https://westmount.org/en/event/movie-in-the-park/
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Join us in Westmount Park for a screening of Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) under the stars.
Prizes will be given for best themed costumed.
Don’t forget to bring your chair or blanket!
Info: 514 989-5226
SMOF News, volume 3, issue 50
Worldcon news roundup, and news in brief.
Petréa Mitchell
News From Worldcon
Glasgow 2024, the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention was held in Glasgow on August 8-12.
Awards awarded
The Hugo Awards were presented with no further controversies beyond the fraudulent voting uncovered last month. Full voting statistics and an administrator’s report on disqualifications and withdrawals are available with the list of winners.
The First Fandom Awards for fannish achievements were given at the opening ceremony. (Official site not yet updated, but the list of winners is available at File 770.)
The Nommo Awards were presented by the African Science Fiction Society.
The Sidewise Awards for alternate history were also presented.
Future Worldcon and bid news
Next year’s Seattle Worldcon 2025 (August 13-17) announced that its optional special Hugo category will be Best Poetry. An eligible poem is “within the speculative, science fiction, and fantasy genres, published in 2024, that is at least three lines.”
The Seattle Worldcon has also announced a Community Fund, starting with $30,000 in seed money, to assist four groups in attending: first-timers from the Pacific Northwest; LGBTQIA+ fans; BIPOC/AANHPI fans; and fans from anywhere in the Global South. Applications have not yet opened. Those wishing to donate to the fund can do so through the con’s registration portal.
LA in 2026, now LAcon V, won the vote easily to hold the 84th Worldcon on August 27-31, 2026 in Anaheim, California. Fears of a stealth write-in campaign were unrealized. Guests of Honor will be Barbara Hambly, Ronald D. Moore, Colleen Doran, Dr. Anita Sengupta, Tim Kirk, Geri Sullivan, Stan Sakai, and Ursula Vernon.
The bid for Kampala, Uganda in 2028 has changed its proposed location to Kigali, Rwanda.
The Brisbane in 2028 bid is reconsidering its dates for the convenience of those travelling to Australia for the 2028 solar eclipse.
Business Meeting Summary
The WSFS Business Meeting took up nearly all its allotted time across four days of Worldcon. A full set of videos is available on YouTube for those who want to relive it in real time. If you would just like a summary of the results, pull up the agenda (PDF) for reference, and read on.
Many items were referred to committees, some of which are still open to additional members. To join one, contact businessmeeting@glasgow2024.org by 1700 BST (UTC+1) this Friday, August 16.
The Retro Hugos are on their way to removal with the initial passage of proposal F.19. This change will need to be ratified next year.
The controversial proposal to restrict which countries can hold Worldcons (F.13) was referred to a committee of its own. This one is not open to additional members unless they are representing a potentially affected country. F.12 (restricting the voter pool) was voted down.
The proposal to create a new Asian Science Fiction Convention (ASFiC) in parallel with NASFiC (E.12) was defeated. It was expected that this would provoke proposals to remove NASFiC, but none were submitted this year.
The censure motions which could not be printed due to local laws were referred to a Committee of Investigation, elected at the meeting by secret ballot. This committee cannot add further members. F.16 (making censures more censurious) was voted down.
Further motions to address the Chengdu results directly, D.13 (the formal apology) and D.14 (retroactively adding more finalists) were passed with significant changes. D.14 is now a constitutional amendment allowing the Business Meeting to retroactively change finalist lists and must be ratified in Seattle to take effect.
A Hugo Process Study Committee was formed and is still open to more members. It was handed F.5 (requiring more transparancy around disqualifications), F.6 (separating Hugo administration from individual Worldcons), F.7 and F.8 (restrictions on disqualifications), F.9 (barring of wayward administrators), and the part of F.10 which would create an oversight committee.
F.10 was divided into three other pieces, two of which were voted down. The remaining part, about Hugo software, was referred to its own committee.
F.11 (another oversight committee), F.17 (Best Editor Long Form wording change),F.18 (art category wording changes) were passed for ratification in Seattle. E.8 (figuring out word counts for non-English works) was ratified.
E.7 (Independent Film category), E.9 (Best Fancast modification), and E.10 (removing US-centric language rules) were all defeated. The Glasgow committee ran an advisory vote of the general membership about the independent film category, in which “No” won with 57.7% of the vote.
