Monday, March 18, 2024

Review of The Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction Vol 1.

This review originally appeard in The Ottawa Review of Books January 15, 2024.

When John Robert Columbo came out with the first anthology of Canadian speculative fiction, Other Canadas, in 1979, it was the first time most of us realized that there even was a Canadian version of the genre. To cobble the collection together, however, Columbo had to scour all of history and pad the list with the likes of Cyrano de Bergerac and Jules Verne—non-Canadians who happen to have set a story in the polar north—to fill his pages. By 1985, the field had expanded sufficiently that Judith Merril was able to solicit enough contemporary Canadian SF to fill the first Tesseracts anthology.

When I co-edited the fifth Tesseract anthology over a decade later, we had over 400 submissions, and I confidently predicted further explosive growth for Canadian SF&F. The Tesseract series is now up to number 22 though the series has morphed into themed anthologies rather than a general survey of the Canadian genre. Imaginarium 2012 was the first attempt at reprinting the “Year’s Best” but the series ended with Imaginarium 4. We therefore have lacked a “Best of Canadian SF&F” series for the last eight years.

Enter Stephen Kotowych, the editor of the Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, Vol.1 (2023).

If I thought working on Tesseracts 5 was challenging, I cannot begin to imagine trying to keep on top of a field that has expanded continuously over the last thirty years. The undertaking, especially by a single individual rather than a team backed by an established publisher, is outrageously audacious. And yet, Kotowych seems to have pulled it off. With 37 entries from 24 different magazines and 6 anthologies—a total of thirty different venues—the collection is certainly a representative survey of the field. The stories range from hard science fiction through fantasy, horror, and fevered dreams to pure CanLit. Inevitably, as with any anthology, tastes differ and one might quibble whether this or that entry is the “best” Canadians have to offer, but there’s no question Kotowych has nailed the breadth of what’s out there. Story quality ranged from “solid” to “outstanding” with the overall weighting tipped heavily towards the “excellent” end. If I’m honest, I think this collection is better than the one I co-edited, a reflection of how Canadian speculative fiction has expanded and matured in the decades since.

Best of all, the collection introduced me to a number of authors with whom I had not previously been acquainted. How had I missed, for example, Suyi Davies Okungbowa? I was shocked to find a stack of novels by this University of Ottawa prof, whose “Choke” is one of the outstanding stories in the current collection. That one discovery is worth the price of the collection five times over. Although “Choke” feels as if it would be comfortable in any CanLit magazine, it originally appeared in Tor.Com, so legitimately qualifies as speculative fiction. But wow! The freshness of the phrasing, the passion of the writing, the absolute resonance of the contemporary experience just floored me. That’s six new novels added to my To-Be-Read pile right there.

Similarly, I had no idea Nebula-nominated Ai Jiang was Canadian. Her “Give me English” is a great opening to the anthology, not just because it’s a gem of a story, but because it nicely illustrates how the current generation is infusing fresh themes and viewpoints into the Canadian genre. I have banged on for years how Canadian SF differed from that of the American (and to a lesser extent, the British) mass market SF&F, but I have to concede that the (English-language) Canadian genre often lacked culturally diverse voices, beyond some influences from Quebec. Jaing’s story speaks not just to the immigrant experience, but to the post-colonial, anti-capitalist themes that have become a natural part of the SF scene. Chelsea Vovel’s “Mischif Man” story of a Métis superhero similarly takes on Settler colonialism, and Lavigne’s “Choose Your Own” is one of the best feminist pieces ever: wincingly on target.

These and the majority of the entries fit my argument that Canadian speculative fiction is oddly optimistic despite the often downbeat premises. The future is on fire in Premee Mohamed’s “All that Burns Unseen”; perpetual war and exploitation are central to Michelle Tang’s “Vihum Heal”; oppressive religion stifles life in Kate Hearfield’s “And in the Arcade”; Charlotte Ashley’s “Distant Skies” features capitalist manipulation of our destinies through genetics; Holly Schofield’s “Maximum Efficiency” has robot soldiers vs humans; KT Brysk’s “Folk Hero Motifs in Tales Told by the Dead” is set in hell, for heaven’s sake. And yet, life goes on and people (or other sentients) find a way. I love this approach of ordinary people bumbling through tough times to carve out acceptable outcomes. It is the literature we need amidst the dumpster fire we’re living through.

