Love Your Library While You've Got One

Two recent articles about the difficulties faced by public library systems have got me thinking about just how important the library has been to me over the years.

Over on boingboing, Cory Doctorow has recently weighed-in on the dire situation facing Philadelphia's Free Library system (thanks to Christine Rondeau for passing this along). Then in today's Vancouver Sun, Shelley Fralic writes about the tough times our libraries are having here in BC as government funding is put on thin ice by the economy: while Vancouver's library system will probably remain intact, some smaller communities may not be so lucky.

If you don't go into a library on a regular basis - and I admit, in recent years I haven't ('cause I'm a book hoarder rather than a short-term borrower) - then the system becomes a service you take for granted until you come across stories like these. But the fact is that libraries (both public and school) were important to the development of my love of books and to the deepening of my appreciation for speculative fiction.

As a kid back east, one of the highlights of every summer was going to the Cambridge Public Library. By all rights, my favourite branch should have been the one in the Preston neighbourhood where my grandmother worked, but my true love was the Galt branch (situated near the huge old churches that ringed the public square, there's something metaphorically appropriate about having a library - a temple of knowledge and literature, on an equal footing with more common places of worship). It was vast, silent and dark - a catacomb of nooks and crannies filled with books and all kinds of other cool stuff. We'd go every couple of weeks to stock up on books, and amidst the lighter kids' fare like the Choose Your Own Adventure titles, that's where I picked up the real treasures like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This was extremely important to my development given that SF is pretty much alien to my parents, so I wasn't going to be finding anything to read that suited my interests at home.

And there were other enticements for young geeky minds in addition to the books: they had summer programming in the auditorium that included presentations for kids on all kinds of fun topics like wild animals and dinosaurs. But the best, the absolute best, was the seminar on robots! I still remember going up the stairs to the auditorium entrance on the second floor and seeing a huge metal mechanoid (or at least the shell of one) leaning on the doorframe. The presentation was from a guy who worked in robotics (can't remember which university or company though) who talked about how robots were built and what they were used for in the real world. Then came the moment that I'll never forget: as he started talking about robots in the movies and which were his favourites, he pulled out a remote control and brought a replica of R2D2 rolling out onto the stage. Somewhere around a hundred 5-10 year olds proceeded to go bonkers and you could tell that even though it was his robot, the guy onstage still thought seeing R2 up close was as cool as we did. After showing off some of R2's moves, the guy opened the floor for questions. Great guy - he took all of our questions seriously. I remember very clearly that I asked him how much wire it took to make R2, and he smiled and said "Miles and miles of it."

As if that wasn't enough, I also remember in either the summer of 83 or 84, the library set aside a very large display case to show off someone's extensive collection of Star Wars toys. No surprise, Mom nearly had to use a crowbar to pry us away from that thing to get us to go home.

I always plan to pay a visit to that library when I go back home for visits, but scheduling never allows it. I think I owe it to the old place to schedule some of the sit-downs with relatives around a trip to the library for once.

Later in my childhood, when the family moved out to BC, I made a point of acquainting myself with the local library. The Tsawwassen branch of the South Delta Library was a heck of a lot smaller than the one in Galt, but there were SF books to be had that kept me interested once I'd ploughed through the stock in the school library. Years later, as an adult, even though I don't live there anymore, I've still been known to drop in and spend a few hours reading from time to time if I've left my car with the mechanic just down the road for a little work.

As I've mentioned before, I tend to be a hoarder when it comes to books, so I don't visit the library that often anymore. That being said, because I do appreciate how important it was to my development, I know that in a couple of years when my wife and I have kids of our own, we'll definitely be regulars at our local library.

Are You a Geek, a Nerd, a Dweeb or a Dork?

Check out the Cynical-C Blog for a graph shedding light on the differences between geeks, nerds, dweebs and dorks. Definitely worth a chuckle to see which side of the line your fannish friends sit on -and, if you're honest with yourself, which camp you're in!

Thanks to the guys over at SF Signal for catching this one and sharing it with the rest of us on their Twitter feed.

The Shat Goes Doctor Dolittle Again

According to an article in today's National Post, William Shatner is throwing his weight behind another animal-related cause.

This time, the man behind Captain Kirk is lobbying the mayor of Edmonton, Alberta in an effort to get the city's Valley Zoo to send its aging elephant, Lucy, to a sanctuary.

Not too long ago, the Shat was urging officials in BC to put an end to fish farms that might threaten the health of wild salmon stocks.

For his next act, he'll be travelling back in time to rescue a pair of humpback whales. He already did that? Oh. Um... how about his ability to act?

Quick Review of G.I. Joe

Warning: Spoilers
(spoilage factor: about the same as a Cobra soldier from the undersea base bobbing up through a hole in the ice to be polar bear chow)


You can't go in to a movie based on a toy line (okay, a toy line that spawned a comic and a long-running cartoon) with high expectations, so the lack of quality in G.I. Joe wasn't a total surprise or disappointment. That being said, it definitely missed the opportunity to be something better.

The special effects and fight scenes were all top notch. I also have to admit there were a couple of scenes that made me chuckle. I like the backstory that was constructed for McCullen's/Destro's (played by Christopher Eccleston) family, but his transformation at the end to have the liquid metal face was pretty lame. As much as it would have been inanimate, I think it would have been better if he would have donned his ancestor's steel mask. It would have had more meaning than nanobots giving him a T-1000 look.

On the downside, the flick had plot holes big enough to drive an entire armoured column through. One of the worst offences was after the disaster in Paris where the Joes get arrested by French authorities. While Hawk is eventually able to get them released, they're told their forbidden from ever returning to France. Huh? This is supposed to be an international team dispatched by the UN, right? So while I can understand your run-of-the-mill gendarmes and bureaucrats not knowing who these characters are, how is it that high-level French officials are in the dark and have to have their arms twisted to release the Joes? If this is an international force, wouldn't there be a couple of French members? Wouldn't the French government at least be in the loop?

And then there were the Joes themselves. Snake Eyes is white?! Huh? Granted, I only read a couple of issues of the comic back when I was a kid and borrowed them from a friend, so I don't know if the comic had anything to say about his ethnicity, but at least in the cartoon there was never any indication that the Joes' resident ninja was white. He was just a ninja. Most ninjas as Japanese, right? Now sure, you may say that doesn't mean that he can't be white, maybe there are white ninjas. Fine. But if this is supposed to be an international team, why not keep things simple and say he's Japanese like most ninjas probably are? This just felt like the producers were trying to pander to the American audience's dim memories from the 80's of American Ninja, which, for all its attempt to be a serious ninja movie, was equally as lame as another white ninja movie years later: Beverly Hills Ninja.

But the worst offence this movie committed was the absence of Shipwreck Delgado from the G.I. Joe team. Shipwreck was the man! The lack of Shipwreck and his bird was truly unforgiveable.

Save G.I. Joe for a rental night if there's nothing else available at the store.

My Marvel-Disney Mashup

Okay, since everyone else in the universe is doing it, I'll hop on board the Marvel-Disney mashup bandwagon. Here's what I'd like to see:

Finding Magneto

Marvel & Disney Sittin in a Tree...

I'm not sure what to think about this whole Marvel/Disney marriage that was announced a while ago.

On one hand, it's probably a good thing for Marvel, because as part of the Disney empire they'll have steady access to a lot more capital to develop movies and avenues like stores and themeparks to hawk merchandise. This is, of course, a good thing, most especially from a business perspective.

For Disney, it's another property to put bums in the seats of its themepark rides. It's not hard to imagine the mouse taking some of the big Marvel names and flushing them out into Indiana Jones-style show rollercoasters or Star Tours-esque puke theatres. And it would work. Hell, I'd go.

On the other hand, with Mickey at the helm, I worry that it's only a matter of time before comic fans see the Disneyfication of the Marvel lines. Oh sure, it wouldn't be right away and it wouldn't be all in one fell swoop. It would probably start subtly because the Disney guys are smart and won't want to damage the revenue from their new property, but over time I wonder if you might start to see a softening of some of the violence or a gentling of character personalities to be more in line with the wholesome image of the mouse's company (granted, American pop culture rarely has a problem with violence - it's sex and swearing they're really afraid of - but you have to admit that at least in recent years, Disney's something of a soft touch when it comes to slugfests). This is not to say that Marvel's titles are the homes of over-the-top gore or phsychological violence. They're still ultimately (for the most part) written with the understanding that kids and youth will be buying them (as opposed to other comic publishers which lean towards the adult audience specifically and are markedly different in the depth of content). But I can just imagine a boardroom meeting some day with execs talking about developing, say, X-Men into a ride for the themeparks and getting into a discussion about whether Wolverine's gonna have to tone down the attitude in order for the concept to be a more palatable for parents; this in turn could affect the comic months, if not years in advance of ride construction. Just a thought, but one that's certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

But beyond that, there's just a general uneasy feeling that I have when I think of these two entertainment powers joining forces. It's the same feeling of wrongness slithering just through the fringes of conciousness that I had way back at the end of the 80's or beginning of the 90's when Disney bought out the Muppets. Sure it probably gave the Henson factory the backing it needed for the Muppet movies (like their versions of A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island) that they put out in the 90's, but when I saw the news footage back then, I just had this feeling that the Muppets were losing something special about their identity by coming under the Disney umbrella. Even now, years later, if you go to the Disney California theme park across the lane from Disneyland, they've got a replica of the Muppet Theater with a funny little show, but it somehow seems faded and half real. Admittedly, part of the problem there is that this show is half-empty most of the time is because its real draw is for the adults who remember watching the Muppets as kids. They bring their own kids there, and the little ones generally enjoy themselves, but the Muppets aren't that big a part of pop culture for kids anymore, so it's not what the kids want to see. That's not Disney's fault per se. But is probably is why the Muppet Theater there feels like it's been half-forgotten and tucked in a corner of the park more out of obligation than any real desire to push it as a destination product - Disney's too focused on promoting its core properties, rather than the add-ons from a bygone era. While Marvel is certainly current, I worry that it may become somewhat marginalized because it isn't a core Disney property. And beyond that, I just can't shake that same feeling that maybe, like the Muppets, some of the magic has gone out of Marvel because of the Disney deal - that it's become the sidekick where it used to be the superhero.

