The “OK” fan is the one who seems to agree to everything you say about your book… but is s-he really listening, or simply polite?
Posted in Art, Comics, Event, Science-fiction
Tagged Book fairs, Comics, humor, SF, Webcomics
My father, Jacques Laframboise, left early this Saturday morning for his solo flight, without compass nor map.
A 1951 Ecole Polytechnique graduate, planes and air cushion vehicles were his passion. He was still writing an article about aerotrains and computing figures on his hospital bed. Our current level of technology permitted that he passed away peacefully.
I will miss his sense of humor. But he was very serene about his going away.
My father was the first one who introduced me to science fiction. And to graphic novels, that he read to us the evenings. He has always accepted and encouraged my love of nature and sciences, which I, in turn, endeavour to transmit to the new generations.
Posted in Event, Science-fiction
Tagged air cushion vehicles, death, Ecole Polytechnique, Father, loss, Science-fiction
This Saturday, October 18th, The Mississauga Central library is holding a Science fiction Spectacular Bookfest!
SF authors Rob Sawyer, Marie Bilodeau, RC Wilson, Tanya Huff will be doing presentations at the Auditorium. Robert J. Sawyer recently received a Lifetime Achievement Aurora Award from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association.
I will be onsite with fellow local authors, exposing (and selling) our works at the Atrium. All my 15 novels and 10 graphic novels will be there, in French and English. Signed books are all in the 5$-10$ range.
I’m proud of being a SF author. Below are a few of my recent titles from the Sunday Artist Studio imprint.
The Mississauga Library has most of my novels. Get a glimpse of my SF universe. The full series (La quête de Chaaas) will be available at a discount.
Two books from the Jules-Verne saga, another YA science fiction series.
Here are two “standalone” SF novels…
WHERE: Mississauga Central Library, 301 Burhnamthorpe Rd W, Mississauga, Ontario
WHEN: October 18th, 10-17h
Posted in Art, Comics, Event, Science-fiction
Tagged art, Author visits, Chaaas universe, MIssissauga Library, Robert J. Sawyer, YA science-fiction
The TCAF is an annual event in Toronto for all Comics lovers. I went from the opening until 13h, sorry for all of you I missed!
Tagged art, Comics, TCAF, Toronto, Toronto COmic Arts festival
This scene unfolds at the Salon du livre de Québec, so the last panel shows the Québec Parliement in the background. There was no freezing spell there, but it really happened at a similar event!
This comic page was done with my Intuos tablet and modified on Manga Studio. It is no 27 in the Splendors and Miseries of the Signing Table series, the French version here. And yes, it was snowing when I drew this comic…
Many thanks to Jack Ruttan who translated this page from French!
This is what I added on my Holiday cards this year, as Canada Post announces its plans to shut down the door-to-door mail delivery in cities.
It is a small tribute to all the men and women who are often the sole contact with older people. Already, Canadians living in the country have to drive to their new superboxes. I hope that my future city mailboxe will be in walking distance.
And the Beatles song will never resonate the same way ever:
Please, Mr. Postman…
No need to know how to draw: just do a quick red sketch in the bottom left of your envelope, with a kind word. You may do a small delivery truck if you feel up to the challenge instead of those rounded red mailboxes.
December 14, 2013 in Event, Society
Tagged Canada Posts, Holidays, Postman, Thank-you
This June 5th, I managed to show the Venus transit to our eager cubs. This safe projection from the telescope shows Venus and even some sunspots (very small). Note the orientation at right angle, facilitating the observation.
Lugging a scope in a park on Venus transit evening make you very popular among passer-by!
(Closer view; those pics were taken by a friend)
But the real magic moments were when birds (or planes!) crossed the enlarged sun projection.
Letter to my conservative members of Parliament,
You are all fathers and mothers.
You engrave your valuables and appreciate the ability to track your stolen jewels. You acknowledge the importance of driving lessons and of drunk driving control. When you renew your car plates licenses, you do not feel treated like a criminal.
When your personal physician warns you that you consume too much fat, you listen to his advice. You do not put his science(1) in question because you would rather eat a bag of chips. When a dangerous toy threatens the health of our children, you act upon it.
Unless the toy is a gun, from a simple rifle to semi-automatic assault sniper weapons. Then, you suddenly cross your arms.
Against all the facts and the experience of criminologists and police, you mention a “feeling of freedom,” or a “feeling of being treated like a criminal.” Just like the census long-form and the renforcement of imprisonment, against science, reason and verifiable facts, you oppose a “feeling”.
This “feeling” has been built from scratch by the propaganda of the arms dealers. Helped by powerful American associations, they aim to protect the billions of dollars in annual market sales of weapons, holsters, and ammunition in Canada. They use the same worn-out buzzwords, a mix of freedom and paranoia, hatred of others, by flattering the “vigilante” part of us.(2)
If at least your government proposed an alternative… but no. No limit to the number of weapons, as easy to get as chocolate tablet, acquired by an unchecked individual. Not even a mandatory engraving on guns. No GPS chips on them. Maybe you are expecting a superhero?
I do not write to make you change your mind, nor prevent you from making this act of autodafe by burning the registry.
It is clear that you have seen the Light and that reason alone will not make you, at the very least, keep semi-automatic assault weapons on the register . Weapons such as those used for the massacre at my engineering school carried on in December 1989. Several similar acts of revenge have been carried out by a few “law-abiding citizens” frustrated, depressed or confused…
Lost in its religious delirium of the battle of Good against Evil, your government will make life easier for the criminals stealing weapons from legitimate owners, or buying weapons and ammunition for resale into traffic. (Ooops! Excuse me, someone stole my gun!) In addition, it will force (I mean: compell) otherwise very nice people to arm themselves for defense … and some might shoot before asking questions.
Combined with your hardened prison sentences and your cuts of social support, destroying the registry will raise the criminal activity, small-time criminals against which you bring out the big cannons.
This “small-time” crime rise concerns discouraged indigent people, lacking a future. Their outbursts of violence or self-destruction will delight the fans of trivia, sustaining our expensive legal system. Weapons as easy to buy as a box of chocolates, overflowing prisons, busy hospitals treating the victims of trauma will complement this flourishing economy.
As for serious crime, the organized greed deeply embedded in our institutions and finance? Your silence speaks volumes.
So now, you have come full circle, erasing my hundreds of volunteer hours to limit the social damage (plus the work of thousands of law abiding citizens, all freedom lovers as you are) done since the December 6, 1989 rampage, my own September 11.
But maybe you crave, without acknowledging it, the excitement of a city rife with crime. As long as it stay away from you.
***
(1) it would be interesting to settle your science limit. Where do science stops and ideology begins?
(2) And they feed the confusion about interdiction and control. There are hunters in my family, and none feel threatened when they register either their gun or their car license.
(The story of the market, told by itself)
1
Trade was my father
private property my mother
I am their blind offspring
my invisible hand
weaves the net
where the strong struggles
where the weak sinks
I am my own law
above all laws
the harsh and lush jungle
where offer and demand
copulate in total freedom
I am the market
In my veins flow
gold and silver
myrrh and incense
a river of desire flooding
the Stock Exchanges
I crown ephemeral kings
crashing on the morrow
TSX 300
Standard&Poor’s 500
New-York Montréal
London Tokyo Toronto
I relish the panic
shaking the floor
under the sheep
running for their Freedom 55
all selling at the same time
then jumping off the cliff
Black Tuesday
Ash Wednesday
Techno bubble collapse
I am the funnel
of frantic day trade
the competition black hole
the goodwill abyss
the glue binding
always bigger mergers
blessed by the Minister
catalysts of a wealth
more and more concentrated
capitalism is dead
long live monopolism!
2
I remember
the merchant fleets
sailing to new worlds
intrepid soldiers sparing no foe
northern spruces cut for timber
tropical forests burned to the ground
tribes decimated by small pox
fur trade slave trafficking
anemic African colonies
drained to the last drop
today
vampire derricks are sucking up
Earth’s rich dark blood
spilling it over the oceans
so many Exxon Valdez capsizing
on the beaches
where goo-covered gulls
totter on soiled sands
still I hunger
tomorrow I will bite
into the tender flesh
of the planet
eating my way
to its liquid iron-nickel core
that I will drink
with a long straw
3
I am the joyful dance
of the sales not to miss
Halloween Christmas
Boxing Day Easter
Mother’s Day Father’s Day
summer sales
back-to-school sales
giant warehouses selling adjusted fares
look at the price wars
my grocery manager is now
a humble cashier at Mega Mart
I am the peddler
of staggering mortgages rates
accordion indexes
volatile currencies
lost homes
ordered bankruptcy
consumers chained
to their credit cards
it’s like the Titanic
the rich in their safe boats
the poor drowning in their debts
I am the supplier
of private prisons
filled to the brim
with bodies fallen
between the cracks
of a social net
cast without conviction
by tamed governments
following a hard right diet
their deficit girdled
by savvy promoters
safe behind their gated communities
watched over by their praetorian guard
I am the call-girl
catering to the cartels
of organized cupidity
sitting on the pyramid’s summit
not seeing the children
at the pyramid’s foot
running from the death squads
I speak trough the mouth
of your machine guns
I am the market
of import-export
made in China
self-made men
who never smell
the decrepit shops
delocalized in Asia
close to the slums
where workers and rats
compete for scraps
I am the Free Trade
built on slavery
and inherited servitudes
of the cane workers
tax-free zones
maquiladoras eating
fifteen-year old
peasant girls worn out
by fifteen-hour days
like their shoes
then consumed
and forgotten
like the eight hundred roses
crushed in Ciudad Juarez
I am the market
of civil wars
in my Name
democracies fall
I freed you
proclaims the Titan
setting up a Tyrant
please taste the freedom
of buying my goods
at the price I ordered
otherwise
(suspension points)
I am the race
for the nuclear mushroom
to put fear into thy neighbor
and steal his place
on the checkerboard
I am the race to arms
filling bags of munitions
to better kill your fellow citizens
I am the race
for outer space
quick, quick, let’s find
a virgin world to bleed dry
4
I am the market
of good conscience
of charity well ordered
beginning at home
wealthy foundations
dainty patrons
aristocrats and oil kings
nabobs and starlets
all shining glittering
in those charity balls
listen to those fiscal escapees
singing hand over their heart
we are the world
we are the people
while their right hand
doles out drops of manna
to the poor
their left hand
scatters their savings
speculates on their rents
hides a treasure in the Bahamas
destroys their unions
negotiates with sub-contractors
in order to keep
a steady reserve of indigents
in dire need of their charity
I am the market
of preachers
selling eternity with a rebate
under a red and white striped tent
condemning flesh sins
forgiving venial sins
against hard currency
of born-again Christians
who forgot the Christ
but not the cash
praise the Lord !
all the faithful will ascend
to the fiscal paradise
I am the media’s Big Brother
putting fear in you
with scandal sheets
incendiary headlines
stirring hatred
towards the Other
the shabby
the scruffy
the dirty
the downtrodden
with their proffered hand
but what is the police doing
lock your door at night
and don’t forget
to give generously
to charities
I am the Leviathan
of agrobusiness
patenting Nature
cloning and copying
in the name of freedom
forcing its genetically
marvelous seeds
on workers’ families
doused with pesticides
5
I am blind
still I can hear
the shop hand whimpering
under the foreman’s weight
children soldiers trashing in their sleep
dreaming of their dead parents
muffled cries of the carpet-girl
nursing her bleeding fingers
shouts of the protesters
defying the tear gas
dry laugh of the machine guns
the last breath of the labor defender
murdered in my name still
as disappeared
Chico Mendes
Iqbal Masih
Digna Ochoa y Plácido
and countless others
I am the theater
of opposing wills
from quarrel to clash
see my hand becoming more visible
see the wool shorn from your backs
that you buy later at a dear price
see the dirty clothes on the shop girl
and the spider web linking her
to your signature dress
I am the mirror of your desires
the infinite sum of
your small gestures
your decisions
your demonstrations
your Porto Allegres
your imagination unhinged
to build something new
I hear billions of voices
murmuring
otro mundo es posible
6
I am the market
with my eyes opened
I see
looming over the horizon
a strange New Deal
countries celebrating
their fair prosperity
neighbors buying selling giving
helping around
taming abuses
green houses
healing nature
the Earth at peace
all fears vanquished
callousness running away
dignity coming home
*
how strange
I never knew
I had a soul
and eight billion bodies
7
We are the market
present and future man-woman-kind
creative force
a galaxy of exponential freedoms
mixed fragrances
of spices and fruits
gossamer fabrics fluttering
in the winds of change
fireworks without pain
children of the global village
laughing running jumping singing
under their elder’s eyes
holding passionate debates
in a hundred dialects
*
We are the market
and from now on
we walk together
****
(cc) Michèle Laframboise 2011
A first version in French of this poem has been read aloud at the Théâtre Nouvelle-Scène of Ottawa, on September 30th 2010.
This version has been rewritten for the day of Occupy Wall Street, happening on the same day as the Toronto Spec Fic Colloquium, on October 15th 2011.
Tagged Invisible hand, market, occupy Wall Street, poetry, Science-fiction, Toronto
Echoes of a Sunday artist 
