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Hacker Chess & Other Stories by Robert Runté

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SF Canada member Robert Runté has been busy in recent months with several stories (new and reprinted) out in the world now.

Most recently, “Ransom and the Christmas Tree,” appeared on Abyss and Apex magazine’s website in December, just in time for the holidays.

“Ransom hesitated, because surely this wasteland wasn’t where one came to cut Christmas trees. Whole sections were just naked sticks, and even the few scattered pines that were struggling to hang on were more grey than green. The blight was so blatant, one didn’t need fae senses to see that the whole hillside was a scarred ruin.” 

“The Missing Elephant,” originally published in the anthology, They Have to Let You In, was republished by Coastal Shelf magazine in their inaugural November 2020 issue.

“Hacker Chess,” came out in Centropic Oracle on November 20, 2020 as an audio production read by Larissa Thompson. This story originally appeared in the anthology The Playground of Lost Toys, edited by fellow SF Canada member Ursula Pflug and Colleen Anderson in 2015. “Hacker Chess,” was also reprinted in Exile Literary Quarterly 39(3) in 2016.

And “Detour on the Eightfold Path” appeared in NeoOpsis #31, also in November 2020. This story is the fourth to feature Robert’s characters Fami and Julia.

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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Stories From The Motherland & Many Lands

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On January 31, 2021 at 4pm EST SF Canada member Bernadette Gabay Dyer will be part of a free online concert brought to you by Storytellers of Canada.

Stories From The Motherland & Many Lands will feature stories from Caribbean and African storytellers in both English and French.

Funds raised through this event will support the 2021 StorySave Rita Cox Project.

Full details about this event are available at: storytellers-conteurs.ca/en/news/Jan-2021-concert.html

Register to attend online at rb.gy/iuy2zu or email admin@storytellers-conteurs.ca

Bernadette Gabay Dyer was born in Kingston Jamaica, and has lived in Toronto Canada for many years. She is a Poet, a Storyteller, an Artist, a Playwright, and the author of four novels, and a short story Collection. Bernadette is a member of the Writer’s Union of Canada and  Science Fiction Canada. Her work has been widely anthologized, and her poetry and short stories have appeared in the University of Miami Journal, as well as in Wasafiri from St Mary’s University in London England. Bernadette is currently awaiting  the publication of a new collection of short stories in 2021.
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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.