Hogtown or Fantown?

Over the weekend, the "centre of the universe" was host to the annual Toronto Fan Expo. CBC's got a nice photo gallery over on its site. Would have been nice to go, but one con this summer was enough. Good on Hogtown (or should we be calling it Fantown?) for putting on a con that draws a respectable crowd and gets hefty media attention - in fact, a couple of the TV stations out here on the Wet Coast even ran short highlights of the con at the end of their newscasts (complete with obligatory smug sniggering from the anchors at the antics of the geeks). Too bad this summer's WorldCon in Montreal didn't get that kind of national attention.

Cylon Has A Plan - for Cats in Richmond

The potential for really awful, unforgiveable puns with this one was almost too great to resist, but I'll be a good boy and just pass this story along as-is:

One of the local newspapers here in Little China, The Richmond Review, recently ran a story about how Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer has taken the local cat sanctuary under her wing. Helfer (now based out of Los Angeles) was located on the Lower Mainland during the years when BSG was filming and also has a sister who lives in Greater Vancouver. She's visited the Richmond Animal Protection Society a few times and has helped fund the operation with proceeds from a photo shoot as well as the sale of merchandise from her website.

The article goes on to mention that Helfer currently has nine cats. Six has nine cats? I know it's her business how many pets she has, but doesn't nine boost a person up into strange old cat-lady territory, or at least very near to it?

Talking Heads Talking Steampunk

Here's a piece that was on the CBC website a couple of weeks ago that I caught while at WorldCon but didn't have time to post: Talking Heads frontman is doing some cool stuff using an old pump organ to make a building into a musical instrument. The cool SF element to it? David Byrne openly calls his sonic experiment "steam-punk technology".

Which Comics Are Best? - The Kind That Go "Khaaaaaaaaaan!"

I received a pleasant surprise at work last week after returning from my WorldCon vacation when my friend Steve showed up with the gift that keeps on giving awesomeness - a stack of comics!

Lucky me, it was IDW's 3-issue comic version of "Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan". Anyone who lets me talk Trek more than 10 seconds knows that TWOK is my favourite installment in the franchise.

While I haven't read through them in full yet, I've skimmed each from cover to cover and the art looks like it kicks ass. Looking forward to sitting down with them this weekend, possibly muttering: "To the last, I will grapple with thee..."

A Word about The Time Tunnel

Sometimes the camera phone is more of a curse than a blessing.

Last week we went with some friends to a steakhouse in Richmond called "Chop". Good food and service, but what was noteworthy from a geeky perspective was the round tunnel with alternating rings of light and dark that they'd built to connect the bar to the restaurant. Seeing someone walk through it reminds me of the old 60's TV series "The Time Tunnel" (which I saw in reruns as a kid in the late 70's) - or, for the younger crowd, Doctor Evil's time machine in the Austin Powers movies.

I had to get a picture of it, so my wife snapped a shot of me doing the classic Time Tunnel off-kilter leap. Sadly, with it being relatively dark, and with the iPhone's onboard camera being of dubious quality, the photo wasn't as good as I'd hoped. The real kick in the butt is that the shot is reasonably clear on the phone's gallery screen - it just sucks when posted to the blog here.

Ah well. That's what I get for trying to show the world the secret location of the Time Tunnel.

bloginhood vs The Time Tunnel

WorldCon - Day 5: a Day Late and a Dollar Short

Sorry for this post coming in a day late, but when I left the con
yesterday I decided to relax on the train and take in the scenery.
After meeting-up with my wife and parents in Ottawa, it was off to
dinner and then turning in early to get some much-needed rest. But
back to the con...

Monday was the last day of Anticipation/WorldCon 67, and for once, I
got off to an early start (relatively). I was at the convention centre
by 11 (mainly because I was up early to check out of the hotel) and
began the day with the session on the Drake Equation and the Fermi
Failure. The room was packed solid. The panel covered all of the usual
possibilities for why, if there are aliens, we aren't detecting them
and how we can do a better job of looking for them. And it was a
fairly entertaining discussion. But the best part was when one of the
audience took it upon himself to find another, bigger room. This gave
rise to some great jokes touching back on the subject of the
session... First the panel wanted to be sure if the larger room had a
mic&speaker system to ensure they'd be heard at the back of the room -
much like the concerns of finding a way to get coherent signals to
other civilizations over great interstellar distances in a reasonable
amount of time. Then, as we all got up and were crossing the hall to
the other room, it occurred to me that we were illustrating how an
advanced species should be observable in its efforts to expand outward
from a home world (room) with inadequate resources to a new space
better suited to its needs. Then, once we were settled in to the new
room, someone in the audience observed that others/latecomers might go
to the old room looking for the session, and finding no trace of it
and no clue that it had left or where it was gone, might then conclude
that it had never existed at all - just like astronomers who might
look at part of the sky where another civilization might once have
lived but vacated, and having missed their signals, might assume it
had always been empty. Ah, geek humour.

Then it was on to the session on genetic engineering our offspring. It
was interesting enough.

After grabbing a quick lunch at Subway, I hit the Dealers' Room one
last time. Good thing too - one of the booksellers had managed to
score a single extra copy of Distant Early Warnings (a new anthology
of Canadian SF edited by Robert J Sawyer - they'd sold out a few days
ago and didn't expect to have any more). I bought it and then ran into
Nalo Hopkinson across the room and she was kind enough to sign her
short story in it.

At that point, I headed to my last session of the day: Dealing with
Disasters. Lots of spirited discussion in this one - especially when
Hurricane Katrina and the tragic failures of the US government during
it were brought up in example. Ultimately, the consensus was that
individuals need to prepare themselves to deal with natural disasters
like ice storms, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc and that having
the right frame of mind is as important as being well-supplied. What
was interesting though was when the panelists noted there are some
mega disasters - like a massive asteroid impact or the eventual super
volcano eruption under Yellowstone park - where there's just no point
in spending much time or effort worrying about it because there's
nothing you (or the government) can do and they're not survivable
anyway. To sum up the message of the panel for when disaster comes, in
the words of Douglas Adams: Don't Panic.

And that was the end. Sure, I would have liked to have stayed around
for George RR Martin's reading, and it might have been nice to be
there for the closing ceremonies, but I had a train to catch, and by
that time of the afternoon, you could feel it in the air: regardless
of how much was left, the con had wound down and was more or less
over. It was like being at a party at the end of the night: sure you
can hang around for one last drink and a final weary laugh, but you
know when it's over. Time to go.

So that was WorldCon 67. Thanks for putting on a great con, Montreal!
Au revoir!

(now for a couple of days of non-geek-related vacation back east
before heading home)

Sent from my iPhone

Where the Mark was Left

Leaving My Mark on WorldCon 67

WorldCon - Day 4

Some days you've just gotta role with the punches.

Today started with a punch to the gut when I made the mistake of
following the recommendation of a friend (who's a Montrealer) and some
other locals who suggested I try a fast food chain unique to Quebec
called La Belle Province. I was told their hotdogs were the best and
that their fries, though greasy, were the best. The only virtue of the
gut bomb that ensued was that it was cheap - which about sums up the
quality of their excuse for food. The dogs were small and tasteless
and the fries weren't potatoes fried in oil so much as oil garnished
with some potato slices. Hell, the chips weren't even cooked all the
way through - that might have interfered with them being a delivery
mechanism for the month-old grease. Usually it's a good idea to listen
to the locals when it comes to finding a place to eat, but this dive
represents a cultural divide that just cannot be crossed.

With that glob sourly sloshing around in my stomach, I fled for the
nerdish safety of the convention centre and went straight to the first
session I'd put on my list for the day. Or so I thought. I got to the
room, grabbed a seat and waited for the panel to get under way. But
rather than launching into an examination of a possible "peak metal"
crisis, the bunch at the front started muttering about teaching SF (or
not) in universities. I knew I had the right room, so peak metal must
have been moved to another location/time or cancelled. Sometimes it
helps to check the schedule update board at the info desk before
starting the day.

Didn't have much interest in hanging around listening to a panel
rehash the obvious (SF is not taught or respected in nearly enough
post-secondary institutions, although it should be), so I decided to
bail. There was no point in trying to track down Peak Metal because by
the time I got back to the front of the centre and down to the level
with the info desk (the place reminds me of Scroob's line in
Spaceballs about the ship being too big to walk or the movie will be
over - the Palais de Congres is that big), figured out what was going
on and got to the new room (if there even was one), I would have
missed too much.

So I went to the Dealers' Room instead. Which was a good thing because
the handout/freebie table at the back had issues of "Emerald Eye",
anthology of Irish SF, up for grabs. Not one to turn my back on a free
SF anthology, I snagged one and browsed for a bit before heading to a
session.

