With our Super Sci-Fi Book Sale concluded for another year, we packed away the last of our remaining stock on Sunday. The 2025 sale was one of our most successful to date, and while the official numbers are not yet finalized, it is safe to say that we raised north of $1000, all of which will be directed towards MonSFFA’s operating budget for 2026.

Plans for next year’s book sale are already in formation, and we will let everyone know of place and date as soon as these are confirmed, likely in the early months of the New Year. Our inventory has now been shipped to MonSFFA’s Strategic Hold, Eastern Depository, where it will reside until the 2026 edition of the Super Sci-Fi Book Sale, to which we hope to again welcome all of you!

And so, we take this opportunity to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of you, club members and friends of our organization, who came down to the sale to support MonSFFA by buying books. Thank you so very much!

We thank, as well, all those who contributed to the replenishing of our inventory by donating books to our sale!

And last, but certainly not least, we would like to send out gamma-ray-level waves of thanks to our many volunteers, without whose efforts the sale would simply not be possible! Thank you for helping to transport, unpack, and sort our many boxes of books and magazines, and pack the whole lot away again, post-sale. Your contributions are enormously appreciated!

Check in with us regularly, here, for information on the club’s activities: www.MonSFFA.ca

This is our closing post of the afternoon.

At this moment, the club is wrapping up its annual Super Sci-Fi Book Sale at our downtown meeting locale. As such, there is no interactive ZOOM-chat component included with this month’s MonSFFA event.

But for our out-of-town club members and friends, we do offer today, here online, a few Halloween-themed items of interest, culled from our meeting archives.

The Horror, The Horror…

For your perusal, then, this overview of Aurora’s line of movie monster-themed plastic model kits, and the mania they precipitated in the 1960s, originally presented as part of our DIY October 17, 2020 Virtual MonSFFA Meeting:

Any so-called “Monster Kid” growing up in the 1960s harboured two utmost desires: the latest issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine (co-founded by pioneering sci-fi fan Forrest J Ackerman), and the latest release in Aurora’s line of classic monster model kits!

The Long Island, NY-based Aurora Plastics Corporation was founded in 1950 as a contract manufacturer of injection-molded plastics. Before too long, the company began producing and marketing its own line of “all plastic assembly kits” for young hobbyists, focusing chiefly on aircraft and automobiles.

Aurora’s first figure kits, a set of medieval knights in armour, were introduced in the mid-’50s, quickly followed by the “Guys and Gals of All Nations” series, featuring statuettes dressed in the national costumes of Holland, China, Scotland, and other countries, this in an effort to appeal to female crafters. Throughout the late-’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, other historical subjects followed the knights, from Roman gladiators to modern U.S. soldiers, sailors, and airmen, along with a variety of kits spotlighting American wildlife, sports stars, comic book superheroes, sci-fi TV characters, and the prehistoric world.

But it was a licensing agreement with Universal Studios that allowed Aurora to launch what would become its most popular and successful series of all, the Movie Monster Models collection!

Universal’s classic horror films were enjoying a revival in the late-’50s- and early-’60s, and were all the rage with youngsters, who watched them on television, where they aired frequently, or flocked to movie houses to see them. Aurora marketing director Bill Silverstein had taken note of the appeal these old pictures had with adolescents and teens, and pitched the idea of a series of kits showcasing Universal’s stable of venerable movie monsters. He was met with ridicule and disinterest but persisted and eventually convinced skeptical upper management to gauge interest by bringing to market one model.

That model was Frankenstein, released in 1961. Silverstein was soon vindicated! Frankenstein was an instant hit and calls started coming in to Aurora’s sales offices requesting other kits in the line. Dracula and The Wolf Man were rushed into production and were on store shelves in time for Christmas 1962.

The Creature (from the Black Lagoon), The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, Dr. Jekyll as Mr. Hyde, non-Universal behemoths King Kong and Godzilla, and others followed. There were 13 monster kits produced in all—tagged by aficionados “The Aurora 13”—plus two customizing kits and a Gigantic Frankenstein, the finished model standing some two-feet tall.  A pair of affiliated models, the Munsters ’65 and the Addams Family Haunted House, are often considered part of the series.

Advertised in Famous Monsters of Filmland and DC Comics publications, Aurora’s monster kits skyrocketed in popularity. In 1964, a U.S.-wide Monster Customizing Contest was sponsored in cooperation with Universal Pictures and Famous Monsters, contributing to a growing “Monster Mania.”

Young model-makers were tasked with creating a macabre diorama using any combination of Aurora monster kits and customizing materials. Two customizing kits were issued, providing modellers with an assortment of skulls, spiders, rats, and such with which to enhance their miniature tableaus. Each entrant received a “Master Monster Maker” certificate. Hundreds of prizes were handed out with the national winner awarded a paid trip to Hollywood and the opportunity to appear in a horror movie!

Sculptor Bill Lemon was responsible for designing and producing the patterns for most of the monster models, with Ray Meyers and Adam “Larry” Ehling taking over when Lemon left to pursue other commissions. The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Mare was the last kit in the line, becoming available in 1967-’68 and sporting box art by renowned pulp illustrator Mort Künstler.

It was the box art produced by James Bama, however, that indelibly marked Aurora’s Movie Monster Models. At the time, Bama was working as a commercial artist for a major New York advertising firm. He was known as a prolific paperback and magazine cover artist, as well as for dramatic interior illustrations featured in men’s adventure magazines. Genre fans would soon come to know him for his extraordinarily striking monochromatic Doc Savage covers for Bantam Books’ paperback reprints of the original novels.

The accomplished illustrator applied his signature realism to what was fantastical subject matter in rendering melodramatically lit, vividly colourful box art for the monster kits. Save for Künstler’s single contribution, Bama produced all of the original box art for the series, as well as a few pieces for spin-offs like the Monstermobiles line, which put our favourite monsters in crazily-exaggerated hot-rods, a concept that did not fly with either monster or hot-rod enthusiasts.

Beginning in 1969, the original monster models were modified to include luminescent parts and reissued through the early-’70s with reworked packaging that included some new art by artist Harry Schaare, who essentially copied Bama’s originals while highlighting with bright acrylics the glow-in-the-dark components of the model. In some instances, Bama’s original gouache paintings were actually painted over with acrylics—no one present back in the day seems to know who might have been responsible for that sin, or perhaps nobody wants to say!

