Category: books

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The Electric Girl by Christine Hart

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SF Canada member Christine Hart just released a new YA novel, The Electric Girl. The story features a dual POV narrative, a rural BC setting circa 1988, and plenty of retro pop culture.

Polly Michaels is trying to forget that her mom has cancer. She keeps busy at school and plods through a normal social life. Until a freak electrical storm and a unicorn appear in the orchard next to her house.

Sy’kai wakes on an orchard floor to the smell of rotting cherries and wet earth. She doesn’t know where she is-or what she is-but she knows something is hunting her.

Polly recruits her friends to find the mysterious creature she saw from her window while Sy’kai, a confused shape-shifting endling from another dimension tries to piece her mind back together. Once the human girls find Sy’kai (whom they nickname Psyche) the mystery unravels and the danger facing all of them comes into focus. 

A gritty struggle ranges throughout the girls’ rural hometown and in the wild terrain around it. All while two questions hang over their heads. Can an alien deliver a miracle for a human mother? Can a group of teens defeat an interdimensional demon?

Christine Hart writes from her suburban home on BC’s beautiful West Coast. She specializes in speculative fiction for young readers. Her stories feature detailed real-world landscapes as a backdrop for the surreal. Her backlist includes YA, NA, and MG titles, including The Variant Conspiracy trilogy and Watching July.

Christine works as a content and communications specialist for a technology studio in Vancouver. And when not writing, she melts metal under the guise of her Etsy alter-ego Sleepless Storyteller.

Learn more about Christine and her books at www.christine-hart.ca.

Order your copy of The Electric Girl from Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble.

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LEXX Unauthorized by D.G. Valdron

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SF Canada member D.G. Valdron recently released a book series titled LEXX Unauthorized. The individual titles are, Volume 1: Backstage at the Dark Zone, Volume 2: The Light at the End of the Universe, and Volume 3: It’s Light and It’s Cold. Volume 4 is currently in the works.

LEXX was a subversive Canadian space opera television show that ran between 1997 and 2002, comprising four movies and fifty-eight episodes. The LEXX itself was a ten mile long bio-mechanical dragonfly designed by an evil theocratic space empire to blow up planets. It was stolen by its crew – a cowardly security guard, a frustrated love slave, an undead assassin and a lovestruck robot head.

The LEXX Unauthorized books chronicle the television show which was known for haunting surrealist imagery and dreamlike structure. The LEXX TV series was created by Salter Street films and shot principally in Halifax, employing Canadian actors and writers. Some notable international actors included Rutger Hauer, Malcolm McDowell, Tim Curry, and Barry Bostwick.

D.G. Valdron is a wayward Maritimer, born on the north shore of New Brunswick. His father was a mechanic, his grandfather a carpenter, which provided Valdron with an arsenal of skills, a work ethic, and a practical approach to life. D.G. is currently a lawyer working in the field of aboriginal rights, but has also worked as a mechanic, carpenter, projectionist, cook, waiter, woodcutter ditch-digger, journalist and school teacher.

The LEXX Unauthorized books are available through Amazon.

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Recognition for A Diary in the Age of Water

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*UPDATED*

A Diary in the Age of Water (Inanna Publications) by SF Canada member Nina Munteanu has received recognition from two sources now.

On World Water Day (March 22, 2021) it was announced that A Diary in the Age of Water became a finalist in the 2020 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award in the science fiction category.

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. 

The Foreword Indies Book of The Year Awards are hosted by Foreword Reviews as part of its mission to discover, review, and share the best books from university and independent publishers.

In December 2020, Nina’s book was also featured on the Yale Climate Connections list of twelve climate / environmental books for the holidays.
A Diary in the Age of Water chronicles the journeys of four generations of women, each carrying a unique relationship with water over a time of catastrophic change. Told in the form of a diary by a limnologist, the story explores a Canada mined for its water by United States, which, in turn, is owned by China.

The list also includes Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent climate fiction Ministry for the Future (Orbit) and James Lawrence Powell’s The 2084 Report. Anthologies and works on non-fiction by the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis are also included in the recommended holiday reading list by Yale University’s Climate Connections.   

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.

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Zee by Su J. Sokol

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SF Canada member Su J. Sokol is launching Zee, xyr third novel. This title is being released jointly in French (December 3, 2020) and English (December 6, 2020) by New Brunswick publisher Mouton noir Acadie, an imprint of Bouton d’or Acadie.

Zee can hear what you’re thinking and feel what you’re feeling. She sees herself through your eyes and what she sees changes who she is. Sometimes Zee is the precocious daughter of her four grown-ups. Other times, she’s a rough boy from Brooklyn, New York, playing basketball and getting into trouble. Zee’s grown-ups are worried. They test Zee’s special powers and conspire to keep them secret. Zee figures out what they’re up to and fights back. Zee just wants to fit in, to meet the confusing expectations coming at her from all directions, but will losing sight of who she is put Zee in even greater danger?