This time it worked out! I went to the panel on alternate histories.
The first part of the discussion looked at why most alternate
histories these days tend to be about WWII or the US Civil War (and to
some extent the Roman Empire). Reasons offered included that's what
publishers want to buy, and that's what fans want to read (because
these wars offer clearly-defined battles of right vs wrong, and
because - in the case of WWII - readers' parents or grandparents might
have been involved). This was followed with an extended discussion of
why not WWI, which had massive pacts on our existence. The rest of the
session involved thoughts about other turning points in history that
could be fodder for good alternate histories, and some stories that
did cover other historic ground.

From there it was on to a session about the economics of interstellar
trade. It was split between non-FTL possibilities and (to a much
lesser extent) trade between FTL-enabled civilizations. Basically, in
the most likely scenario of no FTL, there's not much use for
physically travelling and trading. Information might be the only
reasonable commodity - if the other civilization even put a value on
our knowledge. Art and rare, difficult to reproduce commodities were
other possibilities mentioned. They also hashed over the "why bother"
scenario of civilizations that could invest enough resouces and
technology into making a reasonable interstellar voyage wouldn't need
to - they could make anything our civilization has themselves. And
they raised the spectre that having been broadcasting for so many
decades, we might have already given our info away for free.

The Landscape in Fantasy session afterwards had interesting subject
matter (comparing physical and social landscapes and their effects on
storytelling, culture and sense of self) and most of the panelists
were worth while. My only issue was that one of the panelists (and I
won't name any names) had a way of over-emphasizing every word that
came out of her mouth that was gigantically pretentious - especially
because she wasn't saying anything especially worth while.

From there it was the search for supper. My first attempt was a miss
when I discovered the diner I'd seen a few blocks away was closed. In
fact, downtown Montreal is pretty quiet around supper on Sunday. The
second attempt involved a pasta joint in the convention centre. Might
have been okay if they were properly staffed and taking care of
customers properly, but when the line was 40 people long and not
moving at all, I realized there was no point in hanging around. At
last I settled for St Hubert, a rotisserie chicken place that is
another one of those local legacies. Basically, the food's Swiss
Chalet quality in an atmosphere that's trying to be a bit more hip.
The food was okay and let me get back to the convention centre in
short order.

I arrived about half an hour after the Hugo ceremony had started, so I
knew I wouldn't be tweeting the results like with the Auroras. I
considered blowing off the Hugos for a session on cross-genre hard SF,
but I discovered that had been cancelled. None of the other sessions
were of much interest, so I figured better late than never for the
awards ceremony. It moved along reasonably quickly and had some funny
moments. No big surprises though.

One more day left - or at least part of one - before things wrap up
and I catch a train to Ottawa to start the non-SF portion of my
vacation.

Sent from my iPhone

WorldCon - Day 3

Typical late start to the day: brunch at a place around the corner
called Eggspectations. The food was good (pretty hard to screw-up eggs
& toast & sausages) and inexpensive.

At the convention centre by 1-ish, so I figured I'd check out the
dealers' room again. They'd finished the display with the "Faux Giant
Steam Robot" from the "Murdoch Mysteries" TV series (I always knew
that show was going to flirt with steampunk one of these days!) so I
grabbed a few shots. There were a few more dealers around today and
the ones I'd seen Thursday had more on display, so I did some more
browsing with the intent to buy. I ended up picking up another back
issue of On Spec (Spring '98), Tesseracts 13 (this year's installlment
in the Canadian SF anthology series - not on the shelves yet), and a
cool 1-inch lapel pin shaped like the new Galactica. The bonus was a
free copy of Rich Horton's "Science Fiction: The Best of the Year -
2006 Edition". Someone (I'm guessing the publisher) put out a couple
of boxes of copies on the freebie table at the far end, so I got one
(not going to pass up a free book when it's an SF anthology - even if
it is a couple of years old).

It wasn't a total success though. I'd wanted to buy a copy of Robert J
Sawyer's new Canadian SF anthology "Distant Early Warnings" (or
something to that effect) that I'd seen the other day, but it was sold
out by the time zi arrived today. I also missed out on a new post-
cyberpunk anthology. Oh well, I'll just have to wait until they hit
the shelves at the bookstore in a little while.

On the costume front, there were a few different ones today: more
steampunk types, the usual assortment of anime styles, medieval/
Renaissance enthusiasts, a few Jedi, Browncoats, and one girl who was
just smokin' in a classic 60's style Star Trek women's Starfleet
uniform. Later in the day, Rorschach made an appearance, complete with
can of beans (he even went into a restaurant to borrow a fork). I was
glad to have caught a picture of that guy (too bad I missed Ms Trek
though).

The day's sessions got off to a great start with a panel doing a post-
mortem on BSG. Really the panelists and the audience were focussing on
the final episode and where it failed, as opposed to evaluating the
entire series, but there was a lot of very thought-provoking
discussion from all involved. One scene that was discussed at length
was the decision to cast the fleet into the sun, with many people
agreeing it represented anti-intellectualism (one panelist remarked it
meant they were throwing away not only their technology, but their
accumulated knowledge/history/wisdom as a way to solve their recurring
genocide problem, but he then noted that "nobody ever solved anything
by being stupid"), one suggesting it may have been like Cortez burning
his ships, and even a couple saying they agreed with the choice. The
discussion also included the treatment of Starbuck, Hera's
significance and a range of other aspects of the finale. This was what
a session should be. I left feeling refreshed and energized.

From there it was on to a session about culture and geography, which
unfortunately turned out to be pretty boring. I left about 10-15
minutes early.

Then I went on to a Kaffeeklatsch with author Robert Charles Wilson. I
lucked into this one: when I arrived, I checked with the Kaffeeklatsch
registration desk to see if I could join Wilson's roundtable tomorrow
(when it was originally scheduled). But they'd rescheduled for today
and I was happy to find there were still z couple of spaces open.
There ended up being about 10 of us around the table with Wilson. He's
a nice guy and everyone had a great time asking questions and tossing
around issues like addressing alien conciousness (or the lack thereof
in "Spin" & "Axis") and how to express the truly alien nature of an
alien mind. He spoke about his 3 influences behind his latest novel,
"Julian Comstock": the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, the 19th
century children's adventure novels of Oliver Optic, and his desire to
write a funny novel about a person becomming a writer. My regret was
that I couldn't ask a couple of other questions about that book
because no-one else at thd table had read it yet and the questions
would have contained serious spoilers. Speaking of spoilers, while
Wilson mentioned he was working on "Vortex", the third novel in, as
Wilson put it, "The Spin Cycle", and while he said it would tie the
series up answer many questions, he was very, very carful to not drop
any spoilers at all about it (except perhaps for the merest hing that
perhaps the boy from "Axis" may play a role in providing some further
connection or communication or understanding between humans and the
Hypotheticals. All in all, a very enjoyable chat.

Supper was at the authentic Quebec cuisine place Forchette et
Forquette down on the concourse. The food was good but the service was
too slow for most tables (although once the waiter finally came around
to take my order, I certainly couldn't complain about the speed of the
meal - I must have gotten lucky).

Afterwards it was up to the Masquerade. Rorschach made a formal
appearance as an entry on stage. There were also some good entries
from someone dressed ad Amazonian Wonder Woman, a woman dressed as an
operatic performer with a Cylon helmet on, a Klingon version of Batman
(you had to be there, but it was a scream), and a stereotypical
scantilly-clad videogame heroin giving a lecture to game designers
about the need for better armor. The best though, was a pair that came
on as the moon (his head, with a black cloak beneath) and The Great
Pumpkin riding out of the pumpkin patch - at which point the other guy
(moon) opened his cloak to reveal Linus and Charlie Brown and the rest
of the gang sewn to the inside of the cloak. Clever, well constructed
and brilliantly executed. Not sure who won (I bailed when the judges
left to deliberate), and it doesn't much matter, it was just an
entertaining way to spend an evening.

When the Masquerade wrapped up, most of the crowd adjourned to the
rooftop. A big moon was hovering near an old art deco skyscraper and
there was an absolutely stunning fireworks display put on for half an
hour by the South African team (for the city's fireworks competition -
and during the big Francofolies annual celebration). With all the SF
movie soundtracks playing over the radio to accompny thd display, many
in the con crowd wondered if the music had been chosen with the
knowledge that WorldCon was taking place. Unlikely. Great show though.

Now it's off to bed.

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Rorschach at WorldCon

A Word of Explanation about the Steam Automaton

The "Faux Giant Steam Robot" from the photos in the previous post was
made for Season 2 of the "Murdoch Mysteries". MM is a Canadian-
produced cop show set in Toronto during the Victorian era and is based
on a series of novels by Maureen Jennings.

My wife's a fan of the show, but while I've seen the odd episode, I'm
kind of indifferent to it. The lead actor always looks like he's
wearing too much eye makeup.

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more of the Steampunk 'Bot

Giant Steam Robot at WorldCon!

WorldCon - Day 2

Slept late again - it's not because I'm getting a lot of sleep, rather
because I'm up waaaay too late at night calling home to talk with my
wife and then posting the day's highlights (which is also why I don't
go to parties).

Anyhow, I lunched on a succulent smoked meat sandwich at the world-
famous Schwartz's Deli. Everything you've heard about this place is
true... it's certainly the best pastrami I've ever had. A little
mustard and some serviceable bread and it was complete. Nice and
simple and allowing the focus to stay on the meat. I was a happy boy.

