The Group of Seven Reimagined

SF Canada members Nina Munteaneau and Robert Runte’s latest works appear in The Group of Seven Reimagined (Karen Schauber, ed.)

Founded in 1920, the Group of Seven has captured the imagination and hearts of Canadians for a century, helping to shape our national identity with their stunning landscape paintings representing every region of the country. In honour of the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Group’s formation, The Group of Seven Reimagined takes a fresh look at twenty-one paintings from the Group’s vast oeuvre, extracting narrative from landscape and uniting Canada’s most beloved works of art with some of its most distinguished names in contemporary literary fiction.

While some of the stories in this book are grounded in the painted image, they all launch from the artwork into broader metaphysical or even spiritual questions. Words, the writer’s paint, are artfully chosen and applied, not one wasted. The stories all compel the reader to dive beneath their surface and linger long after the reading is complete.

—Ottawa Review of Books

Robert Runté, Ph.D., is Senior Editor at EssentialEdits.ca, responsible for academic coaching (theses and dissertations) and structural editing of speculative fiction. Previously, he spent over twenty years as a professor at the University of Lethbridge, and a decade as Senior Editor at Five Rivers Publishing, for whom he acquired and edited over 30 books. During his academic career, he co-edited Tesseracts 5 (with Yves Meynard) and an education textbook, Thinking About Teaching; authored fifteen book chapters, fourteen journal articles, seven encyclopedia entries, three government papers, one curriculum resource, over seventy conference papers, and ten open source guides. Robert has three Aurora Awards for his literary criticism and promotion of Canadian SF and was shortlisted for the 2017 Aurora for Short Fiction. His short fiction has been published in Exile Literary Quarterly, Pulp Literature, On Spec Magazine, Imaginarium, Strangers Among Us, Prairie Starport, Tesseracts, Playground of Lost Toys, Alberta Unbound, and other venues. He has also written, edited, or published 149 issues of various zines.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist and novelist. Her novels include: Collision with Paradise; The Cypol; Angel of Chaos; Darwin’s Paradox; The Splintered Universe Trilogy; and The Last Summoner. In addition to eight novels, she has authored award winning short stories, articles and non-fiction books, which were reprinted and translated into several languages throughout the world. Her short work has appeared in Beautiful BC Magazine, Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change, Chiaroscuro,
Hadrosaur Tales, Pacific Yachting, Strange Horizons, and Nowa Fantastyka, among others. Recognition for her work includes the Midwest Book Review Reader’s Choice Award, finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award, the SLF Fountain Award, and The Delta Optimist Reviewers Choice Award. Nina’s latest non-fiction book, Water Is… —a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, teacher and environmentalist—was picked by Margaret Atwood in the NY Times as her #1 choice in the 2016 ‘The Year in Reading’.

Pick up a copy of The Group of Seven Reimagined today.

The Mythic Dream released!

An all-new anthology of eighteen classic myth retellings, The Mythic Dream, has just been released and is edited by SF Canada member Dominik Parisien.

Madeleine L’Engle once said, “When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.” The Mythic Dream gathers together eighteen stories that reclaim the myths that shaped our collective past, and use them to explore our present and future. From Hades and Persephone to Kali, from Loki to Inanna, this anthology explores retellings of myths across cultures and civilizations.

Featuring award-winning and critically acclaimed writers such as Seanan McGuire, Naomi Novik, Rebecca Roanhorse, JY Yang, Alyssa Wong, Indrapramit Das, Carlos Hernandez, Sarah Gailey, Ann Leckie, John Chu, Urusla Vernon, Carmen Maria Machado, Stephen Graham Jones, Arkady Martine, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, and more, The Mythic Dream is sure to become a new classic.

This eclectic, often subversive collection will appeal to fairy tale fans who want something new and different.

Publishers Weekly

 

The Mythic Dream is a triumph of an anthology
Tor.com

Dominik Parisien is also the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Robots vs. Fairies and of The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which also won the Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. As well, Dominink co-edited, with Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Uncanny Magazine’s Hugo-winning special issue, Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Special Issue. Dominik’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Quill & Quire, The Fiddlehead, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, as well as other magazines and anthologies. He is a disabled, bisexual, French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.

The Mythic Dream is available from various retailers through Saga Press.

Shades Within Us wins the Alberta Book Publishing Award!

Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders, co-edited by SF Canada members Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law and published by Laksa Media, has won the Alberta Book Publishing Award in the speculative fiction category. This award is for the most outstanding work of the Alberta book publishing industry as adjudicated by experts and publishing professionals from across Canada.

Shades Within Us is the fourth anthology in Laksa’s “social causes” series and is nominated for this year’s Aurora Award. Others in this series are the Aurora-winning Strangers Among Us, the Aurora-winning The Sum of Us, and Where the Stars Rise.

Susan Forest grew up in a family of mountaineers and skiers, and she loves adventure. She also loves the big ideas found in SF/F, and finds fast-paced adventure stories a great place to explore how individuals grapple with complex moral decisions. Her latest novel is the recently-released Bursts of Fire. Susan is also an award-winning fiction editor, has published over 25 short stories (four, including her current “For a Rich Man to Enter,” nominated for Canada’s Prix Aurora Award), and has appeared at many international writing conventions. She loves travel and has been known to dictate novels from the back of her husband’s motorcycle.

