Well, it appears that ’tis the season! I see lots of awards eligibility posts popping up from authors I know, and since everyone else is jumping off a cliff…
It’s actually been a crazy busy year for me, with not only a couple of short stories published, but my first forays into editing anthologies now under my belt! You can find details below.
And, since you’re here, I’m going to take the liberty of letting you know about the wonderful stories by Canadians that appeared in those anthologies. Again, see below, and thanks for your consideration.
– S.
Anthologies (eligible in the Aurora Award for Best Related Work category)
Game On!, edited by Stephen Kotowych and Tony Pi (ZNB, July 2023)
Games are about more than winning and losing. They’re about risk and reward, strategy and blind fortune, our need to win and our fear of being outplayed. And when magic and science infuse a game, the stakes can be of cosmic importance. Each move could decide life or death. Are you ready to play?
Featuring new stories by Aliette de Bodard, Cat Rambo, James Alan Gardner, Ed Greenwood, Sean Williams, and many more
“…each story exhibit[s] wry and subtle writing embedded with numerous original concepts. A feast for the imagination, I’d say. Highly recommended.” – Amazing Stories
Award winners. Award finalists. Hidden gems. All Canadian. All in one anthology. Curated from top markets like Analog, F&SF, Lightspeed, On Spec, Strange Horizons, and Tor.com, the Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction is your definitive guide to the very best fantastical fiction written by Canadians today.
“[A] real powerhouse of quality fiction sparkling with originality, brilliant perception and sophisticated subtlety; the kind of reading session which leaves me feeling inspired and excited… In my opinion, this volume of The Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction belongs on every Canadian reader’s bookshelf. The second volume is underway. I’d like to see it become an annual tradition. As many readers of my reviews are aware, there is a lot of excellent genre fiction being written in Canada. May this series become the definitive annual sample…You owe it to yourself to purchase it for your bookshelf.” – Amazing Stories
“Overall, it is a great collection, [and] a great reflection on what Canadian speculative fiction has to offer…” – The Ottawa Review of Books
Short Stories for Your Consideration
If I may be allowed a little bit of log rolling… The following are short stories that appeared in Game On!, the anthology of original SFF that I edited this year. While I am biased, I think these are wonderful stories and deserve your consideration this award season.
I’ve included the full TOC so you can see the overall calibre of the stories, and have noted each eligible Canadian author. I hope you’ll keep those Canadians in mind for the Aurora Award for Best Short Story category.
Game On!
“Turtle Cliffs” by Aliette de Bodard
“Machines” by Jennifer R. Povey
“Not His Best Feint” by Ed Greenwood (Canadian)
“Persistence of Memory” by Cory Swanson
“The Grim Reaper’s Game” by David Hankins
“The Cards as They Were Dealt” by Cat Rambo
“The Saltmarsh” by Wulf Moon
“Guilty Until Proven Victorious” by Jo Miles
“Solitaire for Three” by James Alan Gardner (Canadian)
I’m thrilled this morning to announce the full Table of Contents for Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume One!
Give Me English – Ai Jiang
The Voice of a Thousand Years – Fawaz Al-Matrouk
Bottom’s Dream – Glenn Clifton
And in the Arcade, Ego – Kate Heartfield
The Secret Lives of Shellwomen – Geneviève Blouin. Translated from the French by Margaret Sankey
Poem: In Stock Images of the Future, Everything is White – Terese Mason Pierre
Michif Man – Chelsea Vowel
Sunday in the Park With Hank – Leah Bobet
A New Brave World – Eric Choi
Poltergeist – Rhonda Parrish
One Day in the Afterlife of Detective Roshni Chaddha – Rati Mehrotra
Big Trouble in Droidtown – Hayden Trenholm
Poem: First Contact – Lisa Timpf
Distant Skies – Charlotte Ashley
Shattered – Marie Bilodeau
Poem: Necklace – Carolyn Clink
All That Burns Unseen – Premee Mohamed
Poem: Rapunzel in the Desert – Melissa Yuan-Innes
Redfin Spine – Jonathan Olfert
Maximum Efficiency – Holly Schofield
Choose Your Own – C. J. Lavigne
Poem: After the Apocalypse – Colleen Anderson
Rare Earths Pineapple – Michèle Laframboise
Choke – Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Poem: Three Herons – Geoffrey W. Cole
Folk Hero Motifs in Tales Told by the Dead – KT Bryski
Vi’Hun Heal – Michelle Tang
Bleak Communion of Abandoned Things – Ariel Marken Jack
Poem: a sinkhole invites a street to consider its future – Dominik Parisien
Broken Vow: The Adventures of Flick Gibson, Intergalactic Videographer – Peter G. Reynolds
Green Witch – Elizabeth Whitton
Poem: The Mall at Night – Millie Ho
Homeplus – Liz Westbrook-Trenholm
Into the Frozen Wilds – P.A. Cornell
Poem: The Wolf of Your Passions – Lynne Sargent
Critical Mass – Peter Watts
Douen – Suzan Palumbo
The volume will also include an Introduction from yours truly.