Back down to the convention centre. There were a couple of good
costumes out and about today: a Rebel ship crewman and a Stormtrooper;
a steampunk fan decked out in Victorian long coat, top hat and brass
goggles; and best of all, Miss Piggy from the Muppets' "Pigs iiiiiiin
Spaaaaaaace"

For my first session of the day: Steampunk! During the discussion of
what makes this sub-genre appealing, there were the usual comments
about aesthetics and a sense of modern kinship with an bygone culture
grappling with technological & social upheaval. But most
interestingly, some of the panelists suggested that in our age where
our technology is small, sleek and prefabricated to the point where
owners can't tinker with the products they buy (like the iPhone I'm
typing this on) there's a growing interest in Victorian craftsmanship
(even manufactured items) that could be easily customized by an
individual at home. Then there was the other panelist sho summed it up
quite simply: novelty - Steampunk offers a story remarkably different
from the same-old-same-old science fiction and fantasy fare.

From there it was on to: Are We Conscious and Does It Matter?
Interesting discussion on par with university-level metaphysics
courses. What took away from my enjoyment of the panel was the twitchy
kid who came into the room half-way through the session and literally
within 2 minutes was waving his hand in the air virtually exploding
with the need to be acknowledged so he could abuse the soap box. How
the hell can someone have the gall to be hopping up and down itching
to weigh-in when he hadn't even heard enough of the discussion to have
enough perspective on the particular topic at hand to make a relevant
comment? Sure enough, when the moderator finally acknowledged Mr
Twitchy, he proceeded to babble for 5-10 minutes and it took a serious
effort to cut him off so that others - especially the panelists -
would have a chance to speak again. What's worse, what he thought was
so profound that he felt the need to inflict it on us was trivial and
boring. He then spent the rest of the session waving his arm
desperately trying to get acknowledged again. Luckily, the moderator
didn't make that mistake again.

When that was over, it was back to the hotel to get changed for the
Aurora Awards banquet. The registration desk for the event wasn't very
efficient, but once the banquet was underway, it went very smoothly
(except for one of the awards presenters making a crack about the
Battle of the Plains of Abraham - no so smart when more than a few
attendees are Francophone and the event's being held in Quebec).

After that, it was on to a session talking about the One Season
Wonders of SF TV. The panel was unremarkable, but some of the audience
members had notable things to say. One in particular pointed out that
a good show doesn't necessarily have to be around for multiple seasons
- short and punchy can be very effective. Sure we would have liked
Firefly to continue, but even though it was cancelled, it was smart
and had enough of an impact to inspire a very strong fan base which
provided impetus for a movie and comics.

Next was a session on the Vikings. I'll give the audience a lot of
credit: George RR Martin was supposed to be a panelist but withdrew,
and when this was announced at the beginning, everyone stayed. They
were there for the norsemen, not the author.

I wrapped things up with the Tales of Super Science session. You can't
go wrong with a gaggle of scientists sitting around swapping funny
stories about things going wrong in the lab & test field.

On the way out I stuck my head in the dance hall... Earlier in the
evening, there'd been a little over a dozen people tub-thumping to
Chumbawumba, but it was nearly deserted by 11.

I ended up walking back to the hotel with one of the panelists from
the Vikings session and had an interesting chat about cons in
different parts of the country, and about how the Canadian writers'
society keeps SF and children's literature firmly in the ghetto when
dealing with it's members.

Must sleep now to be able to get through tomorrow.

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WorldCon - Aurora Award Roundup

In case you missed my as-it-happens tweets of the Aurora Awards
results from earlier thus evening, here's a recap:

Award for Fan Achievement - Fanzine: The Original Universe

Artistic Achievement Award: Lar Desouza

Award for Best Work in French - Other: Solaris magazine

Award for Best Work in English - Other: Neo Opsis magazine

Award for Fan Achievement - Organizational: Randy McCharled for the
World Fantasy Convention

Award for Bedt Short Form Work in English : Randy McCharles for
"Ringing in the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta"

Award for Best Short Form Work in French: Jean-Louis Trudel (missed
the story title because it went by too quickly en francais)

Award for Fan Achievement - Other: Joan Sherman for the Heather Dale
Concert

Award for Best Long Form Work in French: Michele Laframboise for Les
Vents du Tamerlane

Award for Best Long Form Work in English (presented by Ed The Sock!):
Edward Willett for Marseguro

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WorldCon - Day 1 Part 2

I started the afternoon in the Dealers' Room again. Most of them were
set up and ready to go by then (although I still wonder if there may
be a few latecomers) so I did some in-depth browsing. Ended up buying
a back issue of On Spec (Summer '98) and having a good chat with the
editor about the new look for their website. Later, when I passed the
Canadian SF association (can't remember the exact name), I ran into
the folks from Neo Opsis (another Cdn SF mag - been around for about 2
years) who were giving out free reprints of their first issue. Nice!
After that, I stopped at Anticipation/WorldCon 67's merchandizing
table to buy my con T-shirt.

A few minutes later, I noticed George RR Martin was checking out one
of the bookstands (Bytown Books out of Ottawa, I think - they had some
valuable books there, including a beautifully illustrated old edition
of Tennyson's "The Idylls of the King" - very expensive). Since I had
my copy of "A Game of Thrones" in my bag, I figured I'd ask for his
autograph. I felt kind of funny about it though... Wasn't sure if it's
OK to ask for an autograph from an author of this stature when he's
got a signing session scheduled in a couple of days, but I figured
that since there had been a lull in his conversation with the dealer
and he'd turned back to the books, it couldn't hurt to ask. He said
sure (woohoo!). The surprise came though when I took the book out:
rather than the usual chit-chat about how the series has panned out
since it's debut, etc, Martin saw the book and started talking like a
fan. It's a hardcover advance copy that the publisher gave to
bookstores to create buzz prior to releasing if for mass sale. Back in
'96, I was privileged to hear Martin read the prologue at the Winnipeg
WorldCon (I din't think any of us in the small audience at the time
knew what kind of treat we were in for), and later that year, while
working at a bookstore, the boss knew I was an SF fan and gave the
advance copy to me when the publisher sent it. Back to the present:
rather than talking about the story, Martin (who discusses being an SF
fan ever since he was a kid in his Dreamsongs collections) starts
talking about how I've got to get this book in plastic right away. He
tells me it's important for a valuable edition like this to have
plastic over the dust cover (as plain as it is in simple silver with a
blue throne on it). Valuable? I've only really considered dollar value
for this kind of stuff on 2 occasions: collecting comics as a teen
(before the market fell out of that commodity) and in terms of
replacement value for my books when insuring the contents of my house.
But dollar value on the book? For me the value is in the fact that
it's a hell of a good story. Dollar value never really entered into it
because my book collection is like a dragon's hoard - I'll die before
I'm parted with it. No need in that case to dwell on what that
particular edition would fetch on the marketplace. So there's Martin
talking about value and protection, and he pulls over a couple of book
dealers to guess at the value (increased now that it's got his scrawl
in it), and they start talking numbers that are a little shocking
while Martin lectures me about what happens to the value if a wrinkle
in the dust jacket were to tear. Even after I'd said thank-you and
Martin went on his way, the dealers were still on about plastic. One
of them even insisted on helping me "properly" protect the book by
wrapping it in a plastic bag I had from another purchase. Now that's a
passion for keeping books in good condition! After chatting with them
a little further, I put the book back in my satchel and moved along.
Very surreal.

From there it was on to the Display and Art Show area. There's a cool
8-foot suit of armor looming near one wall. The art is par for the
course: a few really amazing paintings, a lot of okay pieces, the
usual stuff that looks like mediocre junior high art class fare, and
then there was the profoundly stupid entry of a Kelloggs Cornflakes
box. Yup. Just a Cornflakes box mounted on the display board. Sigh.

On to my first session of the con: Rereading. An interesting debate on
the value of rereading stories, including a reference to something
called "The Suck Fairy". No, apparently it isn't someone on the
downtown eastside who will do unmentionable things when you call.
Rather, when you read something for the first time and enjoy it, then
leave the book on the shelf for a long time, the Suck Fairy comes and
makes the story suck so that it's ruined when you reread it. I think
the Suck Fairy may have preyed on my Asimov collection!

On to supper. For some reason the authentic Quebecois cuisine
restaurant in the con centre didn't have enough staff, so they were
turning people away! I ended up ambling down the street into old
Montreal to a place called Villier. Great modern Canadian cuisine and
nice service. Definitely worth having the maple pudding for dessert.

Back to the con. Supper caused me to miss some of the sessions I'd
wanted to attend, but I got back in time for the panel on how Dr Who
has been effected by relationships and becomming a sexual being. One
of the DW series writers, Paul Cornell, was on the panel and was very
funny (looked a lot like a friend of mine too). He argued DE has
always been a show for kids who got bullied because The Doctor puts
the bullies in their place using his brains while still looking like a
dork - in doing so he inspired people who get bullied, and so by
having relationships (and the implication of sex), the Doc is telling
geeks they can have a live life too.

The "How to get to Alpha Centauri" was a standard hard science panel
on interstellar travel. Meh.

The last panel of the evening, "I'll Be Back", on the Terminator
franchise was also unremarkable - all the opinions given are ones I've
encountered elsewhere. I don't know, maybe I was just beat from jetlag.

And yet, as exhausted as I am, it's really fracking late and I'm still
up! Time to turn in so I'm not a zombie tomorrow.

