SFContario, Toronto new fan-run SF literary con, was on the weekend, and overall it went very well ( Read more... )

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From The Torontoist.


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Started off on Friday by attending the fall launch of ChiZine Publications, the dark fantasy/horror press run by kelpqueen and jack_yoniga down at the Augusta House. They've got nineteen books out now, with another seven in the pipeline, which is just amazing. That evening they had new books out by Tony Burgress and Halli Villegas, among others, with readings, a free ( Read more... )

Was at the Bixi Toronto event at the Steam Whistle last night, where they announced that they had achieved the 1000 subscribers they need to get the City of Toronto funding to start the project next spring. Bixi is a commute bike service that places bike stations around the city, and subscribers can obtain bikes from one and drop them off at other ( Read more... )

Started off Friday by attending the Planet in Focus presentation of the doc Transcendent Man, about futurist and engineer Ray Kurzweil. He thinks we're likely only two decades away from cracking AI and making the sort of breakthrus that will make functional immortality possible, and he's had a pretty good track record at predicting the future ( ( Read more... )

Last week went up to Muskoka with my brother to visit with Karen and Shirley, with me staying at Karen's and Dave at Shirley's, so they each got a full Simmons the whole weekend. All got together on the Saturday for NorthWords, a new literary festival in Huntsville that seemed to go off quite well, and for Thanksgiving dinner, courtesy of Shirley, ( Read more... )

The Friends of the Merril will be hosting the 5th annual SF/Anime Flea Market next Saturday, the 11th, at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge St. Admission is free and it'll be help from 10 AM to 4 PM. Please pass this around to your friends and anywhere else that might be interested. Thanks.

Got 9 out of 10 of my first choices for Film Festival tickets this year, which is pretty darned good. My ticket order went into box 28 (of 39), and they started processing from box 9, so I was just past half-way along (thanks to my brother for dropping off my ticket order for me). The film I didn't get was the new Werner Hertzog, Cave of Forgotten ( Read more... )

I was one of the judges at the Fan Expo Masquerade last weekend, first time I've ever done something like that, and it was a lot of fun.

kaijugal asked me about two months back if I was interested, and after I determined that she wasn't joking, I thought I'd give it a try. I've never paid to go to the Fan Expo (not an autograph hunter, which seems to be ( Read more... )