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The
Merril Collection, A Rare Jewel
Favourite Canadian Works
An Interview With Hal Clement
News From the French Quarter
Michelle Sagara: Motherhood and the Writing Muse
Up and Coming
Awards for 1992 Fiction
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The Merril
Collection, A Rare Jewel
by Mici Gold
Although many Torontonians may not know it, they
possess the world's major public science fiction and fantasy library, the
Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy. This
library, with over 53,000 items in its holdings, is one of the world's
largest collections of the genre. But what exactly is it? And how can the
public use it? As a new Friend of the Collection, I wanted to know.
The library began in 1970, I learned, when author and
anthologist Judith Merril donated her personal collection of some 5,000
items to the Toronto Public Library. In an "extremely far-sighted
move," says Collection Head Lorna Toolis, the Library established the
Spaced Out Library for research.
Approximately ten years ago, the collection expanded
to provide circulating paperback novels and anthologies, now totalling
about 8,600 books. On January 1, 1991, the name of the collection
changed to "the Merril Collection..." to avoid confusion about
exactly what "spaced-out" meant! Although the donor felt somewhat
nonplussed by the honour, she does continue to take an active interest in
the collection and maintains an office in the building.
At present, the library is humbly housed in downtown Toronto on the second floor of 40 St. George Street. It shares the space with two
of the Toronto Library's other special collections: Boys and Girls House
and the Osborne Collection. During its operating hours, the library is
filled with students, university professors, writers, media researchers and
members of the public who come in to conduct research or just read.
Sometimes public school classes come by to learn about speculative fiction, and often groups of writers or fans meet in the
building. The library staff bustles from one request to another in a
whirlwind of activity. Somehow, they always seem to have time to answer one
more question or find that last obscure reference.
For those of us who love science fiction and fantasy,
the Collection itself is a treasure. As part of its mandate, the library
collects at least one reference (non-circulating) copy of all genre science
fiction and fantasy published each year. This is usually, but not always, a
hard cover copy, and a paperback copy is added to the circulating
collection.
Acquiring some of these books can present a challenge
for the staff as much speculative fiction gets published by small or little-known
specialty presses. The librarians study catalogues from
publishers and collectors and refer to fanzines and critical
magazines so as not to miss obscure publications in the field.
In addition to mainstream science fiction and fantasy,
the library also collects writing classified as "magic realism."
Initially and most commonly used to describe a fort of literature
associated with twentieth century Latin America, magic realism is about
events of the normal world with a slightly more-than-real essence. Where
fantasy tells about alternate worlds, magic realism is about magical events
in this world. Various works by Michael Moorcock fit into this category,
such as The English Assassin, Mother London and The Condition of Muzak. Another writer in this field
is William Kotzwinkle, whose books Herr
Nightingale and the Satin Woman and The
Great World Circus are examples. Much magic realism appears in
anthologies.
Of course, no decent collection of speculative fiction
would omit periodicals. The Merril Collection has a comprehensive selection
of both fiction and non-fiction periodicals which can be read in the
library. Canada's own On Spec is available, as well as Analog, Asimov's Science
Fiction Magazine, Aboriginal and Aurealis,
carrying Australian speculative fiction, and many more. Non-fiction
magazines, most reviewing the genre but also supporting the future and
speculative sciences, include Locus,
Skeptical Inquirer, Omni, Spaceflight
and Science Fiction Chronicle. Not
only does the library maintain current issues, it collects back issues when
they are available to complete broken runs. Particularly noteworthy are the
library's sets of pulp magazines, such as Amazing Stories, Astounding (which later became Analog), Galaxy, Space Adventures,
Stirring Science Stories, Unknown and Avon Fantasy Reader.
These were
recently inserted into mylar sleeves to protect them from deterioration;
pulp magazines were not designed to last!
The library also collects another form of periodical
that abounds in speculative fiction: fanzines. Written by devotees of the
genre, fanzines contain reviews, news about authors and publishers, advance
publicity on novels, retrospective analyses and sometimes fiction. Fanzines
tend to start and stop at irregular intervals, but the library attempts to
collect as widely and as thoroughly as possible. The fanzines in the
library's file boxes bear whimsical titles such as "Interplanetary
Corn Chips," "Mothalode Morning Mishap," "Lavender
Dragon," "Seldon's Plan," "Skyhook," and, of
course, "Captain George's Penny Dreadful." The library recently
received several boxes of Star Trek fiction fanzines, but these are in
storage at present due to lack of space.