Backers of the Kickstarter will be receiving their e-books and print copies in November, and the book will be available to book lovers everywhere December 5, 2023 at your favourite independent, brick-and-mortar, or online book retailer.
This thing is all killer, no filler, y’all. Can’t wait to get it into your hands!
While the reviewer only reviews some stories in-depth, overall he concludes by saying “…each story exhibit[s] wry and subtle writing embedded with numerous original concepts. A feast for the imagination I’d say. Highly recommended.”
My co-editor Tony and I couldn’t agree more.
Still need to grab your copy? I mean, Christmas is right around the corner… Find the anthology here:
I’m thrilled to announce my new Kickstarter for the Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume One.
The campaign launches at noon EST on June 6, but in the meantime please follow this link and click the ‘Notify me on launch’ button to be told the minute it is live.
The world needs more Canada (as the old saying goes) and that includes a showcase anthology of the best short fiction the Canadian SFF community publishes every year. I’ll be acting as the volume editor and publisher through my imprint, Ansible Press.
If you are at all inclined to back the project, please do so on the first day—preferably as close to noon EST as you can. That early momentum will help juice the algorithm and help get the project noticed (at least, so I’m told).
And please feel free (and encouraged!) to share that link around. The more followers the campaign has prior to launch and the more backer activity the project gets in the first few hours of launch (even at the lowest levels of support) also helps boost the project in the Kickstarter algorithm and will help drive organic reach (i.e.: people just stumbling across it on Kickstarter).
Don’t forget to use the hashtags #CanadaYearsBestFSF and #KickstarterReads when you share on social media, and if you mention the campaign on Twitter please tag @KickstarterRead (no ‘s’). And steal that promo image above, too, and share it around!
Note to those of you in the US, UK, and EU, remember: this campaign is running in Canadian dollars, so with your positive exchange rate it’s like I’m practically giving this book away! ? YMMV for exchange rates from other countries.
I’m really fascinated by the prospects and power of artificial intelligence (AI) as a creative tool…but this is bonkers.
Bobby Geraghty, a 32-year-old singer, songwriter and producer, along with his band Breezer, recorded an eight-song album of Oasis-esque tunes and then trained an AI on a cappella recordings of Oasis singer Liam Gallagher so the AI could stand in as the lead singer.
If you’d told me this was a lost Oasis album from 1998, I’d have believed you. If you were an Oasis fan back in the mid to late 90s (or covered any of their songs at coffee houses, like a certain blogger who shall remain nameless) this album by AIsis (get it?) will bring you back.
If you’d told me this was a lost Oasis album from 1998, I’d have believed you. Not sure the guitar style or tone is 100% Noel Gallagher, but I might not have put my finger on that if I hadn’t known in advance it was another band playing.
I’d always assumed AI would eventually be able to replicate the sound of dead singers or actors…but it was always one of those things that would happen in the future, instead of the now.
Can The BeAItles or Frank SinAItra be far behind? O brave new world, that has such algorithms in’t!
Better listen to it quick, though: an AI song that replicates Drake and The Weeknd’s vocals that went viral (15 million+ streams!) has already been pulled from multiple streaming platforms following a copyright complaint from label Universal Music Group (UMG).
Well, it snuck by without my noticing, but my story “The Book of Elevated Things” is now available to read (for free!) on the Factor Four website. It was the lead story in the March 2023 issue. You can find it here.