In 1971, Aurora launched its controversial Monster Scenes line, featuring four character kits: Frankenstein, sexy comic book pin-up Vampirella, the sadistic Doctor Deadly, and a scantily-clad young woman dubbed simply “The Victim.” At about 1/13 scale, these simple, snap-together, toy-like figures were smaller and lacked the detail of their movie monster cousins. The concept, here, was to enable children to easily assemble and then play with the models. Each figure came with extra sets of movable arms and legs so that they could be assembled in different poses.

In addition to the character kits, four “grisly equipment” kits with names like Gruesome Goodies and The Pain Parlour were available, together serving as a torture-chamber playset into which the figures could be placed. Aurora played up the lurid horror, violence, and sex, promoting its new line with the slogan “Rated ‘X’ for excitement!”

It wasn’t long before concerned parents were petitioning Nabisco, owners of Aurora at the time, outraged at these “sick toys” that make for a “sick society!” Women’s groups, too, admonished the company for promoting misogynistic cruelty, noting that the helpless “Victim” didn’t even rate her own name!

Nervous Nabisco quickly ordered a halt to the tooling on two new kits, a dungeon and an animal pit into which The Victim could be lowered, and announced that the Monster Scenes line was to be discontinued. Preliminary development on models of a second victim, an executioner, and more torture devices ceased. All remaining inventory, including three as yet unreleased kits—Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Giant Insect—were shipped to Canada, where The Victim was recast as Dr. Deadly’s Daughter.

The following year, Aurora recovered from this costly debacle, premiering its well-received Prehistoric Scenes line, which incorporated the same models-as-toys idea that had underpinned the short-lived Monster Scenes series.

Aurora’s swansong monster series was the 1/12-scale Monsters of the Movies line. But by now the monster craze had passed and the last kit in this series was shipped in 1977. The company shut down its molding machines that same year.

In a span of just 27 years, Aurora had progressed from humble beginnings to become one of the foremost and most innovative producers of scale-model kits in the industry, only to fall victim to a number of questionable marketing moves and product choices, as well as generally waning public interest in the hobby.

Bill Silverstein remained focused on the business of marketing toys. His stint at Aurora led him to join comic actors Don “Maxwell Smart” Adams and Bill “José Jiménez” Dana in forming a small advertising agency, securing Aurora as a client, of course! In the early-’70s, he became a partner at Helfgott & Partners (later Helfgott, Towne & Silverstein), a high-profile New York agency that represented the Ideal Toy Company.

After leaving Aurora, Bill Lemon went on to sculpt for major toy manufacturers like Remco and Marx and produced, over his decades-long career, everything from anatomical models for medical schools to Pez dispensers to a circa-1980s Michael Jackson doll.

James Bama left New York in 1968 and moved to Wyoming, where he established himself as a painter specializing in Western themes. In recognition of his Aurora box art, he was inducted into the Monster Kid Hall of Fame in 2006.

Rival model manufacturer Monogram (later merged with another rival, Revell) initially acquired many of Aurora’s molds from parent company Nabisco and reissued a number of the kits under its own banner beginning in the late-’70s. In the mid-’90s and more recently, modern scale-model manufacturers like Polar Lights and Moebius Models have retooled, updated, and rereleased many of Aurora’s most popular kits, occasioning a revival of Monster Mania for both aging Monster Kids and a new generation.

ANSWERS TO…

And finally, here are the answers to the quiz we posted here earlier this afternoon:

1) Halloween is the day before which holiday? – All Saints (Hallows) Day

2) The tradition of making Jack-o-Lanterns to ward off evil spirits is thousands of years old. Which vegetable were they originally made out of? – Turnips

3) According to superstition, if you stare into a mirror at midnight on Halloween, what will you see? – Your future husband or wife.

4) From which region in the world do pumpkins originate? – Central America

5) Who wrote the novel Frankenstein? – Mary Shelley

6) Transylvania is a region in which country? – Romania

7) Halloween has its origins in which ancient Celtic festival? – Samhain

8) Which actor played Dr. Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show? – Tim Curry

9) Is a pumpkin a fruit or vegetable? – Fruit

10) What is the significance of seeing a spider on Halloween? – It is thought to be the spirit of a loved one watching over the person who finds the spider.

11) Which country celebrates the Day of the Dead starting at midnight on October 31? – Mexico

12) According to superstition, a person born on Halloween has what particular ability? – The ability to see and talk to spirits.

13) Who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas? – Henry Selick

14) Which vampire said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m going to give you the choice I never had.”? – Lestat (Interview with the Vampire)

15) How many people were hanged during the Salem Witch Trials?    – 19

16) Every Halloween, Charlie Brown helps his friend Linus wait for what character to appear? – The Great Pumpkin

17) What do people “bob” for on Halloween? – Apples

18) Who is said to haunt the White House Rose Garden? – First Lady Dolly Madison

19) Pumpkins can be orange, white, green, or what other colour?        – Blue

20) In the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, how many people are killed with a chainsaw? – One

21) What’s the body-count in the film Halloween? – Five people, one dog.

22) In which year was the movie Freaks made? – 1932

23) In the original Alien film, how many alien eggs were made for the egg chamber inside the downed spacecraft? – 130

24) How many Oscar nominations did Psycho receive? – Four, including Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock) and Best Supporting Actress (Janet Leigh); the film did not win in any of the categories for which it was nominated.

THANK YOU!

We hope you have enjoyed this afternoon’s Halloween-themed posts. SF/F fans are welcome and encouraged to join the fun, and join MonSFFA! If you have questions about the club, allow us to take you to our leader: president@monsffa.ca

The club meets next on Saturday, November 8, 2025 from 1:00PM to 5:00PM at the Nouvel Hotel, 1740 René-Lévesque Ouest, downtown.

Until then, farewell, save some of those Halloween treats for the kids, and thrill to all the horror movies airing and streaming this month!

This is Post 3 of 4.

At this moment, the club is holding its annual Super Sci-Fi Book Sale at our downtown meeting locale. As such, there is no interactive ZOOM-chat component included with this month’s MonSFFA event.

But for our out-of-town club members and friends, we do offer today, here online, a few Halloween-themed items of interest, culled from our meeting archives.