Reynold’s “Broken Vow: The Adventures of Flick Gibson, Intergalactic Videographer” provides some needed comic relief, and the fiction is broken up by the inclusion of nine rather good, accessible poems.

Overall, it is a great collection, a great reflection on what Canadian speculative fiction has to offer, and a great first entry in which one can only hope will continue as an annual series.

The Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction Vol.1 (2023) is published by Ansible Press.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Al/ice Reprinted

My short story "Al/ice" has been reprinted in the Queens in Wonderland anthology from No Bad Books.

The story was originally published in Shoreline of Infinity #21 (April 2021), which provided a really helpful sensitivity read.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Detour on the Eight-Fold Path

My short story, "Detour on the Eight-Fold Path" has been reprinted in JayHenge's anthology, AI, ROBOT.

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The story originally appeared in Neo-Opsis Magazine #31.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

The Changeling and the Bully" Reprinted

My short story, "The Changeling and the Bully" was reprinted in Polar Borealis #28, February, 2024, pp. 54-63.

Polar Borealis is available as a free PDF download from https://polarborealis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/POLAR-BOREALIS-28-January-2024.pdf

This is the origin story for my Ransom and Friends urban fantasy series. The story was originally originally published in Mythic #17, Oct, 2021, pp. 65-74.

Monday, January 15, 2024

Review of State of the Arc


This review originally appeared in The Ottawa Review of Books, Nov 2023.

State of the Ark: Canadian Future Fiction Edited and Introduction by Lesley Choyce
Reviewed by Robert Runté

As soon as I heard about this anthology, I knew I had to have it for my collection, because I already have Lesley Choyce’s and John Bell’s pioneering 1981 Visions from the Edge, the first anthology of speculative fiction from Atlantic Canada; and Choyce’s 1992 Ark of Ice, a now classic anthology of Canadian speculative fiction (Canada being the ark in question). State of the Ark represents the current state and range of speculative fiction in Canada 2023, including checking in with some of the same authors from the 1992 volume. It is, like its predecessors, an excellent cross-section of the Canadian speculative genre at one moment in time.

At one end of the spectrum, we have traditional space fiction: Robert Sawyer’s “Star Light, Star Bright”, is an approachable story of Dyson spheres, interstellar colonies, and good parenting. Sawyer’s stories are always about exploring the less-than-obvious implications of big scientific concepts and bringing those down to the human level. This short is an example of why Sawyer is arguably Canada’s most successful science fiction writer.

Julie E. Czerneda’s “Foster Earth” is similarly a classic first-contact story: humans trying to figure out how to communicate with The Silent with absolutely nothing to go on . . . and coincidentally, another story about great parenting. I love it!

My favourite SF story, though, is Julian Mortimer Smith’s “Read-Only Memory”, which explores near-future tech to absolutely nail contemporary attitudes and relationships. I’m definitely going to have to hunt down more of Smith’s work.

Jeremy Hull’s “Bright Future” covers the similar ground of virtual technology and relationships, but this time from a parenting angle (hmm, starting to see a trend here). C.J. Lavigne’s “Side Effects May Include” is a sharply Canadian take on medical tech’s relationship with late-stage capitalism.

