Stars struck

Local sci-fi mistress is no longer a
Klingon but still manages Montreal’s
most important fan convention

by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Cathy Palmer-Lister

Age: 59

Occupation: Chair of Con*Cept

Bio: This inspired South Shore gal initially discovered sci-fi through the work of Isaac Asimov in high school and has kept up with the genre ever since. But it was only in 1990, when she attended her first sci-fi convention, Con*Cept, that she became aware of the fandom phenomena. “I walked into Con*Cept and right away met all these people with interests just like mine, people who read the same things as I read, others who were watching Star Trek, and I immediately went, ‘Oh my goodness, this is paradise.’” A Klingon at the time, Cathy soon joined “a whole mess of sci-fi fan clubs,” often attending gatherings in her homemade Klingon garb. After three years serving as president of the Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (MonSFFA), the organization which sponsors the Con*Cept convention every year, today she edits Warp, the club’s quarterly fanzine, and is one of the principal organizers behind the group’s annual wingding. She’s also written a few sci-fi short stories of her own, but nothing that she feels is good enough to publish.

Did she think, just because she’s female, that she could go out in public as a Klingon without getting beaten up? “No, that was never a problem. But I don’t go out as a Klingon anymore. It always took a couple hours getting all dressed up with the whole kit and caboodle, the make-up and sticking these things onto your face and stuff, so after awhile I’d had enough. Also, in the upper levels of the club, there were some political things going on with Klingons at the time so I just kind of drifted out of it.”

When the next Con*Cept convention will be going down: October 2010. “There’re always workshops, gaming, role-playing, board games, competitions and things like that at Con*Cept. We usually get about 350 people coming out each year. It costs $40 in advance, and with that you become a member of MonSFAA, so you can attend our monthly meetings.” Go to conceptsff.ca and/or monsffa.com for more info.

Is she the only woman in the organization? “Oh, heavens no. There’re far more women involved in science fiction now, it’s pretty well evenly mixed.”

Captain Kirk or Picard? Who would she feel more comfortable steering her through the galaxy? “Picard. I prefer thinking leaders, intelligent leaders. Kirk is a man of action and maybe he was the right person at that time, back when it was the Enterprise on the wild frontier, but I prefer a leader with an intellectual background, who thinks things through, who consults with his crew.”

Three local sci-fi writers Cathy thinks you should know about: Jo Walton—“She wrote Tooth and Claw and the Farthing series,” Claude Lalumière, Mark Shainblum. “There’re some truly great sci-fi authors living here, authors worth knowing about.”

A few of her many other serious hobbies: Bellydancing, astronomy, stained glass, knitting, crocheting, origami.

Childhood ambition: To become an astronomer.

Last book read: The Harvest, by Robert Charles Wilson.

Musical preferences: Led Zep, Heather Dale, the Rolling Stones.

Words of wisdom: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

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