The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Fantastic Literature 9780367409449, 9780367409432, 9780367810023

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THE ROUTLEDGE INTRODUCTION TO CANADIAN FANTASTIC LITERATURE

This study introduces the history, themes, and critical responses to Canadian fantastic literature. Taking a chronological approach, this volume covers the main periods of Canadian science fiction and fantasy from the early nineteenth century to the first decades of the twenty-first century. The book examines both the texts and the contexts of Canadian writing in the fantastic, analyzing themes and techniques in novels and short stories, and looking at both national and international contexts of the literature’s history. This introduction will offer a coherent narrative of Canadian fantastic literature through analysis of the major texts and authors in the field and through relating the authors’ work to the world around them. Allan Weiss received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto (1985), with a specialization in Canadian literature. He has taught at York University since 1990, and is currently Associate Professor of English and Humanities. He has edited a number of collections of essays on Canadian fantastic literature, most recently The Canadian Fantastic in Focus (2014), a volume of proceedings of the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy, of which he has been Chair since 1996. He has also published articles and given conference papers on Canadian fantastic literature both in Canada and internationally.

ROUTLEDGE INTRODUCTIONS TO CANADIAN LITERATURE Series Editors: Robert Lecker McGill University Lorraine York McMaster University

Routledge Introductions to Canadian Literature is a series that provides critical introductions to important trends, issues, authors, historical, cultural and intellectual contexts in Canadian Literature. The series draws on the work of experts in the field to provide a detailed but accessible commentary on those works or conceptual issues which are taught with undergraduate students in mind but also graduate students and instructors. The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Fantastic Literature Allan Weiss For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Introductions-to-Canadian-Literature/book-series/RICL

THE ROUTLEDGE INTRODUCTION TO CANADIAN FANTASTIC LITERATURE

Allan Weiss

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Allan Weiss to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Weiss, Allan, 1956– author. Title: The Routledge introduction to Canadian fantastic literature / Allan Weiss. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge introductions to Canadian literature | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020038619 (print) | LCCN 2020038620 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367409449 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367409432 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367810023 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Fantasy fiction, Canadian—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PR9192.6.F27 W45 2021 (print) | LCC PR9192.6.F27 (ebook) | DDC 813/.0876609—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038619 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038620 ISBN: 978-0-367-40944-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-40943-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-81002-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

I dedicate this book to David Ketterer, who introduced me to science fiction scholarship and built the foundation for my own work in the Canadian fantastic.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

viii

Introduction

1

1

Terminology

5

2

The Early Period

21

3

The Pulp Era

62

4

The Atomic Age

87

5

The Flowering

126

6

The New Millennium

178

Conclusion

206

Works Cited—Secondary Index

207 213

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my profound gratitude to Robert Lecker for giving me the opportunity to write this book. Thanks to all those who have helped me over the years in my research on Canadian fantastic literature: Lorna Toolis and Annette Mocek at the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy; Hugh A.  D. Spencer, co-curator of and fellow bibliographer for the National Library of Canada’s exhibit on Canadian science fiction and fantasy, “Out of This World”; the presenters at the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy and my graduate students, who taught me so much; those who answered my many questions, like Robert Runté, Diane Walton, Michael Skeet, and Candas Jane Dorsey; and those without whose expertise this book would not have been possible, David Ketterer and Jean-Louis Trudel. I would also like to thank the folks at Routledge, in particular Michelle Salyga and Bryony Reece, for bringing the book from concept to reality. The author and publisher would like to thank the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada, for the financial support it provided to this work. Portions of this book appeared previously in different form in scholarly journals: “Baptisms by Fire: War in Early Canadian SF.” Studies in Canadian Literature, vol. 39, no. 2, 2014, pp. 210–29. “Offred’s Complicity and the Dystopian Tradition in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Studies in Canadian Literature, vol. 34, no. 1, 2009, pp. 120–41. “‘The True North Strong and Free’: National Evolution and Race in Early English-Canadian Utopian Fiction.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 26, no. 2, 2015, pp. 292–310.

Acknowledgements ix

“Separations and Unities: Quebec Separatism in English- and FrenchCanadian Science Fiction.” Science-Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, Mar. 1998, pp. 53–60. “Beyond Human: Fading Boundaries Between Human and Machine in Canadian Fantastic Literature.” Foundation, no. 81, Spring 2001, pp. 68–75. Special thanks to the editors of these journals for their permission to use the material here.

INTRODUCTION

This book is an overview of the history of Canadian fantastic literature. The term “fantastic” refers to genres like science fiction and fantasy, as well as a few that are not normally or adequately covered by those terms. Over the years, various terms have been used to label these genres; in fact, the problem of terminology in this field is so great that it requires detailed treatment. Thus, the next chapter will discuss the problem and explain the choice of terms used in this book. Writers in Canada have been creating fantastic literature for centuries, and it would be impossible to deal with the entire range of their work in an introduction as short as this. Unfortunately, it is necessary to put some limits on the focus, and so we will looking primarily at fantastic fiction for adults. Some mention will be made of fantastic poetry, drama, and children’s literature, but each of these could be the subject of a lengthy study all on its own and so the brief comments on them are designed to encourage further research rather than offer an adequate account of them. The study of fantastic poetry and drama, for example, is hobbled by a few special challenges, like simply finding texts. Poems, like short stories, are generally published first or exclusively in periodicals, requiring much detective work to locate them and categorize them by genre. Plays are performed and not necessarily published. However, we can trace just a few of the important texts and authors, acknowledging that much more work needs to be done.

Genre Because this book is about a particular genre or set of genres, it would be a good idea to discuss what genre is and how it works. Genre means “type” or “kind”

2

Introduction

of art (in fact, both “type” and “kind” were used before scholars agreed on “genre” as the preferred term). For instance, in music there are such genres as classical, pop, jazz, and hip-hop; in visual art, landscape, still life, abstract, and pop-art. In literature, there are various genres at different levels of generality or abstraction; also, genres can be defined in different ways—usually by form, content, or function. At a very general level (or “high level of abstraction”) there are three major genres defined by form: fiction, poetry, and drama. Among the genres of poetry, there are the sonnet, which is defined by form (fourteen lines and a certain rhyme scheme); the elegy, which is defined by content (mourning the dead); and the epic, which is defined by both content (heroic action) and form (length). As for fiction, some genres are defined by content: detective fiction, romance fiction, science fiction, and so on, and there are even subgenres of each of these, like hard science fiction, cyberpunk, and military science fiction. Other fictional genres are defined by function: the purpose of horror fiction is to frighten the reader, while that of humour is to make the reader laugh, regardless of the content or form. Genres of fiction defined by form include the novel and the short story, based on length. Any text can thus belong to more than one genre, such as a science fiction mystery or a science fiction short story. Similarly, a genre defined by content can cover works in different media or forms: science fiction film, comic book, television series, and so on. Genres are relational, meaning that genres exist because there are other genres at the same level of abstraction. Thus, if all fiction were science fiction, the term “science fiction” would not exist; we would just call it “fiction.” We only use a term like science fiction because there are other genres of fiction we need to distinguish it from, like detective fiction and, of course, fantasy. Also, some genres last a long time, like lyric poetry, while others die out, like the ancient epic (although many long novels and films are referred to as “epic”). Some are fairly new; the modern novel has only existed in its current form since the eighteenth century, while the subgenre of cyberpunk fiction emerged in the 1980s and climate fiction (or “cli-fi”) as a distinct genre has only been around for a couple of decades. Genres are not rigid and eternal categories. In his study of fantasy, Brian Attebery refers to genres as “fuzzy sets” (Strategies 12), and that is an apt description. There are usually texts that are seen (by authors, readers, and scholars) as prototypical of a genre, and works that are similar to them are treated as clearly within that genre. For example, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) is generally recognized as the prototypical example of modern fantasy, and novels like Tolkien’s are treated as undoubtedly works of fantasy. Others, however, share fewer features and lie on the genre’s “fuzzy” borders, sometimes straddling the line between fantasy and other genres. While they retain some features that define them, genres are not static but change over time in response to cultural developments and sometimes thanks to innovative authors.

Introduction

3

Genres therefore have two dimensions: synchronic and diachronic. Synchronic elements are those that persist in a genre and help to define it. These elements are called conventions and—especially in popular genres like mystery and science fiction—tropes. The difference between conventions and tropes has never been properly described, but it seems that a convention is a larger structural feature (like beginning in medias res) while a trope is something more specific and concrete. Some conventions are more central to a genre than others. For example, a defining convention of tragedy is that it has an unhappy ending, normally with the death or suffering of the main character; it is hard to imagine a tragedy that ends happily. As for tropes, in science fiction there are spaceships, robots, alien beings, and time travel, to name a few, while in detective fiction there are corpses and investigators. The diachronic features of a genre are those that exhibit change over time. Genres change in accordance with social, intellectual, cultural, and other developments. In Shakespeare’s day, a tragedy involved a noble or royal hero, but Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1891) and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) showed that tragedies could be about middle- or working-class figures. With the rise of the middle class during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people no longer treated the aristocracy with the same respect, and middle-class audiences wanted to see themselves ref lected in what were considered the most important—that is, tragic—plays. Modernists like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf showed that novels can be about inner states of being rather than external actions. Some genres that were popular in the past, like the Western, have either mostly disappeared or been radically altered. Genres can also become so clichéd and fossilized—so “conventional”—that they provoke parodies and other anti-genres. In addition to genre, a key term is mode. A mode is a way of writing and is usually based on a genre. While a genre is expressed as a noun, a mode is expressed as an adjective. Thus, a tragedy is a play with an unhappy outcome; “tragic” means something is written like a tragedy, such as a “tragic” novel. “Fantastic” is our mode, in that these works are written like fantasy: they portray imaginary worlds and beings. More on that later.

About This Book This history of fantastic fiction in Canada, then, will describe both its synchronic and diachronic features. Underlying the study are a couple of key assumptions: first, that no literature can be understood without placing it in its historical and cultural context, which is especially true of certain fantastic genres; and second, that fantastic fiction tells us far more about the culture that produced it than it does about other worlds and times. The chapters cover five loosely distinguished periods in the history of Canadian fantastic fiction, each beginning with a discussion of the fiction’s relevant contexts: what was happening politically and culturally in the world as a whole and more specifically

4

Introduction

in Canada; how fantastic fiction was evolving in Europe and North America; and developments in Canadian literature, of which fantastic fiction has been an integral part. Canadian fantastic fiction has always been deeply embedded in the country’s political, social, and cultural history, and heavily inf luenced by what was going on beyond the nation’s borders. One additional purpose of this study is to widen the definition of Canadian literature to include work that has often been ignored and even belittled solely because it belongs to a genre with a low reputation. How that low reputation came to be will be one of the topics of the next chapter. Chapter 2 will look at the early period of Canadian fantastic literature from its beginnings to around 1920. Chapter 3 is devoted to the Pulp Era, when popular novels and so-called pulp magazines that specialized in publishing fantastic literature arose in the United States and elsewhere. Chapter 4 deals with the Atomic Age, the period after the Second World War and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when attitudes toward science and technology were shaped by the Bomb, among other developments. During the 1980s and 1990s, Canadian fantastic literature experienced an unprecedented growth— what many have referred to as the “f lowering” of Canadian science fiction and fantasy—and Chapter 5 is devoted to that phenomenon. Chapter 6 continues the story into the twenty-first century, as the last two decades have seen a remarkable expansion of the racial and gender diversity of voices in the field. The bulk of the discussion will be on English-language literature, but relevant French-Canadian works will also be commented upon, especially where francophone authors deal with the same themes as their anglophone counterparts or they are especially significant. Claude Janelle, Jean-Louis Trudel, Amy J. Ransom, and others have done important work in the field of French-Canadian science fiction and fantasy—although unfortunately little French-language scholarship on Québécois fantastic fiction has been translated—and those who wish to examine that literature further are advised to consult their studies.

1 TERMINOLOGY

The Problem of Terms In 2003, Margaret Atwood was interviewed in Britain about her recently published novel, Oryx and Crake. She said that she did not write science fiction but rather “speculative fiction.” She explained to the Guardian that “science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen”; in a BBC interview she said science fiction was about “talking squids in outer space,” whereas she wrote about scientific realities extended—or extrapolated— into the future. In her keynote address at the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy held the same year, she elaborated on the difference between the two genres as she saw it: I liked to make a distinction between science fiction proper—for me, this label denotes books with things in them we can’t yet do or begin to do, talking beings we could never meet, and places we can’t go—and speculative fiction, which employs the means already more or less to hand, and takes place on Planet Earth. (“Handmaid’s Tale” 11–12) She made the same comparison in In Other Worlds (2011): What I mean by “science fiction” is those books that descend from H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which treats of an invasion by tentacled, blood-sucking Martians shot to Earth in metal canisters—things that could not possibly happen—whereas, for me, “speculative fiction” means plots that descend from Jules Verne’s books about submarines and balloon

6

Terminology

travel and such—things that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when the authors wrote the books. I would place my own books in this second category: no Martians. Not because I don’t like Martians, I hasten to add: they just don’t fall within my skill set. Any seriously intended Martian by me would be a very clumsy Martian indeed. (6) Atwood’s refusal to be identified as a writer of science fiction provoked immediate and hostile reaction because many in the “science fiction” community—authors, readers, and scholars—interpreted her remarks as an effort to distance herself from it. They believed that she was using what was seen as a more respectable term—“speculative fiction”—to deny any association with a genre that had a low cultural status. In an opinion piece for the Canadian “science fiction” magazine On Spec, author Peter Watts wrote that Atwood was “so terrified of sf-cooties that she’ll happily redefine the entire genre for no other reason than to exclude herself from it” (“Margaret Atwood” 4). Science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin reacted in a similar manner, saying that Atwood’s distinction between “science fiction” and “speculative fiction” “seems designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders. She doesn’t want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto.” Atwood was puzzled by the hostile reaction she received because she believed (and apparently continues to believe) that her distinction between science fiction and speculative fiction was the standard view. She has insisted that she never intended to show disrespect to science fiction but merely to distinguish what she wrote from what she has defined as science fiction. In her conference address, she said: the radio person said she’d just been to a sci fi conference there, and some people were really, really mad at me. Why? said I, mystified. For being mean to science fiction, said she. In what way had I been mean? I asked. For saying I didn’t write it, she replied. And me having had the nerve to win the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction. (11) Her distinction between the two genres, then, was designed to be descriptive and not evaluative. She was operating on certain beliefs about what differentiated science fiction from speculative fiction and assumed others agreed with her. The problem is that nobody else seems to use the terms this way, and so the people who attacked Atwood for her denial that she wrote science fiction misunderstood her meanings and motives. Ironically, Atwood’s definition of “speculative fiction” is actually the original one. The term “speculative fiction” has been around for quite some