Other more or less traditional SF entries included Spider Robinson’s story of slow interstellar travel; John Park’s “Hammerhead” other-world colonization; Terri Favro’s “Winter Pilgrimage of the Storytellers”, a multi-world portal novel; and Hugh A.D. Spencer’s “Shoebox or The End of Civilization in Five Objects or Less”, a delightful satire of pompous museum staff, the ill-treatment of freelances, and the comeuppance Spencer (himself, a museum consultant) would wish upon them. Greg Bechtel’s “2115: Notes Toward Nine Stories of the Future” examines recent articles to project nine mutually exclusive punchlines for future fiction.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the stories that lean heavily into CanLit, like Katherine Govier’s “VIXEN, SWAN, EMU, BEAR”. I really enjoyed her writing which connected each totem to moments in the narrator’s relationships. This story could comfortably have found a home in any Canadian literary journal. If anything, I questioned whether the speculative element was a bit thin, really only appearing in the last page—it felt a little tacked on. I was, therefore, not entirely surprised to read in her bio that the story had indeed originally appeared in Exile Literary Quarterly and the ending was added for this volume. I am not complaining though! It’s a marvelous piece of writing, and I am always appreciative that our best literary writers are open to stepping across genre lines, which elsewhere are often considered impenetrable. The number and influence of Canadian literary writers crossing over into speculative fiction is one reason our version of the genre is distinct from the mass market American version.

Between these two poles are stories that blur the line between literary and speculative genres.

Élisabeth Vonarburg’s “Terminus” is a parallel world story, but mostly about relationships, identity and self-worth. Casey June Wolf’s “Substance. Light” works some of the same themes, but with an even more poetic bent. Both allude to suicide (so: trigger warning).

Candas Jane Dorsey’s “The Card is the World” a dark--or maybe darkly funny--story plays with literary structure to deliver a commentary on science, suits, and--inevitably--relationships. (And almost as an aside, the invisibility of older women.) Tim Wynne-Jones’ “Eternity Leave” has flying saucers, but it is really a story about imagination, the literary life, and a beautiful day. The story nicely balances literal narrative and Wynne-Jones’ whimsical style.

Lesley Choyce’s own “Tantramar: A Love Story in a Time of Crisis” is either speculative fiction if we believe the characters, Canlit if they are delusional. It could go either way, but it works as a love story, so is categorization important?

I judge The State of the Ark an accurate presentation of current trends in the genre. Old writers and new are both represented, the new bringing a hopefully growing diversity of voices. There is an underlying optimism running through all these stories, even the dystopian ones, which is perhaps new. The collection as a whole is more literary than idea-driven, more about the writing than story-telling, which I would argue reflects the growing maturity of the speculative genre overall, even beyond Canada. Better yet, the majority of the stories here straddle these divides to combine the best of both CanLit and SF. There is room for both space ships and poetic language in Canadian speculative fiction, and even the straight-forward SF all has an identifiable Canadian slant to it.

The State of the Ark is a ‘must-have’ for anyone wondering what Canadian future fiction fares these days.

The State of the Ark is published by Pottersfield Press, 2023.

Friday, December 29, 2023

Ransom and the Open Window Reprinted

My short story, "Ransom and the Open Window" has been reprinted in Neo-Opsis Magazine #35. It is the third story in my Ransom and Friends urban fantasy series, but was the first to be published, back in 2019, in First Line Literary Journal.

Saturday, December 2, 2023

On Going Back to Rewrite a Previously Published BooK

An author I follow has recently posted they’re going back to rewrite their first novel. They explain that as they’ve become a more experienced—and therefore a more accomplished—author with many more books since, they now recognize the many mistakes they made in that first book. Those errors are haunting them and they have decided 2024 is the year to go back and rewrite that first novel, and perhaps parts of the rest of that initial series.

Hmmm. I have a few reservations about this announcement.

First, I liked that first novel. A lot. It’s possible some long-time fans might feel it being rewritten a tiny bit insulting. We bloody well discovered you with that novel, so don’t go saying we were wrong about it.

For example, the author now sees that the tone of the series was ‘inconsistent’, ending up a lot darker at the end than the tone of the original book; that it went from YA to a series for older readers. Um, yeah. That’s one of the things I identified that I liked about that series—that issues that seem straight-forward at first can get, not just worse, but more threatening existentially. A whole generation readers grew up following that series from YA to WTF and matured right along with the writing. We followed the hero(ine) ever deeper into grimdark, damn it, and now you’re telling us that was all a mistake?

Second, and more seriously—history tells us, authors going back to rewrite their earlier novels hasn’t always worked out well.

Let us take two relatively well known examples.

