Little Blue Marble 2018 anthology now available!

Little Blue Marble is published and edited by SF Canada member Katrina Archer, a software engineer, author, and editor.

There is only one little blue marble for all of us so far. Little Blue Marble’s goal is to bring greater awareness of the consequences and potential solutions to anthropogenic climate change. The site links to great content from around the web and publishes original articles and works of speculative fiction.

The Little Blue Marble 2018 anthology is now available. All of this year’s great stories in one spot for your reading pleasure, including works by SF Canada members Holly Schofield and Melissa Yuan-Innes. From rising tides to edible homes, weather control and tornado killers, floating city-states and plant-based humans, the anthology brings you poignant, sometimes hopeful but often biting visions of our futures living with climate change.

Help spread awareness of climate change by purchasing the anthology or via Little Blue Marble’s Patreon.

Polar Borealis Magazine’s #8 now online.

SF Canada member Richard Graeme Cameron, publisher of Polar Borealis, released issue #8 in December.

Polar Borealis Magazine is a non-profit, semi-professional SF fiction magazine which is free to anyone who wants to read it.  This Canadian magazine actively encourages beginning Canadian writers to submit short stories and poems. Since its inception in 2016, Polar Borealis has been downloaded thousands of times in dozens of countries and has featured many works by SF Canada members.

This issue has stories by Steve Fahnestalk, Sheryl Normandeau, Stewart Graham, Jean-Louis Trudel, Nicholas Stillman, Eddie Generous, David F. Shultz, and Matthew Hughes; poems by Roxanne Barbour, Catherine Girczyc, Rhea Rose, Y.M. Pang, Melissa Yuan-Innes, Casey June Wolf, and Augustus Clark; cover art by Lily Author; and an illustration by Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk.

As well as running Polar Borealis, Graeme blogs at Amazing Stories and volunteers many hours at local science fiction events and associations.

Download issue #8 as a .pdf.

Help support Polar Borealis via GoFundMe and Patreon and watch for issue #9 soon!

Su J. Sokol’s ‘Cycling to Asylum’ Headed For The Screen

Kiss Off Entertainment is taking SF Canada member Su J. Sokol’s Cycling to Asylum into development as a feature length film, to be adapted and directed by Sara Beth Edwards.

The Sunburst Award long-listed novel revolves around young parents whose views are at odds with authoritarian government in near-future New York. Laek is a history teacher with a secret radical past while his partner Janie is an activist lawyer representing the city’s most disenfranchised. Together they struggle with how to instil anti-authoritarian values into their two kids, without those beliefs endangering their children’s welfare in an increasingly hostile political climate. How can they live with integrity and still be safe?

“The subversive themes and non-binary characters absolutely drew me to this story,” said Edwards. “But also the depth of emotion as they fight not just for physical survival but the preservation of their beliefs, their humanity.”

Su J. Sokol is a social rights and anti-border advocate originally from New York City where she worked as legal services lawyer. Her short fiction has appeared in The Future Fire, Spark: A Creative Anthology and Glittership: an LGBTQ Science Fiction & Fantasy Podcast among others. Sokol’s latest interstitial fiction novel, Run J Run, will be published by Renaissance Press in 2019.

For more news about Sokol’s publications, including where to purchase Cycling to Asylum, visit her website at sujsokol.com.

Book Launch for Nathan Elberg’s Quantum Cannibals

Double Dragon Publishing has recently released SF Canada member Nathan Elberg’s first novel. Quantum Cannibals is genre-bending, character-driven literary fiction that weaves multiple intersecting narratives that span time, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia to a Post-Modern city-state.  It’s the epic story of three incarnations of two people- alternately son and mother, husband and wife, father and daughter, savage and scholar, who simply want to return to the home they were brutally evicted from.  Quantum Cannibals brings together authentic cultures from Melanesia, Siberia, Europe, the Americas, and more.

