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.