Hugo Eckener was in command. The 33,234-kilometer trip ended where it began, at Lakehurst, and including stops, took 21 days, five hours, and 31 minutes to complete, the fastest circumnavigation of the globe achieved to that date. Less than a decade later, on May 6, 1937, the Age of Airships would come to a fiery end at Lakehurst when the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg exploded during a docking manoeuver, killing 35 of the 97 passengers and crew aboard, and one linesman on the ground.

August 8, 1986: Transformers: The Movie is released, bringing to the silver screen the animated Autobots of television’s popular children’s cartoon series. Voice actors included Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, and Orson Welles! The film was distributed by producer Dino De Laurentiis’ De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. And speaking of Dino De Laurentiis…

August 8, 1919: Birthdate of movie producer Agostino “Dino” De Laurentiis, whose panoply of films includes comic book adaptations Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik (both 1968), the King Kong remake (1976) and its sequel, King Kong Lives (1986), several Stephen King adaptations, including The Dead Zone (1983) and Silver Bullet (1985), Conan: The Barbarian (1982), David Lynch’s Dune (1984), and cult favourite Flash Gordon (1980). And speaking of Flash Gordon…

August 8, 1900: Birthdate of actor James Pierce, immortalized as Prince Thun in the 1936 sci-fi adventure serial Flash Gordon, starring Buster Crabbe. Prince Thun was a Lion Man of Mongo and one Flash’s most trusted friends. Pierce had earlier played Tarzan in the 1927 silent film Tarzan and the Golden Lion, based the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, the ninth in his series of Tarzan books. Pierce wed Burroughs’ daughter, Joan, on August 8, 1928. The two voiced Tarzan and Jane on the “Tarzan of the Apes” radio program from 1932-1934. She died in 1972, he in 1983; their tombstones bear the inscriptions “Tarzan” and “Jane.”

August 8, 1946: The giant Convair B36 strategic bomber made its first flight on this date. Capable of intercontinental flight without refueling, the “Peacemaker” was the largest piston engine-powered production aircraft ever manufactured, sporting a 230-foot wingspan, exceeding that of any other combat aircraft of the day. Until the introduction of the jet-powered B-52 Stratofortress in 1955, the B36 was Strategic Air Command’s only vehicle capable of delivering an atomic bomb to the U.S.S.R. from a base in North America. Convair later retrofitted the aircraft with an additional four underwing-mounted jet engines, in addition to the six pusher-prop motors of the original design, leading to the idiom “six turnin’ and four burnin’!”

August 8, 1955: The United Nations-hosted International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy opened on this date in Geneva, Switzerland.

August 8, 1988: Scientists announced on this date the discovery of Galaxy 4C41.17, a cluster of stars they had determined to lie 15 billion light years distant from Earth. 4C41.17 is a powerful radio galaxy, emitting a signal a billion times greater than that of our sun. Vastly older than the Earth or sun, and perhaps even than our own Milky Way, it was, at the time, the most distant galaxy in the known universe. Today, at 32 billion light years away, Galaxy GN-z11 holds the title, more than doubling 4C41.17’s distance calculation.

August 8, 1948: Born on this date in Moscow, Svetlana Savitskaya was an aviator, aerospace engineer, and cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7/T-5 in 1982 as the second woman in space, almost two decades after pioneering cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova made history. Savitskaya went into space a second time as part of the crew of Soyuz T-12 in 1984, becoming, on that mission to the Salyut 7 space station, the first woman to spacewalk.

August 8, 1930: Birthdate of British screenwriter Terry Nation, known to genre fans for his contributions to Doctor Who in the 1960s and 1970s. Nation originated enduring villains the Daleks and their creator, Davros. He also penned episodes of The Avengers (1961-1969), The Champions (1968-1969), science fiction anthology series Out of This World (1962), and envisioned both the science fiction series Blake’s 7 (1978-1981), and the post-apocalyptic drama Survivors (1975-1977), about a group of people who endure through a plague that quickly spreads across the globe by way of air travel after its accidental release by a Chinese scientist! Pure science fiction; could never actually happen, right?

August 8, 1973: Canadian academic and marine ecologist Archibald Gowanlock Huntsman died on this date. He was a pioneering oceanographer who is known for his research on Atlantic Salmon, and as inventor of the process for fast-freezing fish fillets in 1929. He helped to found the North American Council on Fisheries Research in 1921, encouraging American, Canadian, French (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon), and British (Newfoundland, a British dominion prior to joining Canada as a province in 1949) collaboration on commercial fisheries and oceanographic study. Huntsman was a key figure in establishing and developing an international community of marine scientists. Trained as a medical doctor, he never practised, instead becoming captivated by Canada’s fisheries and conducting research out of St-Andrews, New Brunswick, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Nanaimo, British Columbia. Asked why the keen interest in the fisheries, he replied, “I thought I’d give it a try, just for the halibut!”