Osnat and her husband have been exiled to a frozen wasteland along with the rest of the Eber people.  Facing cold and starvation, they encounter a small band of savages who brutally assault, rather than help them.  Back in the natives’ village, a transgender shaman adopts Osnat after dismembering her husband.   Previously an eminent quantum biologist, Osnat knows she is stuck with the savages.  Amid her grief, fear, and hatred she realizes she has only one choice: to survive, become one of the natives in order to save the remaining few of her people.  But Osnat refuses to abandon her quest to bring the Eber people home, nor her thirst for vengeance.  Terrified by her own behavior she goes to war, armed with bone knives and improvised nuclear weapons.  As she makes a new home for her family and people, she discovers that paradise is the place she previously thought of as hell.

Saima, a northern savage, has been brought across the barrier from the cold, primitive Edge of the World to serve as a handyman in the high-tech but effete Modern Age.  At first, life here seems pleasant: plentiful food, warm houses, and casual sex.  However, he isn’t here to fix machines, but on a mission to take back from this world what its ancestors stole when they sent the Eber people away.

In the bucolic Early Bronze Age, Taiku, the regional chieftain prepares for an epic confrontation.  Rumors have been building of the inexorable approach of an army led by a bloodthirsty conqueror with a pious agenda.  Taiku turns to Asenath, the wise and beautiful local leader of the Ebers, as he tries to unite the disparate, squabbling tribes of the region.

Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as “…an intricate web of characters and events. The author pulls it all together, however, in admirable fashion through solid characterization; the sweeping mix of science, mythology, history; and precise, yet metaphor-filled writing… Those willing to decipher it all will be greatly rewarded.”

For more information about Quantum Cannibals or to order, visit www.quantumcannibals.com

A book launch will take place on Sunday January 20, 2019, at 5:30 pm at Beth Zion Congregation, 1 Place Sidney Shoham Place, Cote Saint-Luc, QC H4W 0B9. Register online at https://bethzion.shulcloud.com/event/tubshvat5779 or through the office at 514-489-8411 or bethzion@bethzion.com.

Short Fiction from Kristene Perron

SF Canada member Kristene Perron is the feature author in the current issue of Pulp Literature magazine. “Flavour of the Forsaken” asks us to savour the simple things in life and to question the validity of tradition.

Find Issue 20 (Autumn 2018) in both print and digital at Pulp Literature’s website.

Kristene is the co-author of the adventure science fiction series Warpworld and the 2010 winner of the Surrey International Writer’s Conference Storyteller Award. Find Kristene on Twitter at @KristenePerron and at warpworld.ca.

Fiction and Poetry from Lisa Timpf

SF Canada member Lisa Timpf  has been busy lately!

Her story, “A Cat’s Confession”, about a ship’s cat serving aboard the Galactic Space Ship Meech Lake plus two poems inspired by her cat, Smokey, recently appeared in the anthology From A Cat’s View. This unique anthology offers fascinating insights into the relationship between humans and their feline owners. Pick up a copy at Post to Print Publishers — it’s the purrrfect gift for cat lovers everywhere.

Her short story, “The Caller”, appears in the Future Days anthology issued by Castrum Press.

New Myths has published a story and a poem by Lisa. “Gone” is about an AI-enhanced dog looking for a missing master and “What Really Happened” is a different take on the Gingham Dog and Calico Cat. Read both for free at New Myths.

Her poem entitled “With Two Left Feet” appears in the Tesseracts anthology Nevertheless. In connection with that book’s promotion, Lisa contributed to their “Bright Spots” blog with a piece entitled “Step By Step” that draws on her recovery from knee surgery.

A sci-fi short story entitled “What Lies Beneath” was included in Nomadic Delirium’s November 2018 edition of Environmental Holocaust. The story follows the efforts of a Hamilton-based researcher to combat the spread of a virus.

A sci-fi poem entitled “History Waits to be Written” was published in Polar Borealis #7.

And her sci-fi poem “Ghost Stories” was included in the Sounds of the Night anthology from Alban Lake Publishing.

Lisa’s writing has appeared in a variety of other venues, including Star*Line, Eye to the Telescope, Thema, and Third Flatiron. Find her at http://lisatimpf.blogspot.com/.