Terminology

7

time, and as Atwood told me in an email in 2009, she had seen it used frequently since she began researching fantastic literature as a graduate student: It goes way back and has appeared in many articles & on many book covers. I use it specifically to mean something that could conceivably happen—the Jules Verne/Bellamy lineage—as opposed to the War of the Worlds one. I was doing my thesis in and around this area in the 1960s. (25 September 2009) The author usually credited with coining the term (although in truth it had been around since the nineteenth century), defining it, and popularizing it is Robert A. Heinlein. His definition of “speculative science fiction” is nearly identical to Atwood’s: There is another type of honest-to-goodness science fiction story which is not usually regarded as science fiction: the story of people dealing with contemporary science or technology. We do not ordinarily mean this sort of story when we say “science fiction”; what we do mean is the speculative story, the story embodying the notion “Just suppose,” or “What would happen if—.” In the speculative science fiction story accepted science and established facts are extrapolated to produce a new situation, a new framework for human action. (14–15) Heinlein thus insists that “speculative science fiction” extrapolates from “accepted science and established facts” and that the real focus is on the social dimension of the extrapolation. Judith Merril said much the same thing in 1966: I use the term “speculative fiction” here specifically to describe the mode which makes use of the traditional “scientific method” (observation, hypothesis, experiment) to examine some postulated approximation of reality, by introducing a given set of changes—imaginary or inventive— into the common background of “known facts,” creating an environment in which the responses and perceptions of the characters will reveal something about the inventions, the characters, or both. (“What Do You Mean” 35–36) Atwood must have encountered Heinlein’s (or Merril’s) term and definition during her early reading in the field. Another irony is that Heinlein was apparently doing what Atwood’s critics have accused her of doing: distancing his work from what was conventionally called “science fiction” (“another type of honest-to-goodness science fiction story which is not usually regarded as science fiction”). At the time, there were so-called “science fiction” pulp

8

Terminology

magazines—more on them later—that were publishing fiction with little real scientific grounding. It was the pulp tradition that caused “science fiction” to be associated with very unscientific, sensational, and not-very-respectable adventure stories for young males. Heinlein was trying to distinguish the scientifically rigorous works he wrote from the sort of implausible material being published as “science fiction” at the time. He clearly felt he needed a new term because of the way the term “science fiction” had been corrupted by the pulps. Nevertheless, people continued to call all fiction set on other worlds and in the future, with spaceships, robots, and “talking squids,” “science fiction.” The magazines were referred to as “science fiction” magazines despite the fact they published so much fiction that was not very scientific and even when they began publishing fantasy. Also, during the 1930s fans began gathering for what they called “science fiction conventions,” and this name has stuck even though they deal with fantasy, too. “Science fiction” had become the umbrella term for all fantastic literature intended for a popular audience. Yet it was still being used for a specific kind of fantastic literature—anything that was not fantasy—and so we frequently see “science fiction and fantasy” as a wordy catch-all phrase. With the growing popularity of fantasy in recent decades, people in the field sought a different general term for all the fantastic genres, and many now prefer using “speculative fiction” for that purpose, seeing science fiction as a subset or genre within that category. For example, Wikipedia defines “speculative fiction” as an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts. This is a very different meaning of “speculative fiction” from the one Heinlein had, and so we see the source of the confusion between Atwood and the vast majority of authors, readers, and scholars who work in the fantastic. She thought everybody had adopted Heinlein’s definition, not realizing the field had redefined the term radically. Meanwhile, to complicate matters further, many continue to use “science fiction” as the overarching term, or to “split the difference”—so to speak—by using the initials “SF” or “sf ” without trying to specify what they stand for. As Peter Nicholls complains in his article on “speculative fiction” in the The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: Though the term has proved attractive to many, especially perhaps academics who find the term more respectable-sounding than “science fiction” and lacking the Pulp-magazine associations, nobody’s definition

Terminology

9

of “speculative fiction” has as yet demonstrated any formal rigour, though the term has come to be used with a very wide application. The episode involving Margaret Atwood reveals an ongoing problem in the field. The criticism of Atwood would have carried more weight if there were universally agreed-upon definitions of “science fiction” and “speculative fiction,” but the fact is that authors, readers, and scholars use these terms and others in very different ways. Sometimes, they talk at cross-purposes, debating with each other without realizing that they are arguing on the basis of very different definitions. The study of fantastic literature has long suffered from this terminological confusion, and from the failed efforts of some to define “speculative fiction,” “science fiction,” “fantasy,” and “the fantastic” in ways that everyone can agree on. In fact, in some cases what the scholars have said actually contradicted what the authors and readers of these genres meant by the terms.

Realist vs. Fantastic/Mimetic vs. Non-mimetic In this book, “fantastic fiction” or “fantastic literature” will be used as the umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, utopian/dystopian fiction, alternate history, and other genres that portray things that violate our understanding of reality. While “speculative fiction” may be the most commonly used term, there are problems with it, as will shortly become clear. Many scholars prefer “fantastic” as a more inclusive and accurate term, like those who founded and named the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA), a scholarly organization that holds the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA). What, then, is fantastic literature? As noted in the introduction, texts can be categorized by genre in various ways, so no single genre differentiation is the final word. One way we can distinguish works of fiction is by using two broad genre categories: realist fiction and fantastic fiction. Realist fiction offers an imitation of the real world as we understand it, which is commonly referred to in studies as the primary world. Contrary to what some critics have suggested, realist fiction does not hold up a mirror to society but rather imitates it. If it held up a mirror to society, then there would be no plot, as life offers no such well-organized sequence of events; no themes, as reality does not operate according to a common idea; and no imagery or symbols, as the world is made up of things, not comparisons. To be sure, there are forms of realist fiction that do endeavour to “mirror” life in all its plotless, directionless disorganization, like the French nouveau roman, but even the authors of such works carefully choose which incidents and thoughts to include in their novels. Authors almost always make artistic choices in what they portray, and most realist fiction strives to depict the world not directly but according to the conventions of the

10

Terminology

form. For example, supposedly “realistic” dialogue never really conforms to the way people speak to each other, lacking fillers like “um” and “ah,” and in fact when a fictional character uses one, the author may be signalling that the character is hiding something. There is a convention in first-person narratives that narrators have perfect recall—unless there are clues that the narrator is unreliable. Experienced readers are so used to these conventions of realist fiction that we accept them, ignoring how unrealistic they may be. A realist novel imitates reality sufficiently to convince us that while the characters are fictional—we do not and are not supposed to mistake them for real people— the world they move around in is the one we know as our “consensual reality.” We call realist fiction mimetic, meaning that it is clearly meant to be an imitation of that reality, and we sometimes criticize such works for their “unrealistic” characterization, dialogue, and plots. Fantastic fiction, by contrast, portrays worlds that violate our understanding of what is real, and is therefore non-mimetic; it does not imitate the world but contradicts what we know is or believe to be reality, and thus creates what we call a secondary world. We do not believe magic is real, so any magic in a novel makes it fantastic; a future setting is enough to violate what we know of the real world; a human being f lying without technological assistance would be sufficient. Of course, there are problems with such simple definitions and distinctions. For example, some things in a fantastic work are expected to be “realistic”; a starship captain is expected to behave like a military commander— if he or she does not, we want to know why—and a human protagonist in a fantasy novel is usually expected to behave the way any of us might in the same situation and not contradict what we know or think we know about human nature. Much depends on what author and reader believe to be real, of course. In a fantastic work, there is an assumption that both author and reader share a view of what is real, and have an unspoken agreement (that is, it is a convention of fantastic fiction) that what is being portrayed is not reality. Concepts of reality are not universally shared, and they change over time, so it is vital to take into account the cultural context of any text. For example, if a writer today were to write about a magic tree and a talking snake, the work would be seen as fantastic; when John Milton wrote Paradise Lost about the Garden of Eden story, however, he considered the story real and assumed—justifiably, given when and for whom he was writing—that his readers would think so, too. We have to be very careful about imposing our own cultural values on others who do not and did not share them. It is a common error among scholars to see the roots of fantastic fiction in Greek and other myths and legends, but if people actually believed in those gods and other such spiritual entities we have no right to call such work fantastic. Just because a text is about supernatural beings does not mean it is a work of fantasy like the novels of Tolkien, who, we can reasonably assume, did not believe there really was a Middle-Earth or

Terminology

11

that elves and wizards ever actually existed.1 That is not to say there were no fantastic works in the ancient world. Aesop’s fables were definitely fantastic; we can be pretty certain the ancient Greeks did not think animals could think and talk like people. Incidentally, the fable continues to be a vibrant fantastic genre. Thus, we always have to take the historical, philosophical, and cultural conditions of a text into account when analyzing it and determining whether it is fantastic or not. What Darko Suvin has said of science fiction, in his effort to analyze how it works, largely applies to fantastic texts as a whole: Science fiction is the literature of cognitive estrangement . . . a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment. (4) What he is saying is that when we read a fantastic work, we find that the text contains elements that contradict our knowledge of the primary world. Elsewhere in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, he uses the word “novum” to describe the element(s) in a science fiction text that take us from our consensual reality to the secondary world. What distinguishes science fiction from other fantastic genres, he argues, is that its fantastic world does not violate our beliefs about how the universe works, in that scientific laws still operate, or are supposed to. Actually, science fiction often does violate scientific laws, but in ways we can sometimes forgive if they are not too egregious or distracting, or are based on the assumptions the future will mean more scientific and technological progress. It should be noted that the term “fantastic” has been used in other ways. In The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1970), Tzvetan Todorov argues that there are three kinds of fiction that create a similar effect in the reader. In all three, strange characters appear and strange events occur (see pp. 41–56). In the “uncanny,” there seem to be supernatural phenomena, but there is really a natural explanation for them. In the “marvellous,” the supernatural explanation turns out to be the real one. (Incidentally, Todorov uses the term “supernatural” for all such otherworldly “realities.”) In what he considers the “true” fantastic, the text hesitates between a rational and a supernatural explanation, never settling on one or the other, as in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898). The problem is that Todorov’s definition of “fantastic”—like Heinlein’s of “speculative fiction”—is shared by virtually no one, and even contradicts other readers’ and scholars’ experience. For them, “fantastic” means what Todorov calls the “marvellous.” There is no hesitation in attributing the alien invasion to aliens, or the ghostly apparition to a ghost; vampires,

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Terminology

dragons, faster-than-light spaceships, and sentient robots are fictionally “real.” Curiously, since Todorov seems to have read only the most implausible works of science fiction, he defines that genre as works in which “the supernatural is explained in a rational manner, but according to laws which contemporary science does not acknowledge” (56). Here, he may be referring to what was called science fiction in the pulps. Fantastic literature, then, in almost all cases portrays secondary worlds, although on its fringes are works that are somewhat ambiguous. The problem with using “speculative fiction” as the overall term, as so many do, is that it refers to “speculation,” an important element in some but not all fantastic genres. To speculate means to ask, “What if?” and many of the genres we are looking at do speculate, asking questions like “What if we had an artificial intelligence that could control the world?,” “What if we could travel through time?,” and “What if there were a society in which all fertile women were made sex-slaves?” Alternate history is certainly speculative fiction, asking “What if some historical event had turned out differently? What if this had happened instead of that?” Without some scientific explanation for the change, it is not really science fiction. In such texts, the central idea is the focus, and the author engages in what scholars have described as a thought experiment, portraying a world that has one major alteration or perhaps a few such changes. These genres belong to what is called the literature of ideas, in which ideas are foregrounded to a greater extent than in most fictional genres; other types of the literature of ideas are satire and philosophical fiction. Speculative fiction is therefore a good term for genres that foreground political, social, scientific, technological, and philosophical concepts. But fantasy does not function in the same way. It does not speculate in the way that science fiction, dystopian fiction, and alternate history do. A fantasy novel does not ask, “What if there were dragons?” but rather presents a world in which dragons are real and even a given, and then portrays characters perhaps engaged in a quest and/or facing a moral dilemma. Fantasy fits into a different tradition—the romance tradition—from the literature of ideas. That is not to say there are no ideas in fantasy, just that ideas are not the main focus as they are in these other genres. Fantasy often relies on wholly familiar elements, the sorts of beings and settings we already know from myths, legends, and history. That is why fantastic fiction is a better umbrella term than speculative fiction. It covers all the genres that involve the creation of a secondary world, whether speculative or not. Some of the fantastic genres, the ones we can categorize as speculative fiction, highlight the differences from our real world and consider the implications of the change, while others accept the secondary world as a given and focus on other things. If a science fiction novel begins with someone travelling through time, we might well ask, “Is that really possible? How would it be done?” On the other hand, if a fantasy novel introduces a

Terminology

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wizard character, we are less likely to question the existence of wizards and focus on what happens to that wizard.

The Genres To sum up, there are two broad genres in the fantastic, speculative fiction and fantasy, although some of the genres do not fit neatly into either one but straddle the boundary between them. Under speculative fiction are genres that foreground ideas and ask “What if?,” while fantasy is more likely to take the fantastic elements as a given and concentrate on how the characters behave. The fantastic genres will be discussed separately to clarify how these terms will be used in the rest of the book.

Science Fiction In science fiction, the fantastic elements are explainable by the operation of natural laws as revealed by science, and developments in technology. We cannot yet f ly to Jupiter, so a narrative about a spacef light to the solar system’s largest planet is fantastic, but if a text portrays us being able to do so thanks to advanced technology, based on scientific principles, then the work is science fiction. Generally, there needs to be a machine or some other naturally explained means of accomplishing whatever is required, whether it is a spaceship, a time machine, a robot, a computer, or genetic modification. These, indeed, are some of the most common tropes in science fiction and the easiest means by which to identify it. In fact, the tropes of science fiction are such powerful identifiers of the genre that they can make a work science fiction even when the science behind them is highly questionable. For example, many science fiction novels and stories feature extrasensory perception and telepathy. There is no actual scientific basis for these, although some science fiction authors—like Judith Merril—thought they might be real and even experimented with them (without success). In science fiction, there has developed a long tradition of treating “psi” powers as a latent ability in the human brain, and many texts speculate that evolution, drugs, or technology can release our psychic potential. These abilities became such a common trope in science fiction that they no longer disqualified a text from being science fiction provided there is some suggestion that it is a natural rather than a supernatural phenomenon. The same has happened to the trope of faster-than-light travel: enough science fiction texts have featured it that it is considered acceptable, if there is, again, at least something about hyperspace, warping the fabric of spacetime, or a similar “natural” or “scientific” explanation. Most of the time, the science is somewhat questionable, because scientific rigour is often sacrificed for the needs of the plot, the characters, and

14

Terminology

the thought experiment. A good rule of thumb is never to look too closely at the science in science fiction. Science fiction has its roots in a number of early genres, and ref lects those precursors in its conventions and tropes. It might be useful to offer a chart showing some of the tropes it inherited:

Earlier Genres Satire: the imaginary voyage foreign/alien beings exaggeration/caricature grotesque topical subjects indirection/irony

Science Fiction voyages through time and space aliens extrapolation strange new worlds and creatures ethical, political, technological, and other issues fantastic settings and beings that ref lect our world and ourselves

Gothic fiction: exotic settings sublime imagery insanity, obsessions, solitude arcane knowledge

alien or future worlds the “sense of wonder” authors try to convey the figure of the mad scientist scientific speculations

The speculative essay: speculation and extrapolation intended to educate readers about science publication in popular magazines and intended for a wide audience

speculation and extrapolation in fictional form often (especially in pulp magazines) intended to educate readers about science publication in popular magazines and intended for a wide audience

Science fiction comes in a variety of different forms, or subgenres, that are sometimes distinguished by their devotion to scientific accuracy. Hard science fiction is about speculations in the hard sciences like chemistry, physics, biology, and astronomy, and the texts are carefully researched and adhere strictly (up to a point) to known scientific facts and laws. This, in fact, is the sort of science fiction Atwood and Heinlein were talking about when they referred to “speculative fiction.” Like science fiction in general, hard SF has been variously defined, although in a subtle way. For some, hard SF foregrounds the scientific and technological speculations and is often characterized by dialogue between scientists debating or discussing scientific laws and technology. The plot, characters, and language are functional; the plot usually involves the solving of a scientific or technological problem, and the characters are little more than mouthpieces for their areas of expertise. For others, hard SF is any science fiction about the hard sciences, even when the focus of the text is on character, theme, or other more conventionally “literary” qualities.