Case Study #1: Blake’s Progress by Ray Faraday Nelson first came out from Laser Books, edited by Roger Elwood, in 1975. It was a pretty good book. But as many critics noted, myself included, it just missed being a great book. And . . . we all blamed Roger Elwood for not pushing Nelson to that next level.

We expect editors to coach writers to produce the best book they can, otherwise, what’s the point of having editors? Any idiot can choose good books for a press, but the reason publishers get the lion’s share of royalties is supposed to be because they’re adding value—by editing good books into great ones.

No one had such expectations of Roger Elwood. Laser books was an imprint of Harlequin, which in those days was pumping out Harlequin Romances to a strict formula like so much processed cheese. Elwood convinced Harlequin that SF, then the second ranked marketing category just behind Romance, could be packaged in exactly the same way: 3 titles a month, 50-60,000 words, a brand-recognizable cover, and a reliable product that readers would loyally consume without even bothering to read the cover blurb. In effect, consumption based on genre rather than particular themes or authors or a unique cover.

Since we assumed Elwood was delivering processed cheese, many dismissed him and his imprint out of hand. SF readers, particularly faanish fans, were horrified by the Harliquin connection because fans had invested a lot of energy in those days distancing themselves from the genre’s pulp origins and particularly any association with formulaic Romance. (Romance has matured into a significant literary movement beyond the original limited formulaic Harlequins, and SF has become mainstream, so such attitudes have largely died out, but it was still definitely a thing in the mid-1970s).

More significantly for Harlequin’s marketing model, SF readers attended to authors and themes far more than Romance readers. Instead of all three releases selling a predictable, fixed number of copies, sales varied wildly between titles, leaving Harlequin with unsold inventory for some titles and unmet demand for others. Since that wasn’t how their model worked, they dropped the SF imprint within 2 years.

So . . . we all assumed that Nelson’s book must have suffered from bad editing.

Nelson, perhaps because he was reading those reviews, rewrote Blakes Progress ten years later as Timequest, published by Tor. No one could complain that Tor was some sort of second rate publisher, or their editors suspect.

Yet, speaking for myself, I found the new version unreadable. It was bloated, pretentious, overwritten and took itself far too seriously. Blake’s Progress was a good book, a nifty idea from which readers could extrapolate to what could have been a great book. But instead of fulfilling the promise of Blake’s Progress, Timequest was actively painful to read. I was unable to get through it.

Case Study #2 The Carpet People was originally published by Terry Pratchett in 1971, when he was 17. I was 19 that year and found The Carpet People on display in the “new books” section of the Strathcona Branch of the Edmonton Public Library. (Considering how few copies that initial version sold, I feel divine intervention was required to put a copy into my hands more than a decade before anyone had heard of Pratchett or the Disc World.) To this day, I have a visceral memory of lying on my stomach, tracing out the action of the book on the deep pile and intricate pattern of the Turkish carpet in my Mom’s front room.

To say that the original made a strong impression on me does not really cover the sense of wonder that it evoked, or that I never stopped thinking about it. It’s one of maybe five books that made me want to be a writer. Fifty plus years on, I still have the carpet I first read it on . . . and I can’t look at the pattern without seeing the roads and village of carpet people it traces out.

But here’s the thing. I knew that novel had issues. I remember clearly my having enthused to my family—and anyone else who would listen—how great that book was . . . but always with the cravat that it had flaws. “You just have to ignore this loophole” or “Yeah, this other scene doesn’t quite work” I would say, in case they actually were persuaded to read it and wondered how I could miss such obvious weaknesses.

They must have been obvious weaknesses to Pratchett, too, when he undertook to rewrite the book twenty years later.

You can bet I devoured that rewrite the moment it hit the market. And it was . . . not the book I had read.

I’m not saying it was bad. On the contrary, the new edition was essentially flawless, the mature Pratchett writing at his peak. All the weaknesses of the original were now erased, the dialogue was pure Disc-World gold, the structural issues and under-development of the original all addressed.

But, um.

As Pratchett himself famously put it, "This book had two authors, and they were both the same person." He was clear about wanting to retain the strengths of the original, of it being a collaboration with his younger self, but I would argue that revising out all of the original’s flaws necessarily erased the 17 year old. I maintain that the rough edges were a crucial part of the original’s charm. The lack of sophistication was part of what lent the book much of its vitality, its ability to massively evoke my sense of wonder.