A Business Meeting Process Study Committee was also formed and is also open to further members. It was given F.14 (ratification of WSFS constitution changes by a wider vote of Worldcon members) to study. F.15 (holding subsidiary Business Meetings throughout the year) was defeated.
Among lower-intensity proposals, E.1 through E.6, plus E.11 were all ratified. F.1 through F.4 were passed for ratification next year. Various standing rule changes and eligibility extensions were also passed, though the extension for Godzilla Minus One was revoked after the full Hugo voting statistics showed that it had nearly been a finalist this year.
SMOF News thanks the Glasgow Worldcon volunteers who provided play-by-play reporting on Discord for members who could not be present in person.
An update from Bill Burns at efanzines:
From the Los Angles SF Society: De Profundis #600 – August 2024 OCR
The N3F: Review of Books, Incorporating Prose Bono
Professor George Phillies, D.Sc., Editor
July 2024 N3FReview202407
Novels
2 … A Lake Most Deep by Rob Howell … Review by Jim McCoy
3 … The Backbone of Surprise by C.S. Ferguson and Greg Ferguson … Review by Jim McCoy
5 … Confessions of a D-List Supervillain, by Jim Bernheimer … Review by Graham Bradley
7 … trl Alt REVOLT! by Nick Cole … Review by Graham Bradley
8 … The Crack in Space by Philip K. Dick … Review by Thomas E. Simmons
9 … The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn by the Strugatsky Brothers … Review by Jean-Paul Garnier
10 … Deeper than the Darkness by Gregory Benford … Review by Jean-Paul Garnier
10 … Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Correia … Review by Graham Bradley
11 … The Downloaded by Robert J. Sawyer … Review by Robert Runté
13 … Fanta-Fly Postcards, Edited by by C.V. Walter … Review by Pat Patterson
15 … Gun Runner by Larry Correia and John D. Brown … Review by Graham Bradley
16 … The Heights of Perdition by C. S. Johnson … Review by Caroline Furlong
19 … I Have a Question by Macintosh Steele … Review by Jason P. Hunt
20 … Khyber by Chadwick Ginther & Shared World by Ball, Chomichuk, Gillespie and Ginter
… Review by Robert Runté
21 … The Last Ancestor by Alexander Hellene … Review by J.E. Tabor
23 … League of Angels by Thomas Tan … Review by Caroline Furlong
24 … Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus … Review by Tom Feller
25 … Lost Cargo by Noah Chinn … Review by Robert Runté
26 … The Lost Expedition by Douglas Smith … Review by Robert Runté
27 … Lost Planet Homicide by Larry Correia … Review by Graham Bradley
28 … Lost Souls by Tim Rangnow … Review by Becky Jones
29 … The Marchioly Project by P.A. Piatt … Review by JE Tabor
30 … Pinup Noir, Edited by Steve Diamond … Review by Pat Patterson
32 … Rimworld- Diversions by J.L. Curtis … Review by Pat Patterson
33 … Shadow Matter by S.W. Mayse … Review by Robert Runté
34 … Super-Earth Mother by Guy Immega … Review by Robert Runté
36 … The Supply Closet of Eternal Terror by Roy Griffis … Review by Michael Gallagher
38 … System Collapse by Martha Wells … Review by Tom Feller
39 … Tower of Silence by Larry Correia … Review by Graham Bradley
41 … Warmaster 2: Winter’s Peril … Review by JR Handley
46 … White Ops #1 by Declan Finn … Review by J. R. Handley
50 … Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction Vol.1 (2023)
Edited by Stephen Kotowych … Review by Robert Runté
Literary Criticism
52 … Literary Criticism: Prozines by John Thiel
53 … Discussing: “Destiny” by Declan Finn
Prose Bono
55 … How to Make a Story: A Recipe by Jim McCoy
57 … Batman and Spiderman … A Thought Experiment by Declan Finn
Sneak Peak: We have a partial list of the books from Sylvain’s Legacy. Click here: Partial catalogue SSP
Click here for more information: https://www.monsffa.ca/?page_id=30481
and Essays from the World of Cold Magic • Fairwood Press, Aug 2024 (c, tp, eb)From NIc Farey: TH 77r
Update from Bill Burns:
A somewhat monochromatic set of six new issues now at https://efanzines.com
—
Bill
Draconis Festival is the biggest role-playing game event of Quebec. It offers more than a hundred role-playing game sessions for beginners or advanced players. The event is totally free and open to all the diversity. The organization team is made entirely of volunteers and the role-playing games are offered by members of our excellent community.
