This first book-length study of French-language science fiction from Canada provides an introduction to the subgenre known as "SFQ" (science fiction from Quebec). In addition, it offers in-depth analyses of SFQ sagas by Jacques Brossard, Esther Rochon, and Elisabeth Vonarburg. It demonstrates how these multivolume narratives of colonization and postcolonial societies exploit themes typical of postcolonial literatures, including the denunciation of oppressive colonial systems, the utopian hope for a better future, and the celebration of tolerant pluralistic societies. A bibliography of SFQ available in English translation is included.

Grade level: 10, 11, 12, i, s, t.

Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Bridging the Solitudes exposes the limitations of the solitudes concept so often applied uncritically to the Canadian experience. This volume examines Canadian and Québécois literature of the fantastic across its genres—such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, indigenous futurism, and others—and considers how its interrogation of colonialism, nationalism, race, and gender works to bridge multiple solitudes. Utilizing a transnational lens, this volume reveals how the fantastic is ready-made for exploring, in non-literal terms, the complex and problematic nature of intercultural engagement.

Essays about the inherently collaborative nature of science fiction As a geometric term, parabola suggests a narrative trajectory or story arc. In science fiction, parabolas take us from the known to the unknown. More concrete than themes, more complex than motifs, parabolas are combinations of meaningful setting, character, and action that lend themselves to endless redefinition and jazzlike improvisation. The fourteen original essays in this collection explore how the field of science fiction has developed as a complex of repetitions, influences, arguments, and broad conversations. This particular feature of the genre has been the source of much critical commentary, most notably through growing interest in the "sf megatext," a continually expanding archive of shared images, situations, plots, characters, settings, and themes found in science fiction across media. Contributors include Jane Donawerth, Terry Dowling, L. Timmel Duchamp, Rachel Haywood Ferreira, Pawel Frelik, David M. Higgins, Amy J. Ransom, John Rieder, Nicholas Ruddick, Graham Sleight, Gary K. Wolfe, and Lisa Yaszek.

2010 Aurora Award nominee The 21st Century Belongs to Canada On a per capita basis, Canada has more world-class science-fiction writers than any country on Earth. Collected here are the best recent works by Hugo Award winners Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo nominees Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, and Peter Watts, and Aurora Award winners Julie E. Czerneda and Karl Schroeder - 14 advance reports of wonders and dangers yet to come. Robert J. Sawyer is the public face of Canadian science fiction." - Quill & Quire Robert J. Sawyer - called "the Dean of Canadian Science Fiction" by the Ottawa Citizen and "Canada's answer to Michael Crichton" by the Montreal Gazette - has published 18 novels, including the Hugo Award-winning Hominids, the Nebula Award-winning The Terminal Experiment , and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning Mindscan. The following is the list of contributing authors with links to a brief bio on the author: Julie E. Czerneda, Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Karl Schroeder, Peter Watts, and Robert Charles Wilson, plus the poetry of Carolyn Clink.