Lucas K. Law is a Malaysian-born freelance editor and published author who divides his time and heart between Calgary and Qualicum Beach. With Susan Forest, he co-edited Strangers Among Us, The Sum of Us, and Shades Within Us. Lucas is the co-editor of Where the Stars Rise with Derwin Mak. He has been a jury member for a number of fiction competitions including Nebula, RITA and Golden Heart Awards. When he isn’t editing, writing, or reading, he is a corporate and non-profit organization consultant in business planning and development.

Purchase Shades Within Us today!

New Release by Matthew Hughes!

SF Canada member Matthew Hughes‘s latest novel, What the Wind Brings, is a sweeping slipstream historical epic, with magical realism woven through alternate history.

Out of the fires of Caribbean revolution, shipwrecked onto the shores and jungles of Ecuador, a slave, a captive, and a shaman fight Inquisition-era Spain for freedom. In times like these, when power spends blood like pennies, what chance do these disparate underdogs have to create an independent nation?

Chance, no. Intelligence, daring, tactics, and magic, yes.

Matthew does an excellent job portraying the ambiguity and complexity of numerous ordinary individuals competing for prestige in a society where affront to reputation is taken very seriously indeed. As a result the political and social mores of the Nigua are every bit as convincing and real as the portrayal of the Spanish. No mean feat.

…the plot is neither straightforward or predictable. Matthew springs quite a few surprises…

…I was totally immersed in the book from beginning to end…I recommend this book. It’s a treat.

Clubhouse review in Amazing Stories by R. Graeme Cameron

 

Matthew writes both fantasy (under Matthew Hughes) and suspense fiction (under Matt Hughes). He’s won the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, and has been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Endeavour, A.E. Van Vogt, and Derringer Awards. Matthew has made his living as a writer all of his adult life, as a journalist in newspapers, a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. He now writes fiction full-time. Find him at https://www.matthewhughes.org/.

What the Wind Brings will be available from Pulp Literature in October. Preorder today!

Uncanny Magazine/Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction wins Hugo Award!

SF Canada member Dominik Parisien was honored at Worldcon this past weekend when Uncanny Magazine won its fourth Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine (Publishers/Editors-in-Chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Managing Editor Michi Trota, Podcast Producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky, Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Special Issue Editors-in-Chief Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Dominik Parisien)!

As with the previous Destroy projects (Women, Queers, People of Colour), Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction takes the rallying cry of We are here and Our stories matter and looks to the future. The other projects all began by “destroying” science fiction, and this one is no different. By turning our attention to the future, we are able to explore concerns and realities in the present and amplify them, correct them, highlight the ways they might become better or worse if allowed to continue on their present course. Through science fiction, marginalized people are able to say, We are here, now, and we will be there later, too.

Dominik Parisien is also the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Robots vs. Fairies and of The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which also won the Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. Dominik’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Quill & Quire, The Fiddlehead, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, as well as other magazines and anthologies. He is a disabled, bisexual, French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.

Congratulations to all the Hugo Awards winners and finalists!

Good Intentions by Ira Nayman

SF Canada member and past President Ira Nayman’s new novel is Good Intentions: The Multiverse Refugees Trilogy: First Pie in the Face. It is the sixth book in the Transdimensional Authority/Multiverse series published by Elsewhen Press.

At the end of You Can’t Kill the Multiverse (But You Can Mess With its Head), Doctor Alhambra, the chief scientist of the Transdimensional Authority, set up an alarm to warn him if a universe is succumbing to the universe-killing machine that is at the heart of the story. But how would the Transdimensional Authority respond if that alarm went off?

In Good Intentions, we find out. In the process we not only meet the most unusual refugees in fiction (probably), learn what Noomi Rapier’s brother does (and with whom), revisit Dingle Dell, and finally discover what happened to chapter seventeen of The Multiverse is a Nice Place to Visit But I Wouldn’t Want to Live There.

In his past lives, Ira Nayman was, among other things: a cave painter whose art was not appreciated in his lifetime; several nameless peasants who died before their 20th birthday during the Dark Ages; a toenail fungus specialist in the court of Louis XIV; and Alan Turing’s scullery maid.

In his current incarnation, Ira is the creator of Les Pages aux Folles, a Web site of political and social satire. Three collections of Alternate Reality News Service (ARNS) stories (Alternate Reality Ain’t What It Used To Be, What Were Once Miracles Are Now Children’s Toys and Luna for the Lunies!) which originally appeared on the website have been self-published in print. Two new volumes of ARNS stories – The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Market Lateralization and The Alternate Reality News Service’s Guide To Sex, Love and Robots were published in 2013. Ira has produced the pilot for a radio series based on stories from the first two ARNS books; “The Weight of Information, Episode One” can be heard on YouTube.

Ira has also written a series of stories that take place in a universe where matter at all levels of organization has become conscious. They feature Antonio Van der Whall, object psychologist. “A Really Useful Engine” has been published in Even Birds Are Chained To The Sky and Other Tales: The Fine Line Short Story Collection and “Escalation is Academic” has appeared in the anthology UnCONventional. “If the Mountain Won’t Come to Mohammed” can be found in Here Be Monsters. “Thinking is the Worst Way to Travel” has been accepted into Explorers: Beyond the Horizon.

In another life (but still within this incarnation) Ira has a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School for Social Research which was conducted entirely online. He also has a PhD in Communications from McGill University. Ira taught New Media part-time at Ryerson University for five years. He is a winner of the 2010 Jonathan Swift Satire Writing Contest.

Find Good Intentions at Amazon, and find Ira’s satirical writings and comedic doodles at http://www.lespagesauxfolles.ca/