August 8, 1977: “Bye, Bye Bennie,” the final episode of the short-lived and appallingly bad sci-fi/comedy series Holmes & Yoyo (1976-1977), about an accident-prone police detective and his new android partner, airs on ABC. Android cop Yoyo was possessed of superhuman strength, could speed-read lightning-quick, and was able to swiftly analyse clues at a crime scene. He was also equipped with a built-in Polaroid camera that would snap a picture of whatever he was looking at, the shutter activated by pressing his nose, with the resulting photograph exiting from his shirt pocket. High-concept stuff!

August 8, 2003: Also bowing out on this date, but 26 years later, was the Tremors TV series, an offshoot of the like-named film franchise. The cast included Michael Gross, reprising his popular character, gun-loving survivalist Burt Gummer. The Sci-Fi Channel broadcast this series but the hour-long episodes were shown out of their intended sequence, with what should have been the second episode airing in the 13th and, as fate would have it, final slot. The show had put up excellent ratings numbers initially, but declining viewership as the storyline progressed ultimately led to its cancellation after only a half-season.

August 8, 1576: On Hven, an island in the strait between Denmark and Sweden, the cornerstone was laid for astronomer Tycho Brahe’s observatory/laboratory, Uraniborg, or the Castle of Urania, which he named for Greek mythology’s muse of astronomy. While travelling abroad, distinguished nobleman and scientist Brahe had also served as an agent for Danish monarch Frederick II, and as reward, the king granted him lordship of Hven and provided the funding to build Uraniborg. The most advanced research facility in the world at that time, Uraniborg was the first custom-built observatory in modern Europe, and an institute for the study of not only astronomy, but of meteorology, alchemy, and astrology. An expansion, Stjerneborg, or Castle of the Stars, was added in 1581 on an adjacent site and improved celestial observation by minimizing the interference of the winds on Brahe’s instruments, many of which he had developed during his time at Uraniborg . Over the lifespan of the institute, upwards of 30 assistants aided Brahe, and the facility was visited by royalty as well as other notable researchers, like fellow astronomer Johannes Kepler. Brahe abandoned Hven when he fell out of favour with Frederick II’s successor, Christian IV, who withdrew funding. Both Uraniborg and Stjerneborg were demolished shortly after Brahe’s death in 1601.

August 8, 1876: Thomas Edison received a U.S. patent for his “electric pen,” key component of a complete duplicating kit. The patent covered the pen, duplicating press, and accessories. A battery-powered hand-held motorized pen drove a reciprocating needle capable of making 50 perforations per second. Users would simple write or draw with this pen on a stencil, their scribblings reproduced as tiny holes in the template. The completed stencil was then placed atop a piece of paper resting on a flatbed press, and a roller used to squeeze ink through it onto the paper, thus duplicating what had been originally written or drawn. Edison claimed that up to 5000 copies could be made from one stencil. The process was a simple, inexpensive means of reproducing business, legal, financial, and other documents in small print runs. Edison marketed his duplicating system with advertisements in a circular that was produced using his very system! The “Electro-Autographic Press” was touted as “the only process yet invented whereby an unlimited number of impressions can be taken with rapidity from ordinary manuscript.” Another ad showing a couple embracing compared the process to a kiss. “Every succeeding impression is as good as the first,” read the ad copy. “Endorsed by everyone who has tried it—only a gentle pressure used.” Early on, Edison sold the rights to manufacture and market his system and eventually, the A. B. Dick Company acquired the patent and refined the invention, creating the mimeograph, which was marketed, with his permission, as “Edison’s Mimeograph.” This apparatus, along with spirit duplicators, or Ditto machines, and the gel-based Hectograph were used extensively in the early years of science fiction fandom to publish “fan magazines,” or “fanzines.” Photocopying technology largely supplanted these seminal home-printing methods by the 1970s.

August 8, 1991: Until its collapse on this date, The Warsaw Radio Mast, a telecommunications tower situated near the village of Konstantynów in central Poland, had been the tallest structure in the world, standing at over 2100 feet in height!

August 8, 2017: Disney announced that it will launch a new direct-to-consumer streaming service offering content from its extensive library after the conclusion in 2019 of the distribution deal the company had with Netflix. This new service will be called Disney+.

5) A SECOND PARODY SONG

This one is by Shirley Serban (www.facebook.com/shirleyserban):