Monsters, anomalies, dystopias, the whole shebang! In honour of National Science Fiction Day, we scoured our stock find the best of our sci-fi stories, whether it features insectoid demon-gods or a globe-altering pathogen. Happy New Year indeed!
J.R. McConvey - Different Beasts
The twelve stories in Different Beasts ask what it means to be both human and monster. Shape-shifting waifs, haunted stuffies, scavenging drones, and mutant angels all come to life in this wildly imagined debut. As do broken soldiers, disgraced politicians, tired parents, ogres and children, opportunists, and desperate survivors — human beasts each struggling with the animalian aspects of their nature.
In this wild, fantastical, viscerally memorable debut, J.R. McConvey explores the power dynamics that undergird social relationships and crystallize into structures of fealty and worship, fear and control, aspiration and desire.
Lori McNulty - Life on Mars
Life on Mars, Lori McNulty's wild debut collection, sears the heart with blinding black humour and whiplash fast prose. With a flawless talent for juxtaposing the absurd with the everyday, violence and discord with redemption and metamorphosis, McNulty takes readers on an unexpected ride into the core of human existence.
Blending aesthetic styles from high realism to the fable-esque, Life on Mars devours life's numbing tragedies and exhilarating passions with ravenous appetite. These are raw, moving, strange stories — an unforgettable reckoning for our disconnected times.
Scott Fotheringham - The Rest is Silence
In the backwoods of Nova Scotia, a man has decided to withdraw from the world and live off the land. Meanwhile, news reports begin to trickle in of a global environmental catastrophe. Someone has released a genetically modified strain of bacteria that devours plastic. The world will never again be the same.
In this masterfully atmospheric novel, both apocalyptic in scope and intimate in setting, Scott Fotheringham cracks opens Pandora’s box to let loose a trail of chilling consequences.