This story was inspired by a comment my then-4-year-old daughter made and was written almost entirely while waiting to pick her up from dance class. As parents, writers have to find the time to write when we can…
Now that contracts are all signed and everything is stamped-it-no-erasies legal, I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a new story to Factor Four Magazine.
This story, “The Book of Elevated Things,” was inspired by a comment my then-4-year-old daughter made and was written almost entirely while waiting to pick her up from dance class. ?
Very pleased that my latest story, “I Think That I Shall Never See,” is available in the online magazine Little Blue Marble. It’s free to read, so check it out now.
This is a short piece of Cli-Fi (climate fiction) inspired by a line from a Joni Mitchell song (shouldn’t be hard to figure out which one…) and my own deep love of trees.
Okay, writers–the post you’ve all been waiting for: “What is this guy looking for in the submissions, and what will give me the best chance of selling him a story?”
So here’s what I want, and (perhaps just as important) what I don’t want–but one caveat! I am speaking only for myself here. My co-editor, Tony Pi, will have his own thoughts on what he’ll be looking for. But he has great taste, so I’m sure we’ll end up with some really hard choices between the best-of-the-best stories.
What I want
Stories that follow the theme, obviously: In GAME ON!, we’re looking for unique science fiction and fantasy takes on games, game playing, and games in culture. A game or games—real or imagined from across all of time and space—should be central to the story in some fashion.
Stories that look at how games and gaming reflect or comment on character and or society, history, etc. The story should be about a character or characters, not just the game. Think of the game as a lens.
Bonus points for unique/unexpected takes on theme. Surprise and delight me with your creativity and cleverness! I’d really love to see takes on the theme that I would never have thought of in a million years.
Amongst real-world games, I welcome authors writing about non-Western games and little-known games (for example, games popular only regionally, or games from the past that aren’t played much anymore, such as the card game Whist from the 18th and 19th Century, or the ancient Egyptian game of senet from ~3100 BC). What’s unique that you can bring to the theme? Show me something no one else is going to.
Made-up and invented games from both science fiction and fantasy perspectives. I’m especially keen on seeing these! Stories could take place in our world (or a version thereof), in the far future, on an alien planet, or in the deepest magical forest or most exotic fantasy setting. What games do aliens play? What games entertain the fey? And what do they show us about those cultures and creatures?
Clever takes on proprietary games that we can’t use by name for copyright and legal reasons. Riff on a game we all know! If you send me a well-written, engaging story that is a wink and a nod to, say, Monopoly or Clue but which cleverly never references anything that could get us served with a cease-and-desist letter from Milton Bradley, you will definitely have my attention. Look at Matthew Johnson’s story “Heroic Measures” from his collection Irregular Verbs and Other Stories for a story that is clearly about Superman without ever mentioning Superman. It is an example of a wonderfully written, character-driven story that pulls this trick off beautifully.
Action and adventure and a sense of wonder are most welcome. But also give me characters I care about and who I can live the story through.
We will probably be getting a lot of fantasy—which is great! But I’m definitely going to want to include science fiction in this collection, so that might increase your odds of acceptance (given SF will likely be a smaller pool). Send me stories that are anywhere from “soft”, more sociological science fiction to “hard”, nuts-and-bolts of physics type of science fiction.
I really hope to find some humorous stories that make me laugh. Bonus points if the story makes some clever commentary or makes me think.
A positive outlook. This doesn’t have to be true for every story, but I’d like it at least a ray of light here and there in the collection. We’ve all lived through a lot of real-world downers over the last number of years and while I like a good sad or melancholy ending as much as anybody, I do find myself drawn especially to something hopeful or positive or—dare I say it?—stories with a happy ending.
What I don’t want
Anything that would be traditionally considered a sport. So no football, no rollerball, etc. Editors’ discretion will trump any argument here about what does or doesn’t count as a sport, thank you.
Stories that center around the same specific games our anchor authors have chosen.
Stories that are just thinly veiled explanations of how to play a game, even a made-up one. The secret is you don’t really need to know much about the rules of a particular game to have a story that involves a game. See my related post about the game Strategema in Star Trek: The Next Generationfor an example. We want character, and plot, and conflict, and action, and change. Will leave the rulebooks to Hoyle’s.
