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When the Call Comes In by Ira Nayman

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SF Canada member Ira Nayman was recently published in No Police = Know Future, a collection from Amazing Stories.

“When the Call Comes In” tells the story of a police incident in three variations. The first features two Caucasian police officers responding to an African American man sleeping in a car in a lane of a drive-through restaurant. The second and third have the same set-up but replaces the responders with an officer and psychiatrist team, and then a psychiatrist with a social worker robot.

The collection No Police = Know Future explores a future without police in response to the 2020 protests that issued the cry to “defund the police.” Amazing Stories challenged science fiction authors the world over to create their vision of a world without police and fair systems of justice. In this collection you’ll find eleven stories showing alternate forms of law enforcement and criminal justice spread across near future, alternate realities and different worlds.

Ira Nayman is a comedy writer. In the 1980s, he was a writer/performer with the Earth Two and Dead Air radio sketch comedy troupes. Since then, he has written 14 feature length screenplays and approximately 85 scripts for television, most of which are neatly divided into 12 original series.

When he isn’t being satirical all over the place, Ira teaches new media at Ryerson University. He has a Masters degree from the New School for Social Research and he has a PhD from McGill. Ira has written film criticism for Reel Independence and Creative Screenwriting, as well as media and film criticism for *Spark Online.

Learn more about Ira and his work at www.lespagesauxfolles.ca.

Order your copy of No Police = Know Future on Amazon.

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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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Night Folk by Barb Galler-Smith

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SF Canada member Barb Galler-Smith has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Issue 47 – November 2020. Her fantasy story “Night Folk” explores retired life from the viewpoint of supernatural creatures.

Galaxy’s Edge is a bi-monthly online magazine published every January, March, May, July, September and November. Select material from the magazine is free for online viewing. Downloads in multiple formats are available from a variety of different venues.

This November issue greets our readers with new articles from regular columnists L. Penelope and Gregory Benford, and reviews of the latest and greatest fiction by Richard Chwedyk.
… “Night Folk,” by Barb Galler-Smith, also takes part in the absence of daylight, where some aging creatures of the night put aside their walking canes to battle some geriatric hunters. It’s not often that we read about retired supernatural creatures, and this story doesn’t disappoint, flipping well-known tropes in this unexpected read.

Barbara Galler-Smith is co-author of DRUIDS, CAPTIVES, and WARRIORS, the DRUID SAGA novels. Barb holds two degrees: Zoology and Education. She’s spent the last eight years substitute teaching every grade and every subject.  Barb also works as an acquisitions editor and sometimes copyeditor for award-winning OnSpec: The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic.

Barb wrote her first story in the third grade for her new elementary school. The school chose it for inclusion in a 50-year time capsule set beneath the school’s flagpole. She’s been writing science fiction and fantasy ever since.

Learn more about Barb at gallersmith.ca.

Purchase a digital or print copy of Galaxy’s Edge, Issue 47 – November 2020 through galaxysedge.com.

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The New Season by Graham J Darling

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SF Canada member Graham J Darling has a short story, “The New Season” in Brain Games: Stories to Astonish. This anthology was published October 26, 2020 by Third Flatiron Publishing and also includes “The Disconnect” from SF Canada member Lisa Timpf.

Brain Games: Stories to Astonish is a fabulous collection of 27 short science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories involving killer apps, Rube Goldberg inventions, clever escapes, Greek mythology, mysterious space heists, and high-tech sorcery. The humor section gives us the inner workings of a MegaMind.

Graham J. “GrayJay” Darling has long been a voracious consumer of speculative literature. The first novel he ever read was Alice in Wonderland: after learning that by heart, he went on to sip from entire fields of such flowers of the imagination. Eventually he was moved to share the wonder with like-minded fans in clubs, conventions, productions and games. He now writes as fiction what the world isn’t ready for as fact, in parallel to his activities as a scientist and as a medieval reenactor.

Full TOC and more about Third Flatiron at thirdflatiron.com.

Order the e-book or paperback version of Brain Games: Stories to Astonish on Amazon.

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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.

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For Laika by Lisa Timpf

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SF Canada member Lisa Timpf has a new poem “For Laika” included in The House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature Vol. 2.

In this much anticipated second volume of speculative literature, authors examine relationships and how technology impacts our connections to each other, to nature, to space and time. The writing in this volume is often dark and rich in satire, yet there are many whimsical moments, and a strong undertone of irreverence. Writers deep-dive into challenging themes to bring us stories and poems that explore gender, immortality, the obsolescence of the human body, biohacking, decay, and the evolution of love in a transhuman world.

Lisa Timpf is a retired human resources and communications professional who lives in Simcoe, Ontario. Her writing has appeared in a number of venues, including Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Very Good, Very Bad Dog, New Myths, Third Flatiron, and Scifaikuest.

A graduate of McMaster University’s Physical Education program, Ms. Timpf also completed course work toward an MSc in Sport History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When not writing, Lisa enjoys cycling and bird-watching.

Learn more about Lisa’s writing at lisatimpf.blogspot.com.

Download a digital copy of The House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature Vol. 2 via Amazon FREE from October 21 through 23, 2020.