Helen Michaud

It used to be that you only had to apply the words “space-age” to any product to instantly convey the idea of sleek modernity, evoking a vertiginous sense of being propelled into the future at light speed. Though precious few have had the privilege of donning a pressure suit and floating in orbit, many more of us were captivated by the lesser gifts of the space program. In school I scribbled notes with a pressurized pen that could write upside-down (not that anyone ever needed to), and when I emerged from a visit to the Smithsonian gnawing on freeze-dried astronaut ice cream that did nothing to cool me off on a hot summer day, I nevertheless thought it was grand.

D.F. McCourt

In issue #4 of AE we’re going to be seeing some new authors and some familiar ones as well. Our lead story “Planetsmith” is a collaboration between first-time author Chris Stamp and established Canadian novelist Lynda Williams. The cover art, Glass Sky, is by Mike Linkovich, a Toronto artist who also provided the iconic cover from AE #1.

Paul Jarvey

Exploration of the unknown is a motif that drives much of science fiction, from Verne’s endless underground caverns and deep sea depths to the cold silence of research stations orbiting distant stars. Tales of isolation and hardship are as old as the genre itself, with their roots in histories and mythologies that flourished long before science fiction had a name. Some of the most influential of these have been the scientific records, captain’s logs, and journals of early northern explorers. Evidence from these journeys has been guarded as state secrets, revered for the hardship and heroism chronicled within, and burned into the collective memory of a generation as Europe’s hundred-year obsession with arctic exploration came to terms with the loss and destruction that walked hand in hand with the search for a Northwest Passage.

D.F. McCourt

It’s been a long while since I was in the young adult demographic. Maybe things have changed or maybe I misremember but, in either case, Jamie Mason’s new YA novel Echo was a surprise. Echo pulls no punches on account of the age of its target audience. It is dark and violent, at turns both oppressive and isolating, and its vocabulary, though never ostentatious, is as broad as many novels for the adult market. On the other hand, Sarai the Snake Girl is a teenager, and the book is a scant hundred pages.

Helen Michaud

Much is written, and rightly so, about the importance in fiction of a strong beginning, but what is often harder to pull off successfully is the ending. This is especially true in short fiction, which doesn’t provide much space to introduce new characters, develop an intriguing situation, and bring it all to a satisfactory resolution (which doesn’t necessarily mean tying it up with a bow).

D.F. McCourt

It seems that everyone involved with science fiction has taken a stab at defining the genre somewhere along the way. I don’t know that that’s a particularly good idea and I’m not going to throw my hat in the ring, but I can tell you that if it were my job to draw a line down the middle of the SF&F section at the bookstore, I wouldn’t do it at the ampersand. The matter of which fantastical tropes a work is using seems so much less important than how it is using them.

Helen Michaud

There’s a certain type of story that we’ve seen more than once in our inbox. I call it (SPOILER!) the “robot fails to overcome its programming” story. It goes something like this: The protagonist is a robot on a mission. It is ingenious and resourceful, surmounting obstacle after obstacle that lies between it and its goal, despite the fact that the circumstances it faces are perhaps not quite what it was designed to handle. As the day draws to a close, it succeeds (or maybe it doesn’t) and in accordance with its programming, it returns to its home base for the night where it expects to receive further instructions. Except the base isn’t there, or there’s no one left to provide the next set of instructions — in any case, it’s unable to complete the circuit in a satisfactory manner. But this robot fails gracefully, as it was designed to do. It recharges as per protocol, and the next day, it will set out on its mission again, as it did today.

Helen Michaud

These days it seems like end of the world is everywhere you look. But there’s another category of stories that don’t just treat the apocalypse as a device, as either a ridiculously contrived crisis that is inevitably averted or a convenient preamble that provides an appropriately lawless backdrop for the main events of the tale. These pre-apocalyptic stories examine what shape the end of the world might take, and what part we as individuals living in modern society might play in bringing it about.