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WorldCon - Day 1 - The Early Report

Woke up way too early this morning. Way too early was just after 9 -
early 'cause I didn't get to sleep until 3am. I don't sleep well when
I travel. Got downstairs & couldn't get a meal at the Hyatt's
restaurant (breakfast: 6:30-10:30, lunch: 11:30-whenever - doesn't do
me much good at 11. What hotel restaurant stops serving for an
hour?!). The Food Gods must be telling me to get out and explore the
local cuisine scene.

Moseyed down to the convention centre (just 2 minutes down the street -
which is great because my leg is in rough shape after my cat went all
Kzin a couple of days ago). Nice building, lots of places to eat on
the ground floor. Went upstairs to register. Had a nagging feeling I'd
forgotten something.

Ah, the con! Fans of every type from every place you can imagine. Not
too many sporting costumes (yet), but lots of folks wearing T-shirts
from their favourite shows/movies/whatever like they're generals
flying their standards as they march towards a battlefield.

Registration was very quick and easy. Saw George RR Martin checking in
while I was heading to the reg line. I put a pin beside my name on the
voodoo board (not that anyone gives a hoot that I'm here) and decided
to get the lay of the land.

The Dealers' Room and Art Fair are still in chaos - typical opening
day. Some booths are already set up and selling, others figuring out
what goes where, one or two waiting at the mercy of late courier
companies, and the usual no-shows. Even though there isn't much
displayed yet, I've had to fight temptation: saw one joint selling
nice little 1-inch Galactica (new version, of course) models as pins,
a couple of books - including the new installment of the Tesseracts
anthology series, and a Ghostbusters hockey jersey. Must...
maintain... resolve... not... to... impulse... buy... right... away.
That being said, if I see any Big Trouble In Little China merchandise,
my self control will collapse immediately. Chatted for a bit with an
author hawking her books at one of the publishers' stands... I always
feel guilty in situations like this where the author is nice and we
have a good conversation but their book holds no interest for me at
all and I have no intention of buying. I feel so cheap begging-off
with "Let me think about it." Wandered off then to look at other stuff.

Then I remembered what I'd forgotten: a stack of bookmarks from White
Dwarf Books back in Vancouver. I'd promised Jill & Walter I'd put some
out in the brochures area for them (sure it's on the other side of the
country, but it's a well-respected specialty store, and this con
surely demonstrates that geeks will travel to follow their passions).
So, back up the street to the hotel. Snagged the WD bookmarks to put
out, and my copy of "A Game of Thrones" in case I run into Martin
again (sure the huge hardcover is heavy, but it'll be worth it if I
can get an autograph). Back down to the Palais de Congres. WD
bookmarks now in the brochure area. Jill & Walter: I'm as good as my
word!

Grabbed a quick sandwich for lunch.

Now to reread the schedule and figure out what to take part in this
afternoon.

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Twas the Night Before WorldCon

It's 2:30am and I've just caught the end of "Rodan".

This afternoon & evening was spent flying from Vancouver to Montreal.
Good flight with an aisle seat & an empty seat beside me - chit-
chatted for a while with a nice lady from just outside Montreal who
was in the window seat. Also read a bunch of short stories that will
need to be added to the 365 short story challenge tally later.

Arrived in La Belle Province and found myself in a cab with a driver
who spoke no English (serving a major international airport no less!
Ah, official bilingualism!). Luckily, I still remember enough high
school French to get by if needs be. Luckier still, my high school
French wasn't as bad as The Tick's when he was transformed into a two-
headed blue bird!

Got to the hotel and saw some fellow geeks hanging around out front.
The clerk at the front desk confirmed that a large number of WorldCon
attendees had checked-in this evening (not to be confused with the
mammary specialist convention the hotel is currently hosting).

Must get some sleep now. Tomorrow: let the Con begin!

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Anticipating WorldCon

Wednesday is the big day... I'm leaving work at noon to catch a mid-afternoon flight to Montreal for WorldCon.

The plan is to post a full summary of each day's adventures here. I'll apologize in advance for weird formatting and paragraph breaks that may not make much sense - my iPhone is pretty handy for blogging on the fly, but the paragraph formating I see on the phone's screen isn't always what shows up here once I hit send. Oh well, it's the content that counts. Sort of.

From time to time, I may post a photo or two. (I'll try to upload good photos off the camera when I can, but failing that I may post the odd shot of less-than-perfect quality from my phone's camera if I run into something cool that I want to send right away).

For quick, as-it-happens highlights (including updates from the Aurora and Hugo ceremonies), I'll be tweeting from whatever events I'm at throughout each day, so be sure to follow me on Twitter as well.

Something Fishy about The Shat

The Vancouver Sun is running a story today about William Shatner diving into the debate about fish farms here on the BC coast.

Who'd have known that all these years when Captain Kirk was thinking about putting on his rubbers, it was to grab his hipwaders and go fishing?

The Flip Side of the Con

Interesting post-San Diego Comic-Con article by Elisabeth Rappe over on Cinematical about what it's like for a reporter/fan to attend and have to spend the entire time conducting interviews rather than doing what all the other fans get to do. Sort of a grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side kind of a piece.

I can empathize with her. During my days as a reporter a few years ago, I had my fair share of assignments to cover fun events (though I was never sent out to file from the floor of a con) but not get to join in the fun. Hot summer nights at the Vancouver fireworks competition spent scribbling stories on a notepad, ear pressed to the recorder looking for the perfect soundbite, watching the crowd for the next happy partier to interview for the same clips as last year (while avoiding the more hostile drunks), trying to walk out of the cellphone dead zones by the beach, and keeping an eye on the clock to be sure I filed on time for the next newscast. The same thing with chocolate fundraisers for local charities - get the interview and get out... no time to stick around and enjoy the thing for what it was. The debut of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace was a similar occasion. After a day of covering some criminal trial in court in Nanaimo, I was sent to the other end of town to interview the fanboys who'd been camped-out in front of the local multiplex for a couple of days waiting to catch the first screening. The geek in me wanted to join them - it was, after all, the first new installment in the franchise in a long, long time (and we were blissfully unaware of the Jar Jar factor) - but duty called, and that meant getting some tape from the cavorting fanboys, who were all too eager to share their enthusiastic predictions, before moving on to the next assignment. Luckily, this time I managed to finish filing that night after the city council meeting and leave the station with enough time to get to the theatre for the last show on the opening day. There was still a good-sized crowd cued-up outside too, and it was nice to be part of that waiting-in-line-for-the-big-show vibe again.

Yeah it's cool to have the press pass sometimes, but other times, it's a lot easier and more fun just to be part of the crowd.

The Simpsons in the Hack During the Olympics

The CBC had an article today about an episode of The Simpsons in the works for February that will see Homer and Marge (along with Principal Skinner and his mother) take on the world in Olympic curling. Finally, a sport that allows Homer to drink beer and handle his rocks in public without embarassing Marge.

I haven't watched The Simpsons regularly in a couple of years because it's started to get a bit boring (hell, even the once-hilarious Hallowe'en episodes are beginning to be a bit of a yawn), but this looks like it could be worth while. (Yes, I used to curl many years ago.) We'll see how it fares next to that epic of the ice: Men With Brooms.

Top 5 SF Characters You Wouldn't Want to Sit Next to on a Plane

With Worldcon coming up, I've got travel on the brain these days. One of the most annoying ways to travel (aside maybe from extended trips on a pogo stick - not speaking from experience here, just supposing) is without a doubt aboard commercial airliners. Cramped conditions, lousy service, food that doesn't actually qualify as food, and alleged safety restrictions and procedures that are less than effective and degrading to law-abiding taxpayers - but I digress. Put all of those technical factors aside and you've still got one big problem: enduring the quirks of the other passengers. Sure, I've met some nice folks aboard planes and had the odd pleasant conversation, but those are the rarities. The most resonable hope is for is a quiet, uneventful flight surrounded by quiet, un-noticeable people. This is generally not the case. Take your pick of screaming kids, snoring sleepers, incessant complainers, seat hogs pushing into your personal space, chatty cathies who really have nothing worth-while to say, and those who are clouded by various and sundry foul odors. Your inflight neighbours can be the toughest part of the journey to deal with. As hard as it is to imagine, it could be worse. Look through the worlds of SF and you'll find a legion of individuals that would put you off air travel for the rest of your life if you had to endure their company. To that end, I've assembled a list of the Top 5 SF Characters You Wouldn't Want to Sit Next to on a Plane:

5) John Valentine - Twilight Zone: The Movie (segment #4)
To address the nitpickers first: Yes, I know The Shat played this character back when the story was done on the original Twilight Zone on TV back in the late '50s, but John Lithgow's performance in '83 was infinitely better. Now, on to the reason for this selection: You've boarded the plane, you've got your bottle of water, a snack and a book or whatever and you're settling in to endure the flight when this guy gets on and sits down next to you. Sure, he's a little edgy, but you don't think too much of it. The plane lifts off, and over the next several hours he has a complete meltdown. The twitching, the constant slamming of the window blind up and down, the gasps and shrieks - and that's all before he finds a gun and blows the glass out. That would be bad enough, but what if, during the commotion, you looked out the window and actually saw the gremlin too?