There’s the potential for a lot of “space chess” or “fantasy poker” type stories, so if that’s your plan, okay, but it had better be The Best version of such a story ever written because we’ll only take a max of one of each. Likewise, with traditional playing card games of all kinds—we won’t want to fill the book just with stories about Hearts, Bridge, etc. And one of our anchor stories is already about euchre, so…
Dark or horror stories are fine but be warned: I’m not going to be super receptive to exceedingly violent stories or stories focused on gore or splatterpunk. But give me creepy, unnerving, unsettling stories that make the hairs on the back of my next stand up and make me not want to turn out the lights before bed? Yes, please!
I’m in the middle of reading submissions for the GAME ON! anthology that I am co-editing with Tony Pi. While we’re getting some great stories, I’ve begun to see a pattern in some of the stories that aren’t grabbing me.
I thought it might be helpful to those of you planning on submitting to share that insight now—so you can write the best story you can and one that we will hopefully buy for the anthology.
Games But No Characters?
The stories that aren’t working for me are, in many cases, stories about a game and not about the characters playing the game.
Oh, there are characters in the stories, certainly. But they’re only there to move the pieces around the board, deal the cards, or click the buttons on the controllers.
While games and game playing must certainly feature in the stories we will accept for GAME ON!, at their heart, the stories we will publish will be character driven. Think of it as the difference between a story about a game versus a story that involves a game.
A Story That Gets It Right (Write?)
As a writer myself, I sometimes find it hard to wrap my head around editorial advice like that.
So, since I’m the editor this time, I thought it might help to offer a concrete example of a story that does a good job of involving a sci-fi game as a way to better understand and illuminate character.
That story? An overlooked (and, in my opinion, classic) episode from Season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled “Peak Performance.”
Through the lens of a futuristic game of strategy, we get character and conflict and action and change. And–as you’ll see by the end of this article–one secret of its success is that the writers understood you don’t need to tell us much about specific rules or how you play to tell an effective story that involves a game.
(PS: While I think I do a good job in this piece of drawing out insights from this episode, do yourself the favor and set aside 44 minutes to watch the whole episode on your streaming service of choice. While there can be some real clunkers in Season 2 of Next Gen, I promise you this is not one of them.)
“Peak Performance” (TNG: S2E21)
The A story in the episode involves the Enterprise taking part in a war-game simulation under the watchful eye of Federation observer and famed strategist Sirna Kolrami, as a way to prepare for an eventual confrontation with the Borg. That storyline is mostly focused on how the crew divides up and prepares for the battle simulation.
But the B storyline—what I really want to focus on—is particularly driven by a game and how it affects the characters. This storyline involves Data’s loss of self-confidence after he is beaten in a game.
Before starting the war game simulation, Commander Riker challenges Kolrami to a game of Strategema. Kolrami is a third-level grandmaster of this futuristic game of strategy and is impressed by Riker’s “audacity” in challenging him. He accepts, noting that playing the game with an opponent of such “limited dimensions” can be “diverting.” This helps set up Kolrami as both arrogant and self-assured (though not without reason) and as a contrast to Data’s own self-doubt later.
The challenge takes place in Ten Forward, with a large audience. Worf informs Riker that he has wagered heavily in the ship’s pool that Riker will take Kolrami past “the sixth plateau.”
Data is intrigued by the Human urge to compete. Dr. Pulaski and La Forge suggest that Data challenge Kolrami to a game of Strategema. Both of them would like to see Kolrami’s smugness taken down a notch.
Riker’s game against Kolrami, however, will do nothing to blunt the alien’s cockiness: it is over almost as soon as it begins. Kolrami wins in a matter of moments and by a large margin (100-23).
Later, Kolrami challenges Data to a game of Strategema (after Dr. Pulaski goads him into it). Their game is more evenly matched, but Kolrami again wins quickly and handily (100-81). He offers Data a rematch. Deanna Troi consoles Data as Pulaski is amazed that Data was beaten.
While Riker describes Kolrami as “the best ever” at Strategema, Data—and his crewmates—are all baffled as to how mere flesh and blood could beat Data’s positronic brain.
