Wikitastic!

Marcel Gagné and Robert J. Sawyer have launched a new wiki for the Canadian SF community just in time for the Prix Aurora Awards season–the Canadian SF Works Database.

The Canadian SF Works Database is meant to be:

a collaborative storehouse of knowledge about everything that is Canadian SF. The raison d’être of the Canadian SF Works Database is to provide a collaborative storehouse of knowledge about everything that is Canadian SF. Why? Every year, usually at awards time, a few people scramble madly to assemble a list of the works published for that year. These lists help determine works that are eligible for those awards. Sometimes the lists are reasonably complete and accurate, sometimes they aren’t, and sometimes they are just plain unavailable thereby leaving your favourite SF story in no-award purgatory. Oh, the humanity! Who knows what to do? Who can help?

You do and you can! Here’s how?

Register, log in, and if you have the time and the information, help us build a comprehensive list of Canadian science fiction (and fantasy) published by year.

So don’t forget to update as you read!

For more on the genesis of the wiki, see Rob’s blog post here.

– S.

PS: I love the logo 🙂

I love Google Alerts.

I’ve set it up to search for any mentions of me or my writings and today it brought to my attention this review from the Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth blog:

Last of all, for this week, I enjoyed Stephen Kotowych’s Borrowed Time from the Daw anthology Under Cover of Darkness. I’ve been nonplussed by most of the Daw anthology stuff I’ve read so far, but this story about a relationship and a man who steals time, and what he does with it, stood out above the rest as well characterised, with a clever central idea.

Cool!

Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth is a project run out of Australia involving four people who have apparently vowed to read everything published in fantasy, SF, and horror in 2007…or at least as much as they can before their eyes melt from their heads like that guy at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It’s great to know that people are actually reading and (dare I say it?) enjoying something I wrote, but even more amazing to me is that these are people I’ve never met, and likely will never meet. They’re in Australia, clear on the other side and lower half of our planet, sitting in the Melbourne sun, reading something I wrote two years ago on my sunny balcony in Toronto.

That’s a joy of writing for me–it blows my mind.

– S.

Details have arrived at last about the whens, wheres, and hows of the upcoming Writers of the Future Awards Ceremony and Workshop. (I will confess I was getting worried they’d decided to revoke my invitation 🙂

On Sunday, August 19th the winning writers will be flown to Los Angeles and conveyed from there to sunny Pasadena, California for the week-long workshop. (The winning illustrators will arrive on Monday, August 20th, but I don’t think we get to meet them until the award ceremony).

The week will consist mainly of the writer’s workshop, led (so far as I know) by Tim Powers and K.D. Wentworth. From what I hear there are lectures (the good kind, not the scolding kind ;), usually some writing exercises, and a surreptitious interview of a random stranger (to be accomplished, I think, during a trip to the Pasadena public library), as well as guest lectures by some of the various judges (I know David Brin has done them before, as has Kevin J. Anderson).

But in what has to be one of the absolutely coolest parts of the trip, we’ll be getting a special private tour of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab!

A view of the JPL campus.

The JPL is the lead US center for robotic exploration of the solar system. JPL spacecraft have visited all known planets except Pluto (my Canada includes Quebec and my solar system includes Pluto!)

I cannot tell you how my inner geek leapt for joy when I read this news. I honestly don’t know whether I’m more excited about the WOTF week or the JPL trip.

I can’t wait to see this place.

There will be a barbecue dinner on the Thursday the 23rd for all winners, arriving judges, and winners’ family members who may be attending.

The Awards Ceremony is Friday, August 24th and is open to the public, so if you’ll be in or near Pasadena that evening come and cheer. RSVP ASAP to contests@authorservicesinc.com

Saturday following the Awards event will be book signings at a local bookstore for all winners and judges (again, come and see us!)

Sunday the 26th is departure, again out of LAX.

August is looking AWESOME.

Hey–I just realized: if I’m going to the JPL will that make me a rocket man?

– S.

Greetings all –

I’m now returned safe and (mostly) sound from my week in Saskatoon. I had a great time, our book booth did well, and from an acquisitions standpoint I think the conference will have been fruitful.

This was our book booth:

And this was my hotel:

It’s tough being an editor sometimes…

– S.

Off to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan this weekend for a week-long conference called the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is the largest annual academic gathering in Canada.

I’m actually looking forward to visiting Saskatoon because I figure: “When will I ever get there otherwise?”

Saskatoon is Canada’s City of Nicknames. It’s known as Toontown, S’toon, the Hub City, POW City (for potash, oil and wheat), and the City of Bridges. Most oddly, though, it’s called the ‘Paris of the Prairies.’ Don’t know why, exactly… Do you think Parisians ever refer to their city as the Saskatoon of France?

Me neither.

I’m staying at the Delta Bessborough, which is supposedly “one of Canada’s legendary railway hotels. Canadian National built ‘the Bez’ in the early 1930s to resemble a Bavarian castle.”

Sounds like I should bring some Gothic novel to read. Is Transylvania anywhere near Bavaria?

See you in June!

– S.

Well, according to the Writers of the Future blog, the date for this year’s Writers and Illustrators of the Future Awards gala will be Friday, August 24th and will be held in “Sunny Southern California” (which I think means San Diego 🙂

Though no one from the WOTF has been in touch yet to confirm details with me, I’ll likely be flying out Sunday, August 19th, and returning on Sunday, August 26th…because that’s what attendees in previous years have done 🙂 The intervening week will be spent communing with All-Knowing Professional SF Authors, from whose brains I hope, like a genre-writing zombie, to drain every last ounce of knowledge about writing and publishing.

Anybody who wants a postcard from “Sunny Southern California” better put your order in now!

– S.

Came across an interesting piece in The Independent. The article, by DJ Taylor (whose profession is ‘writer,’ I’m assured, despite what the initials may suggest) ponders the lack of “great novels of working life”–the emphasis seemingly on the lack of great novels about modern office work.

Perhaps this opening in the market bodes well for my planned roman à clef about the scholarly publishing business, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scholarly Publishing (But Were Afraid to Ask)”. Sounds like a page turner, I know, but trust me–there are some real characters in this industry.

(And if it’s about the academic world I should refer to that “opening in the market” as a “gap in the literature.”)

– S.

(PS: For all you Joy Division fans out there, The Independent is also running an article on the new biopic of Ian Curtis).

As if being in the middle of a North American tour for his seventeenth book Rollback wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Robert J. Sawyer–Canadian SF giant and personal writing guru to myself and the other Fledglings–has found time to switch publishers and work out an amazing deal with Penguin Canada (and Ace Books in the United States).

All the info can be found on Rob’s blog or, if you have a subscription, at the online home of Quill & Quire, the trade paper of the Canadian publishing industry.

A big congratulations to Rob on this move–I’m sure he must be thrilled.

I’m really looking forward to his upcoming ‘World Wide Web’ trilogy with Penguin/Ace–sounds like an idea that Rob can really do some interesting things with.

– S.

Robert J. Sawyer

Funny addendum to my turn as Molly Maid this weekend…

Remember how I said my office was really messy? Well, I was late getting into work this morning (due to a ruptured gas main near my place–don’t worry, they’ll never be able to prove it was me) and the change in my office was so dramatic from Friday that there was a flurry of discussion amongst the staff whether I’d quit or been fired.

Clearly my bi-annual office cleaning is a big deal 🙂

– S.