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.

1. Collect membership dues
2. Verify proxies and voting members
3. Call to order by Chair
   1. Welcome
   2. present agenda
   3. answer meeting procedure questions
4. Read and approve minutes of November 2009 AGM
5. Corporation president report
6. Convention chair report
7. Treasurer interim update
8. Election of one director
9. Proposed Motions
   1. 2011 Enabling Resolution
   2. By-law amendment
10. Other new business
    1. discussion of future plans
11. Announce fall annual general meeting date
12. Adjournment of corporate general meeting

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Society of Upper Canada, sponsoring corporation of SFContario, will hold its spring general meeting on May 2, 2010 at 1:00 PM at the World’s Biggest Bookstore, 20 Edward Street, Toronto. The meeting will be held in the second floor meeting room (ask the staff if you need help finding it).

The meeting will take about an hour. The agenda will include election of one director and proposed motions including an enabling resolution for the 2011 convention and a by-law amendment. The meeting will be followed by a SFContario 2010 committee meeting. Meeting agendas will be posted later this week to the SFContario blog.

Charter members may vote at this meeting. Other paid members are welcome to upgrade to charter memberships; otherwise, attendance at this meeting will count for the “two meetings in the past two years” rule in the by-law for voting at future meetings. A Skype conference call will be arranged to facilitate participation by voting members who cannot physically attend the meeting in person. Voting members who cannot attend in person, online, or by phone may give a proxy to an attending voter.

This announcement will be posted to the SFContario blog, the Facebook group, the Google Groups mailing list, and will be bcc’d to other charter members. Questions or suggestions may be directed to con2010-at-sfcontario-dot-ca, or just posted to the Google Groups mailing list. The corporation general meeting and the concom meeting are open to the public. After the concom meeting, anyone interested may join us for dinner in the area. We look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

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.

SFContario will be having a party at Ad Astra in Don Mills on Saturday, April 10, starting at 9 PM. We expect to be on the party floor so we’ll be easy to find. Diane, Catherine, and Jeff will be hosting the party. Come find out about Toronto’s newest science fiction convention.

SFContario will also be hosting the dessert buffet at FilKONtario in Mississauga on Saturday, April 10 starting around 8:30 PM. The party will be in the hospitality suite after the Filk Hall of Fame banquet. Marah, Alex, and Sue will be hosting the party. The green alien will be consumed. If you’re at FilKONtario that weekend, come and have fun with us!

If you are on Facebook, join our Facebook page to get notified about what’s going on. You can RSVP to one of our parties to let us know you’re coming.

Robert J. Sawyer has been invited to be Toastmaster at SFContario, November 19-21 in downtown Toronto.

SFContario’s toastmaster Robert J. Sawyer is a futurist and frequent keynote speaker and media science commentator with over 500 appearances on Canadian and international radio and television. He is a favorite at science fiction conventions across Canada, the United States, and elsewhere; he has been toastmaster at VCON, Norwescon, and Con-Version.

When he is not doing public speaking, Rob is a prolific science fiction author, having written 19 novels (as of April 2010) plus assorted short fiction and non-fiction. He also works in television, currently as creative consultant for the ABC/CityTV series FlashForward (based on his novel of the same name. For his fiction, Robert Sawyer has won the Hugo, Nebula, Aurora, and many other science fiction awards in three decades in the field.

Karl Schroeder will be Writer in Residence at the Merril Collection for three months starting February 1. There will be a little afternoon reception at the main Toronto Reference Library at 789 Yonge Street on Monday, February 1 at 1:30-3:30 PM. (Karl says “Please come, or else I’ll be surrounded by librarians!”) Karl will be conducting three writers workshops over the next few months. He will also critique manuscripts up to 5000 words (so like a dozen flash fiction pieces or half a chapter of a doorstop fantasy, I’m leaning towards the latter). I took a class in writing science fiction that Karl taught at George Brown back in the ’90s. Stephanie Bedwell-Grime was in the class and she’s done amazing things since, as has Karl himself. Contact the Merril Collection library for further details.

USS Hudson Bay (IDIC) is having their regular monthly meeting at the North York Public Library on Saturday, January 30 starting around 1:30 PM. Aside from the usual nice people, a bunch of our filker friends are showing up to perform, including our filk guest of honor Karen Linsley and our filk program person, Sue Jeffers. Guaranteed to be fun.

So we’ll keep the calendar up to date. I’m off to the NASFiC meeting in Raleigh on Friday, but I’ll be back next week. See some of you at First Thursday!

Another success in the series of high-in-the-sky soirees hosted by Rob Sawyer and Carolyn Clink occurred last Saturday. Attendance was international in scope: Buffalo, N.Y. was well represented.

I have read the three chapbooks I brought home with me: “Here There Be Monsters” by Bud Carson; “Sphinx!” by Tony Pi; “Radio Nowhere” by Douglas Smith.

“Radio Nowhere” I liked the best. I am putting it aside for our younger son who is in his third year at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo. “Radio Nowhere” is set on the campus of neighbouring University of Waterloo.

All three of these short stories are eligible for nomination for a 2010 Aurora Award .