Data, who is supposed to be the acting First Officer during the war game, retreats to his quarters, certain that he is damaged in some fashion. He’s convinced he will be a liability during the exercise and removes himself from bridge duty.
Troi tries to counsel him to learn from his mistakes. But Data has performed a diagnostic of his systems and found that he has made no mistakes, and therefore his deductive capabilities should be questioned.
Pulaski later tells Data that he should rebound from his loss rather than sulking and licking his wounds. But Data is still concerned about giving unsound advice.
Here we see the “Yes, but…” and “No, and…” try-fail cycles of fiction that ratchet up the tension.
With both Troi and Pulaski unable to fix the situation the viewer is left wondering: is Data actually broken? If not, how is he to be convinced to return to duty in time for the war game?
It falls to Picard (naturally) to give him a pep talk and snap him out of his funk. In doing so, Picard utters one of the great lines in all of Star Trek (and one that, I personally think, holds up to any of the great lines in English drama and literature):
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
With Data back on the job, the A storyline then plays out.
Troi and Data theorize about how ‘Captain’ Riker, commanding the 80-year-old starcruiser Hathaway, will approach battle strategy in the upcoming simulation.
Data formulates the premise that based on previous examples of Riker in combat he will employ unorthodox strategy. (NB: This actually does tie nicely into the way Riker eventually defeats the Borg at the end of the next season—but that’s a nerdy deep dive for another time…)
Then we get to see the war game: a surprise from the Ferengi, a bit of Klingon guile, and some unorthodox strategy from Riker that helps wrap up the A story.
We then get the conclusion of the B story: a frenzied game of Strategma, already in progress in Ten Forward.
Well, it’s frenzied for Kolrami, anyway. Data is as cool as a digital cucumber. He has taken Kolrami up on his earlier offer of a rematch and this time the android is holding his own.
As Data’s crewmates cheer him on, we see the scores ticking upward rapidly—each player passes the 33,000-point range.
Then Kolrami slams down his controls and suspends the game. He resigns in a huff. “You have made a mockery of me!” he shouts and stalks away.
The crew is elated.
Data explains that he formulated a new premise for playing Strategma and adopted some unorthodox strategy of his own. Instead of playing to win the game (which would be Kolrami’s intention), Data played for a stalemate.
By passing up obvious avenues of advancement and simply countering Kolrami’s own advances again and again, he was able to avoid both defeat and victory and prolong the game.
Data says that though he had not strictly defeated Kolrami, he should be able to challenge him indefinitely.
Roll credits.
How Strategma Illustrates Character
So, what’s the B storyline in this episode really about? It’s about Data’s loss of self-confidence and how he gets it back. It’s about character. It’s a classic Man-in-a-Hole plot (err, Android-in-a-Hole?)
What is the story not about? Strategema.
That doesn’t mean Strategema isn’t important to the episode: it’s the lens or the crucible through which we test and learn about the character of Data.
But what we don’t spend much time learning about in this episode is how to play Strategema. Here is everything we know about Strategema from dialog and context in the episode:
It is a 3D holographic game between two players
You play it using sensors on each finger (a surprisingly tethered game for the 24th Century…)
It has Grandmasters of various ranks (e.g.: third-level grandmaster, etc.)
First player to 100 wins…unless the score remains close enough that they must keep playing
The game involves something called the “sixth plateau” (and so, presumably, a first through fifth plateau as well)
No game has ever gone as high as the one that Data and Kolrami play
That’s it.
And why? Because that’s all we need to know about the game for it to shed light on the character of Data and his crewmates. Do you know how to play? Do you care either way? Of course not! And that’s because the story isn’t about the game; it’s about what we learn about charactersthrough the game.
This isn’t to say that a fascinating story can’t be written that’s more specifically about the rules of a game. But, on the whole, stories that are just thinly veiled explanations of how to play a game, even a made-up one, just aren’t that interesting.
Using a game or games to illuminate some aspect of a character or characters is going to yield a more satisfying story—and one with the best chance of finding a place in GAME ON!
If you have a character-driven story about games, game playing, or games in culture, you can submit it here. We pay SFWA pro rates, we’re open until Dec 31, 2022, and we take up to 3 submissions per author.