The Horror, The Horror…

For your perusal, then, the following is an expanded version of an article that originally ran in Warp 57 (Spring 2004), inspired by a panel discussion the club had earlier convened at one of its meetings. This topic was also explored as part of our October 15, 2022 Halloween-themed e-Meeting.

The Vampire Myth: Folklore and Fact

In March 2004, MonSFFA welcomed as a special guest speaker locally-based writer/editor Nancy Kilpatrick (1946-2025), lauded by Fangoria magazine as “Canada’s answer to Anne Rice.” An award-winning author of numerous vampire-themed novels and short stories, Ms. Kilpatrick was joined on the dais by club members Cathy Palmer-Lister and Keith Braithwaite for a panel discussion/Q&A on the topic of vampires, perhaps the most iconic terrors of horror fiction and film.

Keith’s notes on the panel capsulize that which the panel imparted to audience members:

The Vampire, an Ancient and Global Legend

Vampires, and supernatural entities that predate the term, are part of the folklore of almost every culture on Earth. While the word “vampire” is of relatively modern origin, revenants, spirits, and demons of vampiric attribute can be found in the mythologies of the ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and other civilizations, and undoubtedly influenced the folklore of ensuing societies. Generally human-like in appearance, these evil, undead creatures feasted on a diet of human blood, and sometimes flesh.

Descriptions of vampires vary from region to region, country to country.

Certain European vampires are distinguished by red hair and a characteristic cleft lip, or harelip. The Bavarian variety sleeps with its left eye open and its thumbs linked. Purple-faced are Russian vampires, according to legend, while the Bulgarian type is distinguished by its single nostril.

Some Chinese vampires are said to draw their strength from the light of the moon, others come to be by way of magic, these drawing “qi,” or life-force from their victims. A hopping gait and fuzzy, greenish skin are unique characteristics.

Several female vampires are to be found in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Appearing as beautiful women by day, they transform by night into winged freaks with a taste for entrails, blood, or human foetuses! These fiends sport an elongated, hollow tongue with which to feed. Some are capable of severing their upper torsos in order that they may fly off into the night to prey upon sleeping pregnant women.

The Mexican vampire is readily recognized as a ghastly chimera, its horrific face a fleshless skull. Further north, reportedly dwelling in the Rocky Mountains, is a vampire that feeds through its nose, sucking blood from its victims’ ears!

The Western Vampire

Stemming almost entirely from the Balkans in Eastern Europe, the Western archetype of the vampire, that of a preternaturally strong, virtually immortal, blood-feasting creature of the night, is but one of many variations when considering vampire mythology, worldwide. The Western vampire, however, is arguably the world’s best known and most popular, no doubt due, at least in modern times, to the widespread exporting of Western culture.

Travellers visiting the remote regions of 16th century Transylvania returned home with strange and terrifying tales of ungodly devils, monstrosities neither living nor dead, which feasted on human blood under darkness of night. These abominations were called, variously, “vurculac,” “wampyr,” and “vampire.”

Transylvanian and other Eastern European vampires shared common characteristics. The legends tell of hellions gaunt in appearance, pale of complexion, having full, red lips, pointed canine teeth, and long, sharp fingernails. They exuded a foul stench, likened to that of a rotting corpse. They possessed superhuman strength, supposedly derived from their diet of blood, and cast a hypnotic gaze upon their prey from behind demonically gleaming eyes. They also possessed an uncanny shape-shifting ability and were able to assume the forms of a variety of animals, and further, to command the nocturnal faunae of the forest.

Superstition and Reality

Fear and superstition fed the vampire myth during the late Middle Ages, the prevalent conjecture being that these nightmarish monsters were evil spirits capable of inhabiting and animating corpses for malevolent purposes. Alternately, persons viewed as sinful or wicked for one reason or another—suicides, those excommunicated from the church, or buried without appropriate rites—might return from the grave, some believed, “reborn” as vampires. Barred from the afterlife, the souls of these vile individuals continued to utilize their lifeless bodies.

But vampire lore did not grow exclusively from superstitious fantasy. Circumstances very real contributed, as well, to the making of the myth.

Unsolved mass murders and cattle mutilations by wild animals are among the kinds of incidents in those days that provided ample fodder for tales of vampirism. The surreptitious removal of corpses from graves by, for example, sexual deviants like necrophiliacs, left behind indisputable “proof” that the dead could leave the grave to any predisposed to such beliefs. And one can easily imagine that the rare, crazed person driven by a pathological or physiological thirst for human blood would quickly be deemed a vampire by his or her frightened neighbours.

Commonly believed to be a source of vampire legend was premature burial. Several centuries ago, it was not unusual for comatose individuals, or even falling-down drunks, to be mistaken for dead, and so buried alive. It is theorized that when subsequent exhumations found that their bodies had not decomposed as a dead body normally would, rumours that these poor unfortunates were vampires soon spread.

One episode in Serbia prompted the government to send a detachment of soldiers, including a few army surgeons, to investigate a village whose panicked inhabitants were suffering an apparent epidemic of vampirism. Thirteen graves were opened and only three bodies were deemed to be undergoing the normal process of decomposition. The others, some longer underground than those three, were reportedly rosy-cheeked, firm of flesh, and when dissected, found to have within them fresh blood. They were promptly decapitated and burned to ashes.

Such anecdotes, inevitably enhanced with each recounting, were picked up by travellers and spread throughout Europe, fuelling the vampire myth.

Also contributing to the myth were the noble Slavs of the 1400s, whose interbreeding resulted in a number of genetic disorders, including a rare disease, erythropoietic protoporphyria, which was not diagnosed until the 19th century. This disease is a pigment disorder which causes the body to produce an excess of protoporphyin, basic to red blood cells. Symptoms include unbearable itching, redness and edema, and bleeding cracks in the skin after brief exposure to sunlight. The physical appearance of those who suffered from this affliction, and their necessary avoidance of daylight, fed right into the belief in vampires.

The Vampire in Art

For centuries, artists have depicted vampires, from great works of fine art to commercial illustrations for books, comics, films and other forms of pop culture. Here is a sampling:

The Vampire (1897), by Sir Philip William Burne-Jones. This painting was exhibited at The New Gallery in London just a few months prior to the first publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The artist, son of British pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, never achieved his father’s level of recognition and fame, and is known largely for this single work of art, and the story behind it.

