Science Fiction and Fantasy Events in Toronto, July 2011

These events are from the science fiction & fantasy calendar I've started.  If you have an event that's not listed, email me (jessica.strider@gmail.com) and I'll put it on the calendar and add it here.  While I try to get the details correct, always check the links to confirm event information. I'll be updating this post as I learn of more events.

Tuesday July 5

Toronto Geek Poetry Slam Spoken word on any geek subject, featuring Mike Bryant.
Where: Boat, 158 Augusta, Toronto, 416-312-3865
When: 7:30 pm
Admission: $5

Friday July 8

Harry Potter Dance Party!
Celebrate the release of the final Harry Potter film with a costume dance party at the Fox and Fiddle on Wellesley.
Where: Fox and Fiddle, 27 Wellesley Street
When: 9pm - 2am
Cost: Cover is $2.
Best costume wins two tickets to The Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
For more information, check out our facebook event page.
And remember: this event is one night only. So unless you own a Time-Turner, don't miss out!
*NOTE: This is a 19+ event*

Wednesday July 13

Chiaroscuro Reading Series: A Night of Wonders
Where: Augusta House (152 Augusta Avenue, Toronto)
When: 8:00 PM - 11:00 PM

Join us and three spectacular readers for a night of cosmic spectacles, ghostly hauntings, and fantastic visions...

Teresa Milbrodt grew up in northwest Ohio and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University.  Her debut short story collection, Bearded Women: Stories, will be published by Chizine Publications in Fall 2011.  Milbrodt's stories have appeared in Nimrod, North American Review, Crazyhorse, Natural Bridge, Indiana Review, The Cream City Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and New Orleans Review, among other literary journals.
*
Karl Schroeder
I'm one of Canada's most popular science fiction and fantasy authors. I divide my time between writing fiction and analyzing, conducting workshops and speaking on the future impact of science and technology on society.  As the author of nine novels I've been translated into French, German, Spanish, Russian and Japanese.
*
Lesley Livingston is a writer and actress living in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of Wondrous Strange, winner of the CLA Young Adult Book of the Year 2010, a White Pine Honour Book, and shortlisted for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Speculative Fiction. Darklight, the second book in this series was shortlisted for the Indigo Teen Read Awards. The concluding volume in the trilogy, TEMPESTUOUS, was released in January of this year. Her next project, a YA time-travel romance-adventure titled Once Every Never will hit store shelves and Starling, a new trilogy set in the same universe as Wondrous Strange is set to release in the summer of 2012.

 
Friday July 15 - Sunday July 17

Polaris
Where: Sheraton Parkway North Toronto (600 Highway 7 East)
When: Friday: 6 pm - 2 am, Saturday 10 am -2 am, Sunday 9 am - 6 pm
Cost: variable

Saturday July 16

Maggie Steifvater Discussing her book Forever.
Where: Indigo Yorkdale, 3401 Dufferin, Toronto, chapters.indigo.ca
When: 6 pm
Admission: Free

Sunday July 17

Space-Time Continuum:
Meet at Indigo (Bay & Bloor in the SF section) to see a movie

Monday July 18

Charlaine Harris Talking about her book True Blood.
Where: Indigo Eaton Centre, 220 Yonge, Toronto, chapters.indigo.ca
When: 7 pm
Admission: Free

Thursday July 21

July Cinemacabre:
Rue Morgue Magazine presents Tom Holland’s FRIGHT NIGHT
Where: ** NEW LOCATION! ** THE TORONTO UNDERGROUND CINEMA (186 SPADINA, JUST NORTH OF QUEEN STREET)
When: 9:30pm
"FREESCREENING!
Classic Trailers!
35MM

While The Bloor cinema undergoes renovations, we’ve moved CineMacabre movie nights to the Toronto Underground Cinema, and to celebrate we’re holding a FREE screening of Tom Holland’s 1985 vampire classic FRIGHT NIGHT. Before the remake starring Colin Farrell drops in August, join us for the ‘80s original, in which horror movie junkie Charley Brewster, his best friend Evil Ed and an aging horror host played by Roddy McDowell tangle with the bloodsucker next door (played by Chris Sarandon) who’s taken Charley’s girlfriend. See FRIGHTNIGHT on 35mm – on us!"

Watch the trailer at: http://rue-morgue.com/rmp_cinemacabre.php

One Night Only!
Ghastly Prizes!

Mizu no Kotoba (Aquatic Language)

This is a nifty animated short film written and directed by Yasuhiro Yoshiura in 2002.  It takes place in a cafe where things aren't quite what they seem.  It's a little slow, but the ending's pretty cool.  I grabbed it from DeadInHell255's youtube page.  The film has a website too.

Movie Review: Cloverfield

Movie Review: Cloverfield
Director: Matt Reeves, 2008
IMDB listing

Pros: realistic alien invasion with regards to destruction and alien nature of invaders

cons: shaky cam, unlikable protagonists

Cloverfield begins with a farewell party for Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) who's moving to Japan for a new job. His rather jerky best friend, Hud Platt (T. J. Miller), is asked to document the party and record clips of everyone saying good-bye.  Rob wonders about the direction of his life when his long time friend, and short term lover he recently jilted, Beth (Odette Yustman), arrives at the party with another man.

An explosion outside is the first sign that something horrible is happening in New York City. The party goers efforts to leave the city are frustrated by the collapse of infrastructure due to an alien invasion and the knowledge that Beth is trapped in midtown.