Learn more about Zee at an online launch in either French or English.

  • French Event: Thursday, December 3 at 7pm EST on either Facebook or Zoom.
  • English Event: Sunday, December 6 at 7pm EST on either Facebook or Zoom.

Su J. Sokol is a social rights activist and a writer of speculative, liminal and interstitial fiction. Originally from Brooklyn, xe now makes Montréal xyr home. Xyr short fiction has appeared or is upcoming in The Future Fire, Spark: A Creative Anthology, TFFX 10th Anniversary Anthology, Glittership: an LGBTQ Science Fiction and Fantasy Podcast, Glittership: Year One anthology, After the Orange: Ruin and Recovery, and Amazing Stories.

Su’s debut novel, Cycling to Asylum, was longlisted for the Sunburst for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and has been optioned for a feature-length film. Xyr second novel, Run J Run, was published by Renaissance Press in May of 2019.

Learn more about Su and explore xyr other titles at sujsokol.com

Order your copy of Zee from your favourite local bookshop (a great way to support independent booksellers during the pandemic), from Bouton d’or Acadie in French or English, on Amazon, or via Kobo.

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The Human Template by Dale L. Sproule

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SF Canada member Dale L. Sproule is launching a new book, The Human Template. This title is the first in a series, Book One of the Arboreal Realm Diptych.

Get ready to meet the BioGrid and reconsider what it means to be human.

Join the book launch for The Human Template online today at 2pm EST via Zoom.

The BioGrid is a vast biological computer housed in the root network of a genetically engineered forest. When it self-identified as a forest and refused to work with its creators, someone had to teach the newly sentient trees to see the world from a more human perspective. Dr Veejay Naidu’s breakthroughs in transferring the consciousness of his terminally ill son into an AI made him the obvious choice, but only one upload was completed before a catastrophic solar event took humanity to the brink of extinction.

Fragmented into diverse factions and locked in a never-ending feud, the badly damaged BioGrid lost contact with humanity for hundreds of years. When one of the factions discovered the remains of the human template and resurrected Raine Naidu, the BioGrid started working together toward the common goal of re-establishing an interface with humanity. But the attempt ended in betrayal; with the mind of a curious toddler named Glory turned into a stew of unsalvageable data. At least the data seemed irretrievable, until the child’s older sister, Adoris, worked out a way to access it.

Re-introducing 21st century technology to the ravaged world enabled Adoris to eliminate all opposition on her path to leadership; gaining direct access to the BioGrid and bending the most powerful of the factions to her will. When she took the entire BioGrid hostage, Raine was forced to rally his arboreal friends in a desperate bid for survival.

Dale L. Sproule is a writer who has published over 50 short stories in a wide range of media. In the late 90’s he co-published/edited a magazine called TransVersions – Literature of the Fantastic. The magazine sought out work that came at the genre sideways and published work by a wide range of amazing voices. He has been privileged to interview some amazing writers and has published dozens of non-fiction articles for venues ranging from SF Signal to Books in Canada, from AE Science Fiction to Rue Morgue.

Learn more about Dale and explore his other titles at dalelsproule.com.

Order your copy of The Human Template at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Chapters, and more.

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Weathering and Age of Miracles by Robert Runté

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SF Canada member Robert Runté recently published two short stories. “Weathering” in the online journal Lamplit Underground [Vol. 4] and “Age of Miracles” in Canadian Shorts II.

“Weathering” is the story of a schoolgirl going about her day in a post-apocalyptic society at war. Lamplit Underground is an online journal, “devoted to all that is slightly odd, a touch off-putting.”

Read “Weathering” at lamplitunderground.com.

“Age of Miracles” is now in Canadian Shorts II (Mischievous Press, Oct 2020) which is a best-of collection of Canadian short fiction. “Age of Miracles” originally appeared in Strangers Among Us (Laska Media, 2016) and was shortlisted for an Aurora Award.

Canadian Shorts II – A Collection of Short Stories is a specially selected collection of short stories by established and emerging Canadian authors. Showcasing Canada’s diverse writing talent, there is a story for every reader.

From Literary Fiction to SciFi to Prairie Gothic, Canadian Shorts II unites some of our country’s diverse writing talent to defy 2020’s year of upheaval. From the depths of social isolation and societal upheaval, sixteen authors offer compelling stories of hope, failure, love, and sheer wonder at the workings of the world – with Bigfoot and a little alien abduction for fun.

Learn more about Canadian Shorts II at mischieviousbooks.com.

Order your copy via Amazon, Google, Smashwords, Apple, or Kobo.

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.