Sir Philip was, briefly, involved romantically with beautiful actress Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner, better known by her stage name, Mrs. Patrick Campbell. But his infatuation with her was rather more than hers for him, and she soon left him heartbroken. Painting from memory, he modelled his vampire after her.

Inspired by the image, Sir Philip’s cousin, Rudyard Kipling, wrote a poem about a foolish man destroyed by a heartless woman, which helped to drum up publicity for the painting prior to its exhibition. Sir Philip displayed a copy of the poem alongside his artwork.

Shown here is a printed reproduction of The Vampire from an illustrated period publication of Kipling’s poem. The actual painting’s whereabouts are currently unknown; Sir Philip may have sold the work, or destroyed it.

Love and Pain (1895), by Edvard Munch. The esteemed Norwegian artist painted six different versions of this scene between 1893 and 1895, and later in his career, returned yet again to his depiction of a woman kissing a man on the neck. The kiss, the man’s submissive pose, and the woman’s flaming red hair led some to interpret the painting to be of a vampire embracing her victim. Though sometimes called Vampire, Munch never referred to as, or so named his work. Yet today, this painting is liberally interpreted as vampire-themed by enthusiasts.

Another work so interpreted is Une semaine de bonté (1934), a collage novel and artist’s book by Max Ernst. Created by clipping images from Victorian novels and encyclopaedias, and combining and arranging these to create new pictures, Ernst was inspired by the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. He divided his work into seven sections, each named for one of the days of the week, with each having a theme, one of which was “Blood.” The work consists of five volumes, for which the artist created 182 dark, bizarre, dreamlike images. One in particular has been widely taken to be that of a vampire, here reproduced.

Creatures of the Night (1969), by Frank Frazetta. The venerated “Godfather of Fantasy Art” celebrated two classic monsters with this canvas, perhaps the two most famous of all. And one of them is a vampire!

Vampirella is a comic book superheroine and, for all intents and purposes, vampire pin-up girl! She was co-created in 1969 by noted science fiction fan/literary agent/magazine publisher Forrest J Ackerman and pioneering underground comix artist Trina Robbins—it was Robbins who came up with the lovely lady’s revealing costume. Frank Frazetta painted Vampirella for the first edition of her self-titled comic book series, but the artist most associated with the character is José Gonzáles, whose iconic rendering was made into a popular poster (left) in 1972.

Right: in 2010, Joe Jusko employed Vampirella to pay homage to Ackerman, who had died two years earlier.

Zora la Vampira (1972-1985) was an erotic/horror comic book series about a female vampire’s sexually-charged adventures as she sought to satisfy her taste for both blood and sex! She was one of many such supernatural characters in the fumetti tradition of sex, violence, and horror. Fumetti are, simply, Italian comic books. This cover illustration was painted by one of the most talented artists of the genre, Alessandro Biffignandi.

Commercial Art: A British merchandise and jewellery designer, and contemporary fantasy illustrator, Anne Stokes has produced artwork for books, record albums, and games, including Dungeons & Dragons. Her art has also been licenced for posters, T-shirts, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, tarot and greeting cards, coffee mugs, and jewellery. This piece (left), entitled Await the Night, is from her Gothic Collection and was adapted, too, as a collectible figurine. See: www.annestokes.com

On the right is cover art produced for a paperback vampire novel, circa 1960; the artist is unidentified and likely one of the many unsung in-house commercial illustrators hired to turn out such artwork.

The best Vampire Movie Posters featured dynamic designs and gloriously garish artwork rendered in a variety of styles.

The Vampire on Page and Screen

History’s poets and writers have showcased the vampire over the centuries, some adding to the mythology an erotic element. Among the most influential works of the early 19th century was “The Vampyre” (1819), a short story written by John William Polidori (1795-1821), personal physician to Romantic poet Lord Byron.

During the summer of 1816—the so-called Year Without a Summer, a recent volcanic eruption having caused unusually cool temperatures and heavy rain over Europe—Byron welcomed guests to his rented villa near Lake Geneva, Switzerland. In the evenings, the group amused themselves telling ghost stories by the fire, until their host proposed that they each write a horror story of their own. Polidori’s “The Vampyre” came of this challenge, which also, famously, begat Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818).

Victorian vampire tales often featured an alluring, elegant neck-biter, seductively preying on young, virtuous women who find themselves at the same time repelled by and attracted to the gentleman. Gothic horror virtuoso Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s (1814-1873) novella, Carmilla (1872), offered readers a Sapphic angle, his titular character the template for many a lesbian vampire to come.

Byron, Goethe, Tolstoy, Théophile Gautier, and Alexandre Dumas, pére are among the literary greats who were inspired by the vampire. Contemporary novelists Anne Rice, Chelsey Quinn Yarbro, Laurel Hamilton, Montreal-based Nancy Kilpatrick, Stephanie Meyer, Richard Matheson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, and countless others, followed in their footsteps.

Advancing the genre on screen were films like F.W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), Tod Browning’s definitive Dracula (1931), and the numerous vampire pictures of the Hammer Horror oeuvre (1958-1974) starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Ingrid Pitt, and others.

More recent fare has included The Hunger (1983), Fright Night (1985; remade 2011), The Lost Boys (1987), the Francis Ford Coppola-directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), 30 Days of Night (2007), the Swedish Let the Right One In (2008; remade in English as Let Me In, 2010), as well as television series like the Canadian-made, Toronto-set Forever Knight (1992-1996), Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and its spin-off, Angel (1999-2004), True Blood (2008-2014), and The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017).

Thomas Peckett Prest (1810-1859), a hack writer and prolific author of penny dreadfuls, co-wrote with James Malcolm Rymer (1814-1884) perhaps the first vampire best-seller, Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (serialized 1845-1847; book, 1847).

The gory tale predated by 50 years that undisputed masterwork of vampire fiction, penned by a relatively unknown Irish writer who, early in his career, had served as an unpaid theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, a newspaper co-owned at the time by the aforementioned Le Fanu.

Abraham “Bram” Stoker’s (1847-1912) Dracula was first published in 1897 and his Transylvanian count has come to epitomize the vampire.

