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Scott Mackay (interview in Number 17, December 2003)
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Scott says:
Since my interview with Challenging Destiny in 2003 I've continued to publish steadily. Omnifix came out in March of 2004, while Tides was published in November 2005. My newest novel, Phytosphere, was published by Penguin Roc in June of 2007. It's about an alien shroud enveloping the earth and cutting off all sunshine. Omega Sol, which will be published by Roc in May 2008, tells the story of hyperdimensional aliens accelerating our sun into its red giant phase. In this sense, Omega Sol and Phytosphere are sister books. Phytosphere tells what happens to the world when it's too dark; Omega Sol tells what happens when it's too bright.
In regard to foreign sales, Orbis has been published in France, while Omnifix was published in Russia.
As for short stories, I had two stories appear in Tesseracts Ten. “Threshold Of Perception” was the lead story. Set in 1910, the piece recounts Percival Lowell's (the astronomer of Martian Canal fame) attempts to warn the world that Halley's Comet is going to strike the planet. I was also asked by the Osprey chain of newspapers to write a mystery story, “Hot Button,” which appeared in newspapers all over Ontario and was subsequently including in Mystery Ink, an anthology of Ontario mystery fiction. These are in addition to a number of other stories I've had published. So it's been a busy few years, and looks as if it will stay that way for some time to come.
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J. FitzGerald McCurdy (interview in Number 20, May 2005)
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Joan says:
In the 2006 and 2007 school year, I was the author for the Kiwanis Read-a-thon in Ottawa. A winner from each of the thirty schools I visited, along with a parent or teacher, was invited to attend a private reading in the newly restored Library of Parliament. On June 6, 2007, the winners congregated at the East Block on Parliament Hill. They were led down into the tunnels and along to the Peace Tower and the Library where, seated before the great white marble statue of Queen Victoria, I read a passage from The Serpent's Egg. It was a magical day and the first time in the history of the Library of Parliament that an event for young readers took place. Photos are available on the Kiwanis Club of Ottawa's Website.
The Black Pyramid, book two of the Mole Wars trilogy, was released in July 2007. I have just finished book three, Guardians of Fire, which will be published in 2008. I am now working on two single books that combine historical fact with fantasy, and I keep wishing that I could write as fast as my readers read.
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Jim Munroe (interview in Number 13, November 2001)
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Jim says:
Since 2001, huh? Oh, this and that. I started a website that features thoughtful articles about dismissed genres and artforms, such as videogames, science fiction, romance, porn, and comics: theculturalgutter.com. I wrote a book in 88 blog entries that people can read at roommatefromhell.com, and it spun off into a post-Rapture graphic novel that just came out called Therefore Repent!
nomediakings.org/about has a bunch more of what I've been up to in a bibliographic sense, and the nomediakings.org main page has the minute by minute postings.
Thanks for asking and congrats on number 25!
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Sean Russell (interview in Number 21, December 2005)
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Sean says:
Thanks for asking me to participate. The historical novel that I mentioned in the interview was just published a few weeks ago. The title is Under Enemy Colors and we put the name S. Thomas Russell on it to distinguish it from my fantasy books. We sold it at auction to Putnam/Penguin in the US, Michael Joseph/Penguin in the UK and we've also sold it in Spain and Italy. I've been busy doing publicity and working on the sequel. I was in Europe for five weeks this summer doing research for the second book. I've been busy.
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Michelle Sagara (interview in Number 24, August 2007)
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In the relatively short time since our interview, Michelle Sagara sold two more books in the Cast series to Luna. The third book in the series, Cast in Secret, came out in August. She is currently working on the fourth book, Cast in Fury. The first book in the House War series, coming out in March from DAW, is titled The Hidden City.
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Robert J. Sawyer (interview in Number 5, January 1999)
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Robert says:
Has it been nine years since we did that interview? Wow—tempus certainly has been fugiting! I remember the conversation fondly.
And, well, it's been an amazing nine years for me. My readership took a quantum leap starting in 2000, when my twelfth novel, Calculating God, became a national top-ten mainstream bestseller here in Canada, appearing on the bestsellers list in The Globe and Mail: Canada's National Newspaper and Maclean's: Canada's Weekly Newsmagazine, and it hit number one on the bestsellers list published by Locus, the US trade journal of the SF field. And there've been five more novels since that one, each also hitting bestsellers’ lists: the three volumes of my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy—Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids—plus the standalones Mindscan and Rollback.
The awards process has been good to me in the interim, too. Hominids won the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 2003, and Mindscan won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award—the genre's top juried award—for best novel of 2005. And in 2007, I won China's top SF award, the Galaxy Award for most popular foreign author, as well as getting an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University. So, life be good. Right now, I'm hard at work on my new project, a trilogy of novels with the working titles Wake, Watch, and Wonder about the World Wide Web gaining consciousness; look for the first one to be in stores late in 2008.