Terminology

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At the other end of the spectrum is soft or social science fiction. Again, people differ in their definitions. Many see soft SF as speculations in the social rather than the hard sciences: anthropology, psychology, sociology, and so on. Some scholars include utopian and dystopian fiction under the category of soft science fiction because they deal with political science. Others prefer to see utopian literature—a broad genre covering all texts dealing with imagined societies, whether utopian, dystopian, or neither—as a separate genre. Some utopian literature involves technological speculations, like the telescreens and other forms of mind control in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and so the genre certainly exhibits elements of science fiction. In this book, however, utopian literature will be treated as a separate genre of speculative fiction: “What if there were a society like this?” Another definition readers use for soft science fiction is science fiction that emphasizes character, symbol, and imagery rather than the science itself. Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that we have already encountered, if not named. The name derives from the Hollywood nickname for the Western: “horse opera.” In the pulp magazines, a Western-like form of science fiction arose, with morally upstanding space-heroes instead of white-hatted cowboys, villains like space pirates instead of outlaws, outer space instead of the American West as the frontier, and evil aliens instead of violent “Indians.” The adventures, often involving the conquest of alien terrains and defeat of alien and human evildoers, were far more important than scientific accuracy. This was the sort of science fiction that authors like Heinlein and even the founder of the science fiction pulp magazine himself, Hugo Gernsback, objected to.2 In Chapter 4 we will see how science fiction moved away from the space opera, but during the 1990s the subgenre was revived with novels and stories that were far more hard-edged and scientifically accurate. The so-called New Space Opera made the subgenre once more a very important part of science fiction. During the 1980s, a new and inf luential kind of hard SF emerged, cyberpunk, which was characterized by near-future and terrestrial settings, a focus on computer and information technology, the blurring of the boundary between the human and the machine, numerous neologisms or invented words, and very dark and violent imagery. It had its roots not only in hard science fiction but also hard-boiled detective fiction, film noir, and postmodernist American fiction. Canadian writer William Gibson became the best-known of the cyberpunk authors, even though he was not its originator, and films like Johnny Mnemonic, based on one of his short stories, and Blade Runner popularized the subgenre. Cyberpunk spawned other related subgenres, most notably steampunk, in which authors speculate on how, for example, nineteenth-century society would have been different had certain primitive forms of technology been developed far beyond their actual state. What if airships had become common means of transportation, or Charles Babbage’s difference engine—an early form of

16

Terminology

computer—became as important to the Victorian Age as the personal computer is to ours? Steampunk blends cyberpunk and alternate history. Apocalyptic science fiction portrays the end of the world, which may be caused by natural disasters or human stupidity, and its aftermath. The apocalypse caused by human beings became the most common type during the twentieth century thanks to the development of weapons of mass destruction, especially the atomic bomb. During the twenty-first century, environmental themes took over from nuclear catastrophe as the main focus of apocalyptic science fiction. Climate change, toxic waste, and pollution have largely replaced bombs as the cause of our demise as a species. Visions of the end of the world—like science fiction in general—ref lect the hopes and above all the fears of the cultures that produce them, and apocalyptic science fiction shows what sorts of humanity-destroying power preoccupy people at a given place and time. Feminist science fiction deals with themes of gender identity and equality. It is often in the form of feminist utopias (imagined societies enjoying greater gender equality and freedom) and dystopias (societies in which our own society’s sexism is exaggerated in order to highlight it). The conventions of feminist science fiction include challenges to androcentric language, depictions of new forms of reproduction and parenting, serious or satirical portraits of gender role reversal, and speculations on new social structures and the end, or reinforcement, of social hierarchies. Also challenging normative views of gender are LGBTQ+ authors who confront assumptions about gender binaries and use the tropes of science fiction to show the many sexual and gender possibilities that have been oppressed or never thought of. Postcolonial science fiction portrays the effects of colonialism and sometimes suggests new ways for different cultures to coexist. Much pulp-era science fiction was intentionally or unwittingly imperialist, and it was common for such texts to say that it was our destiny as human beings to “conquer the stars” or some such idea. Postcolonial science fiction critiques present-day relations between groups of people and sometimes speculates on different ways for human beings to see the self and the Other. A number of new authors have emerged during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries who come from racialized minorities or places other than Europe and North America and offer a new perspective on the usual science fiction tropes and conventions. During the pulp era, authors and their characters tended to be white, and other Earth cultures were portrayed far less often than were the invented cultures of other planets. New voices have expanded the range of what science fiction can be and do. There are other subgenres of science fiction that we will encounter during the course of this study, and they will be discussed in due course. For now, it is important to recognize that science fiction is not just spaceships and robots, but it allows for speculations in a variety of aspects of human experience.

Terminology

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Utopian Literature Since the days of Plato, thinkers have been speculating on different ways societies can be organized and run. The word “utopia” was coined by Thomas More in his Utopia (1516) and is a pun on the Greek for “no place” (ou-topia) or “good place” (eu-topia). Utopian literature in general depicts imagined societies, and the works mostly fall into two genres: utopian fiction and dystopian fiction. Utopian fiction seeks to portray the society of our dreams, one that is far better than our own; dystopian fiction is intended to depict the society of our nightmares, one that is much worse than our own. As one might expect, one author’s utopia might be another’s dystopia; for example, Edward Bellamy’s utopia in Looking Backward (1888), with its highly controlled industrial economy, so horrified William Morris that he wrote his own utopian novel, the anarchist News from Nowhere (1890), in response. Both utopian and dystopian fiction attack the failings of the author’s own society; a utopia presents a better society to show us how far short we fall from the ideal fictional one and perhaps offers a blueprint for improving our own, while a dystopia exaggerates negative aspects of our society in order to critique them. Utopian literature is frequently satirical, ridiculing targets in the real world indirectly through the creation of fantastic societies. There are satirical works about imagined societies that are not clearly better or worse than our own but different in ways that highlight the real society’s f laws. Such works constitute a genre that will be referred to here as the satirical utopia, which includes a well-known Canadian example, James De Mille’s A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888), to be discussed in the next chapter. There is a fundamental structural difference between utopian and dystopian fiction that deserves mention. Utopian fiction usually involves a visitor from our world travelling to the utopia and being given a guided tour by a happy resident of that society. Dystopian fiction usually portrays the society from the inside, with its narrator/protagonist being a disaffected member of the society who may or may not rebel against it.

Alternate History As already mentioned, in alternate history a historical event is changed in order to conduct a mind experiment on what the consequences might be. What if the South had won the American Civil War? What if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo? Some authors offer a scientific explanation for the change—using ideas from contemporary physics like the multiple worlds hypothesis—while others, writing what many fans call “pure” alternate history, do not bother with rational explanations and simply ask “What if?” One of the conventions of alternate history is that it is not about the change itself but the later effects of the change.

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Fantasy Students often ask for an explanation of the difference between science fiction and fantasy. Whereas in science fiction the fantastic elements are attributed to natural phenomena, and involve scientific and technological developments, in fantasy the fantastic elements are attributed to supernatural causes, and occasionally to no defined cause at all. For example, travelling instantaneously from one point to another might involve a transporter device in science fiction and a magic amulet in fantasy. In truth, the transporter device might be every bit as scientifically implausible as the magic amulet, but as long as the author makes some sort of claim to offering a scientific explanation for the novum, the work would be considered science fiction. The difference is to a large extent rhetorical, meaning that it depends on what the author is trying to convince the reader of, that is, the sort of language used. An excellent way to explain the difference is a contrast from an as yet unidentified source: if the story is about dragons, it is fantasy; if the dragons are given an evolutionary history, it is science fiction.3 Fantasy has its roots in the romance tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages at least. The medieval romance grew out of the ancient epic, but its heroes were more likely to be knights rather than kings, and instead of founding nations or conquering other peoples, these heroes engaged in quests on behalf of the women they loved or the kings they served. The wizards, dragons, and other beings they encountered were an accepted part of their worlds, and heroes demonstrated their sense of honour, faith, and strength by overcoming such obstacles. The conventions of the romance include the following: virtuous heroes, clearly evil villains, familiar kinds of monsters and magical quasihumans—dragons, elves, and so on—quests, perilous adventures, and exotic spatial and/or temporal settings. By the time the novel arose in the eighteenth century, the romance was a fading form, although it survived as the Gothic romance of the eighteenth century, the historical romance of the sort for which Sir Walter Scott was famous, and adventure fiction set in supposedly “distant” parts of the globe (“distant” in European terms, that is). Fantasy emerged in the late nineteenth century as a descendant of the romance, and like science fiction it took a variety of forms. High or heroic fantasy is the genre of fantasy with which most people are familiar. Again, the prototypical text of the genre is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and until recently most fantasy imitated Tolkien’s trilogy in some way. Fantasy’s conventions and tropes include quests, protagonists (usually young men or women) faced with moral choices, quasi-medieval settings, magic objects, wizards, dragons, elves, unicorns, trolls (or orcs, gremlins, or other frightening and evil creatures), and landscapes full of dangerous obstacles. The plots are generally coming-of-age stories in which the main character learns how to make difficult choices, usually about moral questions, and the revenge tale has become a common motif in the genre.

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In her Rhetorics of Fantasy, Farah Mendlesohn has distinguished between ways the characters and readers encounter this magical secondary world (see her introduction to the book, pp. xx–xxiv). In “immersive fantasy,” the text is set in that world right from the beginning and all the characters belong to and are familiar with it. In “portal fantasy,” characters from the primary world discover the secondary world and/or enter it through a portal, such as a wardrobe (as in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series), a train station (as in the Harry Potter novels), or a book or other work of art. In “intrusive fantasy,” the secondary-world beings invade the primary world, sometimes to draw human beings into the secondary world for one reason or another. Arising in the 1980s, urban fantasy has sought to challenge the solidly entrenched conventions of fantasy by shifting the settings from medieval villages to modern cities and characters from sword-wielding heroes to streetwise youths. Urban fantasy often takes the form of portal fantasy as characters in our world find themselves, wittingly or not, in a parallel secondary world.4 In another form of urban fantasy that we will turn to shortly, we learn that supernatural beings live among us. The urban setting facilitates the portrayal of these beings as just another ethnic or racial group of sorts in a multicultural city. In much urban fantasy, the fantastic elements symbolize real ones; in Charles de Lint’s urban fantasy, for example, magic is associated with art, as both are creative and induce a sense of wonder and the spiritual in our materialist world. It should be noted here that not all horror fiction is fantastic. Serial killers are unfortunately a part of the real world, and a novel designed to horrify and frighten the reader through the portrayal of a fully human killer might be horror fiction but it is not fantastic horror. (Nor is all fantastic horror fantasy: the Alien movies blend horror and science fiction.) Like the figures in high fantasy, the monsters in horror tend to be familiar ones, like vampires, werewolves, and demons. Again, the defining feature of horror is not so much its content as its function: to scare and horrify the reader. It may seem odd to say that content is not what defines the horror genre. How can a text about these “monsters” be anything but horror? The answer to that question came with the rise of a new genre in recent decades: dark fantasy. Dark fantasy is closely related to horror fiction, and the term was used brief ly as a synonym for it, but contemporary dark fantasy has a different tone. In this genre, the classic figures of horror fiction are given an entirely different treatment from horror. “Monsters” are often treated in a far more morally ambiguous way, and even sympathetically. The figure of the reluctant werewolf is not entirely new, but that of the reluctant and disaffected vampire is fairly recent. Some dark fantasy is called paranormal romance if love relationships are a major part of the plot, like Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. Again, there are other genres of fantasy that we will look at in due course, but two genres that do not fit neatly into any other form of the fantastic need special consideration.

20

Terminology

Borderline Genres Magic realist and surrealist fiction are genres that straddle a number of boundaries; Mendlesohn calls these “liminal fantasy” (xiii–xiv). They both have a higher reputation than the popular genres we have been looking at, and are generally accepted as part of world “literature” or the literary “canon”: those works that deserve serious attention. Magic realism is like intrusive fantasy in that magical elements suddenly appear in the primary world. The difference is that in magic realism the intrusions are only occasional, and they are accepted by the characters as part of the primary world. If someone is so passionate she literally burns with desire, so be it;5 if a character suddenly begins to f ly, that is treated as simply something he does.6 Magic realism is related to and had its roots in surrealist art and literature, in which a dream-like secondary world is depicted. Surrealist fiction is characterized by metamorphosis and illogical juxtapositions; it offers a vivid, symbolic, and often disturbing image of an irrational yet evocative realm. Unlike authors of works that are clearly fantastic, those working in magic realism and surrealism claim that they are not interested in what we normally consider the real world but seek to reveal a higher spiritual, aesthetic, or psychological reality, one that rationality and materialism cover up, suppress, and deny. Their work challenges our assumptions about what is real and what is fantasy, insisting that the marvellous and irrational are real. We will run into this issue in various ways throughout the book. With these definitions in mind, let us turn to a history of the Canadian fantastic in literature, looking at the contexts of each period’s texts and how Canadian authors responded to political, scientific, ideological, and other developments through the creation of fictional Otherworlds.

Notes 1 One scholar of Canadian fantastic literature, John Robert Colombo, classified Indigenous myths and legends as high fantasy, a term that should be reserved for works like Tolkien’s. 2 In 1930, he coined the term “science faction” for works that were more strongly grounded in science. Unsurprisingly, the term never caught on. 3 My efforts to track down the source of this brilliant illustration of the difference have been unsuccessful. 4 Portal fantasy was clearly an inspiration for urban fantasy. 5 A reference to the film Like Water for Chocolate (1992), an excellent example of magic realism. 6 See Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), considered the prototypical magic realist novel.