It is not just that the elder Pratchett was tampering with a treasured memory. I get that must be a factor. Nevertheless, I think it’s more a question that each of those two authors had their own strengths and weaknesses. The original version’s strengths lay partly in its very flaws—as they say in computer software circles, “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature”.

The original version was more interactive. As a reader, I had to fill in the cracks and plaster over the rough bits myself. I took the 17 year old’s vision and ran with it. It triggered the writer in me by making me extrapolate from what was there to the bits that were missing. In contrast, by smoothing out all the edges, the elder Pratchett changed the book from a collaboration between writer and reader to one where the reader is passively watching the perfectly rendered movie that is any mature Pratchett novel.

I am not saying that mature Pratchett ruined the book’s experience or even that he eroded my own fond memories of it. For the 99.9% of his readership who hadn’t read the original in 1971, the 1992 version is perfectly wonderful. I can’t imagine anyone being disappointed with it. 
No, what I’m arguing is that the original had its own strengths and didn’t really need to be rewritten. It was never a failure. It served a different purpose, is all.

I completely understand Pratchett’s decision to rewrite. His Disc-World and YA fans would be expecting any Pratchett title to be the work of the mature Pratchett, and might well have been disappointed if they purchased a less polished volume. And of course, it makes no sense to have a viable property and not reprint it. But I am sad that the 17 year old’s book is no longer out there to engage and encourage 19-year-old-writers.

Which brings us back to the author I mentioned at the outset rewriting their first book in their first series from ten years ago. Artistically, I don’t think that’s remotely necessary. And I’m not entirely happy that the thematic development of the series will be smoothed out so it’s now all grimdark, not the sort of escalating existentialism that I appreciated as the original series progressed.

But commercially . . . yeah, I get it. If that first book is preventing potential new adult / grimdark fans from reading and discovering (more importantly, buying) the whole series, than yeah, that needs to be fixed. But let’s think of it as “repurposing” the book rather than “fixing” it. By all means, re-edit to relaunch the successful series for a new generation of readers. Just don’t bad mouth the original.

A lot of self-published authors get better over time, and many of them have expressed regret to me over their having rushed their first novel into print before it was ready. That’s one reason I sometimes advise authors to use a pseudonym when starting out, rather than risk associating their name (i.e., their brand) with a book that won’t always remain up to their standards.

And of course, I think the services of a good editor can make a difference in ensuring that first book isn’t something that will be regretted later, but I’m pretty obviously biased on that one.

Going back and rewriting that book, though… Usually the time would be better invested in writing something new at one’s current level than revisiting and reinvesting in—“throwing good money/energy/time after bad”—at a title that has already had its turn. Let it go, unless reader feedback makes it clear that it’s sabotaging sales of more recent titles (e.g., when it’s the first in a series and one is losing all the readers who insist on starting any series with book 1).

If one is going to revisit and rewrite—the rule has to be:

  1. wait at least ten years, to ensure one has actually gotten ten-year’s-worth-of-writing better; and also so that the original audience has forgotten it such that it counts now as a new release.
  2. Changing the title is acceptable if and only if it’s noted somewhere that this is a re-release of the old title. (Tricking people into rebuying the same book, even rewritten, is likely to piss them off enough so they never buy from that author/publisher again.)
  3. really consider the strengths of the original (e.g., youthful vitality) and ensure one is not eviscerating what made the original book work and end up with something actively worse. Rewriting is always a double or nothing bet.

Was it really that bad, or merely a different genre/demographic/market/purpose? Smart authors often deliberately choose the simplest novel (of the dozens in their brain) to start with, in order to master the craft of plot, pacing, dialogue, basic character, and so on before attempting their magnum opus. Starting with a space opera before writing one’s Dostoevsky-equivalent (or whatever) doesn’t mean the first novel was crap, just that it was serving a different purpose/market than one is writing for now. The Dostoevsky writes space opera thing isn’t likely to work out.