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Karl Schroeder (interview in Number 15, December 2002)
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Karl says:
I'm having a great time writing my Virga series; it's a whole new world to explore, and I feel like the possibilities of this setting are inexhaustible. At the same time I've been doing some foresight analysis (what used to be called futurism) for clients like the Canadian government and Canadian and American militaries. That's a unique way of triangulating on the future, and gives me insights that I can't get from inside the SF community. Beyond those things, I'm really having the most fun with the biggest adventure you can experience: being a parent.
* * * *
Alison Sinclair (interview in Number 14, June 2002)
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Alison Sinclair's story “Suspended Lives” appeared in Space, Inc. edited by Julie E. Czerneda. She has three novels under consideration at publishers and is working on another. On her web site she says, “I like to be able to ditch all assumptions and conventional wisdom and start entirely from scratch, running my fictional ‘thought experiments’ (Ursula Le Guin's words) according to any parameters I please."
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Peter Watts (interview in Number 19, December 2004)
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Peter says:
Subsequent to the commercial failure of Behemoth—which followed Tor's decision to split that novel into two volumes because it was too long, which in turn followed Tor's earlier request that ten thousand words be added to that novel because it was too short—I barely escaped extirpation from the midlist with Blindsight, the novel mentioned in my Challenging Destiny interview. Blindsight survived questionable cover design, limited distribution, a miniscule initial print run, and even more miniscule publisher expectations to go into multiple hardcover printings, translation into half a dozen languages (and counting), and nomination for several prestigious awards (not to mention a couple of dick-ass ones), none of which it actually won. Following a two-year disillusioned hiatus—during which I completed a postdoc in molecular genetics that proved almost as successful as Behemoth—I have recently returned to writing with a story about a good pedophile (to appear next spring in volume 2 of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction) and
another about an evil Jew (to appear this December in Nature). I am currently working on a novel about battling, botnet-controlled giant squids at the North Pole.
* * * *
Edward Willett (interview in Number 23, November 2006)
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Edward Willett's new novel Marseguro will be out from DAW in February, and its sequel, Terra Insegura, will be coming in 2009. His nonfiction book A Safe and Prosperous Future: 100 Years of Engineering and Geoscience Achievements in Saskatchewan was published by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan. Also coming up are books on Janis Joplin, historic walks of Regina and Moose Jaw, and Mutiny on the Bounty.
Edward has posted the complete text of his book Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star free online in honour of “International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day.” His science columns are available as podcasts. And he's currently performing in the musical Beauty and the Beast.
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Robert Charles Wilson (interview in Number 7, August 1999)
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Since our interview Robert has had five novels out from Tor: Bios, The Chronoliths, Blind Lake, Spin, and Axis. Spin won the Hugo Award, Blind Lake won the Aurora Award, and the novelette “The Cartesian Theater” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Axis is a sequel to Spin, and one more sequel is planned. Robert also wrote Magic Time: Ghostlands with Marc Scott Zicree, and he edited Tesseracts Ten with Edo van Belkom. His novella Julian: A Christmas Story was published by PS Publishing, and he is currently turning it into a novel.
Robert says (on the Locus Online web site): “In human history there are so many institutions dedicated to making sure one generation resembles the one that went before it, culturally preserving religious ideas and the relationships of families in a futile effort to preserve these things through time. We live in a time where we realize these things not only aren't preserved, they're shattering and reforming almost daily around us."
[Back to Table of Contents]
Jhyoti by Marcelle Dubé
Cadet Jhyoti sen Chandar slapped the grav gel packs onto her calves and slipped the control glove onto her left hand. With a last glance around the deserted, moonlit cemetery, she activated the field emitter and slowly rose three meters above the ground, then five, then six. Low Town spread out before her like a dark rocky beach, with the desert beyond a vast sea of glowing sand. Another twist of her fingers and she floated over the wall of the bashravi.
To the east, twenty kilometres across the desert, the glow of the spaceport rose above the horizon. As a child, she had felt the deep rumble of each landing, before the Alliance installed the dampening field. A rod of blue light shot up through the air, the guide beam made visible by the dust dancing through it. A shuttle was landing. Perhaps it belonged to the Solar Wind, the Alliance's flagship explorer, rumoured to be in the solar system.
At last she stepped down onto the hard-packed earth of the bashravi's open area. She glanced around the body washers’ compound, wishing she could have worn the night lenses as well as the camera. But the Academy, like the rest of Kallista, had to make do with the Alliance's cast-off equipment.
She did not dare turn on the light strapped to her wrist. Kallista's two moons would serve until she got inside the inner walls. Besides, she had been here before, surreptitiously recording the body washers’ rituals.
At least, the ones they performed in public.
Six granite “beds” rose from the ground at regular intervals, each ready to receive a coffin. Before them were stone benches where the mourners received the blessing of the yisil and a drink of holy water from the well. Then the acolytes would carry the coffin from the inner compound, that place the yisils, the body washers, held most sacred, as the mourners keened and waited for the body to be returned to them, cleansed of sin and impurities, and ready for burial in consecrated ground.