4) Vogon Captain Jeltz - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This guy is a problem for all kinds of reasons. First, there's his size. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not coming down on heavy folks here (I'm a trifle portly myself), but a Vogon is a whole lot bigger - it's guaranteed there'd be some spillage into your seating area. In fact, given the Vogon lack of manners, he'd probably be one of those passengers who would automatically move the seat arm up and out of the way before he sat down, just to make it easier to crowd into your seat. Then there's the bureaucratic obsession... it's likely he'd quibble about every instruction given by the air crew, make unreasonable delays when they ask him to put up his tray table, and would probably run them ragged with his own petty demands. As odd as it sounds, given his species' lack of manners, he'd probably find some way to try to score both the aisle seat and the window seat. Last, there's the poetry. After having endured unresonably high ticket prices, long lineups at the terminal and everything else associated with flying, you'd then be subjected to the agony of the worst "verse" in the 'Verse until it finally made your brain collapse.

3) Jar Jar Binks - the Star Wars prequels
I don't think I have to prove this point, do I? The only question is, why is Lucas' folly only in third place? Because the worst is yet to come...

2) Rorschach - Watchmen
He stinks, he mumbles incessantly (varying between field notes and ultra-right-wing bullshit), and then there's his obsession with justice and punishment: snore while you're napping - he's probably going to punch you in the throat; let your foot accidentally drift over into his footrest area - he might snap your ankle. You wouldn't even want to know what he'd be likely to do if he went into the washroom after you'd been sitting in there for a bit.

1) Pizza the Hut - Spaceballs
Okay, he's got his own space limo, so why would he be riding coach with you? Who knows? Who cares? Point is, you wouldn't want him to. Strange as it may sound, I'd argue that he's the worst of the lot on this list. First off, he's a cougher. You'd never get any peace and quiet and you'd probably catch some awful space bug that would demand an insanely expensive antibiotic that wasn't covered by your employer-provided health insurance in order to cure it. He's also a gangster, so there'd probably be some threats rather than a polite request if he wanted to switch seats with you, and extortion if you asked to slip past him on the way to the washroom. He's also pretty huge, so there's definitely going to be some issues with him spilling into your seat, and given that he's half man, half pizza, he would actually be spilling. Which would lead to pizza burn, which is never fun. And if you had the guts/stupidity to complain about it? It goes back to the gangster thing again: he'd flip open his phone, and then you'd be faced with the grim realization that "Pizza is gonna send out for you."


So which SF characters would you really not want to have to sit beside on a plane?

Mind Melded

Looking for some great SF stories to read? Visit SF Signal for their latest Mind Meld feature where guests (including me) recommend their favourite tales and explain what makes them so memorable.

Here's Part I of the Mind Meld
and
Part II

I enjoyed reading the suggestions of the other contributors even more than I had coming up with my own list (and that was pretty fun). While some of us highlighted a couple of the same stories, by and large there are a lot of unique suggestions - some well-known and others that are somewhat off the beaten path - with something for pretty much every taste in the genre.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm experiencing a Southpark - Mr Mackey flashback: "My mind to yer mind, mmmmmkaaaay?"

Worldcon Releases Draft Programming Schedule

Woohoo! The organizers of Anticipation/Worldcon 67 have finally released their draft programming schedule!

It's a hefty 104-pager (the content of each page is presented in both English and French because Montreal is in Quebec), so it's going to take a while to thumb through it to figure out what's going on and when. Hmmmm.... I'm gazing into my crystal ball and seeing some lounging out on the patio with the programming guide and a cold one this Saturday.

The site's also posted the list of program participants and it looks like it's stacked with a lot of heavy hitters.

Two weeks and a couple of hours left until I'm off to Worldcon!

Fast Times At Hogwarts High

Warning: Spoilers
(spoilage factor: about the same as any drink that Malfoy gets his mitts on)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is an example of how a movie can contain a lot of good scenes without actually being a very good movie.

The sixth installment in the franchise brings the boy wizard and his gang back to Hogwarts for what's supposed to be another year of schooling, but instead turns into two parts teenage angst and one part magical mayhem. There's a significant amount of tonsil hockey going on as some of our young heroes get to know their classmates better, and those who aren't in on the action are pining away on the sidelines for their unrequited loves. When they're able to pause for a breath, they find that someone's been setting deadly traps for their schoolmates, meanwhile Harry comes into possession of a Potions textbook where someone called the Half-Blood Prince wrote all of the answers, and there's an occasional attack by the badguys. And then there's some stuff about Tom Riddle/Voldemort once in a while that really isn't about He-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Spoken so much as it is about Harry trying to get a teacher to reveal something about an incident with the future-dark-lord but not really getting anywhere as the teacher refuses to fess up, and those scenes felt kinda creepy, especially the way the teacher stared at Harry. Once in a while Voldemort makes an appearance as a snotty little bugger only barely restraining his viciousness in somebody's reminiscences of him as a school boy.

The problem with this movie is that there's way, way too much going on in the story to cram into a couple of hours of screen time. But the film doesn't realize this and tries to fit in all the bits it can anyway. Unsuccessfully.

This is most obvious in two plotlines that didn't get anywhere near enough screen time to properly explain them to make them worth the bother, or, most importantly, to make us care. The first was the mystery behind the so-called Half-Blood Prince mentioned in the annotated/graffitied Potions book. Harry gets the book, reads the name, basically goes "huh" and gets on with exploiting its bonus notes. Hermione, as usual, gets jealous then righteous and says "you shouldn't use that!", to which Harry more or less replies "meh" and continues. There's one, maybe two more times where they ask in an attempt at earnestness who the HBP could be, but we're never really given any scenes of Harry actually trying to find the answer. More importantly, it's never really conveyed to us why the answer matters. This leaves us in the end, when Snape spills the beans, not really caring. Oh, you just murdered Dumbledore and it's supposed to matter that you've also made some revelation about scrawling all over a book that really hasn't done much except get Harry good grades and give him a spell to shotgun Malfoy? How could we possibly care?! Dumbledore's just taken a nosedive off the top of the tower, and the rest of the movie was pretty much entirely concerned with teen love lives to a degree not seen since the Molly Ringwald films of the 80s, and somehow this book is supposed to matter?! The flick hasn't gone to the effort to show that the story hinges on this book at all! More effort was needed here, especially since the alias in the book is the title of this installment in the series.

The other plotline that was highly problematic was the childhood of Voldemort. There just wasn't enough to matter. Okay, he was a disturbing and disturbed kid. From his adult behaviour in the other films (we won't go into the books because adequate time was taken in them to make this plot line relevant) we pretty much already guessed that. These scenes were brief, nowhere near as powerful as the entire Riddle family history, and Tom's story specifically, as outlined in full in the book, and ultimately, for the purposes of this movie, were entirely pointless. There was no context (like we got in the book by seeing the family story) that gave them any meaning. Think about it, what would the structure of this film have lost if the director had removed the Riddle scenes? Nothing! We would have had a plot that looked something like this: Harry meets up with his friends and they go to school, there is snogging and pining, Malfoy behaves like a douchebag as usual, more gawky teenage love and angst, Harry and Malfoy scrap it out, insert more kissing, holidays arrive and so do the Deatheaters, back to school and back to relationship woes, Quiddich!, more snoggifying encounters, Harry and Dumbledore go looking for a horcrux and say hi to some zombies, back to school for murder most foul and some apparent betrayal, Harry resolves to go questing and kick some ass while it's implied that Ron and Hermione will engage in some practice mouth-to-mouth resusitation. See? Nothing's lost by the absence of young Master Voldemort. It's as though they panicked and said to themselves "Oh shit! We can't have a Potter movie without old snakehead in it! A scene or two of him as a kid will keep the audience happy!" (and let me add that the scenes with Hagrid felt pretty much the same). It would have certainly been a tighter film without him.

And that's fundamentally the problem with this movie: there were a lot of really well-acted, well-written and well-composed scenes (and that includes the mushy puberty love and angst scenes because they made the film very believable in the sense that its main characters were teenagers), some of them very funny or poignant, but they just didn't fit together into a well-made film. It was a great, shambling shitmix of a thing with all kinds of spare parts/scenes dragging along in its wake and sticking out in all directions. The Potter movies thusfar have done a great job of holding to the major plot points in the books they were based on, but HBP was just too big and complex to try to fit everything in. Director David Yates should have had the guts to either make some cuts to keep this thing focussed, or to have split the story into two movies the way they're going to be tackling the finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I don't regret paying to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Saturday, but because I didn't really see a cohesive movie, I do wish that maybe I'd waited to see it on video.

Another Item Checked-off the Pre-Con To-Do List

I finally got around to buying my Aurora Awards Banquet ticket tonight. Although a small part of me wants to grumble about having to pay another $40 on top of what I've already shelled out in WorldCon membership fees, airline tickets, hotel costs, etc, I have to ultimately shrug and look at it in terms of "well, I've already shelled out how many bucks on con membership, airline tickets, hotel costs, etc - what's another 40 bones on top of that?" Besides, they've gotta pay for the shindig and the awards somehow, and I don't begrudge the organizers selling tickets to do that. Going to the banquet a couple of years ago when VCon hosted it in Richmond (okay, that year it was a lunch, not a supper banquet) was a nice opportunity to meet some good folks from different parts of the country. And hey, with all of my carry-on of boosting Canadian SF, I can't very well miss our national awards ceremony when I'm already flying half way across the country to be at the con, can I?

Now, if only the con organizers would get around to releasing the programming schedule so I can figure out how I'm gonna spend the rest of my time there. I want to see if I'll have a few windows to slip away from the con and do a little touring - and eating! - around Montreal.

