Why having a Worldcon in Canada in 2009 is cool

The 2009 World Science Fiction Convention will be in Montreal. That's cool for many reasons, including:

It's the 30th anniversary of John Robert Colombo's Other Canadas, the massive retrospective anthology that first established that there was, in fact, such a thing as Canadian science fiction.

It's the 25th anniversary of the first Tesseracts anthology, edited by Judith Merril.

It's the 25th anniversary of the founding (by Judith Merril, with Robert J. Sawyer as its coordinator) of Hydra North, Canada's first association of science-fiction professionals.

It's the 20th anniversary of the founding of On Spec, Canada's leading SF magazine.

It's the 20th anniversary of the founding of SF Canada, the Canadian association of SF writers.

It's the 20th anniversary of the debut of Prisoners of Gravity, Canada's great TV series about SF

It's the 20th anniversary of ConText, the legendary Edmonton convention that brought together most Canadian SF writers for the first time.

For Rob's June 2009 response to Amy J. Ransom, see here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site