2 THE EARLY PERIOD

Historical Context The area that we now call Canada has been the home of Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. These peoples belong to various nations with different languages, cultures, and political and economic systems. Except for a brief and apparently violent visit by Vikings during the Middle Ages, Europeans began to “explore” the Americas in the fifteenth century. Various major European powers came to these lands in order to exploit its resources and convert the Indigenous peoples to Christianity. The period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries was the age of imperialism, as not only France and Great Britain but also Spain, Portugal, Russia, and Holland sought to establish colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, all in order to secure resources—including slaves—for their own economic benefit. For Canadian history, the two most important such powers were France and England (which later joined with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to form Great Britain). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these imperial nations established colonies in North America. France created New France, in what is now the Canadian province of Québec, and Acadia in what is the current province of Nova Scotia, to name two. Britain formed colonies in what are now Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the eastern parts of the current United States of America; those the government set up became known as New England, while others were founded by individuals, religious organizations, and private companies. France was a Catholic country, and Britain was Protestant, with an official religion known as the Church of England or the Anglican Church. Among the most common resources for which Britain and France traded with their Indigenous partners were fur, fish, lumber (oak was especially important for shipbuilding),

22 The Early Period

minerals, and agricultural products like corn. Although it was primarily agricultural, New France depended more heavily on the fur trade than did the English-speaking colonies, and it established long trade routes throughout what is now the American Midwest. Throughout the eighteenth century, Britain and France fought a number of wars culminating in what the Europeans call the Seven Years’ War and the Americans call the French and Indian War; it lasted from 1756–1763, although the Canadian part of it ended in 1760. In 1759, British forces captured the city of Québec, the battle taking place on the nearby Plains of Abraham. The following year, they took Montréal, too, and so what became known as the Conquest was complete. The British renamed the colony of New France Quebec (without the accent), and now had the challenge of governing a Frenchspeaking Catholic colony. Their preference would have been to assimilate and convert the French-Canadians, or Canadiens as they were known, but did not have the military or political power to do so. They issued proclamations guaranteeing religious freedom to the Canadiens, but hoped that over time the new British subjects would see the wisdom and superiority of British institutions, including the English language and the Protestant faith. French-Canadians resisted assimilation, however, and there arose the concept of la survivance: the survival of the French-Canadians as a distinct people, or nation. Nationalism is a political movement seeking to defend, promote, and establish political institutions on behalf of a particular nation or “race” (a term that was loosely defined back then, as now). French-Canadian nationalism took various forms over the centuries of rule by the British and later the majority English-Canadian people. Throughout the nineteenth century and the first half or so of the twentieth century, the dominant form of Québécois nationalism was conservative nationalism, which stressed the importance of certain pillars of Québec society in ensuring la survivance: the Catholic Church, the French language, the agricultural way of life (as opposed to industrialism), tradition, Church-controlled classical and theological education, and the family. It is difficult to overstate the role of the Church in Québec life before 1960; the Church ran the schools, hospitals, other social services, and to every possible extent the government, not to mention people’s cultural lives. It retained the power to censor literary production, up to a point. Another form of nationalism, liberal nationalism, arose in the nineteenth century and was characterized by anti-clericalism—opposition to the Church’s role in education, culture, and politics—and a greater willingness to embrace democracy, scientific and technological advancement, capitalism, and secularism. The most radical form of nationalism was separatism: the belief that Québec could only fully achieve la survivance and fulfill itself by breaking away from Britain—and later Canada— and become a country. After the Conquest, Britain brought in a number of laws designed to deal with Quebec’s distinct nature, some of which triggered dissent in the English

The Early Period 23

colonies. The American War of Independence broke out and lasted until 1783, resulting in the creation of the United States of America, but not all in the colonies wanted to form a separate country. Refugees known as the United Empire Loyalists f led to British possessions like Nova Scotia and Quebec, settling in the western and southern parts of the latter. Eventually, Britain divided Quebec along the Ottawa River into Upper Canada in the west, which was dominated by English-speaking Protestants, and Lower Canada, the home of the Frenchspeaking Catholics. It should be noted that the interests of Indigenous peoples were never considered in these decisions and the drawing of these boundaries. Both Upper and Lower Canada were ruled by cliques made up of large landowners and government officials, and rebellions against the lack of “responsible government” (that is, government responsive to the wishes of the people) broke out in 1837 and 1838 in both colonies. Many of the rebels in Lower Canada, the Patriotes, also wanted to break away from the British Empire. The rebellions were crushed, and the British government sent Lord Durham to investigate the causes of the Rebellions and recommend changes to how the colonies were governed. One of the suggestions in the Durham Report was to unite the two colonies into one so that the ongoing immigration of British colonists would swamp the French-Canadians with sheer numbers and ultimately result in their assimilation. Many French-Canadians rightly saw Durham’s plan as a serious threat to their survival. On the international front, the United States continued to expand, and in 1812 invaded both Upper and Lower Canada in a failed attempt to capture British North America. The War of 1812 provided further evidence that the United States was the greatest threat to the British colonies, and when the southern states seceded from the Union in 1861, launching the American Civil War, the British and Canadians saw a potentially dangerous build-up of military might in the American north. Irish nationalists in the United States known as Fenians conducted raids across the American border from 1866 to 1871 to pressure Great Britain to grant Ireland independence. In 1867, due to the political problems caused by Union and the threat represented by the United States once the Civil War ended in 1865, the decision was made to create a single entity out of the British colonies in North America. The British North America Act passed on July 1, bringing about the confederation of four provinces as the Dominion of Canada: Ontario, Québec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Other provinces were formed or brought in during the next few decades: Manitoba (1870), British Columbia (1871), Prince Edward Island (1873), Saskatchewan (1905), and Alberta (1905). Newfoundland (now Newfoundland and Labrador) joined much later, in 1949. The Canadian government sought to attract settlers to the western prairies in order to secure the region, provide needed resources for burgeoning Canadian industries and cities in the central Canadian provinces, and increase the (white and Protestant) population of the Dominion. Millions of people

24 The Early Period

immigrated to Canada, swelling the populations of cities like Montréal and Winnipeg and the lands in the west. To connect the widely scattered provinces, Canada built the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), a project that involved cutting through lands already occupied by Indigenous peoples and the Métis: those of French-Canadian and Indigenous parentage. Indigenous peoples were dispossessed by treaties that were either not fully explained or not respected. The killing of massive numbers of buffalo and other resource animals by settlers, fur traders, and recreational hunters caused starvation among Indigenous peoples and Métis. Rebellions against Canadian incursion onto their lands broke out in 1870 in what is now Manitoba and in 1885 in what is now Saskatchewan. The leader of the Métis was Louis Riel, while in 1885 the Blackfoot and Cree were led by such chiefs as Poundmaker and Big Bear. The Canadian government sent troops to suppress the 1885 rebellion, and Riel—whom many French-Canadians saw as a champion of minority French-language and Catholic rights—was hanged after a controversial trial. The story of Canada during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was that of industrialization and urbanization. These led to the same sorts of social problems seen in Great Britain, the United States, and elsewhere: conf lict between employers and workers over wages, working conditions, and unionization; poor housing and sanitation in the cities; disease; and racial conf licts, such as attacks on Chinese and Japanese minorities in British Columbia and anti-Asian government policies. Because Canada remained a British colony, Britain controlled Canada’s foreign relations. Canadians participated in such Imperial conf licts as the Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902) and the First World War (1914–1918). The latter was a particularly significant war for Canada. At first, Canadian battalions were incorporated in British divisions, but later they were organized into Canadian divisions led by Canadian commanders, and in 1917 the Canadian divisions led the successful fight to capture Vimy Ridge. This battle took on mythic dimensions, to the point that some historians and others have argued that Canada had its true birth not in 1867 but at Vimy, where it experienced its “baptism by fire.” The growing need for men to fill depleted ranks in the overseas battalions led the government to implement conscription. Many French-Canadians had enlisted willingly in the army, but many also resented being required to join, especially if it meant defending the Empire that had conquered and disempowered them. Conscription riots broke out in Québec, and the political divisions created or exacerbated by the Conscription Crisis remained right up to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Thus, certain problems persisted throughout the early period: divisions between English and French, disputes with the United States over everything from boundaries to fisheries, questions over the relationship with Great Britain and the degree to which Canada should be autonomous, and so on. All of these issues became the early subjects of Canadian fantastic literature.

The Early Period 25

Social Context The industrial revolution led to a society with a rising middle class but also an expanding industrial working class. The growing gap between the lower classes and the increasingly wealthy capitalists led to great concern. Would a revolution ensue, or would social reform satisfy the needs and demands of the working class? In addition, the period saw so-called first-wave feminism, which was largely about securing the right to vote (or suffrage) for women, but also about equality in the workplace and society as a whole. Feminist activists and authors pressed for equal treatment in property rights, education, employment, and so on. Fantastic literature was one medium by which women authors explored themes of gender identity and liberation, and some, like Mary E. Bradley Lane and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, wrote feminist utopias to challenge conventional ideas about gender differences.

Cultural Context The nineteenth century was the great period of nationalism, as nation-states were formed and/or asserted their identities. Often, those national identities meant looking to the past to find the “true national spirit” in folklore and legendary or historical figures. In Great Britain, for example, there was a new fascination with English history, ref lected in such cultural phenomena as the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott, and in Germany the Grimm Brothers recorded folktales and fairy tales. In the United States, Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne sought to create an American culture in part by reaching into the country’s young history for its legends and lore. Later, Canadian authors and folklorists, especially in Québec, did much the same: assert the existence of a national identity by writing about folklore and the heroes and heroines of the young country’s history.1 After the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, authors in North America and Europe sought to challenge that movement’s stress on reason by writing works that appealed to the emotions, above all Gothic literature. The Gothic was characterized by sublime imagery, settings, situations, and characters: storms, huge, mysterious castles and mansions, larger-than-life anti-heroes and villains, melodramatic plots, strong passions, and actual or suggested supernatural beings and events. The Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries glorified and even deified Nature, replacing God with natural phenomena as the source of spiritual enlightenment and satisfaction. As the scientific revolution made the universe more understandable but also more mechanistic and spiritually empty, many poets and fiction writers emphasized the imagination as the faculty that could truly open one’s eyes to the wonder and grandeur of the world. In fact, the sublime that the Romantics sought to evoke in their readers through the portrayal of

26 The Early Period

awe-inspiring scenes on Earth would become the “sense of wonder” that science fiction authors would try to evoke through depictions of the cosmos. A cultural movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries complicates the story in profound ways. Spiritualism began in the United States in the 1840s and spread into Canada and elsewhere. Spiritualists believed that the spirits of the dead live on, and that ghosts are real and can be communicated with at séances through mediums. Believers in spiritualism included authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and even scientists like evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace; in fact, in 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded on the assumption that psychic phenomena were a legitimate subject of scientific study. In his study of Canadian spiritualism, Ramsay Cook notes that these thinkers were trying to provide scientific explanations for the miracles in the Bible and to reconcile religion and science (67–68). Some early Canadian fantasy was written by spiritualists, raising a difficult question: if an author believes in ghosts or reincarnation, is his or her story about them truly fantasy? If psychic abilities are real—as real as gravity and physical forces—could fiction about them be considered science fiction? We will treat Canadian works of supernatural fiction as fantasy, but such questions remain. The most important scientific developments when it came to the rise of fantastic literature generally and in Canada were the expansion of time and space and Charles Darwin’s theories. At one time, people could believe that the universe had been created in six days about 6,000 years ago, and that the universe was a fairly limited place with the Earth or at least the sun at its centre. By the nineteenth century, however, it was clear that the Earth had existed for millions of years, and the universe was unimaginably vast. Meanwhile, Darwin showed—to some people’s horror—that human beings were animals like any other and that instead of being specially created by a deity we had evolved over a long period of time. Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution had some negative connotations. It challenged not only the consolations of religion but also the Romantic view of nature as spiritually enriching. Judaeo-Christian beliefs saw humanity as a special creation and the universe as subject to the will and direction of a benevolent God. Now, nature was a site of constant struggle, and we humans were the product of biological forces outside our control. Darwin had a profound inf luence on culture throughout the Western world, including Canada. The nineteenth century was noteworthy for its faith in progress: scientific, technological, political, and social. It was assumed that thanks to science we would continue to learn about the natural world until we knew its inner workings, that we would continue to develop machines to help us “conquer” nature, and that society would move further and further toward utopia, mostly by correcting or eliminating what the industrial revolution had produced. Society would either be reformed or radically changed—as Karl Marx would argue—and we would enjoy a far better future. Yet along with this optimism

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was an ongoing fear of what a more technological and less “human” (that is, “naturally” human) future might lead to. Would we become nothing more than cogs in our own machines? By the end of the nineteenth century, Darwinism took a dark turn. While people (including Darwin) assumed at first that evolution equalled improvement, it later became apparent that it could also mean degeneration. The theory of natural selection meant that creatures that were best adapted to their environment would survive and pass on their characteristics to the next generation. But what if the environment encouraged weakness rather than strength, and less rather than more intelligence? Some thinkers argued that modern civilization, with all its comforts, was our new environment and that it allowed or even favoured the survival of the physically and mentally weak. For Hebert Spencer and others who argued for Social Darwinism, society had to be just like the wilderness, with no provision made for the physically, mentally, socially, economically, or racially “inferior”; if they were allowed to die out, the society as a whole would end up stronger. The same principle was applied to international relations: war was a way for nations to remain strong and to advance through military struggle. Some Canadians—like members of the nationalist “Canada First” movement of the 1860s—agreed with British and American racist thinkers that Nordic “races” were superior because they had to cope with a harsher environment than did southern “races,” and that made them stronger in mind and body. Indeed, Robert G. Haliburton claimed that Canada, with its challenging climate and geography, was the true home of the Nordic races with their legacy of martial power and love of liberty: “the true north strong and free.” When it came to technology, one area was of special interest for Canadians: transportation technology. Canada is a huge country with a widely scattered population, and one of the ways the framers of Confederation sought to preserve Canada was by building a railroad from one end to the other to connect and unify the various provinces. The CPR was finally completed (after much difficulty) in 1885, connecting western and central Canada while other railroads linked Montréal to the maritime provinces on the east coast. Canadians like Alexander Graham Bell, usually but not fairly credited with inventing the telephone, focused on communication technology, a further way to link widely scattered populations.

The Rise of Fantastic Literature As already discussed, some forms of the fantastic have been around for millennia; others, like science fiction, are relatively new. The animal fable has been one of the most enduring forms of fantastic fiction; modern examples include George Orwell’s political allegory Animal Farm (1945), Richard Adams’s Watership Down (1972), and numerous children’s stories. Satire has also had a long

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history, and has often been in the form of either science fiction or fantasy; in fact, Lucian’s A True History (2nd century ad), a satire on the improbable literature of his day, is often cited as an early example or at least precursor of science fiction since it features a trip to the moon and an account of its inhabitants. Satire uses alien beings—in Lucian’s case, found on another world; in the case of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), found on previously undiscovered islands—to mirror the author’s own society. Inf luencing the Canadian authors were such satirists as Swift and Mark Twain on the English side and Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Voltaire on the French.2 With the scientific revolution during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, Western society adopted a more materialist, rationalist, and mechanistic view of the universe. Growing skepticism about the supernatural meant that tales invoking magic would be seen as less “realist” and more fantastic. Also, authors began to speculate on natural phenomena that could explain such tropes as imaginary voyages. For example, during the seventeenth century two authors imagined trips to the moon and sun made possible by entirely—if not very plausible—natural means. In The Man in the Moone (1638), Francis Godwin tells the tale of a man who f lies to the moon on a contraption pulled by migrating birds. Cyrano de Bergerac narrates fanciful journeys, first toward the moon thanks to vials of dew strapped to his belt—he crashes along the way, and in Canada, no less—and then to the sun using a glass sphere that employs suction and exhaust. Both authors had satirical purposes for their texts, but the fact that their journeys were achieved through natural, not supernatural, means and technology indicates the stories constitute proto-science fiction. European imperialism produced a new genre: adventure fiction, that is, narratives of Europeans and, later, Euro–North Americans in “exotic” lands coping with dangerous wild animals, bloodthirsty natives, and other perils. Adventure fiction is usually set in places where there are supposedly few people, like Africa and South America, and sometimes no people at all, like the North and South poles and desert islands, as in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). It was a small step for adventure fiction to move from distant and strange but still Earth-bound settings to other times and other planets. For example, Edgar Rice Burroughs became famous for his Tarzan novels and then began writing tales about John Carter, whose adventures are set on Mars. Modern science fiction emerged during the early part of the nineteenth century, represented most clearly by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). The Creature is apparently the product of animal tissue revivified by electricity— no magic is involved. Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells, to name only the most famous early authors, contributed to the development of modern science fiction, which Wells and others called scientific romance.3 Nineteenthcentury science fiction usually involved an adventure set in the future or the prehistoric past, grounded (more or less) in scientific theory and technological speculation. It depicted voyages to unexplored parts of the world or to

