Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (640 page)

James Alan Gardner (1955– ) is a contemporary of Robert Charles Wilson and Robert Sawyer, and also raised in Ontario. Author of numerous short stories, he has won several awards. In 1989 he was awarded the Grand Prize in the Writers of the Future contest for “Children of Creche,” set in a futurist vacation world. He earned an Aurora Award for “Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream” (1997); it was also nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo awards. He has written a series of satirical novels set in the benevolent League of Peoples universe where life is sacred and there are no wars and few criminal activities. The first, Expendable (1997), introduces female protagonist Festina Ramos of the Technocracy Explorer Corps, a component of the League responsible for investigating planets and contacting new life forms. In this universe, murderers are considered as lacking in sapience, and are killed off if they try to leave their solar system. Gardner is currently working on a new novel, Fire and Dust.

Perhaps the most well-known, prolific, and highly respected science fiction writer in Canada today is Robert J Sawyer (1960– ), the “dean of Canadian science fiction,” as the Ottawa Citizen (1999) has dubbed him. Sawyer is one of only eight writers, and the only Canadian, to win all three of the world’s most prestigious science fiction awards for best novel of the year: The Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He has also won many international awards and honorary degrees. His first novel, Golden Fleece (1988), is a murder mystery which takes place aboard the spaceship Argo. The ship is manned by the quantum computer JASON, who is in charge of all the humans aboard, and who narrates the story. He is one of the most well-rounded, intriguing, non-human characters in science fiction. Sawyer has stated that the creation of JASON is his way of paying tribute to Arthur C. Clarke’s Hal in Space Odyssey 2001. To date, Sawyer has published nineteen novels and two short story collections. In many of his novels, Sawyer explores the impact of science and technology on humans, dealing with such subjects as the possibility of uploading one’s consciousness into an artificial body (Mindscan, 2005), the challenges of aging and the possibility of rejuvenation (Rollback, 2007), and the evolution of man in the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy: Hominids (2003), Humans (2003) and Hybrids (2003). In Hominids, which won the Hugo award for best novel, a bridge opens to reveal a parallel Earth where Neanderthals survived to the present day but humans in the contemporary world did not. Sawyer’s novel FlashForward (1999) in which the consciousness of all of mankind experiences two minutes of the future is an exploration of fate versus free will and a philosophical look at the behavior of humans when faced with mysterious circumstances. This book was made into a mini-series by ABC television in 2010. Sawyer’s latest trilogy on the importance of the world-wide web and the way it impacts us as humans includes the novels WWW: Wake (2009), WWW:Watch (2010), and WWW: Wonder (2011). He and his wife, Carolyn Clink, edited the influential anthology Tesseracts 6 in 1997. Sawyer now has his own eponymous imprint at Red Deer Press in Alberta. In March 2008, Quill & Quire named Sawyer as one of thirty of “the most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing.” Sawyer’s philosophy on science fiction matches that of Margaret Sommerville, who in her book The Ethical Canary states that “science seems to be moving ahead ever more swiftly, leaving ethics seemingly further and further behind. Is it time to slow down the clock and let ethics catch up?” (2) Sawyer himself has echoed similar sentiments in many of his classroom and public lectures over the years. In spite of his caution regarding scientific advances today, Sawyer remains optimistic about the ability of humans to create a better society for themselves. In an interview with Gary Butler, he states “Science fiction is a literature of ideas” embracing “science, philosophy, history, and ethics” (3). Sawyer continues to write, to lecture, and to be an active participant in literary, social, and philosophical discussions in Canada and around the world.

Canadian science fiction writing shows no evidence of waning. Though this genre is relatively recent in Canada, it has a widening readership and has media attention in both English and French Canada. It is hard to believe that just two decades ago, no Canadian publisher was interested in publishing David Ketterer’s study Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. He eventually had it published in the US in 1992. With the ever-increasing number of Canadian writers living and working in Canada today, and the easy accessibility of their work through the Internet, anthologies, paperback books, and e-books, these writers are reaching Canadian and international readers, and their works are being translated into many different languages. Moreover, the recent profusion of Science Fiction and Fantasy courses in Canadian universities and colleges (and universities and colleges around the world) is earning the genre greater appreciation, respectability, and mainstream status.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret.
The Handmaid’s Tale.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985.

——.
Oryx and Crake
. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2003.

Butler, Gary. Author Profile: Robert J. Sawyer. “Nothing but Blue Skies”
Quill & Quire
May 2007: 1–3.

“Can Lit 30”.
Quill & Quire
March 2008.

Clute, John and Peter Nicholls, eds.
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
. London: Orbit, 1999.

Clute, John. “Fables of Transcendence: The Challenge of Canadian Science Fiction.”
Out of This World: Canadian Science Fiction and fantasy Literature
. Ed. Andrea Paradis. Ottawa: Quarry, 1995: 21–27.

Colombo, John Robert, ed.
Other Canadas: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Toronto: Mc-Graw-Hill Ryerson, 1979.

De Mille, James.
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder.
1888. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965.

Dorsey, Candas Jane.
Machine Sex & Other Stories
. Victoria BC:
Porcepic Books, 1988.

Gardner, James Alan.
Expendable
(League of Peoples Book I). New York: AvoNova, 1997.