The inner gate to this mysterious compound now stood before her, closed. Clutching her pack in one hand, Jhyoti moved toward it, keeping her distance from the beds. She would be selective in what she touched. She did not wish an inadvertent touch to immerse her in others’ grief.
As with many of the doors and gates in Low Town, this gate was made of sturdy sakhri vines trained to the needed shape. The broad, deep blue leaves formed a wall of privacy, impossible to peer through. The vines clung on either side to posts made of clay bricks.
For such a secretive order, the yisils were very trusting.
She was almost at the inner gate when something tripped her. Without so much as a gasp, she dropped the pack, tucked and rolled into the fall, regaining her feet in one smooth motion. If nothing else, five years at the Academy had taught her how to fall.
Then she bent to retrieve her pack and saw what had tripped her.
The woman slumped against the granite bed, as if someone had dumped her on the ground and walked away.
Jhyoti straightened slowly, gripping the pack. She did not need to touch the woman to know she was dead.
"You there!"
Jhyoti's heart leapt to her throat. Once more the pack flew from her fingers as she sprang into a classic self-defence pose. Then a bright light shot through the darkness, blinding her. When she could see again, she found herself face to face with a very tiny, very angry old woman wearing the traditional white robe of a yisil.
"How dare you?” The old woman glanced at the body then took in Jhyoti's hooded robe, her gloved hand with its controls and the pack on the granite bed, where it had landed. “How dare you dishonour the dead with your foolish pranks?"
Jhyoti blinked.
"Forgive me, yisil, but my trespass seems insignificant compared to the disregard this bashravi shows the dead.” Surely families would protest if they knew how poorly their loved ones were handled in the bashravi. Perhaps the yisil would refrain from turning her in to the Admiral if she were afraid Jhyoti would reveal what she had found.
But the old woman was staring at Jhyoti in dismay. Her waist-length white braid swayed as she shook her head. “Are you implying that you did not bring...?"
"I did not.” If the yisil had not left the woman's body there...
They both turned to stare at the body, and then glanced around the empty courtyard. Beneath her thermally regulated uniform, and despite the concealing robe over it, Jhyoti grew cold.
"Who...?"
But the old woman leaned forward, her clasped hands keeping her loose robe from falling forward, and examined the woman. “Oh no,” she murmured.
"What is it?” Jhyoti leaned forward in turn, morbidly curious.
Her pack chose that moment to topple off the edge of the granite bed. As she lunged to retrieve it, her gloveless hand grazed the dead woman's cheek.
The jolt was like a supernova in her head. There was nothing but pain and bright light. Her skin crawled with electricity. After a time, she became aware of someone moaning, realized it was her and stopped. She finally opened her eyes, expecting to be blinded by pain, but it was gone.
She was lying on the hard-packed earth a few feet away from the dead woman. The yisil squatted next to her, her green eyes narrow. The old woman's voice was a distant murmur. “Were you born with the gift?"
Jhyoti shook her head and sat up. The dead one's pain still tingled along her arms and legs. “It came soon after my first blood.” And it would leave with her last bleeding. At least she had that blessing. Those who were born with it usually became recluses. Most went mad by adolescence.
"I am Suri, the yighsilchi of this bashravi."
The yighsilchi. Jhyoti looked at the old woman, who glared back at her. All the yisil were technically bhoto, low caste, but they were also considered holy. And the yighsilchi was holiest of the body washers.
This was not good.
"And you are?” prompted the yighsilchi testily.
Jhyoti hesitated. She could lie but there would be no honour in that. In any case, the yighsilchi would not know that she was from the Academy.
/> "My name is Jhyoti, Suri sen."
"Allow me a guess, Cadet Jhyoti. Fifth year? Exo-anthropology? Final field assignment?"
It was Jhyoti's turn to stare at the old woman in dismay.
The yighsilchi sighed her disgust. “Did you think you were being original?” She rose to her feet, graceful despite her age. “Every year I turn one or two idiots away."
Jhyoti braced herself on one hand as she looked up at the old woman. “And...?"
Suri sen smiled tightly. “Those who irritate me I turn in to the Guard.” She glanced sideways at Jhyoti. “And you all irritate me."
Jhyoti swallowed.
With a dismissive shrug, the yighsilchi reached for the dead woman.
"Suri sen, wait."
The yighsilchi stopped in surprise. Jhyoti scrambled to her feet and squinted, allowing the ocular camera to record the dead woman from different angles while making low notes to her implanted recorder. “You should not move her,” she warned as she worked. “The Guard will want to see how she was found."
The yighsilchi snorted, a startling sound coming from a holy person. “Do you want to be expelled?"
The question took Jhyoti aback. The Guard would want to know what Jhyoti was doing at the bashravi. They would inform the Academy.
And Admiral Dilan, that devil in a uniform, would love nothing better. He would finally have reason to expel her. Five years of hard work, wasted...
Suri sen grasped the woman's arm, but it was stiff. Then she took the dead woman by the chin and turned her head. “Rigor mortis is almost gone."
Jhyoti looked away, her stomach clenching.
Challenging Destiny #25 Page 13