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Earth’s future, worlds that turn out to be full of strange monsters and sometimes strange races, like Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1870) and Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). Indeed, Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires—novels about trips under the sea, to the moon, around the world, and so on—were the model for much of the science fiction that followed, including in French Canada. Adventure fiction was sometimes Lost Race narratives of the sort H. Rider Haggard wrote, like She (1886), in which undiscovered “races” or the descendants of familiar peoples like the citizens of Atlantis or ancient Egyptians are found in some isolated region. One convention of Lost Race fiction of the Haggard variety is that an archaeologist or anthropologist goes on an expedition in Africa or South America to find the truth behind a legend. In science fiction works, the Lost Race is an offshoot of human evolution or historical people; in fantasy, a legend involving the supernatural turns out to be true. Apocalyptic science fiction—especially popular toward the end of the century—usually involved natural disasters, like global plagues and objects falling on the Earth from space. Human beings had not yet gained the ability to destroy the world themselves, and authors wanted readers to appreciate the overwhelming power of nature, and our need to renew our corrupt, conf lict-ridden world even if it takes an apocalyptic cataclysm to make it happen. Fantasy also evolved during the century, although it can be traced back to the publication in the early eighteenth century of European translations of the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern and other tales dating back to ancient times. Later in the eighteenth century came Gothic fiction with supernatural events and characters, and authors like Poe, Hawthorne, John Polidori, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Théophile Gautier published stories about ghosts, vampires, and other supernatural beings in the burgeoning magazine market. Growing out of the fairy tale, satiric, and Gothic traditions, fantasy has explored the supernatural from the perspective of a culture with a declining belief in fairies, monsters, and demons. The Arabian Nights tales and Eurocentric thinking, meanwhile, inspired authors to write Orientalist fantasy, that is, stories set in the Middle and Far East that European and American authors, and their audiences, assumed were more suitable sites of magical events than their own countries. These settings were seen as fully Other, representing the survival of wonder and the supernatural in an Enlightenment world that, for Europeans and North Americans, was increasingly rational and material. Such fiction was based on stereotypes of Middle and Far Eastern peoples, notably Arabs and Chinese, that depicted them as everything Europeans were supposedly not: emotional, imaginative, fanciful, effeminate, and in touch with nature and the transcendent. Science contributed to the rise of such fiction: archaeological discoveries in Egypt, for example, led to a vogue for art and fiction based on ancient Egyptian motifs. Howard Carter’s excavation of King Tutankhamen’s tomb was especially inf luential for twentieth-century writers of fantasy and horror (e.g., films like The Mummy

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[1932]).4 As theorists like Edward Said have shown, Orientalism involved creating complete Others out of those whom Western authors understood the least. The “Oriental” was in fact the shadow side of the Western self, a ref lection of European and North American self-definition in negative terms. Canada’s earliest works of fantasy, and some that appeared later, were heavily inf luenced by Orientalism, as will soon become clear. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and before The Lord of the Rings changed the history of fantasy forever, works about the supernatural took certain distinctive forms. On one hand were those short stories and novels depicting psychic powers and supernatural beings—mind reading, reincarnation, ghosts, and mind control, among others—introduced into the contemporary world: Farah Mendlesohn’s intrusive fantasy (xxi–xxii). On the other hand are those more rare instances when the supernatural is portrayed as part of a secondary world to which people from our world find a way to travel: in Mendlesohn’s terms, portal fantasy (xix–xx). Rarer still are those works that are entirely set in such secondary worlds, or immersive fantasy (xx–xxi); after Tolkien, immersive fantasy became far more common, and even the dominant form, especially among his direct imitators. The combination of the damaging effects of industrialism on workers and the optimism and faith in Progress discussed earlier led authors to envision ideal new societies that would solve all of our world’s social, economic, and spiritual ills. The late nineteenth century became the heyday of utopian fiction. As Lyman Tower Sargent has shown in his articles and bibliographies, the period saw the publication of hundreds of utopian works in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere. While earlier utopias were set in the present and on a distant island, mountaintop, or planet, now they were to be found nearby and in the future. The emphasis on time stemmed from the period’s belief in progress, which arose partly from an increase in scientific knowledge and technological expertise and partly because human beings and society were seen as changeable and even perfectible. Canadian fantastic literature emerged when utopian literature was at its peak and had this future orientation, and so it is not surprising that so many early Canadian fantastic texts were in that genre and looked forward in time rather than elsewhere in terrestrial space. By the twentieth century, dystopias began to outnumber the utopias as nineteenth-century optimism gave way to modern pessimism. Another fantastic genre that was highly popular during the late nineteenth century was future-war fiction, a vogue that began with the publication of Sir George Tomkyns Chesney’s “The Battle of Dorking” (1871). In the story, Germany successfully invades Great Britain after overwhelming the Empire’s vaunted navy and proceeds to impose its will on the Motherland. The story caused a sensation and inspired numerous imitators not only in Britain but also in the United States, other nations in Europe, and Canada. During the nineteenth century, some believed that war was a necessary part of national

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evolution, a form of struggle that strengthened and therefore improved a nation. It benefited a nation by testing its people, above all its young men, and served to give countries a purpose as well as a forge in which to harden its population. For them, war made a man out of a boy and a nation out of a people. One further context needs to be addressed: the rise of Canadian literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In English-speaking Canada, literary works began to appear early on, like The History of Emily Montague (1769) by Frances Brooke. Fiction, poetry, and drama were written by authors in both languages and by both sexes throughout the colonial period. The so-called Confederation Poets of the late nineteenth century, like Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman, and Charles G. D. Roberts (1860–1943), were heavily inf luenced by British Romantic and Victorian poetry while using Canadian subjects and themes. These authors saw nature as harsh and unforgiving, but also capable of inspiring expanded and even transcendent vision. They also critiqued aspects of Canadian society, opposing modernity and the materialist, anti-natural, dehumanizing industrial world it was ushering in. Darwin’s inf luence on Canadian literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be seen in the emergence of a genre that was especially prominent in the country: the animal tale. Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton were among the most important early practitioners of the genre, both writing numerous stories about Canadian fauna. In their stories, nature is portrayed as “red in tooth and claw,” in Tennyson’s phrase, unlike their Romantic predecessors, who presented nature as a source of spiritual fulfillment; these authors wished to show how animals endure life in a harsh environment and sought mere survival as predators and prey. Animal tales depicted animals in their natural habitats, behaving the way the authors thought such animals would behave as they hunted for food and looked for shelter during inclement weather. Some have suggested that these stories should be treated as fantastic, since the authors could not know how animals really think, so their efforts are speculative. On the other hand, they wanted to present their subjects as they really were, not as anthropomorphized characters as one would see in fables. Ketterer does not consider such animal stories in his study, likely considering them as the authors wished them to be seen: as realistic portraits based on what science had revealed about their subjects. In French Canada, censorship by the Catholic Church meant that only acceptable works of literature could be published. One prominent genre emerged in francophone literature that is particularly significant for us: the roman de la terre or roman du terroir (“novel of the land”), best represented by Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine (1913). The roman de la terre was the literary expression of conservative nationalism, celebrating and promoting farm life and thus conveying the unmistakable message that the agricultural way of life was the best for the moral condition of the French-Canadians and their survival as a people.

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These themes of Canadian literature in general found their way into the country’s fantastic literature as well.

The Beginnings of Canadian Fantastic Literature To say that Canadian fantastic literature is as old as Canadian literature itself is not to exaggerate very greatly. Leaving aside folktales about ghosts and werewolves, the earliest work of Canadian fantastic fiction so far identified is also the first Québécois novel ever published. Philippe-Aubert de Gaspé, Jr.’s (1814–1841) L’influence d’un livre (1837; also published as Le chercheur de trésors and translated in 1993 as The Influence of a Book) is the story of a young man who enters into spiritually dangerous studies of alchemy and black magic. Charles Amand is a materialist, seeking worldly glory rather than salvation; his last name means “lover of man,” implying a lack of love for God. The novel often strays into long digressions intended to parallel Amand’s own descent into unChristian activities, with stories about others who fail to pursue virtuous lives and encounter demons and the Devil himself. De Gaspé was inf luenced by Gothic romances, and his novel is undeniably in the Gothic and romance traditions with its imagery of storms and isolated settings, its evil and yet attractive anti-heroes who operate by passion rather than reason, and its melodramatic plot. The fantastic elements are not given rational explanations but are presented as really supernatural. The country’s first science fiction text—if it can truly be called that— appeared shortly afterward. In 1839, Aimé-Nicolas Aubin (1812–1890), writing under his journalist pseudonym Napoléon Aubin, published “Mon voyage à la lune [My Trip to the Moon]” in his own magazine, Le Fantasque. Aubin was clearly inspired by Cyrano de Bergerac and other authors of imaginary voyages to the moon, as Aubin’s story also features a deliberately ludicrous but entirely natural means of locomotion and is a satirical text about an imaginary voyage to another world that ref lects the author’s own. Jean-Louis Trudel, in his Petit guide de la science-fiction au Québec, traces a number of sources for Aubin’s tale in French and Spanish literature during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries (30–31). Trudel also contextualizes the story by relating it to the Durham Report and the threat that it posed to the future of French Canada, one that led Aubin to speculate on different ways to govern his people (27–28). Aubin was even jailed at one point for expressing support for the Patriotes. In the story, in order to cure his horse Griffon’s depression, Aubin’s narrator gives it laughing gas and hydrogen to cheer it up; unfortunately, he gives Griffon so much gas that it begins to f loat. The narrator gives himself and his dog some gas so that the three can f ly together to the moon. He discovers that the moon is inhabited; the Lunatics (Lunatiques) prove to be satiric portraits of FrenchCanadians in their habits (such as a love of gossip [30]), and corrupt political and judicial institutions. Early on, for example, the narrator tells us that he saw

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on the Moon (in Jean-Louis Trudel’s translation) “astonishing things related to the science of passing judgment, exploiting, shaking down, pillaging, f leecing, bleeding, and knocking senseless, that is to say the art of governing people” (26). A good example of the satire is what the narrator learns about the moon’s legal system from his female guide, as she says, “Justice? . . . We do not have just one justice. Our courts offer two: one for the rich and one for the poor. And so we can say there is justice for all” (35). As noted above, nationalism in Europe and North America led some to compile fairy tales, folk tales, and legends that were seen to be expressions of a national culture or “spirit.” Such stories were considered truly “authentic” because they were old, and came out of the oral tradition of the “common people” and some sort of shared national consciousness. That was what the Grimm Brothers were attempting to do when they collected German fairy tales, and British scholars when they gathered old English ballads.5 EnglishCanadian authors and poets wrote allegorical plays about the country, as we will see, and Québécois writers and editors did much the same to assert their own national identity, retelling local legends including stories about ghosts and creatures like the loup-garou, the French-Canadian werewolf, in such volumes as Henri-Raymond Casgrain’s Les legendes canadiennes (1861) and Honoré Beaugrand’s La chasse-galerie, légendes canadiennes (1900).

Utopian Literature Aubin’s satirical utopia was the first of numerous Canadian works in the utopian genre. Some were satirical, but most were written in earnest, portraying a future Canada that had solved its political and social problems and was now a leading nation on Earth. By 1900, the dystopia was beginning to replace the utopia as the dominant form of imagined future societies elsewhere, but the utopia lasted longer in Canada.6 There are a number of possible reasons that Canadian authors continued to create utopias. First, for these writers Canada’s relative youth as a country suggested it had more potential for future greatness. North America was the “New World”: not only new to Europeans and settlers (although hardly new to its Indigenous inhabitants), but also a place of political, social, and even spiritual renewal. Second, Canada’s perceived racial purity— a perception that failed to recognize the growing diversity of the Canadian population through immigration and completely effaced the presence of Indigenous peoples, who appear nowhere in these texts—implied that the Dominion enjoyed a high degree of unity that meant strength and vitality. Third, underlying Canadian nationalism was a sense of national and divine mission. The thread that unifies the utopian texts’ otherwise quite different visions is the idea of evolution: biological, spiritual, and, in conjunction with and as a consequence of these, national evolution. Many English-speaking nationalists saw the new colony as a burgeoning country in its own right, one

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that would take its place alongside Great Britain as an equal in an imperial family. More importantly, they saw Canada as a place where the Anglo-Saxon “race” (loosely defined) and the Christian religion could be rejuvenated. These two were inextricable; many believed that Anglo-Saxons had a divine duty to bring Christianity—that is, Protestant Christianity—to the “heathens” and to the Roman Catholics in Québec. The new Dominion would be where the race could evolve and even be saved from the corrupting conditions of Europe. The utopian texts therefore envision a future Canada in which these connected developments would lead the country to become a racial and spiritual paradise. Inf luenced by Darwin, European racial thinkers believed that physical environment accounted for racial differences. Struggle in a harsh environment, like the one to be found in the northern Europe and North America, led to technological, intellectual, and other kinds of progress. As it grew more comfortable, that society itself became the new, debilitating environment that would lead to the weakening of a race. Unsurprisingly, then, these thinkers saw the “Nordic,” above all the Anglo-Saxon, race as the most highly evolved in terms of intelligence, morality, accomplishments, strength, and so on, even compared to southern Europeans. They were the natural, and even divinely appointed, leaders of the world. After Confederation, some Canadian political thinkers and authors saw English- and French-Canadians as constituting a distinct nation while being part of the British Empire and members of a greater Britannic nationality. The literature of the period sought not just to express the Canadian “nation”s culture but also to create and foster it. True nationhood required the creation of a national literature, and to serve its national purpose much early Canadian literature tended to be allegorical. Authors used fantastic, and in particular utopian, fiction both to express and to create national myths to represent Canada’s past and future. They portray Canada as not merely a “better place” but in fact the best place in the world, and indeed a model for all others. While not perfect, the Canada of the future is invariably a cleaner, happier, more just, and more religious place than the authors’ own. Among the earliest anglophone Canadian utopias is Ralph Centennius’s “The Dominion in 1983” (1883). Centennius’s name is obviously a pseudonym, and no one has yet been able to trace who he really was. Like many utopian authors of the time, he set his story a round number of years in the future. The text is a kind of “future history,” looking back at the “past” one hundred years of Canadian history from the perspective of someone living a century hence. In that sense, the narrator is not a typical utopian “visitor” educated by a local guide; instead, the reader is the visitor and Centennius is the guide. We might expect visions of future Canadas to feature scientific and technological evolution, especially given the nineteenth century’s faith in Progress, and we do get some of that. Canadian scientists, engineers, and policy-makers have always

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been preoccupied with the challenges of uniting a large country inhabited by a small and widely scattered population. Here, Canada is physically united by rocket train cars that cross the vast country in mere hours. “The Dominion in 1983” appeared during the building of Canada’s transcontinental railroad, the Canadian Pacific Railway, and so its rocket trains certainly ref lect current events. The real focus of the story, however, is on the country’s political and social progress. Centennius begins by discussing Canada’s foreign relations, although the nation’s international experiences are shaped primarily by its continuing and enthusiastic membership in the British Empire, which has expanded beyond its already global reach as it has absorbed more of Asia and Africa. During the nineteenth century, both the British and the Americans were engaged in similar searches for their national identities, and on both sides of the Atlantic there developed a view of the two countries as belonging to a single “Anglo-Saxon” family. For some English-Canadian nationalists, one of Canada’s most important roles was to act as a link or mediator between the great Anglo-Saxon nations that had been tragically divided by the American Revolution. While speaking disparagingly about American materialism and other cultural failings, they saw the Americans as racial brothers and sisters, and the Revolution as a fratricidal conf lict within the Anglo-Saxon family. Centennius also expresses an ambivalent attitude toward the United States. He raises but then dismisses fears that the United States would annex the country, then presents the sort of race-unifying mission promoted by the Canadian imperialists: “The only sort of union that is quite likely to come about is the joining by the Americans of the United Empire, or Confederation of all English-speaking nations, with which we have been connected for some years” (312). Canada has eliminated various social ills thanks not to the introduction of socialism, as in other nations’ utopian texts, but to the efforts of the Society of Benefactors, an organization of wealthy men engaged in social reform measures: “It is chief ly to these exertions that the improved tone of public opinion is due, and the general, moral and intellectual elevation of the present day are largely owing to the same cause” (313). Like the Darwinist thinkers discussed above, Centennius acknowledges that scientific and technological progress has the potential to weaken society—as comfortable conditions produce degeneration—but Canada’s youth will save it: “[t]hese things are perhaps truer of society in Europe, and in some of the States, than in our young Dominion, where everything was necessarily in a somewhat inchoate condition” (314). Had it not been for the Society, “our history, our manners, and customs, our whole career as a nation would simply have been a repetition of European civilization with all its defects, failures and vices” (314). Murder, suicide, epidemic and other diseases attributable to poor sanitation, and other social ills have been eliminated (314). Better hygiene has meant lower infant mortality; as a result,

