When Words Collide 2021

Save the dates this August 13 through 15 2021 for When Words Collide (WWC) the annual Canadian literary festival based in Calgary, AB. This popular event for fiction readers, writers, artists, and publishers is open for registration.

As with last year’s online event, WWC 2021 will be both online-only and FREE to attend with most panels and workshops taking place via Zoom. WWC is an inclusive event with programming covering a broad range of commercial and literary fiction, poetry, and more.

WWC has grown to become one of Canada’s largest literary events and is now celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2021.

Learn more about WWC at: whenwordscollide.org/About_WWC

Register to attend this year’s virtual conference here: whenwordscollide.org/Registration

Issue 17 of Polar Borealis Available for Download

The latest issue of Polar Borealis, edited by SF Canada member R. Graeme Cameron, has just been published.

Discover poetry from SF Canada members Jean-Louis Trudel, Lisa Timpf, and Melanie Marttila along with fiction from Paula Johanson.

Both Polar Borealis and the new Polar Starlight are open to poetry and fiction submissions until February 28, 2021. The latter is a new Canadian poetry magazine edited by Rhea E. Rose.

Download Issue 17 for free. Visit polarborealis.ca to view back issues and find more information about this paying market.

One Bad Apple & Other Stories by Holly Schofield

SF Canada member Holly Schofield has been busy with some new short story publications recently.

The No Police = Know Future anthology examines worlds where funding for police is redirected to other social services. The publisher, Amazing Selects (a division of Experimenter Publishing which publishes the 94-year-old Amazing Stories magazine), says it’s a “unique showcase for our authors’ creativity and problem-solving capabilities, offering much food for thought.  It will get you to think, to engage, to understand that this genre is a tool for exploring, examining and, hopefully, helping us to discover the kind of futures we desire.”

In the near-crimeless and heavily surveilled world of Holly’s story, “One Bad Apple”, a protective father has to make some tough choices when he and his young daughter are confronted by a mugger.

Get No Police = Know Future from Amazing Stories today in print or ebook.

Another of Holly’s stories, “Stubborn as Dirt”, is about rewilding a marsh — a school science project gone wrong! — and appears in And Lately, the Sun.

This 20-tale solarpunk anthology, probes at “how we could build a working world using the resources available to us – the natural, the social, the political, and the technological”. It’s published by Calyx Create Group, an international team of writers, science fiction enthusiasts, media types, and people who don’t want to see humanity crash and burn. The group is registered in Australia as a non-profit association for the purpose of supporting, generating, and disseminating creative works on themes of science, technology and the future.

Details on ordering And Lately, the Sun, and audio excerpts (including one from Holly’s “Stubborn as Dirt”), are here: https://latelythesun.com/ .

When Holly saw the submissions call for the Magic Pens anthology, she knew she had to write a story for it. The result was “Writ Large”, a surprisingly timely tale of the creation of a “new normal” and a possible way to vastly improve the world.

This eclectic, multi-genre collection of original stories is about the power of communication, the magic of writing instruments, and the strength of community, curated to inspire wonder, hope, and joy.

Treat yourself to the ebook or the print version of Magic Pens today!

A more literary look at what we are doing to the environment is Holly’s story “Passengers All”. An otter investigates an abandoned ferry and uncovers some universal truths. Find it in the October 2020 issue of Honeyguide Literary Magazine.

Environmental concerns are not the only topic Holly writes about. In “Reaching Up, Reaching Back”, familial relationships are examined through the lens of time travel. This story was recently reprinted in The Trouble with Time Travel from Smoking Pen Press.

Holly Schofield is the author of over eighty short stories. Her works are used in university curricula, have been translated into multiple languages, and have appeared in Analog, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, the Aurora-winning Second Contacts, and many other publications throughout the world. She hopes to save the world through science fiction and homegrown heritage tomatoes.

Find Holly at hollyschofield.wordpress.com.

And be sure to watch for Holly’s upcoming stories in the Fix the World anthology, the Very Much Alive anthology, and Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine!

With My Kind by Cait Gordon

SF Canada member Cait Gordon was recently published in Stargazers, Microtales from the Cosmos, a collection from AE The Canadian Science Fiction Review.

Her short story “With My Kind” stars a disabled protagonist in a micro escape story. Originally launched through Kickstarter, the Stargazers collection was compiled from AE’s 2020 competition for ultra-short sci-fi stories.

Stargazers: Microtales from the Cosmos is a beautifully illustrated collection of the 20 best flash fiction pieces. Stargazers showcases new and under-represented voices in science fiction. Alongside our astral explorers you will get a chance to count down the clock in an intergalactic tourist agency, fight celestial starcopies with ninjutsu, witness the flashpoint of a revolution, get the downlow on astronomer-brand adultery, and even get a chance to reconnect with literary icon Lady MacBeth.

Cait Gordon is a humorist, baker, and Irish-Canadian princess living in the Narnia region of Ottawa’s suburbia. She enjoys reading and writing speculative fiction that celebrates the reality of diversity. In her advocacy work, Cait’s goal is to continue to share and elevate the voices of disabled, Deaf, and/or neurodiverse creatives.

Learn more about Cait and her work at caitgordon.com .

Order your copy of Stargazers, Microtales from the Cosmos directly from the AE website at aescifi.ca.

 

The Human Template by Dale L. Sproule

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 TransVersionsLiterature 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.

Night Folk by Barb Galler-Smith

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.