Recently, the library has begun to include graphic
novels, also known as comics, in its holdings. On the special shelf devoted
to these soft cover books, fans will find The Illustrated Harlan Ellison, for example, which includes one
of my all-time favourite stories, "Repent Harlequin! Said the Tick Tock Man." Also on the shelf are Elfquest, Batman, Watchmen and Sandman. Neuromancer and The Vampire Lestat are adaptations
of print books, by William Gibson and Anne Rice, respectively. The staff felt
that these graphic works represented a significant and growing branch of
the genre. And to support this part of the collection, they also offer The Comics Journal in the
periodical section.
In keeping with its mandate as a research library, the
Merril Collection has also assembled a comprehensive selection of non-fiction
about the genre: biographical works, criticism, bibliographies and
histories. One of the newest and most outstanding additions in this area is
the revised Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction, by John Clute and Peter Nichols (1992). This work, which also
documents fantasy, is a good place to start whether the subject is history,
biography or literature. For users expecting to find material related to
speculative fiction, the library maintains a 001 section, with books on
subjects ranging from astrology to spaceflight to UFO's.
An appropriately modern development in the collection
is the inclusion of various audio-visual materials, including movies,
plays, television, role-playing books, comics, radio and software, because,
according to the Collection Head, "in the last decade, science fiction
and fantasy has mutated in scope." Although presently small, the
number of AV items is growing. The library limits the number of formats it
collects to those expected to endure and to be supported by future
technology. Unfortunately, the collection does not yet have the equipment
or space for some of these to be studied.
The library also collects original science fiction and
fantasy art and prints. Students of art history can also find books in the
collection describing this kind of art.
The staff maintains a vertical file with some two
hundred subjects related to speculative fiction. Short clippings and
articles contributed by users and Friends of the library fill this file.
Not surprisingly, the Merril Collection has the
world's best collection of Canadian speculative fiction. Although most of
the library's holdings are in English, it also collects French material,
especially that written in Canada. It does have some material written in
other languages from around the world, wherever there is a
"significant SF community", according to the collection policy—Russia
and Japan, for example. Much of this is received as donations because the
library is a depository for World SF, "an international organization
of people professionally involved with speculative fiction." Because
of its international reputation, the Merril Collection also receives
original correspondence and manuscripts.
Accessing all this wonderful material requires the use
of an old-fashioned card—yes, paper—catalogue. Both
fiction and non-fiction is listed by author and title and there is a
subject catalogue for non-fiction monographs as well. All circulating
paperbacks can be found on the Toronto Public Library's Dynix on-line
catalogue, which users can consult at any branch.
One of the unique tools the library offers is a short
story catalogue listing all the stories, by author and title, in all the
anthologies in the collection. The staff anticipates putting the reference
author/title catalogue on the computer next. Users can also check a series
list, if they want to know all the titles in a particular author's series.
The periodical rolodex lists which issues of which periodicals the library
holds.
Updating and maintaining the collection is the
responsibility of three dedicated librarians. Lorna Toolis, as Collection head,
handles reference, makes acquisitions and administers, sometimes all at
once—one day she timed her interruptions as coming every ninety
seconds! She has also co-edited an anthology, Tesseracts4, which won an Aurora Award for best
anthology, and is helping to select and assemble the Mars Project CD of
literature that influenced the space explorers. As planned by the Planetary
Society, the disc will travel to Mars aboard Mars 94 as a gift to future
Martian settlers. In her daily tasks, Lorna is ably assisted by Mary
Cannings, who manages the circulating collection and carries some of the
cataloguing duties, and Annette Mocek, responsible for reference,
cataloguing and AV materials. Their work and the collection are supported
by Nancy Krygsman, the Assistant Chief Librarian.
The library also enjoys the assistance of the Friends
of the Merril Collection, people who have an interest in science fiction
and fantasy. The Friends offer memberships which fund the Reading Programs
bringing in authors to read from recent works or works-in-progress.
(Membership information can be found elsewhere in this newsletter.)
