Stellar Evolutions Edited by Rhea Rose

SF Canada member Rhea Rose is the editor of a new anthology, Stellar Evolutions, now open to pre-release ebook orders. These short stories and poems were drawn from the first fifteen issues of fellow SF Canada member R. Graeme Cameron’s magazine Polar Borealis.

Oh, Canada! Welcome to this world-bending collection of speculative writing Canadian style. Between these boreal covers, a compilation of must-read fantastic fiction by trending and diverse authors will take readers to the next level of story discovery. New futures, fantasies and frightening realities become readers’ portals connecting yesterday’s print to tomorrow’s digital dreams. This gathering showcases stories and poetry by many award-winning, award-nominated, yet diverse authors’ and their best works, selected exclusively from Polar Borealis Magazine, a Canadian speculative fiction publication dedicated to discovering the finest ideas in a large land of divergent narratives. These stellar storytellers and poets find our common humanity, play with its evolution, evaluate the relentless tick-tock of technology and step into the seductive chill of starlight with only their imaginations to guide them against the spiralling foils of the unknown.

“A particularly interesting collection because it features emerging Canadian writers, covers a broad swath of Canadian speculative fiction, and includes as much poetry as prose.” —Robert Runte—Editor, critic, author of Canadian Science Fiction, an Introduction & List of Recommended Authors and more.

Learn more about Rhea at rheaerose.weebly.com.

Learn more about Graeme and Polar Borealis at polarborealis.ca.

Reserve your copy of Stellar Evolutions via Amazon.

Renaissance Virtual Conference Oct 24-25

Join over 20 speculative fiction authors from across Canada for a two-day virtual writers’ conference October 24 & 25, 2020. Panelists include SF Canada members Su J. Sokol, Nina Munteanu, Elizabeth Hirst, and Cait Gordon.

Panel discussions cover setting, world building, writing inclusively, and much more. Participants will also enjoy a virtual dealers room with a broad range of books.

Register at on the Renaissance Press website and head over to the event on Facebook to follow updates.

Gatekeeper’s Key by Krista Wallace

SF Canada member Krista Wallace recently published her first novel-length work, an audiobook titled Gatekeeper’s Key. This book is the first of a fantasy trilogy.

Gatekeeper’s Key is based on a podcast Krista has been publishing since May of 2020. Krista brings her acting and narration background to this project, publishing first as an audiobook owing to her know-how with this medium.

Gatekeeper's KeyOutcast swordfighter, Kyer Halidan, walked out of a cornfield at the age of three. Now, she leaves to discover who put her there. And why. Along the way she makes mistakes and kills a man with powerful friends, while at the same time earning the respect of her greatest heroes.


New enemies pursue her relentlessly, desperate to learn what she knows about their plans. Kyer’s impetuousness and disregard for consequences put the mission, and her life, in jeopardy. But to save a village and possibly the continent from a despicable evil, she must choose between adhering to duty and breaking the rules.

Krista Wallace is a writer, singer and actor. She writes short fiction in a variety of genres, and long fiction, primarily in fantasy. Krista sings jazz in a big band called FAT Jazz, and a duo called the Itty Bitty Big Band. She also does audiobook narration, and puts out a weekly podcast. She likes dark chocolate and fine single malt scotch.

Learn more about Krista and explore her work at kristawallace.com.

Purchase Gatekeeper’s Key at Kobo, Scribd, and Google Play.

A Diary in the Age of Water by Nina Munteanu

In June 2020, SF Canada member Nina Munteanu released her fourteenth book, cli-fi eco-novel A Diary in the Age of Water (Inanna Publications).

A Diary in the Age of Water follows the climate-induced journey of Earth and humanity through four generations of women, each with a unique relationship to water.

Centuries from now, in a dying boreal forest in what used to be northern Canada, Kyo, a young acolyte called to service in the Exodus, yearns for Earth’s past—the Age of Water, before the “Water Twins” destroyed humanity. Looking for answers and plagued by vivid dreams of this holocaust, Kyo discovers the diary of Lynna, a limnologist from a time just prior to the destruction. The diary spans a 20-year period in the mid-20th century and describes a planet in the grip of severe water scarcity. Lynna, in her work for a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water, witnesses and records the disturbing events that will soon lead to humanity’s demise.