AFTERGLOW OF A CME: A CME struck Earth yesterday (July 25th at 1422 UT). The impact did not immediately cause a geomagnetic storm, but hours later a minor G1-class storm occured as Earth was passing through the CME’s magnetized wake. The afterglow was observed in Washington, Wisconsin and Maine. CME impact alerts: SMS Text
MAJOR FARSIDE SOLAR FLARE: The biggest flare of Solar Cycle 25 just exploded from the farside of the sun. X-ray detectors on Europe’s Solar Orbiter (SolO) spacecraft registered an X14 category blast:
Solar Orbiter was over the farside of the sun when the explosion occured on July 23rd, in perfect position to observe a flare otherwise invisible from Earth.
“From the estimated GOES class, it was the largest flare so far,” says Samuel Krucker of UC Berkeley. Krucker is the principal investigator for STIX, an X-ray telescope on SolO which can detect solar flares and classify them on the same scale as NOAA’s GOES satellites. “Other large flares we’ve detected are from May 20, 2024 (X12) and July 17, 2023 (X10). All of these have come from the back side of the sun.”
Meanwhile on the Earthside of the sun, the largest flare so far registered X8.9 on May 14, 2024. SolO has detected at least three larger farside explosions, which means our planet has been dodging a lot of bullets.
The X14 farside flare was indeed a major event. It hurled a massive CME into space, shown here in a coronagraph movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):
The CME sprayed energetic particles all over the solar system. Earth itself was hit by ‘hard’ protons (E > 100 MeV) despite being on the opposite side of the sun.
“This is a big one–a 360 degree event,” says George Ho of the Southwest Research Institute, principal investigator for one of the energetic particle detectors onboard SolO. “It also caused a high dosage at Mars.”
SolO was squarely in the crosshairs of the CME, and on July 24th it experienced a direct hit. In a matter of minutes, particle counts jumped almost a thousand-fold as the spacecraft was peppered by a hail storm energetic ions and electrons.
“This is something we call an ‘Energetic Storm Particle’ (ESP) event,” explains Ho. “It’s when particles are locally accelerated in the CME’s shock front [to energies higher than a typical solar radiation storm]. An ESP event around Earth in March 1989 caused the Great Quebec Blackout.”
So that’s what might have happened if the CME hit Earth instead of SolO. Maybe next time. The source of this blast will rotate around to face our planet a week to 10 days from now, so stay tuned. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-curiosity-rover-discovers-a-surprise-in-a-martian-rock
Among several recent findings, the rover has found rocks made of pure sulfur — a first on the Red Planet.
Scientists were stunned on May 30 when a rock that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals.
Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich with sulfates, a kind of salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. But where past detections have been of sulfur-based minerals — in other words, a mix of sulfur and other materials — the rock Curiosity recently cracked open is made of elemental, or pure, sulfur. It isn’t clear what relationship, if any, the elemental sulfur has to other sulfur-based minerals in the area.
While people associate sulfur with the odor from rotten eggs (the result of hydrogen sulfide gas), elemental sulfur is odorless. It forms in only a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven’t associated with the history of this location. And Curiosity found a lot of it — an entire field of bright rocks that look similar to the one the rover crushed.
Pan around this 360-degree video to explore Gediz Vallis channel, the location where NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover discovered sulfur crystals and drilled its 41st rock sample. The images that make up this mosaic were captured by the rover’s MastCam in June.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert,” said Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”
It’s one of several discoveries Curiosity has made while off-roading within Gediz Vallis channel, a groove that winds down part of the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) Mount Sharp, the base of which the rover has been ascending since 2014. Each layer of the mountain represents a different period of Martian history. Curiosity’s mission is to study where and when the planet’s ancient terrain could have provided the nutrients needed for microbial life, if any ever formed on Mars.
