Category: Member News

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Uncanny’s Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction issue!

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SF Canada member Dominik Parisien serves as fiction co-editor for this very special edition of Uncanny magazine.

Why destroy science fiction? Because disabled people have been discarded from the narrative, cured, rejected, villainized. We’ve been given few options for our imaginations to run wild within the parameters of an endless sky.

This issue destroys those narratives and more.

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.

But it is not just enough to talk about disability. It is not enough to just say that we are here, that we will be there later. We need to remember that we are people, too. The disabled artists in this issue are not just disabled people, as so many would boil disability down to a single trait. These are fully actualized individuals, living at the intersections and axes of identities. Queer, nonbinary, Jewish, black, PoC, Christian, straight. We are all of these things and we are disabled. Disability itself means different things to different people. We are not a monolith.

Throughout the stories, nonfiction, and poetry in Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, you will encounter narratives and experiences that may be familiar, or not. Perhaps some disabled readers or writers will encounter an experience they recognize, but handled slightly differently than their own. No one experience of disability is the disability experience. Many of the themes dealt with by our authors could, and likely would, be handled in radically different ways by other disabled authors. And that’s the point. The Destroy projects are important to the field because they amplify the work of a specific demographic at a specific point in time, but they are only a small part of what needs to be an ongoing conversation. We need more of those narratives, with a broad range of experiences.

Now available from Uncanny as .pdf, .epub, or .mobi.

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November 21st launch of Chasing the Banyan Wind

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Mark your calendars! SF Canada member Bernadette Dyer ‘s novel, Chasing the Banyan Wind, will be officially launched on Nov 21st, 2018, at 61 Heintzman Street in Toronto at 6:00pm (Heintzman Place).

This historical novel is published by LMH Publishing.

In the mid 1920s an English family, Jonathan and Wilemina Gunn, and their two young children, Dunstan and Eliza emigrate to the  Caribbean island of Jamaica. With help from locals they build a home in a remote rural location on the island’s north coast. Previous perceptions of the island do  not prepare them for the reality of the island’s diverse Englishspeaking population that includes Negroes, East Indians, Chinese, Jews, Europeans and Syrians.

This haunting saga exposes race relations, social class distinctions and alliances in a multi-ethnic society, that goes beyond the  unforgiving landscape of war, turmoil, hardships and passions that proliferate even beyond Jamaica’s shores. A sweeping historical novel that addresses World War II, and the involvement of the Commonwealth nations’ allegiance to the ‘Mother  Country’ while taking us on an unforgettable journey that gives credence to the saying, that the more things change, the more they  remain the same.

Chasing the Banyan Wind is available at Amazon, Indigo, Barnes & Noble, and the Toronto library system.

Congratulations, Bernadette!

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The Art of Dying poetry collection

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SF Canada member Sarah Tolmie’s second collection of poems is a traditional ars moriendi, a how-to book on the practices of dying. Confronting the fear of death head-on, and describing the rituals that mitigate it, the poems in The Art of Dying take a satirical look at the ways we explain, enshrine, and, above all, evade death in contemporary culture.

Some poems are personal—a parent tries to explain to a child why a grandfather is in hospital, or stages a funeral for a child’s imaginary friend – while others comment on how death figures in the news, on TV, and in social media. Some poems ask if there is any place left for poets in our rituals of memory and commemoration. A few examine the apocalyptic language of climate change. Others poke fun at the death-defying claims of posthumanism.

A thoughtful and irreverent collection about serious concerns, The Art of Dying begins and ends with the fact of death, and strips away our euphemisms about it. The book is available through McGill-Queen’s University Press , Indigo, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Find more of Sarah’s poetry and fiction at her website.

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A Body of Work now released!

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SF Canada member Colleen Anderson‘s first solo collection, A Body of Work, was launched by Black Shuck Books at Fantasycon earlier this year. It features sixteen of Colleen’s dark fiction, split into two sections:

MIND OVER MATTER: eight stories examine dark obsessions, consuming lust and the consequences of choices that can twist the mind to its own desires or bring release.
UNDER THE SKIN: eight stories where the quest to master devices, environment or worlds leads to battles of survival that devour or shape into something new.

Savory teeth, sentient insects, deadly automatons, VR worlds, ensorcelled blades, nanotech healing, possessive fungus, gingerbread people, prophetic soap bubbles and more: this Body of Work is a stitchery of tales, a strange creature that is alluring, disturbing and thought-provoking.

A Body of Work is available through Black Shuck Books and Amazon.

Watch for upcoming launch events, soon to be announced on Colleen’s blog.

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New ways to enjoy Scott Overton’s fiction

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SF member Scott Overton recently used his 30 years of experience as a broadcaster to convert some of his fiction to audio. His mystery/thriller novel about the radio industry, Dead Air, is now available in audio format from Audible.

When radio morning man Lee Garrett receives a death threat he shrugs it off as a prank, until harassment turns into outright attempts on his life. Then the deadliest attack yet claims an innocent victim and Garret knows he must force a confrontation with his persecutors.

Scott has also been busy with his short fiction. Fifteen of Scott’s science fiction and fantasy short stories  available in  e-book form via the anthologies Disastrous!, Body Of Opinion and other stories plus the series Beyond: The Stars, Beyond: Time, and Beyond: Technology are now gathered together into one paperback. BEYOND: Stories Beyond Time, Technology, and the Stars is now available to buy in print form through Amazon and other online retailers. Your favourite independent bookstore can also order it through the book distributor Ingram.

Find more fiction at Scott’s website, including free stories.

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Dave Duncan (June 30, 1933 – October 29, 2018)

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It is with deep sadness we announce the passing of Dave Duncan, a founding and honorary lifetime member of SF Canada, an inductee of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and one of Canada’s legendary speculative fiction writers. He was the author of sixty-five books, including several fantasy series (among them The Seventh Sword, A Man of His Word, and A Handful of Men) as well as seven books about The King’s Blades. He twice won an Aurora Award for best novel.

Born in Newport-on-Tay, Scotland on June 30, 1933, Dave left the old country in 1957, after graduating from the University of St. Andrews. He settled in Calgary, Alberta where he worked as a petroleum geologist for 30 years. He was innovative in his approach to the oil business and, in addition to being a working geologist, founded a data company specializing in timely retrieval and dissemination of well information.

Dave was a master storyteller who sometimes liked to say that when he didn’t like the real world he could invent his own. And what brilliant, intricate worlds he created.

When the oil patch took a downturn in the eighties, Dave submitted a manuscript to Del Rey in New York. To his delight, it was accepted and the confidence he gained from that allowed him, at age 53, to switch careers completely and turn to writing full time. That novel, “A Rose Red City”, was the first of over sixty books. He ranged across genres, writing mostly fantasy but also science fiction, young adult and historical, making him one of the country’s most prolific and much-loved authors.

He wife of fifty-nine years, Janet, was his biggest supporter, a respected influence, and his in-house editor.

As well as writing, he successfully explored painting, photography, computer programming, genealogy and many other passions that came and went. But writing was the passion that stayed and was his true calling.

Never one to leave loose ends, fans will be pleased to know Dave Duncan finished his last book days before his death.

We’ll miss you, Dave.