The Lady by K.V. Johansen Published

The Lady, by K.V. Johansen, was published December 9 by Pyr. According to Publishers Weekly:
The Lady by KV Johansen
“The action continues unabated in this dashing, magic-filled sequel to The Leopard… Deities, demons, devils, and wizards stalk the pages alongside human heroes and others not so easily defined. Some of the magic is as quick as thought, while other magic requires lengthy rituals that border on poetry. Johansen has found a winning combination: the modern epic fantasy penchant for a cast of thousands and the golden age feeling of a tale of Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser duelling with gods gone mad.”

For more about the book and author visit www.kvj.ca

Mark Shainblum and Claude Lalumière to edit Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen

Anthology opens to submissions on 30 October 2014

Image: Wikimedia. Creative Commons Share-Alike 2.0.Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! Multi-award winning author and editor Claude Lalumière and SF Canada member and past-President Mark Shainblum will be co-editing the 19th edition of the Tesseracts anthology series from EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing.

Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen will be just what the title implies, the best in prose superhero fiction from the best authors in Canada,” said Shainblum. “I’m thrilled to be working on this project with Claude and EDGE. It’s going to be something special.”

From the official call for submissions

Superheroes! Supervillains! Superpowered antiheroes. Super scientists. Adventurers into the unknown. Costumed crimefighters. Mutant superterrorists. Far-future supergroups. Crusading aliens in a strange land. Secret histories of covert superspies … and more! We want to see any and all permutations of the superhero genre. Any genre-mashing goes: alternate history, crime, horror, romance, SF, fantasy, surrealism; we want a variety of tones, approaches, subgenres, cultural perspectives, etc. We’re interested in submissions where Canadian setting (a specific city, region, or province) plays a role, but we’re open to other types of stories, too, set anywhere in the world, the universe, or the multiverse!

Click here for full submission information

SF Canada Awards $1000 to Tanya Huff

JLTrudelTSHuff2013AJean-Louis Trudel presents Tanya Huff with a ceremonial cheque.
(Photo by Jonathan Crowe)

The Aurora Award for Best Novel, accompanied by the SF Canada Award of $1000, was given to Tanya Huff in Ottawa on October 6, 2013 for her fantasy novel The Silvered, published by DAW Books. Born in Nova Scotia but now living in rural Ontario with her wife Fiona Patton, Tanya Huff is one of Canada’s most important and best loved fantasy authors. Since her first professional sale to Amazing Stories in 1985, she has published over thirty books and a number of short stories. Her “Blood Books” series was adapted as the television series Blood Ties in 2007. Her award-winning novel features magicians and shapeshifting werewolves united against a steampunk empire, and has been well received by readers and critics alike.

The 2013 Conference on Canadian Content in Speculative Arts and Literature played host to the 33rd national Canadian convention of science fiction and fantasy, also known as Canvention. Ten other Aurora Awards were announced. The fantasy adventure Under My Skin (in the “Wildlings” series) by Charles de Lint won the Aurora Award for Best YA Novel. Published in On Spec, the fantasy tale “The Walker of the Shifting Borderland” by Douglas Smith won the award for best short fiction. David Clink’s poem “A sea monster tells his story” in The Literary Review of Canada won for Best Poem or Song. The webcomic Weregeek by Alina Pete won the Aurora for best graphic novel while the award for best related work went to the anthology Blood and Water edited by Hayden Trenholm for Bundoran Press. Finally, Erik Mohr received the Aurora Award for Best Artist, honouring his covers for ChiZine Publications. The remaining Aurora Awards went to fans contributing to the speculative fiction community across Canada, and the Aurora-Boréal awards for works in French were given out earlier this year in Montreal.

Potential New SF on CBC Radio

Matt Watts, Greg DeClute and Joe Mahoney have completed production of a half hour pilot for a proposed new science fiction radio play series on CBC Radio called “Nightsoil: Into the Beyond of the Future of Tomorrow.”

If accepted by CBC Radio’s programming department, Nightsoil would continue the new wave of science fiction comedy begun in 2005 on CBC Radio by Matt and Joe with Steve the First, Steve the Second, and later Canadia:2056 (with Greg DeClute).

In the future, 98% of the world’s population live in a computer simulation called Next Life.  The other 2%, stuck in the real world, spend their miserable lives looking after the inhabitants of Next Life.  Nightsoil is the story of one man’s dream of entering the wondrous world of Next Life, reuniting with his childhood sweetheart, and living happily ever after.

If only Next Life were that easy…

Consistently funny, sometimes serious, yet always entertaining, Nightsoil: Into the Beyond of the Future of Tomorrow has everything: relevancy, mass appeal, and perhaps most importantly, a really long title.