Stoker’s research of Eastern Europe’s vampire legends, while preparing to write his novel, led him to the grisly stories surrounding one of history’s most savage figures, Vlad Basarab.

Vlad the Impaler

Stoker based his fictional blood-thirsty count in part on this very real and equally blood-thirsty late-1400s ruler of Wallachia, now part of southern Romania. Vlad III, also known as Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler, was a son of the notoriously cold-blooded Prince Vlad Dracul (translates as “dragon”). Vlad the younger thus became Draculaea, or Dracula, son of the dragon.

Vlad Dracula was a formidable warrior but it his sadistic brutality that earned him his inhuman reputation. According to various historical accounts, he would have his victims flayed, dismembered, and roasted or boiled over flame, among other torments. But his favourite means of execution was to impale his victims on long wooden stakes, which brought about a slow and excruciatingly painful death. Men, women, even children, noble or peasant, were not spared his unusual malice. The crossroads and fields surrounding his castle were a hellish display of impaled corpses. In one rampage, some 30,000 met their end on the stake! While reports of his barbarity differ as to details, there are sufficient affidavits from various sources to conclude that Vlad Dracula was, indeed, one of history’s most diabolical personages.

Elizabeth Báthory

Another historical figure whose supposed cruelty contributed to the vampire myth was the comely Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, who began a bloody spree about 100 years after Vlad Dracula died.

Initiated into the black arts by her manservant and her nurse, she is believed to have engaged in macabre pleasures which involved the drinking of human blood. With her husband often away at war, and later, following his death by undetermined causes, Báthory and her minions would lure young, chaste girls to her castle with promises of employment as servants. But once there, these innocents would be hung on chains, their veins opened, and their blood drained so that the countess, obsessed with her own beauty, might bathe in their virgin blood, which she apparently believed would preserve her youthfulness. This and other devilish tortures awaited any maiden who found herself within the walls of the countess’ Castle Csejthe!

Having grown careless disposing of her victims’ bodies, she was eventually found out, arrested, and brought to trial. As a noblewoman, she was spared the execution meted out to her accomplices. Instead, she was walled up in her bedchamber, with only a narrow slit in the masonry permitted, through which she received food and water. She died after four years of this imprisonment.

Báthory’s depraved excesses may well have been exaggerated with repeated tellings, and some historians argue that her crimes might also have been purposely embellished to politically benefit her aristocratic rivals. Others speculate that she was almost certainly that rarity, a female sexual sadist and serial killer.

Often cited as an inspiration, it must be noted that Stoker’s research for Dracula may, or may not have extended to Báthory’s blood-soaked story.

The Vampire Endures

Today, the vampire is a fixture of popular culture and, arguably, the most preeminent monster of horror literature and film, with tabletop RPGs and video games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Castlevania extending the mythos further still.

The unquestionable appeal of the vampire has been tied by some to blood, coursing through our bodies, the life-sustaining essence of our very lives, and additionally has been posited as our means of metaphorically coping with a supressed desire for sexual abandon, as well as the dread of our own mortality. So beguiling are Dracula and his cohorts that within the Goth subculture, for example, adherents of “sanguine vampirism” actually drink each other’s blood, motivated by a potent fascination with the fiction, the established aesthetic and lifestyle, an occult belief, or for some, a cult-like devotion to the long and terrible legacy of the vampire throughout human history.

Next Post: 3:00PM

This is Post 2 of 4.

At this moment, the club is holding its annual Super Sci-Fi Book Sale at our downtown meeting locale. As such, there is no interactive ZOOM-chat component included with this month’s MonSFFA event.

But for our out-of-town club members and friends, we do offer today, here online, a few Halloween-themed items of interest, culled from our meeting archives.

The Horror, The Horror…

For your perusal, then, this Halloween quiz originally ran as part of our October 15, 2022 Halloween-themed e-Meeting. Good luck! We’ll run the answers in our closing post, today, at 3:00PM.

1) Halloween is the day before which holiday?

2) The tradition of making Jack-o-Lanterns to ward off evil spirits is thousands of years old. Which vegetable were they originally made out of?

3) According to superstition, if you stare into a mirror at midnight on Halloween, what will you see?

4) From which region in the world do pumpkins originate?

5) Who wrote the novel Frankenstein?

6) Transylvania is a region in which country?

7) Halloween has its origins in which ancient Celtic festival?

8) Which actor played Dr. Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

9) Is a pumpkin a fruit or vegetable?

10) What is the significance of seeing a spider on Halloween?

11) Which country celebrates the Day of the Dead starting at midnight on October 31?

12) According to superstition, a person born on Halloween has what particular ability?

13) Who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas?

14) Which vampire said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m going to give you the choice I never had.”?

15) How many people were hanged during the Salem Witch Trials?

16) Every Halloween, Charlie Brown helps his friend Linus wait for which character to appear?

17) What do people “bob” for on Halloween?

18) Who is said to haunt the White House Rose Garden?

19) Pumpkins can be orange, white, green, or what other colour?

20) In the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, how many people are killed with a chainsaw?

21) What’s the body-count in the film Halloween?

22) In which year was the movie Freaks made?

23) In the original Alien film, how many alien eggs were made for the egg chamber inside the downed spacecraft?

24) How many Oscar nominations did Psycho receive?

Next Post: 2:00PM

At this very moment, the club is holding its annual Super Sci-Fi Book Sale at our downtown meeting locale. As such, there is no interactive ZOOM-chat component included with this month’s MonSFFA event.

But for our out-of-town club members and friends, we do offer today, here online, a few Halloween-themed items of interest, culled from our meeting archives.

This post has gone up at 12:00PM; we’ll put up another three, at 1:00PM, 2:00PM, and 3:00PM. Check them out, and enjoy a little Halloween fun! 

The Horror, The Horror…

For your perusal, then, the following was featured as part of our DIY October 17, 2020 Virtual MonSFFA Meeting:

October 31st arrives soon and legend has it that Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, is the night on which the veil between our corporeal world and the spirits’ realm is at its thinnest, allowing a measure of intersection between the two. So we thought it prudent to offer a few important tips on how to live through these nocturnal hours. Here are our:

1) NEVER SPLIT UP!

