Category: Member News

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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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Recognition for A Diary in the Age of Water

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*UPDATED*

A Diary in the Age of Water (Inanna Publications) by SF Canada member Nina Munteanu has received recognition from two sources now.

On World Water Day (March 22, 2021) it was announced that A Diary in the Age of Water became a finalist in the 2020 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award in the science fiction category.

Lyrical and dystopian, A Diary in the Age of Water is as much an ode to water as it is a cautionary tale about the dire implications of climate change. 

The Foreword Indies Book of The Year Awards are hosted by Foreword Reviews as part of its mission to discover, review, and share the best books from university and independent publishers.

In December 2020, Nina’s book was also featured on the Yale Climate Connections list of twelve climate / environmental books for the holidays.
A Diary in the Age of Water chronicles the journeys of four generations of women, each carrying a unique relationship with water over a time of catastrophic change. Told in the form of a diary by a limnologist, the story explores a Canada mined for its water by United States, which, in turn, is owned by China.

The list also includes Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent climate fiction Ministry for the Future (Orbit) and James Lawrence Powell’s The 2084 Report. Anthologies and works on non-fiction by the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis are also included in the recommended holiday reading list by Yale University’s Climate Connections.   

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and award-winning novelist and short story writer. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Nina has coached writers to publication for several decades using her Alien Guidebook Series writing guides.  Nina’s non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada.

Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books, short stories and essays. For more about Nina’s coaching and writing workshops, visit www.ninamunteanu.me. You can also find Nina on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In.

A Diary in the Age of Water can be purchased through Amazon,Chapters-Indigo,Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Inanna Publications.

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With My Kind by Cait Gordon

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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.

 

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Zee by Su J. Sokol

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SF Canada member Su J. Sokol is launching Zee, xyr third novel. This title is being released jointly in French (December 3, 2020) and English (December 6, 2020) by New Brunswick publisher Mouton noir Acadie, an imprint of Bouton d’or Acadie.

Zee can hear what you’re thinking and feel what you’re feeling. She sees herself through your eyes and what she sees changes who she is. Sometimes Zee is the precocious daughter of her four grown-ups. Other times, she’s a rough boy from Brooklyn, New York, playing basketball and getting into trouble. Zee’s grown-ups are worried. They test Zee’s special powers and conspire to keep them secret. Zee figures out what they’re up to and fights back. Zee just wants to fit in, to meet the confusing expectations coming at her from all directions, but will losing sight of who she is put Zee in even greater danger?

Learn more about Zee at an online launch in either French or English.

  • French Event: Thursday, December 3 at 7pm EST on either Facebook or Zoom.
  • English Event: Sunday, December 6 at 7pm EST on either Facebook or Zoom.

Su J. Sokol is a social rights activist and a writer of speculative, liminal and interstitial fiction. Originally from Brooklyn, xe now makes Montréal xyr home. Xyr short fiction has appeared or is upcoming in The Future Fire, Spark: A Creative Anthology, TFFX 10th Anniversary Anthology, Glittership: an LGBTQ Science Fiction and Fantasy Podcast, Glittership: Year One anthology, After the Orange: Ruin and Recovery, and Amazing Stories.

Su’s debut novel, Cycling to Asylum, was longlisted for the Sunburst for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and has been optioned for a feature-length film. Xyr second novel, Run J Run, was published by Renaissance Press in May of 2019.

Learn more about Su and explore xyr other titles at sujsokol.com

Order your copy of Zee from your favourite local bookshop (a great way to support independent booksellers during the pandemic), from Bouton d’or Acadie in French or English, on Amazon, or via Kobo.

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Tower in the Crooked Wood by Paula Johanson

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SF Canada member Paula Johanson is re-releasing an ebook version of her short novel, Tower in the Crooked Wood, with publisher Doublejoy Books.

Join Paula on her Facebook page today, November 30, 2020 at noon PST for an online book launch.

They were stolen in the dark to work for a night and a day, building a tower for the wizard Krummholz on faraway Copper Island, in a place where the trees grow twisted in a poisoned bog. Some of the unwilling workers were returned bewildered, bruised, and marked by whips — others died as the uncaring wizard called new workers to his tower. Now Jenia is the only one left of her family willing to leave her orchards and walk five hundred miles in search of her abductor, and the answers to questions burning inside her.

 

Why was she stolen out of the dark? What is wrong at the heart of the tower? And why does the magic twisting the very trees strike a strangely familiar note? All Jenia knows for sure is that she will not let herself be made a prisoner again, not by magic nor by force of arms. When a soldier tries to trap her in a lord’s garden, and a village of gentle people tell her to give up her hopeless quest, Jenia has to choose where to place her trust: in friends, in strength, or in the cunning in her own two hands.

 

And then the wizard Krummholz sends his call out again…

“A wealth of realistic detail lends authenticity to this engrossing tale of a young arborist, ‘a scholar of trees.’ Paula Johanson has created a magical alternative world both mythic in feel, and hauntingly evocative of our own.” – Eileen Kernaghan, author of The Snow Queen.

Paula Johanson is a Canadian writer. A graduate of the University of Victoria, she has worked as a security guard, a short order cook, a teacher, newspaper writer, and more. As well as editing books and teaching materials, she has run an organic-method small farm with her spouse, raised gifted twins, and cleaned university dormitories. In addition to novels and stories, she is the author of forty-two books written for educational publishers, among them The Paleolithic Revolution and Women Writers from the series Defying Convention: Women Who Changed The World. Johanson is an active member of SF Canada, the national association of science fiction and fantasy authors.

Learn more about Paula and explore her other titles at paulajohanson.blogspot.com.

Order your copy of Tower in the Crooked Wood at !ndigo, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and other digital booksellers.

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Hoards of Glory by Arinn Dembo

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SF Canada member Arinn Dembo wrote a new game, Hoards of Glory, for Kerberos Productions Inc. This title was released November 6, 2020 through STEAM.

Kerberos Productions, the makers of Sword of the Stars, have released a new tabletop simulation game for the PC. Hoards of Glory is a Viking-themed strategy game of dice placement, economy and combat for 1-4 players. Playable by up to four friends via the Internet, it also offers a variety of AI opponents to fill in when human players are not available.


Hoards of Glory is the first stand-alone simulation of a tabletop game that Kerberos has released. Their previous tabletop projects, The Pit: The Board Game and Planetary Control, were both modeled using the popular Tabletop Simulator software.

“This is really satisfying. Been missing games night a lot amidst the pandemic, and this scratches that fast paced card/dice game itch. It feels nice to play something with an “around the table vibe” and this game is easy to teach to my friends who aren’t really PC gamers, so I can play with anyone.” – STEAM reviewer

Purchase Hoards of Glory online at steampowered.com.

Discover other Kerberos Productions games at kerberos-productions.com.