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the population can grow naturally and there is no longer a need for immigration. The benefits for Canadians of their relative racial purity are profound: Our race, owing to the splendid hygienic and social conditions that have been dilated upon, is one of the healthiest and strongest on the face of the earth. We are not demoralized or effeminated by the luxury and abundance which are ours, but elevated rather, and strengthened by the very magnificence and opulence of our circumstances, and by the perfect freedom, under healthful restraint, which we enjoy through the community’s strong, vigorous, moral and intellectual tone. (317) Note the gendered comparison between Canadians’ “strong, vigorous” (that is, masculine) nature and the “effeminated” condition they might have acquired had the country been older and degenerated. Racial and national themes can also be found in Frederick Nelson’s Toronto in 1928 A.D., which Nelson wrote for the Canadian National Exhibition in 1908. His account of Toronto in the future is blatantly racist. The narrator is Reginald Fleming, and his chauffeur and guide, Frank, explains that University Avenue has ceased to be the home of “foreigners” (25) and is instead (in a prescient line) where a “mammoth hospital” has been erected (25). Queen’s Park has also been salvaged from the immigrant races that had occupied it: “From a Canadian’s view, the great park had once appeared doomed. The Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and other foreigners had taken it as their own” (26), but now the poor and immigrants now live east of the center: Such districts are often termed the resorts of the scum of the earth. Truly, the races of the earth were pretty fully represented here. Vicious Negroes of a low class; the Italian of the f lashing knive [sic]; the Irish, French, American, English, Bohemian, Polish, Russian and German; and sad to say, even the Canadian who had seen better days. (28–29)7 Like Centennius, Nelson expresses faith in the fundamental superiority of the Canadian people and the country as a whole; it is not a coincidence that the great achievements of the city are the Dominion Hotel and the Dominion Aeroplane. These and the vast highways represent Canadian dominion over nature and other nations. Nelson places more emphasis than does Centennius on technological progress, above all in transportation, and as Fleming watches the airship soar overhead he thinks of the growth of the airship and the growth of Toronto. How far could they go? Perfection in the former and then probably displacement through

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some other discovery in nature. Magnitude in the other and then also a displacement, so far as surprise at rapid progress goes. (47) Toronto and Canada as a whole have improved thanks to literally putting immigrants in their place and giving free rein to their ingenuity in countryspanning transportation technology. The second part of John Galbraith’s (1846–1914) In the New Capital (1897) is a vision (presented with little context or explanation) of Ottawa and Canada as a whole in the year 1999. In this future, the narrator learns, Canada has solved the problems of unemployment engendered by industrial automation. Reducing work hours and instituting Henry George’s “single tax” (i.e., on land) have eliminated unemployment and distributed the country’s wealth to everyone to ensure prosperity for all. Baron Carleton, a Canadian aristocrat, acts as the narrator’s main guide, and the narrator at one point declares, “Why, this country is now a paradise to live in compared with the past ages!” Baron Carleton’s reply is as follows: Well, why should it not be? . . . Did not God by bounteous gifts of nature intend it to be so, by his bestowal of such forces as steam, electricity, water and compressed air, together with the fruitful qualities of the land and the fecundity of animals for man’s requirements, and all we have to do now is to see they are properly distributed to all mankind as His children, and not to a few. (127) Canada’s bounty is therefore evidence of God’s grace and intentions for the country, a point confirmed by the elected King of Canada: the All-wise Creator has blessed us with certain gifts or privileges by which we are enabled to produce the necessaries of life with less labor than our ancestors of the past, thereby giving us more time for the proper development of both mind and body. (143) Canadians’ wealth and the nation’s progress thus have divine sanction. In Canadian utopian texts social advances would be the result of reform measures, not socialist evolution or revolution, like the temperance measure the country has adopted requiring licenses for alcohol purchases. Baron Carleton says that Canada has become a role model for the world (139). For many nationalists, and the utopian authors who shared their views, what may have been Canada’s most important role in the world was spiritual and religious: Canada could be the home of a (re)united Christian Church, and therefore a religious model and beacon unto the world. For both English- and

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French-Canadians, Canada was where Christianity could be renewed, cleansed of the accumulated corruption, heresy, sectarianism, and other sins that beset churches in the Old World. In the Canadian utopian texts, the progress Canada has enjoyed is similarly not only material or social but spiritual as well. The text that most clearly expresses this view of Canada as a spiritual beacon unto the world is Hugh Pedley’s (1852–1923) Looking Forward (1913).8 Pedley’s protagonist, Rev. Fergus McCheyne, is a Methodist minister who—after a failed experiment in hibernation—awakens in 1927 to find that Canada has become a thoroughgoing utopia, with all of its social and economic problems solved thanks mainly to one event: the creation of the United Church of Canada. Bishop Falconer, McCheyne’s utopian guide, explains that while Protestants and Catholics are still divided, most Protestants belong to one national church. When McCheyne expresses surprise that the churches were able to overcome their disagreements, Falconer points out that the denominations and their sectarian conf licts are not native but imports. Canada lends itself to spiritual renewal because it is a new land, one not subject to Old World divisions and one where innovation is possible: you can easily see how the feeling of national self-respect, the sense of new and large opportunity that was rising with tidal force at the beginning of the century, should have furnished the condition under which a bold, comprehensive Canadian scheme could be matured. (103–04) On his tour of the country by airship, McCheyne finds it unpolluted, prosperous, and happy. Christian values have permeated every institution and action. Above all, the world is beginning to learn from Canada’s example of renewed Christianity—a Christianity that paradoxically hearkens back to its earliest, most unified, and purest form. The novel ends on the theme of national, racial, and international union, as McCheyne stands on the summit of Mount Royal with Florence, his new bride. The following passage comes near the end of the novel; note the reference to Polaris, an allusion to Canada’s Nordic nature as well as to the Star of Bethlehem, as if the world’s great Beacon and spiritual guide has shifted from the East to the North: Out of the departing light of the sun the stars begin to gleam, and, most steadfast of all the host, the North Star hangs like a lustrous jewel above the city. With a kind of answer and challenge to shadow and star-light the long lines of electric lamps f lash out on busy street and by f lowing river. In this mingled radiance of earth and sky the outline of the city is clearly seen. At regular intervals the spire, the column or the tower proclaims the place of worship. They gaze for a while in silence. Faintly from a distant square comes the sound of a band and the opening strains of “O Canada.” (293–94)

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Thanks to Canada’s renewal of Christianity through a national church that unites the races and the creeds, the whole world has a clear model to follow for its own salvation. A more conventional, if not clichéd, utopian text is “After the Cataclysm” (1909) by H. Percy Blanchard (1862–1939). It is also an example of apocalyptic science fiction, combining the conventions of both. The unnamed narrator is struck by a detached lighting wire and is shocked into a state of suspended animation for thirty-three years, a period one cannot help interpreting as an allusion to Christ’s life span. He awakens in the home of a typical utopian older man, in this case Mr. White, who has a typical utopian beautiful young daughter, Eva (see Looking Backward, the model for other such novels). As per the genre’s tropes, they become his guides to the new world, Mr. White through dialogue and Eva by taking him outside to see the new society directly. A looming war in the Middle East between Russia and a revived Israel was interrupted when a giant body from outer space nearly collided with the Earth, setting off earthquakes and f loods that caused the deaths of most humans. The object’s gravity moved the planet’s axis so that it no longer inclined, meaning the extremes of summer and winter have been eliminated. That means that humans no longer have to struggle to satisfy their needs for food, shelter, and clothing. The survivors—enjoying the resulting abundance of natural resources—have created an Arcadian utopia (see Chapter IX). Competition and money have been replaced by cooperation and global sharing. In what was a common view among intellectuals in the nineteenth century, evil is shown to be the product of poor social conditions, so when social problems are solved, moral ones disappear as well. Vera tells the narrator: During the first few years of the new Order of Things . . . an invisible yet more or less recognizable compulsion took hold of surviving humanity. This power has since gradually relaxed; until now, among most of us, it is almost unfelt, giving place to an inward and inherent desire on our own part to pursue an altruistic course. (92) Given the references to God throughout the text as the First Cause of all that has occurred (see pp. 71–72 and the story’s ending on p. 102, for example), it seems as if this is indeed another Flood story of sorts, as social and spiritual renewal come after and thanks to the “cataclysm” of the title. Arguably the most important English-language utopian text of the period is James De Mille’s (1833–1880) A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888). The novel does not portray a better society but rather one that is bizarrely different and whose purpose is to ridicule British society and the Empire. De Mille’s novel has clear scientific and literary roots. On the scientific (or more exactly pseudo-scientific) side, it ref lects the theory of John Cleves Symmes, Jr., an American army officer and politician who believed that the

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Earth was hollow and its climate was tropical at the poles, where one could enter the planet’s habitable and likely inhabited interior. His theory inspired such fictional works like Symzonia, Voyage of Discovery (1820), in which the purported author, Captain Adam Seaborn, travels into the Earth, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). In De Mille’s novel, the frame narrative is about friends on a cruise who discover the titular container and document. As devoted supporters of the British Empire, Lord Featherstone, Oxenden, Melick, and Dr. Congreve are little affected by the moral lessons that the manuscript conveys. The manuscript they find is by Adam More, whose first name alludes to the hero of Symzonia as well as the biblical first man, while his surname refers to the author who coined the term “utopia” and established the literary genre. More finds himself f loating into the interior of the Earth through the South Pole, where he discovers the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, a race known as the Kosekin. As per the conventions of utopian fiction, the novel is largely a dialogue between More as the visitor and the Kohen, a religious leader, as the guide. More learns that the Kosekin’s moral and philosophical views are seemingly the opposite of “our”—that is, the implied reader’s—own: they love death the way we love life, believe those in love should be kept apart, and prefer darkness to sunlight. In his stupidity and Eurocentric arrogance, More assumes they are all mad. However, More is confronted with the fact that the Kosekin and the British are not all that different after all, and it is the extent to which the Kosekin mirror the British in their attitudes and culture that produces the satire. For one thing, De Mille devotes a great deal of his focus to Kosekin religious practice, notably their cannibalism in the rite of the Mistah Kosek; More is horrified by the practice, but Christianity’s rite of communion is hardly different. In Kosekin society, paupers are the most honoured people while the wealthy are the lowest class, and when the Kohen describes his own “fall” from respectable poverty to appalling wealth and power, he laments his passage through such stages: “I became a capitalist, an Athon [i.e., Lord], a general officer, and finally Kohen” (161). De Mille here attacks materialism and worldly ambition in Victorian society. De Mille’s satire is especially apparent in how he treats the Kosekin love of death. More is shocked by the idea that men are honoured for causing the deaths of others, and the Kohen replies, with equal shock: “Why, yes; how could it be otherwise? . . . Is it not the same with you? Have you not told me incredible things about your people, among which there were a few that seemed natural and intelligible? Among these was your system of honoring above all men those who procure the death of the largest number. You, with your pretended fear of death, wish to meet it in battle as eagerly as we do, and your most renowned men are those who have sent most to death.” To this strange remark I had no answer to make. (186)

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Here, the Kohen acts as a satirical ingenu, innocently asking embarrassing questions that the representative of the reader’s society dares not answer. De Mille exposes the British (and by extension European) love of war and therefore death by exaggerating it in the Kosekin, the satiric mirror. Later, More gains power in Kosekin society in true British Imperial fashion, by wielding a gun and demonstrating how willing he is to kill the local people. More finds a fellow European among the Kosekin, Almah, whom he takes as his bride and co-ruler. She announces to the Kosekin that she and More are willing to “sacrifice” their poverty, and the way More describes what follows reveals the hypocrisy behind supposedly Christian Britain’s and Europe’s claims of moral superiority over non-Europeans like the Kosekin: Selfishness, fear of death, love of riches, and love of luxury, these were all unintelligible to the Kosekin, as much as to us would be self-abnegation, contempt of death, voluntary poverty, and asceticism. But as with us self-denying rulers may make others rich and be popular for this, so here among the Kosekin a selfish ruler might be popular by making others poor. Hence the words of Almah, as they were made known, gave rise to the wildest excitement and enthusiasm, and the vast multitude poured forth their feelings in long shouts of rapturous applause. (280) Kosekin society is founded on principles of self-sacrifice, poverty, and cooperation; in other words, they are far better Christians than those who profess to be of the faith. De Mille also satirizes himself and other authors of implausible fiction through the framing device, as the four readers of the manuscript critique its style and content. English-Canadian authors were not the only ones seeing a glorious future for Canada, or at least a part of it. For French-Canadian authors, the utopia would come in Québec, or involve people from Québec. It should be noted that similar religious attitudes to the ones we have traced among anglophone nationalists were present in French Canada as well. Many French-Canadians saw Québec as the home of a purer Catholicism; the French Catholic Church, they believed, had become corrupt, asserting its relative independence from Rome to become the Gallic Church, and allowing itself to be made subject to the will of the State after the French Revolution. The standard form of Catholicism in Québec, however, was ultramontane, or “beyond the mountains” (i.e., the Alps), meaning absolute submission to Rome and refusal to accept State control and any modernization. Like Protestant Christianity for the EnglishCanadian nationalists, Roman Catholicism would be renewed and returned to its doctrinal roots in the New World, above all in Québec. While Aubin’s story is a satirical utopia, more serious utopian fiction began to appear later in the nineteenth century. The most significant of these is

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Jules-Paul Tardivel’s Pour ma patrie (1895, translated in 1975 as For My Country). The novel is set in 1945—that is, fifty years in the future—and portrays a Québec facing familiar threats: English-Canadians, Freemasons, and AngloSaxon politicians seeking a return to the Union political structure of the 1840s and 1850s that was intended to assimilate the French-Canadians. One FrenchCanadian politician stands in their way: Joseph Lamirande, who contends not only with this political conspiracy against French Canada’s language, religion, and identity but also the illness of his daughter. He becomes a Messianic figure when he receives messages from St. Joseph and from his daughter after she is dead, both encouraging him to continue the fight. He leads a groundswell of opposition to the constitutional plan, and eventually the creation of a separate and fully Roman Catholic Québec known as the Republic of New France. By adopting its old name, the new country hearkens back to its greatest historical period when the French, Catholic, agrarian, and tradition-maintaining nature of Québec was secure and unchallenged. While we are not given a portrait of New France society, we gather that like Canada in Pedley’s novel, the Republic has enjoyed spiritual gains as well as material prosperity: the Republic of New France benefits from a revived, refreshed, and fully ultramontane Catholic Church. In fact, at the end Lamirande enters a monastery and becomes a holy man, now venerated as a saint for having achieved salvation for himself and his people. To that extent, then, Tardivel’s novel is clearly an expression of conservative nationalism. However, in his introduction to the English translation of the novel, I. A. Silver says that Tardivel admired many of the institutions of the British Empire, surprisingly enough, and saw the Empire as a shield against English-Canadian assimilationists; Silver writes: Tardivel .  .  . took it for granted that only the continuance of British imperial authority made Confederation possible, and that when that authority disappeared, Confederation would have to give place to some new arrangement. For in his view, Anglo-Saxon aggression was not to be feared in the form of British imperialism so much as in the form of English-Canadian nationalism. . . . In fact, the imperial authorities could be seen as protectors of French-Canadian identity against the assimilating projects of the English Canadians. (xxxiv–v) According to Silver, Tardivel favoured Québec separation from Canada but its continued membership in the Empire, as most “French Canadians agreed that the imperial power was necessary both to protect all Canadians against American annexationism and to act as a fair arbitrator in disputes against EnglishCanadian assimilationists” (xxxv).

