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Song of the Sword$12.95 add to cart

If you think you know Arthur, Merlin and the Lady of the Lake guess again. Ariane is a troubled teen, starting a new life with her aunt in Regina. A new school would be hard enough, but learning you're a descendant of the Lady of the Lake too?

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The Native Star$8.99 add to cart

In the best novel category:

• The Native Star by M.K. Hobson
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
• Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
• Echo by Jack McDevitt
• Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
• Blackout / All Clear by Connie Willis

The nominees in all categories are up at the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website. Last year's award for Best Novel went to Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.

Read McNally Robinson's interview with nominee M.K. Hobson

I've never thought too hard about science fiction and fantasy poetry. I knew it existed. I knew that Robert J. Sawyer's wife Carolyn Clink was one of the form's noted practitioners. But like many fantasy readers, I've been guilty of skipping the poems or the songs that inevitably find their way into fantasy epics.

So why am I talking about it now?

In October 2010, I attended the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio. At one of the many parties, this one hosted by Canadian publisher ChiZine, a poetry reading broke out amidst the launch of Paul Tremblay's In the Mean Time and Robert Boyczuk's Nexus: Ascension.

Sandra Kasturi, ChiZine co-publisher declared we would listen to a poem because "she'd bought the beer". She read a poem from her first collection The Animal Bridegroom called "Frankenstein's Monster's Wife's Therapist."

Amazing.

Now, lo and behold, one of Canada's two major SF&F awards, the Prix Auroras, have added a poetry category. Both Clink and Kasturi published numerous poems in 2010, also notable is Helen Marshall's "Waiting for the Harrowing". Even the "Dean of Canadian Science Fiction", Robert J. Sawyer has an eligible work; his prose poem, "The Transformed Man".

No longer a category I'll be ignoring.

A list of 2010 publications

Nominate for the Auroras

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What Is Stephen Harper Reading$21.00 add to cart

Yann Martel, the Booker Prize winning Saskatoon resident began his letter campaign of sending books promoting "stillness" to our Prime Minister in 2007, Recently Martel sent his one hundredth, and final book to Prime Minister Harper: Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad, translated from the French by Linda Gaboriau.

And it so happens that this is the hundredth letter I've written to you. One hundred. One, zero, zero. The same as 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. That's a lot of letters and books. And come to think of it, it's the same number of chapters as in my novel Life of Pi. One hundred is a nice round number and a good number to end on. (The number of times you personally have written back to me is also a nice round number, by the way: 0. That's zero, naught, nada, zilch.)

It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion.

Martel's efforts are documented on the website What is Stephen Harper Reading.