The Friends also produce Sol Rising and help at receptions. This organization relies on the
support of some special people, whose names have appeared frequently in
these pages. Larry Hancock, the present Chairman and editor of the newsletter,
has been involved with the Friends since its inception. When he's not
working or helping the Friends, he writes The Silent Invasion comic series, which can be found on the
graphic novel shelf. John Millard, a member of First Fandom, is co-chairman
of the building committee and past Chairman of the Friends. And Doris
Bercarich, who is the secretary/treasurer, also provides the catering for
functions offered by the Friends.
Both staff and Friends are excited by the prospect of
a new building for the Merril Collection, Boys and Girls House and the
Osborne Collection. Now in the planning stage, the new facilities will
occupy the southwest corner of College and Huron Streets. When the building
is completed, the Merril Collection will occupy the third floor.
The new space will provide "miles" of
compact shelves in environmentally-controlled conditions that will help
preserve the older and more fragile material. A sound-proof room will
contain the hardware for enjoying the AV materials, and quiet study space
will be available in the reference section.
The Friends will be able to hold the Reading Programs
in a 250-person meeting room in the same building. And staff will be able
to prepare thematic exhibits of material, including hanging relevant art on
the walls.
Until that time, the staff will continue to acquire
books and assist researchers and to maintain what the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls "one of the world's
more important SF research libraries." And as its size and reputation
grow, more and more Torontonians will, like me, discover what a fantastic
jewel they hold in their mundane hands.
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Favourite
Canadian Books
By John Robert Colombo
Out of the blue I received a phone call from the
promotion person at a large publishing house. He introduced himself as
Salman A. Nensi and went on to identify himself as the publicist for Random
House of Canada.
Everyone has heard of Random House, founded by the
late Bennett Cerf, publisher of the Modern Library, etc. I am never certain
how many books Random publishes in Canada, but I am familiar with its
excellent and extensive list of American publications which it distributes
in this country.
Sal came right to the point. He was preparing a
"press kit" to draw media attention to Canadian science fiction.
In Canada, Random House distributes the
Ballantine/Del Rey paperback line. Current/ forthcoming titles by Canadian
authors include Dave Duncan's Upland
Outlaws, Michelle Sagara's Sundered
Trilogy, and Crawford Kilian's Red
Magic.
Sal mentioned the appearance of Fossil Hunter, the latest novel by Robert J. Sawyer
("award-winning" "Toronto's own", etc.) and said
or suggested that these novels "have legs". He wanted to give
them proper send-offs. Specifically, he wanted them reviewed like
mainstream novels rather that like science-fiction novels.
"There's one way to do that," I said.
"What's that?" he asked. No doubt he had the
vision of a big-concept, no-cost, fast fix.
"The way to ensure that science-fiction novels
are treated like mainstream novels is to arrange for their first release in
hard-back, not paper-back," I explained.
No doubt Sal was disappointed with my response. After
all, he was operating out of the Toronto office, not the New York headquarters. As well, what I
was proposing was the province of another department, editorial and
marketing, not sales and promotion. What he had at hand to promote were
paperbacks, not hard-backs.
Yet to his credit he pushed ahead. He explained that
he had contacted a number of writers—not really "movers and
shakers," but journalists and authors known to be readers of science fiction—and they had
agreed to contribute promotional copy free of charge to the press kit.
The long and the short of it is that I agreed to
contribute to the press kit. Two enthusiasms did the trick: Sal's
enthusiasm for a worthy-enough project, my
enthusiasm for encouraging a national science fiction. I agreed to
contribute a list of my "favourite" Canadian fantastic fiction.
(I hasten to add that I did so out of interest and enthusiasm—and
also with the promise of some complimentary copies of current books from
Random House's catalogue. I don't believe in writing anything for nothing—Sol Rising being the exception that
proves the rule—and I advise other writers, full and part-time, to
act accordingly.)
What's your favourite colour? What's your favourite
name? Who's your favourite author? These are questions for children, yet
the notion of compiling a list is the concept of making a selection, with
one eye focused on past reading and another eye focused on future readers
of these works.
Anyway, here is the list I presented to Sal for use in
the press kit. It would be worthwhile to hear from readers of Sol Rising about some of their own favourite works.
Colombo's 13 Favourite Books of Canadian Fantastic Literature
Long before
I began Canadiana, I was reading and enjoying fantastic literature.
What I mean by fantastic
literature is science
fiction, fantasy fiction, and supernatural (including weird/horror) fiction.
Here are two rule of thumb genre distinctions:
SF is set in the future; fantasy is set in the past or
the never-never; supernatural fiction is set in the present.