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Science Fiction In this period, authors were more interested in political than scientific or technological speculation. The science fiction that did appear mostly fell into two categories: passages in utopian texts about future technologies, and novels and stories with themes derived from Darwinism. In the first category, we find comments on technological advances achieved in Canada’s future. As already noted, a preoccupation in Canada during the period was developing forms of transportation and communication technology that could link the scattered population centres stretched across the country’s vast distances. Not surprisingly, then, these early authors of science fiction focus on developments in these areas, especially transportation. Centennius describes the invention of the rocket car: Nowadays the old cumbrous locomotive, rumbling and puffing along and making only sixty miles in sixty minutes, is a very dilatory machine in comparison with our light and beautiful rocket cars, which frequently dart through the air at the rate of sixty miles in one minute. The advantages to a country like ours, over 3,000 miles wide, of swift transit are obvious. The differences in sentiment, politically, nationally, and morally, which arose aforetime when people under the same government lived 3,000 miles apart have disappeared to be replaced by a powerful unanimity that renders possible great social movements, utterly impossible in the railway age, when seven days were consumed in journeying from east to west. . . . From Toronto to Winnipeg in 30 minutes! From Winnipeg to the Pacific in forty minutes! Such is our usual pace in 1983. (304–05) There may even be automobiles, depending on how one interprets the following line: “All our vehicles have the automatic electric attachment and move along briskly through the clean wide streets” (306). Nelson also devotes a substantial amount of space to describing the transportation technology of his future Toronto. The wide streets are filled with cars of various shapes, sizes, and colours—in contrast to the uniformly black Model Ts of Nelson’s day, of course—that operate on “roads which had been especially reserved for vehicular traffic” (13). The streetcar runs all the way to Newmarket, Toronto’s new northern boundary, and like Centennius’s rocket car it attains unprecedented and unimaginable rates of speed (22–23). As impressive as the surface transportation in these texts may be, however, there is a new form that easily outclasses it. By 1908, the zeppelin had renewed faith in the practicality of lighter-than-air craft, and such airships

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became a prominent feature of visions of future cities in Canada and elsewhere. In Toronto in 1928 A.D., the airship is the elite form of transportation, with a f leet run by the Toronto and District Airship Company, and the airships, together with airplanes and other modes of transportation, offer choice and lower prices, as protagonist Reginald Fleming learns from his chauffeur: “he had marvelled at the multitudinous means of transportation—including subway railroads, surface railroads, automobiles, long-distance aeroplanes, carriages and cabs” (45). Meanwhile, overhead “soared the Dominion Aeroplane, returning with its full complement of fifty persons” from Hamilton (46). In Blanchard’s “After the Cataclysm,” the narrator learns that airplanes and wireless communication have become commonplace. Fergus McCheyne tours Canada largely by airship, leaving from the “Air-Ship Station” on the outskirts of Montréal, and travels westward at “between forty and fifty miles an hour” (156); during the voyage, he sees “an aeroplane slashing by at a hundred miles an hour” (162). There is also a new form of transportation that may well be a Canadian invention, the “Spirodrome,” a railway designed to carry passengers up mountains (179). As for the second category, a particularly interesting text is Flora MacDonald Denison’s (1867–1921) novel, Mary Melville, the Psychic (1900). The tone of the novel is set early in the introduction by William Newton Barnhardt, who was, according to Thomas Hodd, a Toronto doctor and member of the American Society for Psychical Research (129). Psychic powers are treated in the introduction and the novel as a whole not as supernatural phenomena, but rather as inherent, latent human abilities that we are evolving to be able to exercise. According to Barnhardt: By a proper understanding and exercise of psychic force, mankind will attain a new condition. Man has taken infinite pains to perfect everything but himself. He has swept the horizon of his nature with his mental telescope, but has neglected the cognizance of the observatory on which he stands. The facts of consciousness and psychic life have been too visionary or insignificant compared with the hard, tangible facts of this materialistic nature and sensuous life. . . . We are living in a marvellous age, a period of constant change and rapid progress. The present marks a transition to still higher and better conditions. The march of progress has wrought wonderful changes in both the material and social conditions of all civilized countries. . . . “A Psychic” is an exceedingly fitting theme for literary treatment on the eve of the twentieth century. More especially is this so when the subject is discussed in a truthful and coordinated manner, free from the mysticisms, the distortions and perversions that are so common in many of the attempts to use psychic facts and experiences as a basis for literary entertainment. (n.p.)

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In his foreword, Benjamin Fish Austin, a spiritualist author, claims that the “miracles” in all religions are manifestations of this real and entirely natural psychic ability, and writes that Mary Melville’s life was prophetic of the New Era of Psychic Unfoldment upon which the human race is now entering. What she did, multitudes will yet accomplish and the hour is not far distant when humanity will be forced to recognize the latent powers of the human soul in Clairvoyance, Psycometry, Soul Flight, Telepathy, Prophecy, and in transcending the apparent barriers of time and sense. (n.p.) In other words, evolution means Progress, and that Progress will be ref lected in the development of the powers of the human mind. The novel is a quasi-biographical and feminist account of Macdonald’s late sister Mary Merrill, who Flora believed had psychic abilities (Hodd 128–29). Mary Melville’s parents are both geniuses—her mother Elizabeth is a prodigy (19–20), while her father George proves to be clairvoyant and foresees his sister’s death (16). Their daughter inherits their highly advanced mental powers. It is made clear that she is an evolutionary advance over the rest of the human race, in that mental evolution is a natural law, as George tells Elizabeth before they marry: “a fixed law governs our intellectual development, with just as much unity of purpose as water is always found when two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen meet” (37). While religion represents mental stasis (44), intellectual evolution is constant, inevitable, and wondrous: The plastic protoplasm, the feeling life, the man in the dugout, and then, up, up, up, brain cell after brain cell developing, the brow broadening, the face refining till reason, now our eternal birthright dawned, and Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, on, on, on, Shakespeare, Newton, Burns, Huxley, Darwin—what a birthright! And George became entranced—translated, as he ran them over, and seemed to live their lives, seemed to breathe the inspiration they had breathed, nor did he know of time. (49–50; note the inclusion of evolutionists Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin in the list) Ramsay Cook is correct to say that “the entire work is founded upon a vulgarized version of Darwinism” (79). When Mary is born, she is tiny and frail, because all of her energy—as we soon learn—has gone into her intellectual, not physical, development (50–51). She is able to speak by six months old (54), and later, while being homeschooled, she shows herself to be beyond precocious (72–73). She also has

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telekinetic powers, moving a chair and other objects at will (74). George does not know what to make of it: Was it a case of an advance step in the evolution of the brain, and was she only a personality in advance of what the race was coming to? Or was she a sensitive organism acted upon by intelligence beyond her—or—or. (77) Undoubtedly, given the anti-religious sentiments expressed earlier in the novel, the first theory is the more accurate one. The true sage will recognize “the evolutionary process working . . . and hope takes up the banner with Eternal Progression emblazoned across its open folds” (79). Mary can read minds, the past, and the future, for example somehow knowing that George’s brothers had all proposed to Elizabeth before George finally won her (90). Later, George has another epiphany as he walks in the woods: the power of nature, and the absurdity of seeking supernatural explanations when nature alone supplies the answers to all mysteries, as he recognizes a consciousness of knowledge not written in books, a consciousness of the vast sea of information in nature’s huge reservoir, a conscious relationship and sympathy with the giant pines, with the tender undergrowth, with the soft white snow, and even with the hard granite rock. (99) Great thinkers and writers are “[i]nspired because a divine idea had been caught on brain cells newly evolved, and the possessor of such a brain had been able to so translate the idea that he who ran might read” (100). Mary astonishes her professors at Prince of Wales University. However, her intellectual activity takes a physical toll, and at one point she enters into a trance or coma (113–14) and has a vision that is a mixture of the mathematical and the mystical, the spiritual and the scientific, as she tells George upon awakening: Have I been gone, father? Poor old Euclid! I was just ending the fourth book when I got tired and closed my eyes, and then I went out, out of my body, out of the house, and away, way off, and Euclid can’t teach me any more. . . . Ah, father, I wish you had been with me. It was such a grand thing to see and to know things as they are. To see that all our works, all our endeavors, are along progressive lines, to terminate never, but to get nearer and nearer to a state of perfect harmony, and perfect beauty. Oh, the music of the spheres! Oh, the beauties of the vari-colored and ever changing pictures of a universe! (115)

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The trance reveals that her body is simply incapable of handling the mind within it, and so the greater her mind grows the weaker her body becomes. Unfortunately, as the novel progresses the tragic consequences of such an imbalance between mental and physical powers ensue. One of her doctors explains what caused her death: “Brains, just too much brains. She knew too much. The body could not support the tremendous mental activity” (254). Another declares that “humanity has now evolved to a plane above the material body” (258). The point, however, is that we are all moving in her direction; psychic abilities are our birthright as a species, and Mary is, sadly, ahead of her time. Evolution is inevitable, even God-like, as George explains to Mr. Moody, a clergyman: there is force, irresistible, unchangeable, all knowing, or to use your phraseology, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, pervading all space, and acting on matter which also fills all space. Humanity is the highest manifestation of individualized matter. The brain is an instrument being acted upon by this force, and bringing knowledge to our consciousness. According to the brain development will be the knowledge received. She has demonstrated the possession of brain development probably a century in advance of her time, but down all the ages there has always been a pioneer of every epoch of advance thought. But people of to-day cannot and will not know her worth. (131–32) Finally, the narrator tells us, “She came too soon, just as others had before her” (264). As for her father, we are told: Through her he saw the evolution of the past ages. Through her he saw the progress of the future. Through her he saw the real world of cause. Through her he saw the Psychic Meaning of it all, that knowledge is without, for all to drink of. (266–67) Someday, all of humanity will come to possess those powers and that knowledge. Another example of Darwinism in Canadian science fiction is Charles G. D. Roberts’s In the Morning of Time (1919). Most of Roberts’s stories deal with contemporary animals and, occasionally, their encounters with humans, but Roberts sets In the Morning of Time in prehistoric times. Its opening chapter, as its title says, is about “The World without [i.e., before] Man.” Like his realist stories, the novel depicts animals struggling to survive, in this case various species of dinosaur. The “protagonist,” a diplodocus, survives attacks by carnivorous dinosaurs, but in its effort to escape gets trapped in quicksand and succumbs anyway to the indifferent, deadly forces of nature. Ketterer writes, “Describing animal life was Roberts’s forte, and he generates a lot of sympathy for the dinosaur” (20).

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Roberts’s purpose in this chapter is to set the scene for his later human characters, showing his reader first that life can and does go on without us—we are not the centre of the universe or even the natural world, as we might imagine—and second that life in nature is anything but the way Romantics might present it. As W. J. Keith puts it, “its function is to present a frighteningly vivid picture of the primeval state of nature” (80). Keith goes on to note that the mammoths at the end also sink into the pitch, bracketing the human narrative with scenes depicting nature’s indifferent, unpredictable, and merciless capacity to kill. Thus, when the humans do appear beginning in Chapter II, their lives are an unending battle against giant animals and other natural threats, and dangers arising from fellow humans. The second chapter is made up largely of a battle between giant creatures, while human beings survive and triumph through their greater intelligence. The rest of the novel describes the lives and adventures of caveman Grôm and his mate A-ya. Grôm embodies much of human evolution: he discovers fire (Chapter IV), is the first to experience romantic love (99), invents the bow and arrow with A-ya’s help (176–82), accidentally learns the principles of water travel and navigation (Chapter XII), and comes up with the idea of smudging as a way to deal with biting insects (297). He becomes a great leader by using his brains rather than his brawn, successfully overcoming wild animals, bloodthirsty fellow hominids, and treacherous members of his own tribe, notably Mawg, a rival for A-ya’s favours. He often seems to have an instinctual need to learn and invent (see, e.g., 180). Roberts makes it clear that “Nature” rules—not, it should be stressed, God—yet, interestingly, Grôm comes to challenge nature as the world’s greatest power, and even, through imagery, is directly compared to it. For example, the narrator portrays nature as conducting “experiments,” as in how he describes the extinction of the dinosaurs: “Nature, pleased with her experiments in the more promising mammalian type, had turned her back upon them [dinosaurs] after her fashion, and was coldly letting them die out” (20). Roberts is referring here to the principle of natural selection, which is not a conscious process in literal terms but is presented only metaphorically as involving God-like choice. Similarly, at the beginning of Chapter III, nature is described as “ruthless” (41) because it is unthinkingly cruel. Later, Grôm engages in similar “experiments” with fire, learning how to control this mysterious, God-like being (30, 98). Ultimately, humanity comes to usurp the power of the larger, stronger beasts through sheer intellect. As he tricks various monsters into destroying each other, “he . . . despised the gigantic beasts and felt himself their lord” (39). Through his control of fire, Grôm becomes seen as a god, first by A-ya (69) and then by the rest of his tribe (71, 98–99, etc.). He lays the groundwork for humanity’s “conquest of nature” (to use a popular phrase of the time), although the truth is that we are merely one of nature’s most successful “experiments.” The novel exhibits both progressive and regressive thought. On the one hand, A-ya is almost Grôm’s equal; she is every bit as brave as he is, and is even

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better at wielding the bow and arrow—which, as already noted, she partly invents. She is fully responsible for the invention of cooking, with help from a fortunate accident involving a fire into which a f leeing elk stumbles (Chapter XI). Females in the novel, both human and non-human, are formidable fighters when their children are threatened (e.g., 142). While gender stereotypes are challenged to some extent, however, racial ones are reinforced. The most civilized hominids—that is, the most evolved—are Grôm and his people, and they are white-skinned (45, 52): Grôm and Mawg are “superb specimens of their race—the highest then evolved upon the youthful earth,” and when Mawg betrays his tribe and joins the enemy Bow-legs he is said to be “plainly of superior race to his companions” (151). The Bow-legs are yellow-skinned (43–44, 142, 149, etc.), numerous (e.g., 143), and as their nickname says, bow-legged— all stereotypes of Asians in Yellow Peril literature and wartime propaganda during the Second World War. Even Indigenous people make an appearance as a “copper-red” woman enters the white hominids’ camp (198–99). The least civilized, least evolved, most animal-like hominids, predictably, are the black-skinned half-apes referred to at the beginning of Chapter III, “who were plainly men, in a way, but still more plainly beasts” (41). For all its virtues as an exciting (if often unlikely) adventure story, the novel ref lects some unfortunate contemporary ideas. Ketterer explains the interest in prehistory among Canadian authors as stemming from the country’s harsh environment: to early Canadian settlers, the voyage from Europe to the rather more untamed, primeval Canadian landscape might well have seemed like a movement backward in time . . . the long Canadian winter and the frozen Arctic wastes cannot but remind Canadians of that cataclysmic Ice Age which destroyed a prehistoric world. These factors have imparted to Canadian writers a very palpable sense of the overpowering forces of nature and of the long evolutionary perspective. (22) These works can best be explained, however, by seeing them in the context of the broader interest in evolutionary themes among authors like H. G. Wells (The Time Machine [1895], The War of the Worlds [1897], etc.), Jack London (Before Adam [1906–07]), and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (e.g., The Lost World [1912]). Among the sciences, biology was as important to writers and others then as astronomy and physics would become later in the twentieth century. A somewhat unconventional, and like Mary Melville, the Psychic also feminist, science fiction novel is Tisab Ting, or the Electrical Kiss (1896), written by Ida May Ferguson using the pseudonym Dyjan Fergus. The novel is set in Montréal in 1995, in line with the convention during the period of looking a round number of years into the future. Very little appears to have changed