Anyhow, next item on the pre-con checklist: head on over to White Dwarf Books to pick up some business cards or brochures to drop off at whatever table the con sets aside for promotional stuff. Sure, White Dwarf is a long, long way from La Belle Province, but there's always a chance someone looking at the table will be heading west at some point, and if I can help steer a little geek traffic towards my friends at the store, it's the least I can do to thank them for all of their hospitality.

After that, I think it's just a matter of waiting until my flight out on the 5th.

I'm starting to look forward to this geeky getaway.

Top 5 SF Road Trip Movies

First off, let me appologize for the lack of weakly lists over the past couple of weeks. I was travelling at the beginning of the month and last week I was too busy to give it enough thought. (Not that, admittedly, these lists demonstrate much in the way of thought anyway, but I try. Kind of.)

At any rate, this time out I thought I'd delve into the exploration in SF movies of that age-old summer tradition of the road trip. The signature of the road trip movie's plot is a trip (sometimes by an individual, but usually by a group - or a group that's assembled along the way) from point A to point B, usually for a fairly normal reason (to pick something up, to drop something off, to meet somebody, to get to work, etc). It's important to make the distinction though between the road trip movie and the quest movie. The quest movie is also about getting from one location to another, but it's very definitely for a higher purpose - to defeat the ultimate force of darkness (as in Frodo's trip to drop The Ring into Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings) or to rescue an important person (like Snake Plissken going after the president in Escape from New York). The road trip doesn't have such lofty goals, at least not in the final analysis. What makes this type of film enjoyable isn't usually the otherwise banal plot of going from one place to another, rather it's the characters met on the road and the adventures that crop up along the way.

And so here are the Top 5 SF Road Trip Movies:

5) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
The title says it all, folks: the central purpose of the entire flight that the movie follows was to drive some Klingon rustbucket home. Oh sure, along the way the gang from the recently-destroyed Enterprise travelled through time, saved an extinct species from extinction (huh?), saved the Earth, introduced the newly-regenerated Spock to profanity, and gave Kirk the chance to hook-up. Substitute the bird-of-prey for a Volkswagon, the Earth for a friend's grandmother's house, and the cetacean specialist for a sorority girl, and you'd have a disposable teen road movie.

4) 2001 - A Space Odyssey
Again, fairly simple plot here: Dave Bowman is on a long drive to get to a job and runs into some trouble along the way. You may argue that in addition to being a pilot, Dave is a scientist off to explore another world and that's far from banal. But the fact that this is his job, rather than something he was abruptly catapulted into, is what gives this journey enough semblance of normalicy that it can be classified as a road trip. The murders, the alien artifact, the trippy interstellar travel, and the apotheosis all just kinda happen along the way.

3) Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Okay, I know some of you have got your hackles up just having read no farther than the title of this nomination, 'cause I'm treading on holy ground here, but just bear with me. What is the first and essential task that the bulk of this movie really revolves around? The Rebel techie says it best during the retreat at Hoth: "Good luck, Luke! See you at the rendezvous point!" The same holds true for Han & Leia and the rest of the gang: the whole point of the movie is to leave Hoth and meet up with the Rebel fleet. Everything else is a distraction. Sure, Luke is secretly plotting to pay a visit to Dagobah, but that's like Fanboys where the guys make a detour just to piss off some Trekkies. Sure it's a whole adventure in itself, and Luke's training is ultimately of vital importance to the fate of the galaxy, but it's a side trip and a side trip only because he always intends to get back on track when he's done his training and meet up with his friends. The gang on the 'Falcon may have caused a sinus infection in an overgrown tube worm, and sure they dropped in to visit an old poker-buddy-turned-sellout-millionaire, but that was all just something that happened on the way to the fleet. Yeah, Han didn't make it, but that's like Curly dying on the cattle drive in City Slickers - doesn't change the purpose of the journey. The next question, of course, is why doesn't Empire rank higher on the list, given that it is such an amazingly good film? Keep reading.

2) The Muppet Movie
Talking frogs and other anthropomorphized animals, and scientists living lives of hermits in secret locations perfecting titanic growth serums are ideas that are pretty firmly within the realm of science fiction and fantasy, so let's get the debate about the appropriateness of this film for an SF list out of the way right now. Why does The Muppet Movie rate number 2 though? Because of all the films here (including those on the Honourable Mentions list to come) this one actually takes place in a car, on the road. As with Dave Bowman's trek across the solar system, the fact that Kermit is answering an ad offering to make him rich and famous is secondary to the fact what he's doing in the most fundamental sense is going for a job interview - something fairly typical. Along the way he makes some great friends, meets the rather problematic and pudgy love of his life, evades an overzealous restauranteur, and gains some insights about life. Another reason why this film ranks so high on the list is that after 30 years (and I can still vaguely remember my parents taking me to see it in the theatre) this is still a very, very entertaining story for people of all ages. Henson & co were geniuses.

1) Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope
The ultimate SF road movie: a teen and his friends hit the road because they have to drop something off at someone else's place. Along the way they rescue a hot (if foul-tempered) girl and save the galaxy. Now, there are some who argue that Empire is the best of the holy trilogy, and they might assert (if they're not too busy hopping up and down frothing at the mouth in rage because I've soiled The Trilogy by alleging that two of its installments are mega-scale road movies) that it should hold the number one spot, rather than ANH. But I think ANH gets first place because, firstly, it was the FIRST of the movies, and thus Empire could have been titled Yet Another Road Trip. My other reason for giving ANH the number one spot though is because it ends on a high note. Sure, bad things can happen in road trip movies, but the stories tend to resolve themselves along some kind of positive lines. Empire doesn't. Han gets freezer burn. Luke has to make a large health insurance claim. Lando gets squeezed out of his business in a hostile takeover and winds up poor and on the run. Leia loses the love of her life and has to live with the guilt of knowing that most of the time she treated him like shit. C3P0 got blown up real good. R2D2 saves the day yet again but is still generally ignored and unappreciated. And Chewie's still the dog. ANH, on the other hand (no reference intended to Luke's prosthetic-enabled condition), ends on just about as high a note as you can get: Luke's found his place in the universe, Leia is free from Imperial imprisonment, Han & Chewie (okay, probably mostly just Han) are rich, the droids are shiny, and the galaxy has been saved from the terror of the Death Star. Best of all, they have fulfilled their road trip reason for existence: they have successfully transported the goods (R2) from point A (Tatootine) to point B (the Rebel headquarters in lieu of Alderaan). What more could you ask for in a road movie?


Honourable Mentions:

The Fountain - at least 1/3 of it is a road movie (getting to that star) anyway.

Macross - forget fighting the Zentradi, it's all about driving the SDF1 home.

Fanboys - not an SF film itself, rather it's about people who love SF. Great road movie.

Red Dwarf - not a movie, but a TV show that's all about cruising across the galaxy to get home.

Doctor Who (some episodes anyway) - again, a TV show, not a movie (although some movies have been made) taking a trip from one place to another and getting into trouble along the way. The problem is there's very little emphasis on the trip and a lot on the stuff that happens along the way.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - lots of on-the-road, but only very loose direction.

belated addition:
Damnation Alley - how could I have forgot? Landmasters - the winnebagos of SF road-tripping!

Doctor Who - Dallas Mash-up

If you're hurtin' for a Who fix (and not in the Dr Seuss sense of all the Whos down in Whoville), here's just what The Doctor ordered:

A Doctor Who - Dallas mash-up on Youtube.

Had a good laugh over this one as alternated between flashbacks to the 80s (I'm ashamed to admit my parents were Dallas fans and I remember seeing some of it before giving up in disgust and going upstairs to read) and memories of the past couple of weeks where we've been doing a Doctor Who marathon in the evenings after work. The question is... who shot The Doctor? Or was that JR?

Thanks to Steve for passing this along.

And, if you're looking for more legitimate Doctor Who fare, Steve's got a review on his site of the Whovian comic Autopia. When you get into expanded universe media, there's always the risk of it being hit and miss because it's so removed from the creators of the source material (with the exception of The Ranch's tight control of all things Star Wars - which is probably a good thing). This time... well, read Steve's review for yourself.

Hidden Talent Right in Front of Our Eyes

Recently, the gang at SF Signal has been exploring a very interesting and important question in its Mind Meld feature: "What is going on right now in international sf/f that anglophone readers might be missing out on?" Writers and editors and fans from around the world have weighed-in on the subject, giving an overview of what's happening in SF in their countries/languages that English-speakers should know about, but probably don't.

It's definitely worth reading for yourself:
part I
part II
part III
(and there may be more installments coming)

As someone who loves to read, any discussion that introduces me to writers and stories I haven't previously heard of is irresistable. Even if many of the works they're referring aren't available in English, this kind of discussion can spur the movement to have them translated, either in print or online. Sure, it may not happen right away, but if the will is there, we might gradually begin to see things open up, linguistically - or at least more so than they are already. When the time comes, I might remember some of the names that have been recommended and know which avenues to follow.

One of the submissions that really stood out for me was that of Jean-Luis Trudel (in part II), who noted that here in Canada, we're in a bit of a privileged position, with strong SF communities in both English and French. Because of our official bilingualism, we're able to see a number of works originally written in French (by authors who are Quebecers, or Acadie from New Brunswick, or Francais from St Boniface in Manitoba, or people from any of our other Francophone communities) published in English magazines and anthologies (take Tesseracts Q, for example: an anthology composed entirely of stories by Quebec authors that have been translated into English). In fact, our national SF awards, the Auroras, present awards for achievements in English and in French.