Shaky cam makes this film painful to watch. I imagine the purpose for it was to make the action feel reel and immediate.  Instead, it meant seeing shots of feet when I'd have rather seen the alien menace.  The action takes place mostly off screen or on a tilted or jiggling screen. The scenes where you finally get to see the aliens are amazingly terrifying.

The protagonists had irritating personalities.  Shaky cam meant deaths were mostly off screen and confusing (sometimes I wasn't sure someone had actually died) so it was hard to sympathise with their pain. And, despite getting to know them a bit, or perhaps because of it, I didn't care when people died.

The special effects were great and the aliens were delightfully creepy and evil, killing and destroying indiscriminately.

Ultimately, despite some awesome aliens, it's not the best invasion film.

New Author Spotlight: David Nickle

New Author Spotlight is a series designed to introduce authors with 3 books or less in the different SF/F subgenres.

Today's spotlight shines on David Nickle.

David Nickle's books include:

• The Claus Effect by Karl Schroeder & David Nickle (Tesseract Books)
• Monstrous Affections by David Nickle (ChiZine Publications)
• Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle (ChiZine Publications)

Here's the cover copy for Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism:

The year is 1911. In Cold Spring Harbour, New York, the newly formed Eugenics Records Office is sending its agents to catalogue the infirm, the insane, and the criminal - with an eye to a cull, for the betterment of all. Near Cracked Wheel, Montana, a terrible illness leaves Jason Thistledown an orphan, stranded in his dead mother''s cabin until the spring thaw shows him the true meaning of devastation - and the barest thread of hope. At the edge of the utopian mill town of Eliada, Idaho, Doctor Andrew Waggoner faces a Klansman''s noose and glimpses wonder in the twisting face of the patient known only as Mister Juke. And deep in a mountain lake overlooking that town, something stirs, and thinks, in its way: Things are looking up.

Eutopia follows Jason and Andrew as together and alone, they delve into the secrets of Eliada - industrialist Garrison Harper''s attempt to incubate a perfect community on the edge of the dark woods and mountains of northern Idaho. What they find reveals the true, terrible cost of perfection - the cruelty of the surgeon''s knife - the folly of the cull - and a monstrous pact with beings that use perfection as a weapon, and faith as a trap.

If you like historical fiction with a paranormal twist, you might also like:

• The Tomb (Repairman Jack) by F. Paul Wilson (Tor Books)
• Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
• The Terror: A Novel by Dan Simmons (Back Bay Books)

Rome: 3 Dreams of Black

Rome is an interactive film by Chris Milk.  It uses WebGL, so you have to use Chrome as your browser when viewing the film.  It starts off with a post apocalyptic setting.  Three times in the film your cursor/mouse interacts with the footage; allowing you to draw flowers, plough paths of destruction and follow a flock of birds over a desolate landscape respectively.

Enter here.

Two Creepy Book Trailers

I got an email about Glen Duncan's book The Last Werewolf, out July 12th.  Looks and sounds interesting.  From the Knopf youtube page:

Meet Jake. A bit on the elderly side (he turns 201 in March), but you'd never suspect it. Nonstop sex and exercise will do that for you—and a diet with lots of animal protein. Jake is a werewolf, and after the unfortunate and violent death of his one contemporary, he is now the last of his species. Although he is physically healthy, Jake is deeply distraught and lonely.

Jake's depression has carried him to the point where he is actually contemplating suicide—even if it means terminating a legend thousands of years old. It would seem to be easy enough for him to end everything. But for very different reasons there are two dangerous groups pursuing him who will stop at nothing to keep him alive.

Here is a powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend—mesmerising and incredibly sexy. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century—a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way deeply human. 

One of the most original, audacious, and terrifying novels in years.

I heard about this second book a while back and unfortunately forgot about it.  Thankfully, Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews posted the synopsis and trailer, and it's now firmly at the top of my to be read pile.  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs, has one of the best book trailers I've ever seen.  It's in stores now. 

From Irreference's youtube page:

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs.

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience.

Book Review: Blood Red Road by Moira Young

Disclaimer:  This is the last book review I did before realizing I needed a break.  So it's a little more... critical than usual. 
 -------

Pros: bleak post-apocalyptic world, good fight scenes, smooth writing

cons: uneven pacing, unlikable protagonist, written in dialect with limited punctuation

Blood Red Road is the narrated account of Saba's quest to find and save her twin brother from the cloaked men who kidnapped him. The world is a bleak place and despite her 18 years, Saba knows little about it. Using her wits and the crow she keeps as a pet, she's determined to find out where her brother is and bring him home no matter what the cost

While the setting is interesting - a post-apocalyptic desert - the pacing's uneven, with long quiet stretches occasionally broken up by an action sequence.  And Saba is surprisingly unlikable for a narrator.  She treats her younger sister horribly and insists she can do everything alone even when its clear she can't.  She's a bad judge of charcter, trusting easily when she shouldn't and treating badly those she should trust and be greatful to.

The novel is written in Saba's dialect meaning a lot of misspelled words like 'yer' for 'you are' 'aks' for 'ask, etc.  It does bring you into her mind, but the dialect and the lack of quotation marks around dialogue meant I occasionally had to reread passages to understand them correctly.  Having said that, once you got the hang of the dialect the work was highly submersive.

The ending seemed a little contrived and by the time people started dying I didn't care about any of them.

Still, for a debut, the writing showed a lot of promise.