A Diary in the Age of Water received a silver award from Literary Titan for a book that “expertly delivers complex characters, intricate worlds, and thought provoking themes. The ease with which the story is told is a reflection of the author’s talent in exercising fluent, powerful, and appropriate language.”–Literary Titan

“Evoking Ursula LeGuin’s unflinching humane and moral authority, Nina Munteanu takes us into the lives of four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. In a diary that entwines acute scientific observation with poignant personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Particularly harrowing are the neighbourhood water betrayals, along with Lynna’s deliberately dehydrated appearance meant to deflect attention from her own clandestine water collection.”—LYNN HUTCHINSON LEE, multimedia artist, author, and playwright

 

“Lyrical and dystopian, ‘A Diary in the Age of Water’ is as much an ode to water as it is a cautionary tale about the dire implications of climate change.”—FOREWORD CLARION 5-STAR REVIEW

 

“In poetic prose with sober factual basis, Munteanu transmutes a harrowing dystopia into a transcendentalist origin myth. An original cautionary tale that combines a family drama with an environmental treatise.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS

 

“An exceptional and thought-provoking dystopian fiction.”—LITERARY TITAN

 

’A Diary’ is a brilliant story…Munteanu writes with fresh, stimulating style.”
—CRAIG H. BOWLSBY, author of The Knights of Winter

 

“The story like water itself fills you, moves you, hypnotizes you, and eventually, totally engulfs you.”—GOODREADS REVIEW

 

“Thoroughly researched and cleverly executed, A Diary in the Age of Water is a must-read, especially for those who are longing for nature, and touch, while fearing both.”

—CARAMOYNES, Amazon Review

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and award-winning novelist and short story writer. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Nina has coached writers to publication for several decades using her Alien Guidebook Series writing guides.  Nina’s non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada.

Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books, short stories and essays. For more about Nina’s coaching and writing workshops, visit www.ninamunteanu.me. You can also find Nina on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In.

A Diary in the Age of Water can be purchased through Amazon,Chapters-Indigo,Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Inanna Publications.

 

Birthday Barbeque by Robert Runté

SF Canada member Robert Runté was published, September 7, 2020 in Potato Soup Journal. “Birthday Barbeque” is a contemporary flash fiction story with a magic realism twist.

Snaps are simple of course, but this latest model had a pretty sophisticated built-in editing suite. Fortunately, it had an ‘easy’ setting for people like Grandpa. Software did everything for you. “See, Grandpa, you just have to remember to press this button, and move your finger over what you want to erase, and it’s gone.” 

Dr. Robert Runté is Senior Editor with EssentialEdits.ca, a retired professor (University of Lethbridge), and former Senior Editor for Five Rivers Publishing. As an academic, editor, reviewer, and organizer, Robert has been actively promoting Canadian SF for over forty years. He was a founding Director of NonCon, Context89, and SF Canada; and has served on the Boards of the Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society, On Spec Magazine, Tesseract Books, and The Writers Guild of Alberta. In addition to dozens of conference papers, journal articles, book chapters, and a half dozen entries in the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, Robert has edited over 150 issues of various SF newsletters.

Read “Birthday Barbeque” at potatosoupjournal.com.

Congratulations to 2020 Sunburst Award Winners!

The Sunburst Award Society announced this year’s winners on August 31, 2020.

Our heartiest congratulations go out to Silvia Moreno-Garcia, on winning the Adult Award for Gods of Jade and Shadow, to Allison Mills, winner of the Young Adult Award for The Ghost Collector, and to Rebecca Campbell, winner of the Short Story Award for “The Fourth Trimester is the Strangest” published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Additional applause goes to all the shortlisted and longlisted authors, including SF Canada member Edward Willett who was longlisted for his YA novel Master of the World.

The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a juried award which recognizes exceptional writing in three categories: adult, young adult and short story. The awards are presented each fall to the best Canadian speculative fiction novel, book-length collection, or short story published any time during the previous calendar year.