We were moved to suite 700, a real cool space with sofas,conference table,  fridge, microwave, and so on. Had we known earlier, we would have brought popcorn for the movies!

Early birds were treated to a viewing of Wayne and Shuster spoofing Star Trek. Hilarious! Due to traffic on the Victoria Bridge (On a Sunday morning?!), I missed the first bit, but it’s on Youtube, look it up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsqaZ0Sbpow

At noon, Keith began the SFCinema  Matinee. After viewing several trailers, we voted on watching Island of Terror, starring Peter Cushing, Edward Judd, and Carole Gray. Except for the deplorable female character, the film was generally well received. It interested me enough to look it up on the IMDB. We did pick up on a few plot holes, but missed seeing the wheels under the silicate creatures when villagers threw dynamite at them.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060548/?ref_=ttgf_gf_tt  I think it speaks favourably of the movie that we did miss the obvious bloopers like disappearing walls.  Suspense was carefully built up, we did not see the creatures right away, and even then,  we saw glimpses only at first.  A bit of mystery never fails to intrigue!

I brought in Star Trek bheer. https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1879/238786/ As you might expect from a group as diverse as ours, opinions ranged from too bitter to not bitter enough.  I gave it a 7/10, Mark said I was too generous and threatened me with Coors lime beer when I responded that I had never met a beer I didn’t like.

Rene Walling was up next, after a short break, with a presentation on Foreign and Exotic Science Fiction.  His research shows that every continent has at least one or two countries with strong SF communities of authors and fans.  He brought in a selection of books from his own collection, which he had to keep from members wanting to take some of them home! (I had my eye on the Scotish book) He went beyond literature to SF cinema starting with b&w films from before “talkies” . Though he could only scratch the surface in so short a time, we were treated to a culturally intriguing diversity of style and content.  He will be sending us a list of suggested titles.

Rene has also given talks in the past on graphic novels, esp from Europe, and anime from Japan. (Click HERE for his recommended anime list) Hopefully, he’ll be expanding on some of the topics raised in Sunday’s presentation.

There were several really nice raffle prizes. I won a signed Martin Springett Fionavar inspired print, Eilathen.  Many grateful thanks to all those who donated prizes. IIC, we raised a little over 60$.  Idle conversation during the break centred a lot on HBO’s Westworld.

The model builders who missed last month’s meeting to go to a competition were required to give us a review of the event. Dom Durocher showed excellent photographs of some stunning work. He has promised to send photos to our website.
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Mark Burakoff then took centre stage to ask us if we were prepared for the Apocalypse.  I was expecting Zombies or asteroid strikes, but we found ourselves talking a lot about how we got through the Ice Storm of 1998.  Was it really that long ago?  Our memories of the disaster are still very fresh, it seems, as all of us had a story to tell But getting back to the original “what ifs” we generally decided that the level of preparedness required was going to depend on many factors, but ultimately, survival would depend on creative use of the resources that were available.  Yes, you can record Babylon 5 during a power outage! In the case of nuclear war or asteroid strike, when resources are not only scarce but not likely to be brought in from elsewhere, how willing are you to fight for the survival of yourself and your children?  And then there is having to rebuild after the disaster. Knowledge is also a resource, and if libraries burn and computers go off line, we may lose the most important resource of all.

We could have gone on for a while longer on the topic, but time being short, we moved on to a discussion on Why don’t we get the shows we want to see?,   AKA suits vs fans. Lead by Keith Braithwaite and François Menard, this conversation started with what we are tired of seeing–remakes, reboots, and just plain retreads.  Why does the industry continue to recycle the success stories at the cost of originality? Failure costs too damn much! Is there a solution? Crowdfunding, perhaps?  And what DO we want to see? Several book titles were tossed out–Dragon riders of Pern, for instance.  The film rights to the Dragonriders of Pern series were optioned to Warner Brothers in 2015–but don’t hold your breath.

During the first part of the meeting, François and Keith took advantage of the suite’s bedroom to continue the filming for our stop motion project.  Working in fairly well controlled lighting conditions and few distractions, they managed to crush 3 more dinosaurs! Just one more to go….

We were six at supper. It seems les 3 Brasseurs is becoming our “usual haunt”.  All our orders were excellent, though we had eaten way too much Halloween candy during the afternoon, and found we could do without dessert.