In any deadly encounter with an unspeakable, preternatural abomination, when you have the benefit of numbers, never split up! Slap upside the head the idiot in your party who proposes a plan of action that involves your faction dividing its forces! Never, ever follow such counsel! You’d just be making it easier for the beastly terror to pick you all off one by one! By sticking together, at least one, or maybe two of you have a chance of making it out alive!

2) NEVER INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE OF UNUSUAL SOUNDS!

If you hear a strangely unnatural or unanticipated loud noise, for Pete’s sake, do not volunteer to seek out its origin when your companions ask “What was that?” Under no circumstances should you go looking for what caused the noise in question! Appreciate that this is an audible clue, a hint, a sign, a portent of something terrible lurking just around the corner! But if you do choose to throw caution to the wind and venture after the source of said noise, only to find that it appears to have just been the cat, you have mere moments to live! Run in the hope that you’ll prove sufficiently fleet of foot to evade a grisly demise, but fully expect to die!

3) DON’T LOOK IN THERE!

Never open a closet door if you even in the least suspect that something other than someone’s wardrobe is hanging within!

By the same token, kids, what good does it do you to know what might be lurking under your bed, anyway? Why risk a peek? If a monster has established itself below your box spring, you’ll be up all night, too scared to sleep lest the creature come out from under there to get you while you slumber! And if there’s nothing under your bed but dust bunnies, you’ll be up all night worrying about when a monster might decide to take up residence! Either way, you won’t be getting any sleep, so that being the case, ipso facto, you don’t really need use of a bed, do you? Get up, go downstairs, and watch TV until it’s time for breakfast!

And ladies, take note, never draw the shower curtain unless you are absolutely sure that the only thing behind that flimsy barrier is a bath tray holding a washcloth, luffa, bar of soap, and a bottle of shampoo! This is indispensable guidance to keep in mind, particularly if you are staying overnight at a remote roadside motel run by a clerk with mommy issues!

4) ALWAYS RUN AWAY!

Animals, including human beings, are possessed of a primal instinct when faced with danger to either take on the threat, head-on, or to flee. Behavioral scientists refer to this innate impulse as the “Fight or Flight” reflex. Particularly when dealing with entities evil, monstrous, or supernatural in nature, always choose “Flight!” I mean, do you really think you’ll be able to take down a malevolent demon summoned from Perdition’s flames with that baseball bat leaning up against the wall over there?

It’s very important to understand the physics of running away. When sprinting full-out for your life from a monster giving chase, understand that even though you are running at track-star speed and the monster is shambling along in plodding pursuit, it will invariably catch up with you! As a general rule, the monster’s rate of gain is inversely proportional to the speed at which you are running.

This equation describes the reciprocal relationship between “X”, defined as your speed, and “Y”, defined as the distance between you and the monster.

As your speed (X) increases, the distance between you and the monster (Y) decreases! If we then define escape as “E”, thus does the following mathematical statement describe your chances of success in that regard:

To further hamper your efforts, you can expect to trip and fall once or twice, more often if you are female! And, you can also anticipate entangling your clothing on something, or becoming pinned under a fallen tree trunk or some such, and so have to waste valuable seconds struggling to free yourself as the monster lumbers ever closer.

If you drove to the scene, incidentally, should you actually make it back to your car in one piece, relieved that you can now speed away to safety, expect that you’ll either fumble with and drop your keys, or that your automobile, inexplicably, won’t start, even though mechanically, the vehicle was working just fine earlier!

Your only real hope in such circumstances is that something comes into play which temporarily distracts the monster, causing it to break off its pursuit and allowing you an opportune moment to scram! Obviously, it is strongly recommended that you take full advantage of such a moment!

5) IF YOU THINK IT’S SAFE TO GO IN, OR OUT ON THE WATER, THINK AGAIN!

It’s never safe to go in the water! Piranhas, barracudas, and sharks are the least of the dangers to be found beneath the waves! You just don’t know what’s down there! You have no idea what shocking, scaly aberration may be swimming around below the surface, waiting to sink jagged teeth into parts of your anatomy, or wrap slimy digits or tentacles around your leg and pull you under! So swim quickly back to the beach and get to high ground if you hear someone calling out a command to “Release the Kraken!” And never, for any reason whatsoever, wade or dive into rank, murky swamp, brackish lagoon, chilling lake, or open ocean waters! I mean, do you really want to risk gruesome injury or even death just so you can snorkel dive, waterski, or skinny-dip with your girlfriend or boyfriend? Choose a safer option! If neither of you have a backyard pool, just run around together under a lawn sprinkler!

And while you’re on the water, never come up alongside and board any drifting, derelict, ship you may come across while at sea. To satisfactorily fulfill your maritime duty to lend assistance, note the wreck’s position, radio it in to the Coast Guard, and let them deal with it! That’s their job, after all! And given that you are not employed by the Coast Guard, be certain to remain aboard your own vessel at all times! However, if you do decide to board the decaying hulk under some misguided notion that there might be a number of poor souls still aboard, incapacitated and in need of aid, you may well be correct! There might be a few, or perhaps many poor souls still aboard! But the thing is, they would surely be, at this point, just that: souls! Likely of the cursed variety! And if these ghosts have not yet moved on to the other side, you don’t want to stick around to find out why! Get off the ship posthaste!

666) SPURN THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST!

At all costs, balk at anything bearing a sequence of three sixes—an address, hotel suite number, route number, flight number, part of a license plate or telephone number, even a price tag or lottery ticket displaying three consecutive sixes! And definitely steer clear of anyone sporting a “666” tattoo! Generally, abnegate anything and anyone connected in any way with that number! You’ll have a devil of a time unless you do! And that means this entry, by the way; why are you still reading this one? Stop! Right now! It may already be too late!

7) FACE FACTS!

When you’ve reached the point of strapping your welt- and blister-covered adolescent daughter to her bed as she hurls both vulgarities and vomit in your direction, you must face the fact that the situation is well beyond the involvement of her school’s guidance counselor! And don’t bother dialing your local health clinic to schedule an appointment with a medical specialist; call the nearest diocese and ask to be connected to the Department of Exorcisms!

Similarly, if a cabal of Satanists shows up at your baby shower to fawn over your newborn son, you need to face the fact that Junior is the son of Satan and his “Terrible Two’s” are going to be “H”-“E”- double hockey sticks!

8) GET OUT OF TOWN!

