NOW Toronto's Susan G. Cole notes how independent bookstores in Toronto are upset by a grant of money by the Toronto municipal government to a literary festival.

A grant from the Toronto Arts Council to the International Festival of Authors, bestowed last fall, has outraged programmers for the city’s independent bookstores ( Read more... )

blogTO's Phil Villeneuve shares the story of Toronto's Glad Day Bookshop, the oldest GLBT library in the world still operating.

Very few book stores in the world have been fought off widespread hate, battled censorship at the Supreme Court, and acted as home base for an entire community of people. Toronto's Glad Day bookshop has, which is why it's ( Read more... )

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• Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith wonders why so many stories featuring gay children kicked out of their families feature the children later reuniting with these same people.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly draws from her own experiences growing up in a family marked by abuse to argue that Trump is treating Americans as any abuser treats their ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes the Distillery District's Toronto Light Festival.
• Border Thinking Laura Agustín looks at migrants and refugees in James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia.
• Centauri Dreams suggests that Perry's expedition to Japan could be taken as a metaphor for first contact.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a report about how brown dwarf EPIC 219388192 b.
• The LRB Blog ( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams shares a proposal for the relatively rapid industrialization of space in a few short years using smart robots with 3d printign technology.
• To what extent, as Crooked Timber speculates, the Arthurian myth complex science fictional?
• Dangerous Minds shares a lovely middle-finger-raised candle.
• The Dragon's Gaze looks at the interactions ( Read more... )

The Globe and Mail's Mark Medley describes how Toronto comic store The Beguiling is managing its move from the soon-to-be-defunct Mirvish Village to a new College Street location.

For nearly two decades, visitors to the Beguiling, the charmingly overstocked comic-book emporium in the heart of Toronto’s Mirvish Village, would often be greeted by ( Read more... )

• Beyond the Beyond links to a US military science fiction contest.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly notes that journalism is meant to offer criticisms of the president.
• Crooked Timber has an open forum about the inauguration.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos from seminal 1980-era London club Billy's.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper reporting on a ( Read more... )

Wired shares excerpts from a recent interview with Bruce Sterling on what science fiction can teach its readers about fascism, and about what science fiction has to learn about itself.

“There’s a kind of rhetorical trick that goes on in science fiction, and in fascism, that kind of says, ‘Don’t really worry about what this means for the guy next ( Read more... )

• Bad Astronomy shares photos of the ripple made by moon Daphnis in the rings of Saturn, as does the Planetary Society Blog.
• The Broadside Blog questions whether readers actually like their work.
• Centauri Dreams notes evidence for the discovery of a Jupiter-mass planet in the protoplanetary disk of TW Hydrae.
• Dangerous Minds links to the 1980s work of ( Read more... )