My novel Lockstep is up for an Aurora!  I'm in good company, nominated alongside people like Kelley Armstrong and Charles de Lint.  I've previously won the award, in particular for my novel Permanence, but that was in the Best Novel - English category.  It's cool to be nominated in the YA category because I was hoping that this book would appeal to a younger audience as well as my established fans.  The nomination suggests that I didn't completely fail in doing this.  

The awards will be handed out on the weekend of November 20-22nd, 2015, at the SFContario 6 convention in Toronto.  For more information (like, if you want to vote), see the Aurora Awards website.

My short story "Jubilee" can be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 32nd Annual Edition, edited by Gardner Dozois.  "Jubilee" is set in my Lockstep universe, but it explores the ideas of that book from the outside in.  It's about a hereditary caste of couriers who transfer letters between two people who live in separate locksteps.  The couriers live in real-time, but the Authors, as they call them, are from locksteps that only awake at 30 and 29 year intervals, respectively.  Centuries pass between jubilees--those brief times when both locksteps are awake at the same time. 

Here's the thing, though:  the letters are just love-letters between two teenagers from different worlds.  "Jubilee" is a love story, but one that's played out over hundreds of years and mediated by people who live their entire lives in between the exchange of two letters.

This story was huge fun to write, and was originally published on Tor.com.  I'm delighted to see it in print form, and especially in a place like the Year's Best.

My interests in time and in what is "really real" meet this week in an exhibit and discussion at Trinity Square Video in downtown Toronto.  I'll be talking duration and solidity with German filmmaker Isabell Spengler, whose exhibition Two Days at the Falls will be showcased at the galllery.  This should be a mind-bending excursion to the edges of what we know, and I'm really looking forward to it--so come join us, April 8 at 6:30 p.m. at 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 376.  We're right at Spadina so the easiest access by TTC is the Spadina Streetcar; there are numerous Green-P and Blue-P parking garages in the neighbourhood as well.  For more information about the event and the gallery's ambitious science-fiction oriented programme, check out the press release.

Saturday

A Trillion Is a Statistic ◼Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Room: Markham B

Panellists: Andrew Barton, Ian Keeling

It happens so often in science fiction there's a name for it: "earth-shattering kaboom." From Lensmen to Ender's Game and beyond, sf has been solving problems with genocide for decades. Is this just authorial laziness, motivating heroes with a big enough bang, or is reflective of something dark in the genre's soul?

A.I. and Us: Heuristics of Surpassing the Human Brain ◼Science & Technology

Time: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Room: Aurora

Panellists: Hayden Trenholm, Madeline Ashby, Nina Munteanu

When the BBC posts an article reporting the world's preeminent theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking warning that AI will eventually spell the end of the human race, all eyes turn to predictions of the Singularity. Those same predictions put it within the prime of the upcoming generation of scientists and engineers, so what teachings can the current generation pass on to insure the singularity doesn't mean the end of the human race? Or is the deprecation of our intelligence inevitable...

Sunday

Readings: Karl Schroeder & Hayden Trenholm ◼Readings & Podcasts

Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Room: Buttonville

Panellist: Hayden Trenholm

They're studying Sun of Suns at the U of T this term and Professor Michael Johnstone has invited me down to talk to the class on February 25th.  This event is open to the public, so if you want to come by, we'll be at the Muzzo Family Alumni Hall 400, at 121 St. Joseph Street.  We'll be starting at 7:30 p.m. with a reading, and then I'll be doing a Q&A.  My priority is to answer queries by the students, but I'm not about to turn down any good question.  Afterward, there'll be signing.

I'm flattered that the class has chosen Sun of Suns, and would like to thank Prof. Johnstone and the class for inviting me in.

Once again, Locus Magazine has put me in their annual Recommended Reading List. This time it's for Lockstep (which will be out in paperback in March) but, in a twist, they've included me in the Young Adult category rather than Science Fiction.

I don't know how to feel about that.  I'm flattered to be told that I'm a success in the YA category, and I sort of understand why I'm there, in that Lockstep's protagonist is not an adult, there's no sex or graphic violence, and all ends well.  But since when were those things required to make something an "adult" book?  I wasn't writing a book to exclude a young audience, but then, I wasn't writing it to exclude an adult audience either.  When I was growing up, these categories weren't so distinct and the result was I was reading books like The Worm Ouroborous and Dune when I was twelve.  And why not?  My nephew read Ventus when he was the same age and had no difficulty with it; so what's with this YA stuff? 

I wrote Lockstep to consciously hie back to the classic space operas of the 1950s and 60s, but updated and--unlike every book that's used faster than light travel to generate its galactic empire--scientifically possible with what we know today.  That was all.  Whether kids read it or adults wasn't the point.

All of which means I'm overjoyed to be selected again for the list, and not at all upset to be in the YA category.  I just don't really understand why the category exists.  It's worrisome in that many potential adult readers who might really enjoy it may not even consider the book because of that categorization. That would be a shame for everybody involved.

Ah well.  Thanks, Locus, and everybody who's enjoyed the novel--whether you consider yourself an adult, a "youth" or (and this is what I hope) another kind of person who falls into no marketing category:  namely, a reader.