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.

Congratulations to SFContario’s Toastmaster. Robert J. Sawyer’s Wake has won the 2010 Best Novel in English Prix Aurora Award. For all the winners see Science Fiction Awards Watch

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

In his own (brief) words

David Nickle’s blog

Glad Peter is coming home, sorry he had to go through this experience, offended that those in authority decided to perform this abuse of justice.

Newly added to the list of authors appearing at a Friends of the Merril reading is Cory Doctorow.
Makers is the Toronto native’s most recent novel.
He draws a crowd, therefore the reading will happen in the basement of the Lillian H Smith Public Library, the home (third floor) of The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy.
See and hear Cory Doctorow on Friday June 4, 7 p.m., 239 College Street, Toronto.

I am imagining young John Scalzi and John’s mother and John’s father meeting the family’s doctor.
Doctor: “I have a suggestion, a new medicine for John, we could try. It’s called Ritalin.”
John’s parents: “Yes. We’ll try anything. Thank you thank thank you.”
Scalzi was a challenge to amateur photographers during his appearance earlier this evening in Toronto. The man is in constant motion, walking, waving his arms, gesturing.
The author of Old Man’s War and The Android’s Dream, and more, and whose popular blog is named Whatever, drew a capacity crowd to the Merril Collection.
Out-of-context and paraphrased quotes: “If you like Dan Brown you will think he is a good author.” “I am not awesome all of the time.”
Scazli was still however while reading, for the first time, chapters 1 and 2 of his “reboot” of the late H. Beam Piper’s Hugo-nominated (1963) novel Little Fuzzy.
Scalzi’s version, Fuzzy Nation, of the most popular of Piper’s creations, will be published next year.
Scalzi hopes his version –not a sequel– will draw readers’ attention to the out-of-copyright original. All he has kept is the Fuzzies.
The President-in-waiting of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is prepared for the reaction of some purists who will cry “sacrilege from sentence 1.”
One of the oddities of the business of publishing Fuzzy Nation is that the _author_ is paying the rights-holding owner, Penguin, a _publisher_ an advance. Another publisher is publishing Fuzzy Nation.

Our Author Guest of Honour, Michael Swanwick, will make a public appearance in Toronto the evening before the start of SFContario.
Michael will appear at a Friends of the Merril Collection reading.
Authors not in Toronto for a convention turn up, too, at a Friends of the Merril Collection event, like, hey, this coming Friday, John Scalzi.
You not need be a Friend to attend the Scalzi reading. But take the advice of Etobicoke’s own 2010 Hugo Fan Writer nominee, Lloyd Penney: “Writer, editor, blogger, TV consultant, and all round bacon-lover JOHN SCALZI is coming to town. Seriously! He’ll be speaking at the Merril Collection on Friday April 23rd, at 7pm. Join us there to chat with John about SF, writing, cats, or whatever else is on his mind (or yours). The event is free, but remember that seats fill up fast.”
For more about the Friends of the Merril Collection upcoming events, see The Friends of the Merril Collection.

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.

The Hugo nominations have been announced and are online on the Aussiecon 4 web site.

SFContario would like to congratulate our Author Guest of Honour, Michael Swanwick, who received a nomination in the category of Best
Related Work for Hope in the Mist, a study of British author Hope Mirrlees. We would also like to congratulate Editor Guest of Honour
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, a nominee in the Best Editor, Long Form category.

Further congratulations go out to our Toastmaster, Robert J. Sawyer, who received a nomination for Best Novel for WWW:Wake.
Additional congratulations are due to Rob, as the pilot episode for the series FlashForward, “No More Good Days,” based on Rob’s novel
of the same name, was nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

Additionally, we’d also like to highlight nominations for other Toronto authors and fans: