J.G. Ballard is often quoted as saying science fiction died around the time editor, writer, and anthologist Judith Merril left New York for Toronto. “I remember my last sight of her,” he recalled in 1992, “surrounded by her friends and all the books she loved, shouting me down whenever I tried to argue with her, the strongest woman in a genre for the most part created by timid and weak men.”
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By that time Merril was long gone–she left the country in 1968, disgusted with American politics but also unnerved by the power she’d accumulated in the “literary ghetto” of New York’s sci-fi industry. In Canada, though, she managed to nurture a modest legacy that endures to this day. For one, Toronto’s public library maintains what’s now called the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy, which began with the 5,000 or so works Merril personally donated in the summer of 1970. It now houses some 57,000 items.
Kiss Machine has just published its sixth issue, and Pohl-Weary is polishing the manuscript for her first novel, “Sugar’s Empty,” which she pitches as “a weird mix of pop culture, urban fantasy, and, well, a ghost love story.” She’s been working on it for years, but before she could buckle down for the final stretch, she had some family business to take care of.
Pohl-Weary is reading from her novel in progress and hawking the new Kiss Machine as part of this month’s Perpetual Motion Roadshow, organized by Toronto sci-fi novelist Jim Munroe, who also runs the indie-publishing site nomediakings.com. Each month a different crew of writers and artists does a seven-day, seven-city reading tour in the U.S. and Canada. Pohl-Weary’s fellow travelers are local filmmaker Bill Brown, who edits the travel zine Dream Whip, and Toronto autobiographical cartoonist Matt Blackett. The tour comes to Quimby’s (1854 W. North, 773-342-0910) on Tuesday, May 20, at 8 PM.