Should you take a wrong turn and in due course happen upon a small, dusty, deserted town in the middle of nowhere, consider that there is probably a good reason for said hamlet being deserted! Do not under any circumstances stop to see if there’s someone around who might be able to give you directions back to the main highway! Step on the gas and keep going, as fast as you can, easing up on the accelerator only when you are well outside of town limits.

Make certain, when planning your travel itinerary, to bypass towns like Amityville, Haddonfield, Derry, Twin Peaks, Wayward Pines, Sleepy Hollow, Burkittsville, Hawkins, Eerie, Cuesta Verde, Santa Mira, Sunnydale, Bodega Bay, Antonio Bay, Mystic Falls, Bon Temps, Midwich, Dunwich, Innsmouth, Arkham, of specific note for you ladies, Stepford, and finally, Night Vale.

As a general rule, steer clear of any off-the-beaten-track, rural enclave, particularly if located in Maine, or if, upon entering town, you can hear the distinct twang of banjo strings being plucked! Nothing good will come of stopping for gas or to get a bite to eat at the local diner! Skedaddle but quick!

9) DON’T GO LOOKING FOR TROUBLE IN THE WOODS!

You and your friends should eschew equipping yourselves with GoPros for a hike into the Maryland countryside looking for witches! The footage you’d shoot is likely to be the only thing that would survive such an excursion! Instead, stay home and watch reruns of Bewitched!

On a related note, you youngsters should at no time hazard a bike ride out to the local graveyard or the old, abandoned house at the end of the street on some foolhardy double-dare! And don’t go looking to solve any longstanding, spooky neighbourhood mysteries, either! Whatever the rumours may be about what happened that night all those years ago is probably all just a lot of hooey, anyway! Don’t be sticking your nose into business that doesn’t concern you! You’re not in a Scooby-Doo episode, for Heaven’s sake! Just play ball hockey on the driveway or something, and make sure you come in as soon as the street lights are turned on!

10) PRECLUDE HOLIDAY HORRORS!

Everyone needs an interlude, from time to time, for rest and recreation; a little downtime, a break from the day-to-day, an opportunity to get away from it all and unwind! Organize your get-away, by all means, but be mindful that bizarre and frightening peril very often arises precisely while you are on vacation!

To avert potentially finding yourself in a deleterious predicament, exercise some basic cautions when planning your sabbatical as you do not wish to find yourself up the proverbial creek without a paddle! Live by the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared! For example, when packing for your trip, always include a well-stocked first-aid kit. Make sure that your principal mode of transportation, whether airline, cruise line, rail or bus line, comes highly recommended and boasts an outstanding safety record. Should you intend to employ your own or a friend’s camper, have the vehicle thoroughly checked by a reliable mechanic before departure to insure that it’s in good working order, the aim, here, being to minimize the chances of your breaking down somewhere along the route on dangerous ground with no means of engineering a quick exit.

But perhaps most importantly, plan ahead so as not to wind up in uninviting territory to begin with! As a general rule, if travelling on the Continent, give Transylvania a wide berth! Detour around the slopes of cloud-enveloped Mount Trollenberg, too! If voyaging by sea, travel through the Bermuda Triangle is not prescribed under any circumstances! Never charter passage on either the Lady Ann or the Mary Celeste, and plot a course around such atolls as Skull Island and Isla Nublar! Avoid Scotland’s island of Summerisle, as well! Stay out of Japan’s Aokigahara Forest, and on no occasion board the KTX to Busan! When considering hostelry, never book a cabin at Camp Crystal Lake or make reservations to bed-and-breakfast at Exham Priory! By no means ever check in to the Bates Motel or the Overlook Hotel, from either of which it is exceedingly improbable that you will ever check out!

11) DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE!

If your car breaks down or runs out of gas one night on a lonely road in a region with no cellphone service, do not hike up the road a ways to that old ramshackle house to ask if you can use their landline in order to call for a tow. Use your head, man! It’s a hoary, dilapidated building, a derelict dwelling probably uninhabited, and even if someone does live there, they almost certainly do not have a functioning phone! But if you choose to ignore this advice and find yourself standing on the porch wondering why nobody answered the front door when you knocked, take this gift of an opportunity to correct your error and sprint forthwith back to your vehicle! Should you opt, instead, to foolishly continue with your reckless course of action and, upon trying that rickety front door, find that it isn’t locked, positively do not enter the house! If you insist on entering, be sure that you’re wearing your brown pants! But now would be a good time to turn and bolt back to your car, jump in, roll up the windows, and engage the door locks, after which you may wish to cower in the back seat under a blanket until sunrise!

12) DON’T GO DOWN INTO THE BASEMENT!

Never search for your missing friend in a dark, dank basement, especially if you are alone and the power has gone out during a raging thunderstorm! But if you must, carry a working lantern or flashlight with fresh batteries installed, not a candle that can easily gutter and extinguish at the slightest exhalation of fetid breath wafting from the unholy maw of the tall, dark, and hideous thing that may inhabit that basement!

And while we’re discussing this topic, be careful on those invariably creaky staircases that lead down to basements, for you risk escape-impeding injury! Should one of the rotting wooden steps collapse under your weight, you’ll plummet through, your fall broken only by the putrid, decaying carcass of something, or someone, under those stairs! Play it safe and stay out of basements altogether!

13) DON’T TOUCH THAT!

Never handle any strange, pulsating goop that you’ve discovered in a secret laboratory, next to a meteorite crater, or around a ruptured barrel clearly marked as a container of toxic waste! The government has people for that sort of thing, so don’t let your curiosity get the better of you. Remember that age-old proverb involving the fate of curious cats, and note that you do not benefit from having nine lives!

14) NO MAGIC WORDS OF THE DARK VARIETY!

Never open any dusty old tome on the cover of which is inscribed a pentagram, or specifically, the title “Necronomicon.” But if you do injudiciously crack the spine on said book, under no circumstances attempt to carry out any of the exercises outlined in any chapter, or read aloud any incantations therein, even as a joke! Basically, do not attempt to translate ancient writings that may result in the opening of a portal to Hell!

15) NEVER PLAY GAMES WITH THE FORCES OF EVIL!

If your old Ouija Board or Magic 8-Ball begins to actually work, toss the game away quickly and vamoose! Don’t ask “just one more question,” for the answer will, in all likelihood, spell your doom!

16) GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!

If the police call to inform you that they’ve managed to trace those threatening crank phone calls you’ve been getting all evening, and that the calls are coming from within the very house in which you now stand, make immediately for the front door and flee screaming into the street! The kids asleep upstairs? You’re just the babysitter, not a hero! Look, it’s not like their parents agreed to danger pay or anything like that! You don’t get paid enough for this shit as it is.

Still on the theme of domiciles, if the walls of your new house suddenly start bleeding, recognize that you have a serious problem! This is not the unfortunate result of your having used discounted wallpaper paste that has now liquefied in this humidity, nor the fluke confluence of mismatched chemicals in your primer and semi-gloss that have reacted with each other and caused the paint to run! Occum’s Razor, people!—of any given set of explanations for an occurrence, the simplest is most likely the correct one. So this is obviously the result of evil demonic forces at play in your living room! Don’t just stand there wondering what brand of household cleaning fluid will get that stain out! Even if you were to call in a priest to bless it, your bottle of Mr. Clean cannot help you, here! Vacate the premises without delay!

Never take any bet that involves your spending the night in an antediluvian, cobweb-enshrouded Victorian-style manor! Also, if household appliances suddenly start switching on by themselves, it’s got nothing to do with the wiring. Don’t waste valuable minutes checking your fuse box, just get the eff out of the house!

And always remember that oft-cited axiom about the most important factor with regard to real estate: location, location, location! So keep that in mind when listening to the real estate agent’s sales pitch. Regardless of the owner having substantially dropped his asking price—a red flag if ever there was one!—do not sign a contract to purchase a house that you discover was once owned by Satanists, or was the site of a gruesome murder a few years ago, or was built atop an old Indian burial ground, or next to a river into which an unprincipled chemical products manufacturer upstream has surreptitiously dumped toxic waste for years, thereby inducing ghastly mutations in the local fauna! Politely thank the agent for his time and get out of Dodge!

17) SORRY, BUT NO SEX!

This one is specific to you teenagers, and while it is a lot to ask, consider that your very lives are at stake! Fact is, sexually active teenagers, principally young girls of the babysitting, cheerleading, sorority, or summer camp-counselor persuasion, are like catnip to mute, monochromatically dressed strangers exhibiting a particularly lethal skill with any of the following items: axe, machete, carving knife, pneumatic hammer, power drill, welding torch, Sunbeam Mixmaster, and most especially, chainsaw! They are not fun dates!

These guys usually have a record of savage butchery, and have often recently escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane. They tend to display an elevated level of physical strength, and demonstrate an uncanny capacity for surviving any assault on their person by their desperate, struggling victims. Repeated clubbing with a blunt instrument, being run over by a car, set aflame, or multiple gunshot wounds seem not to bother these dudes terribly much!

Exercise the same caution around any small-town Billy-Bob who seems a little slow and whose family, according to the locals, “live just outside of town, mostly keep to themselves, and don’t bother nobody!”

18) WHEN YOU THINK IT’S OVER, IT ISN’T!

Miraculously, you’ve somehow managed to survive your confrontation with the nightmarishly savage blade-wielding fiend that has been stalking you and your friends all night, and have just heroically struck the brute a killing blow, leaving him prone and motionless on the ground at your feet! “Is he dead?” your sobbing, pretty, female co-survivor and potential new girlfriend will surely ask. You must resist the understandable urge, in your newfound role as her brave protector, to turn your attention away from the beastly hellion towards the girl and respond in the affirmative, for the brute is almost certainly not at all dead! It is unfailingly at this very moment of inattention to your foe that he will suddenly spring up, grab you firmly by the throat, lifting you right up off the ground, and fatally run you through with his weapon! So what have we learned, here?—never get close enough to see if the murderous psycho is still breathing, because if you do, you won’t be for much longer!

To avoid this scenario playing out as above described, you must remember, immediately after having struck your blow, to quickly back well away and in one fluid motion, turn and race off like a scared rabbit, thus giving yourself a valuable head start over your female companion! She probably wasn’t going to go out with you, anyway.

19) MOVE AWAY!

Should a tall, dark-haired man accompanied by a petite, stunningly attractive woman with shoulder-length auburn locks knock on your door flashing FBI badges wishing to question you about unusual goings-on in your neighbourhood, move to another neighbourhood!

Next Post: 1:00PM

The Super Sci-Fi Book Sale will take place today, in “Salle St-Mathieu” at the downtown Nouvel Hotel, 1740 Boul. René-Lévesque O. (corner St-Mathieu)! Doors open at 12:00PM!

Are you out of town this weekend? Can’t make it to the Super Sci-Fi Book Sale this afternoon? Then visit MonSFFA online for our Halloween Special, offered as an alternative, and which will unroll on the club’s Website during the book sale!

Saturday, October 25, 12:00PM-3:00PM

www.MonSFFA.ca

Attention SF/F readers: MonSFFA’s Super Sci-Fi Book Sale is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, Saturday, October 25!

Be sure to bring shopping bags and a stash of coins and folding money with you to this utterly amazing, astounding, astonishing bargain-bonanza of a book sale! This is your opportunity to stock up on all your fall and winter sci-fi reading! Get in some early Christmas shopping, too!

Paperbacks, hardcovers, trades, plus many comics, magazines, and even a few DVDs—we’ll have thousands of titles available, by authors from Asimov to Zelazny, and at the lowest prices in all of the Seven Kingdoms and known space! Take advantage of our “Bulk Book Bargains”—the more you buy, the more you save!

The Super Sci-Fi Book Sale will take place in “Salle St-Mathieu” at the downtown Nouvel Hotel, 1740 Boul. René-Lévesque O. (corner St-Mathieu)! Doors open at 12:00PM!

So spread the word to family, friends, and co-workers! And bring a couple of fellow SF/F fans with you to the sale!

Volunteers needed! Help us stage this event by lending a hand with unpacking and set-up! We’ll need volunteers on Friday evening before the sale (that’s this evening!), and Saturday morning, day of the sale (tomorrow!). If you are able to help out, please meet up with us at the Nouvel Hotel Friday evening at 6:30PM, and/or Saturday morning at 10:00AM. We thank you in advance for helping make this book sale possible!

Contact MonSFFA at: president@monsffa.ca