Made in
Canada R.I.P.
In
1998, when I first started Made in
Canada, Canadian Science Fiction was very poorly represented on the web. The
most the average SF reader knew was that American expatriates Spider Robinson,
William Gibson and Robert Charles Wilson all lived up here, that Robert J.
Sawyer was "Canada's
only native-born full-time science-fiction writer" and that
Margaret Atwood slummed in the Genre once or twice. Made in Canada was the first
website to remedy that perception. I created Made in Canada as a hub to find everything
available online regarding Canadian Science Fiction authors, actors, directors,
movies, magazines, TV series, websites, awards, news, etc.
MiC
was at its peak between 2001 and 2005. I would spend hours researching,
updating, finding news for the MiC Newsletter and soliciting
contributions. Response from people with entries in MiC and from SF Fans
was awesome. I got cool emails from Ellen Dubin, Lex Gigerof, David Winning,
Rob Sawyer, Robert Charles Wilson, Jean Pierre Normand, Julie E. Czerneda, and
many other personalities as well as hundreds of encouraging emails from fans.
Whenever I met a new author, editor or actor, it was always cool to find out
that they knew of and had visited my website and thanked me for my efforts.
Between 2000 and 2006 MiC was recognized by
the fans of Canadian SF with 8 Prix Aurora Award nominations, 3 of which won
awards. I was welcomed into the SF community with open arms and have
gained many good friends over the years.
Since
1998 things have changed significantly. Nearly every SF writer has
a blog, a website, or both. Canadian SF is now very well represented by major SF
websites (SF Site, Locus Online, Sci-Fi Wire, Etc), Publishers (DAW, Tor,
Baen, Etc), International Awards (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Etc), and of
course Wikipedia; A hugely popular database of online information that
includes a wealth of information on Canadian Science Fiction.
Unlike
ten years ago, almost anything you can find through MiC can just as easily be
found through Google or through the resources mentioned above. I can't
help but think that the information here at MiC is becoming a bit
redundant. With that in mind I regretfully have to say that MiC will
no longer be updated significantly.
I
am very proud of Made in Canada and its little footnote in Canadian SF
History. I want to thank everybody who helped with Made in Canada.
In particular, Isaac Szpindel, Julie Czerneda, Doug Smith, Rob Sawyer, Peter
Halasz, Bob Wilson, John Clute, Karen Bennett, Ruth Stuart, Marcel Gagne, Edo
van Belkom, Cory Doctorow, Jim Gardner, Peter Watts, Karin Lowachee, Lloyd
Penney, Bill Wanstrom, Pat Forde and Ken Basarke. Your praise, encouragement, advice,
contributions and friendship helped to make Made in Canada great.
Made
in Canada will remain online. Please feel free to browse through the hundreds
of pages still here at MiC. Many of the treasures that made MiC cool can still
be found. I will likely add links to Wikipedia entries on many pages and try
to keep up with bad links. Some of the more popular MiC pages will get some
attention when it comes to updates. I will also update the Official
Author pages when needed.
My
E-mail address is still active for any of you who want to contact me.
canadian-sf@rogers.com
Cheers,
Don
Bassie
