SF Canada will now be featuring free short fiction contributed by our members! You’ll find the stories on our Bookstore/Free Fiction page, updated from time to time.
The first story has just gone live: “Not a Problem” by Matthew Hughes. Click over and give it a read!
K.V. Johansen will be attending LONCON 3 (the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention) in London UK, from August 14-18, where she will be on panels discussing “Crossing Boundaries: Histories of International SF/F for Children”, “Sense of Wonder in Children’s SF”, and “YA Fiction: The History of a Genre”, as well as being available at a kaffeeklatsch where readers and writers can meet.
Right before LONCON, Johansen will be a class leader at the Science Fiction Foundation’s annual Masterclass in Science Fiction Criticism, held at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, August 11-13.
Johansen’s latest novel, The Leopard, was published in June by Pyr, to be followed in December by part two of the epic fantasy: The Lady.
For more about Johansen’s writing and her participation in LONCON 3, see her blog, her website, or her alternate website for children’s & YA books.
This tour is supported by the New Brunswick Arts Board | Cette tournée est soutenue par le Conseil des arts du Nouveau-Brunswick
Paul Marlowe’s short story “The Grinsfield Penitent” has been published in the Indian literary magazine The Affair. (Click the links to read the story for free on-line.) 
The story, about a priest confessing and recollecting a supernatural incident connected to the First World War, also appears in Marlowe’s collection Ether Frolics, which was short-listed for the 16th annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best début collection of short fiction by a Canadian author.
Reviews of Ether Frolics
“Marlowe’s sense of place is dynamic and fresh, for all that his writing is set in the past… what Marlowe has written is a creation well worth the read, revealing a major Canadian talent.” – Chadwick Ginther, The Winnipeg Review
“This collection of nine short stories is a true jaw-dropping jewel of a book…”
– Aly Grauer, Doctor Fantastique’s Show of Wonders
SF Canada member Nowick Gray has released a new speculative novel. PsyBot is every programmer’s nightmare: the bug that gets loose on the user side of the interface. Virtual reality, Joe Norton discovers, is not confined to hardware. Is the only way out, to go further in?
PsyBot, in the best “cyberpunk” tradition, is both speculative technothriller and character study. Its themes comprise both personal growth and corporate machination. The language aims for that balance of gritty description and eloquent quest that can satisfy equally readers of sci-fi or morality tale. The use of genre elements—alien abduction, offworld travel, astral projection—is effectively ironic, introduced by the antagonistic computer virus to tempt and tease, to call into question the arbitrary fabric of every virtual reality we yearn for or claim to inhabit.
PsyBot: A Novel of the Near Future is available from Amazon.ca in both Kindle and paperback formats.
Read a preview chapter here, and more about the novel here, at the author’s website.
Nowick Gray’s Rendezvous, an adventure novella with a paranormal twist, was published by World Castle in 2013. His short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in a wide variety of periodicals and anthologies. Reviewers have praised the “standout fiction” ( James A. Lee); “gripping story technique” (Frank Burnaby); “captivating forward momentum” (Sally Ross); and “fully fleshed-out characters, living and breathing” (S. L. Saboviec).
Connect with Nowick Gray and his writings at nowickgray.com.
Released June 10, 2014
K.V. Johansen‘s latest novel, The Leopard, has been published by Pyr.
The Leopard was chosen for Kirkus Review‘s Best Speculative Fiction Reads for June, and io9.com’s Most Astounding Must-Read Science Fiction And Fantasy Books In June.
Ahjvar, the assassin known as the Leopard, wants only to die, to end the curse that binds him to a life of horror. Although he has no reason to trust the goddess Catairanach or her messenger Deyandara, fugitive heir to a murdered tribal queen, desperation leads him to accept her bargain: if he kills the mad prophet known as the Voice of Marakand, Catairanach will free him of his curse. Accompanying him on his mission is the one person he has let close to him in a lifetime of death, a runaway slave named Ghu. Ahj knows Ghu is far from the half-wit others think him, but in Marakand, the great city where the caravan roads of east and west meet, both will need to face the deepest secrets of their souls, if either is to survive the undying enemies who hunt them and find a way through the darkness that damns the Leopard.
To Marakand, too, come a Northron wanderer and her demon verrbjarn lover, carrying the obsidian sword Lakkariss, a weapon forged by the Old Great Gods to bring their justice to the seven devils who escaped the cold hells so long before.
Review: “…the work highlights Johansen’s strengths. A surprising number of characters and plot threads are deftly interwoven…” – Publishers Weekly
Review: “An involving and deftly written novel of escape and capture, love and loss, and battles both mental and physical…. Johansen’s writing style is assured and elegant, subtle and powerful…”– ForeWord Reviews
For more about the Marakand series and the author, see K.V. Johansen’s website at www.kvj.ca
Sherry D. Ramsey’s debut novel, One’s Aspect to the Sun, published by Tyche Books, is one of three titles shortlisted in the Book of the Year – Speculative Fiction category.
Another Tyche title in this category is Masked Mosaic, an anthology of Canadian superhero tales. SFC contributors to the anthology include Claude Lalumiere (co-editor), David Perlmutter, Marie Bilodeau, Michael Matheson, Mike Rimar, Rhea Rose, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
SFC member Simon Rose’s non-fiction work, Canada in World War I: Roots of the Conflict, published by Weigl Educational Publishers, has also been shortlisted in the Education Book category.
The award recipients in ten categories will be announced during the Alberta Book Awards Gala on Friday, June 6, at the Fairmont Palliser Hotel in Calgary. Awards for Publisher of the Year, Book Illustration, and Lifetime Achievement will also be presented.