SF is technically impossible; fantasy is materially
impossible; supernatural is unlikely (we hope!).
In general, fantastic literature places human beings
in contexts undreamt of by
"mainstream" writers of "psychological
realism."
Anyway, here I have listed 13 books of fantastic literature
written by Canadians which I have read with pleasure and insight and which
I plan to reread with additional pleasure and insight.
- A Strange Manuscript
Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888) by James De Mille. A classic novel of
adventure that takes the reader into the centre of the earth where a "lost race"
poses satiric and philosophic questions.
- Sick Heart River (1941) by John Buchan. A remarkable and moving
novel about a man-of-the-world's attainment of ultimate values, set in the valley of the mighty Nahanni River, Northwest Territories, by the novelist John
Buchan, Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir.
- Slan (1946) by A.E. van Vogt.
A classic and exciting novel about human beings who develop psychic
powers, written while the author, one of the great names of the Golden
Age of SF, was still living in Toronto.
- Consider Her Ways (1947) by Frederick
Philip Grove. An amazing imaginative satire, written by the Prairie
novelist more noted for his realistic novels, about a colony of ants
that treks across North America only to find its own values superior
to human values.
- Sunburst (1964) by Phyllis Gotlieb. A novel of
great insight and compassion which examines the effects of genetic
damage from a runaway nuclear reactor on a young girl.
- The Armies of the Moon (1972) by Gwendolyn MacEwen. Highly
evocative and imaginative poetry with a fantastic and science-fiction
edge inspired by the sight of the Moon.
- The Best of Judith Merril
(1976) by Judith Merril. Two poems
and nine stories set in other times and places written with a
"sense of gender" as well as a "sense of wonder"
by the respected writer and veteran anthologist.
- Stardance (1979) by Spider Robinson and Jeanne
Robinson. An impressive novel about—guess what?—the desire
of a dancer to perform an original work in the weightlessness of outer
space.
- Burning Chrome (1980) by William Gibson. Ten short
way out stories including the title story which imaginatively introduced
the concept of "virtual reality" and the term "cyberpunk."
- The Woman Who is the Midnight Wind (1987) by
Terence M. Green. Ten thoughtful, emotional, and gracefully written
stories of fantasy and science-fiction.
- Distant Signals and Other
Stories (1989)
by Andrew Weiner. Twelve
stories which deal impressively with problems (surprisingly like those
of the present) that infect the future.
- Chips & Gravey (1991) by William Gough. Fantasy?
Magic Realism? Channelling? A riotously funny novella of life in an
outport, complete with salty Newfoundland characters.
- Golden Fleece (1990) by Robert J. Sawyer. A novel
that combines adventure, mystery, and madness aboard a spaceship that
is as self-contained as the planet Earth.
John Robert
Colombo, knows as the Master Gatherer for his many compilations of
Canadiana, including fantastic literature, contributed the article on
English-Canadian Science Fiction in the new 1993 edition of the Science-Fiction Encyclopedia edited by John Chute and Peter Nicholas.
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An Interview
with Hal Clement
by Dr. Allan Weiss
Harry Clement Stubbs
was born in Somerville, MA, on May 30, 1922. He studied at Harvard and
received his B.S. in Astronomy and, after serving with the United States Air Force in World War 11, his M.Ed from Boston University in 1947. He taught high-school science and
mathematics in Massachusetts from 1947 to the present, apart from another stint in
the Air Force during the Korean War. He received his MS. from Simmons College in 1963.
Recently Sol Rising found
out that Harry Stubbs spent many summers of his youth in Canada and asked Dr. Allan Weiss to investigate further.
Here is the result of that interview.
One of the perpetual complaints of science-fiction
editors over the past few decades has been the dearth of true
"hard" SF: science fiction strictly based on the pure and applied
sciences. Since the 1950s, the name most frequently cited in discussions of
hard SF is that of Hal Clement (pseudonym of Harry Stubbs); Clement's
stories and novels reveal an in-depth knowledge of the physical sciences
(Clement received his B.S. in Astronomy at Harvard), and his wish to build
his worlds and situations rigorously on accepted scientific principles. He
was in Toronto as one of the guests at Ad
Astra 13.
Allan Weiss: I'd like to ask you about your
early days in Canada—about your visits to Prince Edward Island.