Gotlieb, Phyllis.
A Judgment of Dragons.
New York: Berkley Publishers, 1982.

——.
Son of the Morning and Other Stories
New York: Ace, 1983.

——.
Sunburst.
New York: Fawcett, 1964.

Grove, Frederick Philip.
Consider Her Ways
. 1948. Toronto: Bakka, 2001.

Gibson, William.
Count Zero
. New York: Ace, 1986.

——
.
Mona Lisa Overdrive
. New York: Ace, 1988.

——
.
Neuromancer.
New York: Ace, 1984.

Hopkinson, Nalo.
Brown Girl In a Ring
New York: Warner Books, 1998.

——
.
Midnight Robber
. New York: Warner Books, 2000.

——
.
Skin Folk
. New York: Warner Books, 2001.

——
.
The Salt Roads
. New York: Warner Books, 2003.

——.
The New Moon’s Arms
. New York: Warner Books, 2007.

Hopkinson, Nalo, and Geoff Ryman, eds.
Tesseracts 9.
Victoria, BC: Press Porcepic, 2006.

Jameson. Fredric. “The Space of Science fiction: Narrative in van Vogt” in
Archaeolgies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Fictions.
New York: Verso, 2005.

Ketterer, David.
Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1992.

Leacock, Stephen. “The Man in the Asbestos Suit.”
Nonsense Novels
. 1911. Whitefish MO: Kessinger, 2004.

——.
The Iron Man and the Tin Woman with Other Such Futurities
. New York: Macmillan, 1929

——.
Afternoons in Utopia
. New York: Macmillan, 1932

Merril, Judith.
Daughters of Earth: Three Novels.
New York, Doubleday, 1969

——.
“That Only a Mother.” Astounding Science Fiction. 1948.

Merril, Judith, ed.
Tesseracts 1. Victoria, BC: Press Porcepic, 1985

——.
Shot in the Dark
New York: Bantam, 1950.

Paradis, Andrea, ed.
Out Of This World: Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. Ottawa: Quarry, 1995.

Pratt, E. J. “The Great Feud.”
Titans and Other Epics of the Pilocene
. 1926.
Collected Poems.
Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1958

Roberts, Charles G. D.
In the Morning of Time
. London: Hutchinson, 1919.

Sawyer, Robert J.
FlashForward
. New York: Tor Books, 1999.

——.
Golden Fleece
. New York, Tor Books, 1988.

——.
Hominids
. New York, Tor Books, 2003.

——.
Humans.
New York: Tor Books, 2003.

——.
Hybrids.
New York: Tor Books, 2003.

——.
Mindscan
. New York: Tor Books, 2005

——.
WWW: Wake
. Toronto: Penguin, 2009

——.
WWW: Watch
. Toronto: Penguin, 2010.

——.
WWW: Wonder
. Toronto: Penguin. (forthcoming in 2011)

Somerville, Margaret A.
The Ethical Canary: Science, Society and the Human Spirit.
Toronto: Viking/Penguin, 2000.

Tesseracts.
Vol. 1. Ed. Judith Merril. Victoria, BC: Press Porcepic, 1985

Van Vogt, A. E.
Slan
.
Astounding Science Fiction
1940.

Wilson, Robert Charles.
Blind Lake
. New York: Tor Books, 2003.

——.
Darwinia
. New York: Tor Books, 1998.

——.
Spin.
New York: Tor Books, 2005

——.
Axis
. New York: Tor Books, 2007

* * * *

Ruby S. Ramraj
teaches in the department of English at the University of Calgary. She has written articles on Isaac Asimov, Robert Sawyer, Amitav Ghosh, and Nalo Hopkinson in such journals as
Foundation
and such collections as
Canebrakes
and
A Sense of Wonder
(2011).

(1952– )

Although Darrell is better known for his fantasy, his expertise on a variety of topics related to genre fiction, and his editorship of
Weird Tales
, he does many other things as well, not the least of which is write SF poetry.

I’ve known Darrell since the mid 1980s, when I was an undergraduate and he was (as he still remains) a major figure in Philadelphia-area fandom. We were reacquainted when I broke into publishing, and I see Darrell and his wife Mattie at virtually any conference I attend. We’ve sat on panels together, and the breadth of his knowledge is startling, whether the topic is Tolkien or T. H. White or Byzantine history. In addition to writing and editing he’s a literary agent and small press publisher; when he’s not speaking on panels he’s in the dealer’s room selling books and ancient coins. (Like the Ancient Mariner, “he stoppeth one in three” and talks to people until they buy a book from him. Darrell jokes that unsigned copies of his books sell for more than signed ones…because they’re rarer.)

One of Darrell’s talents is an ability to mix scholarship with a keen sense of the humor and absurdity inherent in both history and literature. (It flows through his own work as well, as in “Social Lapses”: A slime-beast from Fomulhaut-Five / quite drunk in an old spaceport dive / proposed to nine men, six cats and a hen / and barely escaped there alive.) The poems here capture that mix of seriousness and absurdity. In “Alternate Histories” Darrell “sums up the whole alternate history genre in 18 lines,” while “Scientific Romance” wistfully echoes the mostly forgotten Vernean view of SF. “At the Conclusion of an Interstellar War” is just as wistful on the subject of bug-eyed monsters.