The annual national Canadian SF convention, the Canvention, will be hosted in 2011 by SFContario 2.

Canvention in alternate years is hosted by a SF convention on the other side of the Manitoba/Ontario border. Keycon 27 (Winnipeg) hosted the 2010 Canvention this past weekend.

Hosting Canvention means hosting the Prix Aurora Awards ceremony. The Canvention most recently was hosted in Toronto in 2006 by Toronto Trek 20.

The deadline for online voting in the 2010 Prix Aurora Awards is soon: May 22, noon, Central Daylight Time.

During Ad Astra 29 I pre-ordered from Rene Walling a copy of The Aurora Awards: Thirty Years of Canadian Science Fiction. This collection is the second collection from Montreal small press Nanopress.
Nanopress says “Including work by Isaac Szpindel, James Alan Gardner, Eileen Kernaghan, Daniel Sernine, Robert J. Sawyer, Julie Czerneda, Élisabeth Vonarburg, Candas Jane Dorsey, Yves Meynard, David Nickle, Karl Schroeder, Edo Van Belkom, Hayden Trenholm, Douglas Smith, and Laurent McAllister, with an introduction by Jean-Louis Trudel, this collection celebrates the variety and depth of stories to win the Aurora.”
This new Aurora Awards collection will be released next month during Keycon 2010, this year’s Canvention, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Nanopress also will be at Boreal in May. If you too order The Aurora Awards before May 21 shipping is free. Rene also will have a table in the SFContario Dealer’s Room.
For more information see Nanopress

Canadians are on the 2010 Hugo ballot in seven categories.

Excerpted from the Hugo ballot announcement:
BEST NOVEL (699 nominating ballots)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
and
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)

BEST NOVELETTE (402 nominating ballots)
“The Island” by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)

BEST RELATED WORK (259 nominating ballots)
Canary Fever: Reviews by John Clute (Beccon)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION – LONG FORM (541 nominating ballots)
District 9 Screenplay by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell; Directed by Neill Blomkamp (TriStar Pictures)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION – SHORT FORM (282 nominating ballots)
FlashForward: “No More Good Days” Written by Brannon Braga & David S. Goyer; Directed by David S. Goyer; based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer (ABC)

BEST FAN WRITER (319 nominating ballots)
Lloyd Penney

BEST FAN ARTIST (199 nominating ballots)
Taral Wayne

John Clute is an expatriate, a Londoner for a majority of his life, but he was born and grew up in Toronto.

Also nominated, in the Fan Writer category, is Emily Pohl-Weary’s grandfather, Frederik Pohl.

Fred is the second oldest person on the ballot. Jack Vance is the oldest person on the ballot. Neither of these grand old men of SF is nominated in a fiction category.

Congratulations to our guests Michael Swanwick and Patrick Nielsen-Hayden for appearing on the 2010 Hugo Ballot.

Michael is a BEST RELATED WORK nominee for Hope-In-The-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees.

and

Patrick is a BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM nominee.

The SFContario programming page is now online. You can give us ideas for panels or other program events on this page. Also, if you are interested in participating in the program, there’s a form where you can give us information about yourself.

The best convention programs I’ve seen are those that bring in the best ideas from many people. With about three tracks of programming, we won’t be able to use every idea or every person who volunteers, but we’ll use as many good ideas and good people as we can. So let us know what you’d like to see or talk about at SFContario. We look forward to your suggestions.

Here’s a question for our group mind: which Hugo and Nebula winners are Canadian?

The answers could be added to the Wikipedia.

A fan on a mailing list to which I subscribe explained “I’m editing the Wikipedia again. and would like to stick in a list of the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Canadian writers (not to mention checking to make sure all the Canadian SF writers are in the relevant
articles). Can anybody play “spot-the-Canadian” on the winners lists
and let me know? I’m a clueless Yank, and may not know which ones
aren’t as aggressively known as Canadian.

“I will leave it to you how you classify the immigrants like Dickson and Ryman.”

Dickson is Gordon Dickson, emigrant to the U.S. Ryman is Geoff Ryman, emigrant to the U.K.

I claim the emigrants, the never lefts, _and_ the immigrants.

Here is a list that claims to include all winners of both awards:

http://bit.ly/8OssUa

Who are Canadian?

We’re putting together a Hugo recommendation page, similar to the Aurora recommendation page we put up recently. If you’d like your suggestions to be included on our page, please contact Diane at program2010-at-sfcontario-dot-ca.

Just a quick reminder for those who have not yet nominated: you still can! The deadline for submitting nominations for the Aurora Awards is tonight on Monday, February 15. You may use the online nomination form.

If you’re not sure who to nominate, please come to our Aurora recommendations page for some ideas. Please also feel free to look at Marcel Gagne’s excellent online reference of Canadian science fiction. The Aurora committee has also posted some of their favorites on the Aurora award web site.

Star player Michael Swanwick is coming to Toronto from Philadelphia.

The veteran started as a pitcher in the 1980s, with In The Drift, under Ace Special manager Terry Carr. The Ace team then included other future All-Stars, Gibson and Robinson and Waldrop.

Swanwick in the intervening years has been most productive at short (story).

Toronto is sending its ace pitcher, Doc Halladay, to Philadelphia. We wish Halladay and the Phillies well but we take comfort that Swanwick will be playing in our ball park this coming November.

And we expect Swanwick will be putting up good numbers, for years, after Doc Halladay has retired.

Swanwick has been elected to the Hugo All Star game multiple times.

For more Swanwick stats, see http://michaelswanwick.com.