But that got me thinking about what the broader Canadian population has to offer because, see, it's a myth that we're bilingual. The word implies there are only two languages here in the Great White North, which has never been the case. The infamous "Two Solitudes" may be the most vocal, but there have always been many other linguistic groups here, and some are growing larger and contributing a significant amount to our national cultural mosaic, and to the world's.

Firstly, there are, of course, the First Nations who were here thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. Theirs is an oral storytelling tradition, but Aboriginals are using every media now and using their cultural traditions and mythology to branch out into other types of tales, including SF. One example that comes immediately to mind is a comic series published by the Healthy Aboriginal Network, which started with an issue called Darkness Falls (which I discussed in a posting back in 2006). While the series is meant as a health and wellness educational tool, it is a legitimate foray into comics and is well put together. While other examples don't immediately come to mind, I have no doubt there are many other First Nations authors and artists who are contributing to the broader SF scene.

And there Canada's many, many immigrant communities whose members are adding their unique voices to SF, many writing in English. Too many to name, in fact.

But the more I thought about the question of what Anglophones are missing out on, the more I wondered about what might be happening here in our own backyard that we don't know about. The great thing about Canada is that we have a lot of people who move here and join in our wider culture, while still participating fully in their own cultures and languages. As a result, it's not unusual to hear about Canadians who were born here, but who are also part of immigrant cultures, who use their talents in other languages overseas. One rather infamous example is actor/singer Edison Chen, born in Vancouver but a star in Hong Kong film (and in his own sex tapes, as has been scrutinized by the gossip columns and the courts). I wonder if the same thing is happening right now in the world of SF (no, not sex tapes), where talent born and raised here in an English/French environment is being published in other languages in other countries? If it's not happening now, I'm certain it will happen very soon in the coming years.

The irony, of course, is that because it would be published in other languages, it's unlikely the majority of Canadian SF fans would know about it. And that's unfortunate, because we ought to take pride in the literary/cultural contributions made by all Canadians in all of the languages that we speak. And we can't do that if we don't know that it's out there.

But this is not an argument for all new Canadians to drop their mother tongues and start writing in our official languages. Far from it!

We need to look for new voices in SF with an eye for linguistic diversity beyond English and French. We have only ourselves to blame if we're missing-out on talent because it speaks other languages. Canada's SF community (our arts community in general - but let's keep to the spaced-out focus of this blog) needs to make this a part of our dialogue when we gather for conventions. We also need to exercise our power as consumers and tell publishers that we want them to translate works from other languages. As fans we can make a concerted effort to start learning other languages (or, just as importantly if you're from an immigrant community: make the effort to stay fluent in your other language or the language of your parents) so we can start exploring theese other worlds on our own. But most importantly, we have to do what our country does best: keep lines of communication open with colleagues in SF who speak other languages - both in our country and around the world. When we talk with people elsewhere who share our passion for SF, we'll hear about it when they're publishing great works by our own people and we'll be able to translate those stories, to bring them home for everyone else to enjoy.

Life Imitates Londo

I sometimes forget that because my wife is from Hong Kong, she wasn't raised with the same children's songs and nursery rhymes that I was. The other day she came home from an agency that she volunteers with where she works with children, and asked me if I'd learned "the hokey pokey" growing up. I shrugged and said "Yeah, pretty much everyone here did. It was just one of those songs from playschool and kindergarten." She said she'd never heard of it before and thought it was a weird song, especially since it wasn't really about anything.

That made me flash back to the episode of Babylon 5 when Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari was trying to figure out the song and was becoming increasingly frustrated with its meaninglessness. For the rest of the day I felt the need to occasionally flavour conversations, regardless of subject, with lines from The Hokey Pokey delivered in my best Londo accent.

Now, if only I could get that crest going with my hair...

Judge Yoda

Sometimes when you least expect it, lines from science fiction force their way into real life - this time into a northern Vancouver Island courtroom:

A story in the Campbell River Mirror a little while ago observed that in a Provincial Court trial back in February, the judge invoked the wisdom of Yoda when dealing with a crook. 23-year-old Justin Upton was pleading guilty to a group of charges. When the proceedings turned to the subject of Upton turning his life around for the better, Judge William Jack told him: "Don't try, just do!"

To be fair, what the Jedi Master actually said in The Empire Strikes Back was "Try not! Do or do not. There is no try." but the fact that His Honour came close is very cool.

Unfortunately, the famous words seem to have fallen on deaf ears. It wasn't long before Upton was back in court again on new charges.

My Aurora Award Vote

I promised the other day that I'd quit procrastinating and get my Aurora Award voting out of the way. After all, I don't want to miss out on backing my favourites for Canada's SF awards. Bad enough that I wasted my chance to weigh-in on the final ballot for the Hugos by missing Friday's deadline (damn eastern time poll closures!). So, I filed my Aurora vote online tonight - well before the July 15th deadline.

Here are my choices for the 2009 Aurora Awards:

Best Long-Form Work in English
Identity Theft and Other Stories by Robert J Sawyer

Best Long-Form Work in French
-no vote-

Best Short-Form Work in English
"Ringing in the Changes in Okotoks Alberta" by Randy McCharles

Best Short-Form Work in French
-no vote-

Best Work in English (Other)
(here I exercised the preferential balloting option)
On Spec magazine - first choice
Tesseracts Twelve - second choice
Neo-opsis magazine - third choice
The Gaslight Grimoire - fourth choice

Best Work in French (Other)
-no vote-

Artistic Achievement
-no vote-

Fan Achievement (Fanzine)
-no vote-

Fan Achievement (Organizational)
-no vote-

Fan Achievement (Other)
-no vote-


To top it all off, I finally got around to booking my hotel room in Montreal for Anticipation/Worldcon (wouldn't do much good to have my con registration and the plane tickets booked without a bunk for the night!). How's that for having everything in order?

Just over one month and counting...

Part of the IRoSF Team

I've got a new side project in the works: I've recently joined the team over at the Internet Review of Science Fiction (IRoSF) as an editor.

The site is populated with thought-provoking essays on SF and its themes and tropes, as well as reviews and news. I've browsed over there from time to time in the past and will now, obviously, be spending a lot more time reading its content.

This volunteer gig is going to be a real pleasure because I'll be combining my life-long love of SF with my professional passion for editing (I'm lucky enough to have a paying day-job where a large part of my duties include writing and editing, sadly none of the content there is geekified). Bluejack and Stacey have put together a great crew of editors and I know it's going to be a lot of fun being a part of IRoSF and working to support authors in publishing their insights into the genre.

Missed It By That Much!

I should put off procrastinating for a while. It's caused me to miss the Hugo Award voting and it's my own damn fault.

Earlier this week we were on a short vacation over to Vancouver Island. Gave me a chance on the ferry rides over and back to catch up on my Hugo nomination package reading to the point where I was able to make an informed vote. I knew in the back of my mind that I had until midnight Friday to cast my ballot and even though we were being fairly leisurely about our return, making a few stops on the way back down the Island, I figured I'd have a couple of hours once we got home to exercise my Worldcon membership right. So we finally drove The Ol' Porkchop Express onto the scow, made the 2 hour crossing from Nanaimo to Tsawwassen, picked up some take-out from a favourite Chinese diner and got home and ate, spent some quality time with the cat, and unpacked.

By the time I made it to the computer, it was 10:00pm. No problem, right? Wrong. I pulled up the Hugo voting site and found a message saying voting was closed. It had ended at 11:59 Eastern. Dammit!

No one to blame but myself though. I could have read the nomination package a couple of months ago, and then I would have been able to get voting out of the way. But there were other books and short stories that caught my eye. Always figured I'd have enough time. I should have known better. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. Shit. Where's that Delorean time machine when I need it?

Ah well, at least the voting period is still open for the Auroras. The deadline is July 15th. I'll try to take care of my voting tomorrow evening, but at the very least I'll get it out of the way by the end of the week. I'll post my choices after I've voted.

Notes from the Road

We've been out of town for a couple of days for a short holiday on
Vancouver Island.

Spent the Canada Day holiday (142 years old and still lookin' great!)
in Victoria yesterday. While moseying through the street party we came
across a busker dressed as Darth Vader and playing the violin (see
yesterday's photo post - I tried to include a note but only the pic
went through). Couldn't resist taking a picture with him. He played a
mean fiddle too - even sawed out the Imperial March. Problem was, that
Dark Lord of the Sith was no match for the heatwave we've been having
and had to unmask himself from time to time.

I also had a chance to duck into Munro's Books (great independant
store, if you're ever in the area - I always try to pay a visit
whenever I'm in Victoria) and picked up a copy of Matt Ruff's The
Public Works Trilogy and Ann and Jeff Vandermeer's anthology Steampunk.

Today we headed up-Island to spend a little time in the Comox Valley.
After a great hike in Nymph Falls regional park, I went back into
Courtenay and scored a copy of The Best of John W Campbell from the
local comic and used book shop, Inner Sanctum. Best part of all, it
was only a buck 30. That shouldn't be a big deal, but back in
Vancouver, the markup at used book stores is huge (presumably because
of higher overhead) - you'd never find a book, even though it was
previously owned, a bit battered, and more than 30 years old, for
anywhere near that little.

All in all, a good trip so far, but it'll be nice to head home tomorrow.

Sent from my iPhone

Happy Canada Day, Darth Vader!