Hal Clement: Well, they were generally made
in the summer; my mother, and myself and after the first year or two my
younger sister—actually my sister was born during one of these visits
in Canada—we used to go up to Prince Edward Island and stay there for
three months or so while my father stayed in a job at home. I had several
cousins there; one of my mother's sisters had three sons and a daughter and
that was one of the farms we stayed at. One of the cousins was about ten
months younger than I was (Jack Bell) and we were very good friends and
were very unhappy whenever a summer was missed without our going there. He
shared my astronomy enthusiasm; he, like me, started trying to write
science fiction in our teens. I still look back on those days with quite a
bit of nostalgia, although my uncle, Jack's father, was a farmer from the
old school and didn't believe that boys should be left in bed after five in
the morning—should be kept busy for their own good—so this is
one of the reasons I feel qualified to hold an opinion on the subject of
whether going back to nature is a good idea; I've hoed all the turnips I
want to; I favour the hi-tech society.
AW: Your father was an
accountant and I wonder what his attitude would have been to your ambitions—your reading and so on.
HC: He was quite tolerant about
the whole thing. I suspect—he never stated it firmly—that he
would have liked me to be a minister. But my interest in science from the
word go was very, very obvious and he was willing to encourage it. And both
he and my mother were pretty well converted my junior year in college; they
allowed me to major in astronomy as I wanted, and in my junior year I sold
two stories to John Campbell and the $245 that those brought in made a very
large dent in Harvard's $400-a-year tuition. So they were pretty well
converted after that.
AW: Your mother was a teacher, right?
HC: She taught for a while. She
was a college graduate; at least, I guess it was a full-scale college; it
was then called Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, P.E.I.—I
think its name has changed since, and very possibly its scope and all the
rest of it; I haven't been back for a long time and don't know. But, yes,
she graduated from college; she taught for a while in the one-room
schoolhouse at York Point where she was born, and then I don't know all of
the history. She was working in Halifax during World War I and got
mildly injured by flying glass in the Halifax explosion. I don't know when
or where she met my father, but they were married in the States in 1921 and
I was born roughly a year later in 1922. My father eventually became a
naturalized citizen; I don't know what all his reasons were, what their
reasons were for moving to the States.
AW: Did the fact that she was a
teacher have any influence on whether you read as a child? Did she
encourage you to be more of a literary sort?
HC: Yes, they both encouraged
our reading very strongly. Dad was an enthusiast of Shakespeare and able to
quote quite a bit of Shakespeare. They both had very high standards in use
of English; I'm afraid both my sister and I deteriorated in that aspect
after we started public school. We were both able to read and write and do
simple arithmetic before we started school.
AW: Now, you yourself became a
teacher, and you've often said that your teaching is your vocation and your
writing is your hobby. But I'm sure that the interrelationships. between them were pretty strong all the way through your
career. Can you give me some sense of how one might have influenced the
other, affected the other?
HC: Well, a main reason for my
winding up as a teacher, aside from the fact that I've always liked kids
and done things like Boy Scout work, was that it became painfully evident
towards the close of my undergraduate days that I was not a good enough
mathematician to become an astronomer. I didn't have to make the decision
immediately; I graduated in February of 1943, with the Army waiting, and
spent time flying with the 8th Air Force and sundry things, and then had
the G.I. Bill to handle the next step, which was to go back to graduate
school and get an education degree and a teaching certificate. Teaching was
certainly going to be the next best thing to astronomy. And I stayed with
it for forty years.
AW: Were there things that you
discovered in your research for your teaching, or things you discovered in
discussions with your students that inspired some of your works?
HC: I would say yes although I
can't come up with specific examples. There was a swapping of information
in both directions, actually. Things that I thought of setting up for my
stories also offered analogies and suggested situations that I could use in
class to start discussions going.
AW: So it was an exchange of
ideas. It's pretty evident that the environment is a major theme in your
work: placing your characters in strange environments and seeing what
happens.
HC: Yes, that's the fun of it:
cooking up what sort of environments there might be, and what sort of life,
if any, could exist in those situations, and how the beings adapted to those
situations would respond—what their motivation would be, what they
would want to do and what they would have to do.
AW: And then you establish a
problem for them that they have to come up with a solution for
scientifically.
HC: Well, from my point of view,
the words "problem" and "plot" are essentially
synonymous. If your characters don't have a problem you don't have a story.
AW: Did your interest in the
environment have anything to do with certain environments that you
encountered either as a child or an adult?
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