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in the world technologically speaking, but socially and politically there have been noteworthy alterations. China is now an independent country and a major economic power, and nations are competing to trade with it. It is not considered wrong for women to move out on their own and support themselves through work, although women do not appear to be doing any jobs that are not conventionally female: they are still teachers and servants. Also, when a Chinese man comes to Montréal seeking a wife, Mrs. Harrington seems to have no racial concerns when it comes to offering up her daughters to this potential Asian suitor. What she does not know is that Tisab Ting has come seeking one young woman in particular: Petra Bertram, the daughter of his now-deceased scientific partner with whom he studied the properties of mysterious stones that either heal or kill. In trying to cure Antony of a deadly disease Tisab Ting’s father chose the wrong stone, and to atone for his error he asks his son to marry Antony’s daughter. Tisab Ting has discovered that there is an electrical vein in the human body, running through the neck, and when a person is kissed on that vein she or he will instantly fall in love with the kisser. It is by kissing Petra this way that Tisab Ting wins his maiden. The novel’s premise must be considered in its contemporary scientific context. For decades, biologists had studied “animal magnetism,” the idea that living beings possess electrical and magnetic forces that sometimes cause them to be attracted to each other and sometimes allows one individual to gain control of another (through mesmerism or hypnosis). In a way, this electrical source of sexual attraction is little different from Victor Frankenstein’s apparent use of electricity to bring his Creature to life. There are obvious moral problems with how Tisab Ting gains Petra’s heart, but he marries her out of devotion to his father and hers. Things do not turn out well, however, as the power that both Tisab Ting and Petra have unleashed prove to be too much for her—in much the same way that Mary Melville’s body cannot withstand the forces in her mind. It is worth noting the important role that MacDonald and Ferguson played as female and feminist pioneers of Canadian science fiction, while seemingly required by the romance genre to end their texts with tear-jerking climaxes involving frail female bodies.9 Robert Barr (1850–1912) published a few works of apocalyptic (or nearapocalyptic) science fiction. “The Doom of London” (1892) is about a deadly fog—more exactly, smog, in that the fog is mixed with coal smoke—that settles over London during a period without any wind to relieve its effects and kills thousands. In “Within an Ace of the End of the World” (1900), scientists develop a way to fix atmospheric nitrogen so that it can be used to fertilize crops. A giant corporation emerges, The Great Food Corporation, as capitalists seek to corner the market on nitrogen. Removing nitrogen from the air increases the proportion of oxygen, leading to a global conf lagration that kills nearly everyone on Earth. The story is an attack on what for Barr were two of the period’s dangerous developments: irresponsible and short-sighted scientific “progress” and the rise of monopoly capitalism—a very American

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phenomenon, it might be added. Science fictional elements can be found in his novel A Rock in the Baltic (1906), with its matter-dissolving substance “ozak,” and his story collection Jennie Baxter, Journalist (1899). In the latter, a mad scientist has invented a machine that fires a ray capable of destroying atomic bonds, turning solid matter into dust; the story ref lects contemporary concerns triggered by the discoveries of X-rays and radium.

Canadian Future-War Fiction Despite Canadians’ self-image as a peace-loving nation, the fact is that war has long been a major theme in Canada’s literature, including some of the earliest texts of Canadian fantastic fiction. Canadian authors joined the vogue for future-war fiction in the decades after Confederation, as some early Canadian nationalists believed that Canada would never truly become a nation until it fought a war for its survival. War would strengthen the Canadian people and secure its place in the world. Examples of the theme can be found as early as “The Dominion in 1983”; Centennius tells us that some Americans seeking to “liberate” (i.e., annex) Canada made plans to invade Canada in 1887—a mere four years after the author’s present, highlighting the immediacy of the threat. The problem, he tells us, resulted from the fact that the United States had permitted “all the firebrands and irreconcileables from European cities” (298) to immigrate, while experiencing a growing divide between the few very rich and the many very poor. Some Canadians envy the wealth of their southern neighbours and yearn to join them (298–99), representing real annexationists in Canada who argued throughout Canada’s early period for union with the United States. In Centennius’s history, revolutions and wars break out in Europe, the economy suffers a downturn, and Fenians make plans to repeat their 1860s invasions of Canada. Things look bleak for Canada, but people from all across the country rally to its defense, and even some who had emigrated to the United States return home to man the Dominion’s barricades (299–301). The American invasion is averted when the United States endures a series of crises: the president is assassinated, class warfare breaks out “between labor and capital” (301), and even Mother Nature intervenes as a hurricane destroys some of the ships to be used for the invasion (301). None of this stops Ontario’s “demagogues” from continuing to betray their nation by calling for annexation (302). Soon, however, Europe calms down and Britain feels better able to afford to help its colony, sending 12,000 men to Canada; meanwhile, diplomatic successes restore some of the Empire’s lost glory and respect (302–03). Britain now has the moral authority to convince the American government to stop the “leaders of the ‘army of deliverance’” (303). The effect of this military threat on the Canadian spirit is profound: Of course the benefit to Canada of having had the national feeling so deeply stirred was incalculable, for all classes of men in all the provinces

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had been animated by the profoundest sentiments and the strongest determination possible, and it was the opinion of leading military men of the time that the Canadians under arms, though outnumbered trebly by the intending invaders, would have held their own gallantly and have come off victorious. (303) War, then, is a boon to national unity and strength, even when it is averted. While Canada enjoys a period of peace and prosperity after this crisis, old, divided, and belligerent Europe does not. A world war breaks out in 1932, but because military technology had advanced to the point of making war “too destructive to be indulged in at all” (311) it does not last long, as a “monster oxyhydrogen shell” kills numerous heads of state gathered for a meeting: Their armies hardly had a chance of getting near each other, so fearful was the execution of the shells. Since then, the world has been free from war, and, but for gathering clouds in Asia, would seem likely to remain so. (311) While Northern Europeans have become too civilized to embark on a war, the same cannot be said of militaristic “lesser races,” like those in the southern part of the continent: Great as has been the increase of the Anglo-Saxon race, the numbers of the Sclavonic [sic] race have kept pace. The Sclavs, unfortunately, retain much of their old brutish disposition and ferocity in the midst of all the civilizing inf luences of modern times, so that statesmen foresee an inevitable collision in the not distant future between the Sclav and the Anglo-Saxon. (312) Meanwhile, thanks to their own national evolution, the Americans are now too advanced a people to attempt another invasion; “even if Americans coveted our possessions they are not likely to resort to such an old-fashioned expedient as warfare to gain them” (311–12). According to Centennius, then, countries benefit from war but later outgrow it. A text that clearly demonstrates the inf luence of Chesney’s “The Battle of Dorking” is W. H. C. Lawrence’s The Storm of ’92 (1889). The novella follows the conventions of future-war stories as described by I.  F. Clarke (see Voices chapter 2): it is set in the near future and deals with contemporary threats, in this case (and once again) the United States; it portrays an unprovoked invasion by a powerful foe; and it is narrated by a veteran of the war, a grandfather

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telling the story to his grandchildren, as is the case in “The Battle of Dorking”— in fact, the subtitle of Lawrence’s story is A Grandfather’s Tale Told in 1932. Lawrence’s text is almost certainly a response to an American story, Samuel Barton’s The Battle of the Swash and the Capture of Canada (1888); there are some clear parallels between the two that may suggest direct inspiration if not imitation on Lawrence’s part. Future-war fiction is nearly always inspired by current crises; here, the lingering dispute over the east- and west-coast fisheries between Britain and the United States during the 1880s is presented as a major source of friction in both stories (e.g., Barton 39–48). The war’s trigger in Lawrence’s story is a confrontation between a Canadian cruiser and an American fishing vessel, the “Blaine” (13, 16–20). As in Centennius’s story, annexationist sentiment arises in the United States and persists in Canada (see the account on p.  13). Most authors of future-war fiction portray political and military leaders as naïve and ill-prepared, in an effort to warn contemporaries about the need to spend more money and attention on the army and navy, but Lawrence presents his officers positively (see, e.g., 49). Lawrence glorifies rather than condemns Canada’s and Britain’s governments and generals. In his story, war is once again beneficial to Canadian unity: its statesmen “forgot party bickerings and thought only of their country” (8). The country enjoys being part of a benign British Empire: “Our people were loyal to that just power whose yoke was no heavier than a garland of roses, whose gentle sway we were proud to own” (9). Again, as in “The Dominion in 1983,” the United States is morally inferior and belligerent because of its free immigration policies: “we feared the result of democratic government where the reins of power had fallen from the hands of the educated, to be grasped by the ignorant, the worthless and the base” (10). These newcomers have brought “strange” ideas (anarchism, socialism, etc.) to North America. Pro-annexationist saboteurs damage communication and transportation links—as we have seen, vital for a country like Canada—and are lynched (30). The story connects the war’s action to Canada’s military heritage, particularly an event that took on mythic qualities in accounts of Canada’s history: the Battle of Queenston Heights during the War of 1812. In that battle, the British defeated a larger American force trying to invade the Niagara peninsula, but the British commander, Sir Isaac Brock, was killed in action. A monument to Brock and his sacrifice was erected and stands on Queenston Heights to this day. Lawrence’s unit fights a second Battle of Queenston Heights in the shadow of Brock’s Monument (46). Lawrence’s allusions to the battle and Brock are a clear example of the way propagandists use commemoration of a nation’s military history, and especially of “blood sacrifice,” to promote nationalist sentiment: For the first time in eighty years a Canadian army was crossing that old field in the footsteps of those led by the gallant Brock upon his last march,

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and towards the spot where he found his grave; and, while upon our left the ruined and grass-grown mounds, which marked the site of Fort George, in his day a powerful earthwork, bore testimony to the lapse of time, I do not believe that the sentiments of patriotism which inspired his men, burned less warmly in the breasts of this army of a later day. (51) Another allusion to Canadian military history is the reference to Irish-Americans among the first enemy soldiers encountered, recalling the Fenian raids (46). Thus, the story hearkens back to Canada’s own military heritage as much as that of Britain. Normally, in future-war fiction enemy soldiers are remorseless and merciless, but in Lawrence’s story the invading Americans are portrayed as halfhearted combatants. That is because the “better class” of politicians and journalists do not want to fight, and the United States and Canada share close economic ties (31). They share something else as well: a racial heritage that makes any struggle between them “a civil and fratricidal war” (31). Conventionally, the outcome of the war in British future-war fiction depends on the fate of the Royal Navy, and here, the f leet arrives and bombards New York, then lands British and imperial troops from all over the world on both coasts (32). Their arrival boosts morale: “The idea that we would fight side by side with the historic regiments of the Imperial army made the younger men almost exult that war had come” (33). The United States is no match for the united Empire and its navy (63). Early in the text is a line that ref lects contemporary attitudes toward the benefits of war to a nation, as the narrator says that the war “made Canada what she is today” (5). The narrator makes it clear that Confederation was only the first, and not necessarily the most important, step in Canada’s birth (6). On the eve of the battle, he thinks about the fate of this little nation which had drawn the sword against the mighty power of its attacking enemy. What had the coming years in store? Were we, with all our pride in Canada, with all our affection for the land of our fathers and our wish to remain part of its Empire, to become another Poland—conquered, disgraced? Was it already Fate’s decree that we should witness our f lag torn down, beaten back and banished from this continent, that we should live to listen with burning cheeks to the scarce-concealed sneers of our conquerors? Or would the fire and endurance of a race enured to danger bring us in safety through this trial. (41) For one soldier, the narrator’s friend Waller, war is a nation-building, and therefore positive, exercise:

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I believe this war in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty is for the best, and though it may seem cruel that it will desolate many homes and put many a poor fellow under the sod, it is yet for the best, because it is permitted to be. . . . The war will build up Canada. There is no bond between human hearts like that brought about by a common danger and a common grief—and our Provinces, but lately such strangers to one another, now face the one, and will shortly, God help us, share the other. So with ourselves, England and the Empire. (42) Finally, Lawrence tells us: There is peace to-day in Canada, and happiness among her twenty millions of prosperous people, forming the new nation of the Western world. Knit together as one nation, old differences silenced and forgotten, we have become heirs to a goodly heritage. (69) Thanks to the war, Canada has become a nation able to stand alongside its imperial brothers with pride: Not in vain, in the fresh morning of their young life did these first-born of our nation’s heroes pass into darkness. Still over them, upon that tall staff, f loats the f lag for love of which they died. Here in this sacred spot, let us resolve that Canada, preserved by their sacrifice, shall be a nation great, just and renowned; great in the great hearts, the high aims, the noble courage of her people; progressing ever onward in all that is worthy, beneficent and good, until nation shall no longer rise against nation, and men shall learn war no more. (71) Canada’s nationhood is forged in the fires of war, and Canada has emerged triumphant and prosperous thanks to Providence and the Royal Navy. Not so much a future-war as an alternative history novel is Ulric Barthe’s Similia similibus (1916). It was published during the First World War, and in Barthe’s version the war does not begin until the Germans first attack North America. Cast as a dream vision, the tale concerns a successful German invasion of Québec. Once more, local sympathizers of the enemy, or “fifth columnists,” contribute to the threat. As discussed earlier, the survival of the French-Canadians depended on their maintaining their hold on the land. In Barthe’s tale, the Germans are able to move artillery and troops into the province thanks to some foolish farmers who, a decade before the war, sold their land to Germans pretending to be innocent immigrants. Meanwhile, secret anarchist German

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associations try unsuccessfully to help the German invaders expand their conquest. Because the invaders are members of the German “race,” not fellow Anglo-Saxons, they are the typical foes of the period’s future-war fiction: barbaric and evil, committing atrocities against the people they have conquered reminiscent of the real-world propaganda reports of German atrocities in Belgium (182–91, 242). The novel’s title comes from the field of medicine and means that one can be cured by being given a controlled dose of whatever is causing the disease. In this case, Barthe offers his readers a small dose of German invasion to ensure his French-Canadian readers will prevent the real thing from happening to them. Since Barthe’s text is intended to inspire support for the war effort, it is full of anti-German racism (80–81, 92); for example, we are told that “Pillaging . . . it’s in their blood” and “They are still barbarians” (my trans. throughout; 150). The Germans’ Proclamation (61–69) is identical to the one the Germans had issued in Lunéville, France, in August 1914 (69 n. 1), and may be intended to recall the one that the British issued as part of the Conquest of 1759–60. One thing is certain, that what happened in Belgium could happen to us, too, if by bad luck the dam that is holding back the Prussian f lood, from the North Sea to the Swiss border, breaks if there are not enough arms to support it. Similia similibus, as you say in Latin, Father. (242) Like the other texts, Similia similibus offers a nationalist message: the benefits of war in uniting the country and providing a foundation for its growth and development. Here, the unity involves the two founding races, represented by the journalists Paul Belmont, who is French-Canadian, and Jimmy Smythe, who is English-Canadian. Despite a brief disagreement over the races in Canada and their qualities (209–11), they work together to subvert the Germans. As we learn, “A new fire seemed to run in their veins with the good old Gallic and Celtic blood with which the most noble races of the Old World nourished the soil of Young America” (63) and “Never had the feeling of national solidarity so spontaneously arisen in all their hearts” (201). Only by working together, and overcoming their differences, can French- and English-Canadians prevent Paul’s drug-induced nightmare from coming true. Barthe’s novel is about not so much a future war as a future battle; he predicts that the First World War could come to Canada’s shores if people are not very careful.

Fantasy The text David Ketterer identifies as the first fantasy novel in English Canada is La Masque; or, The Midnight Queen (1863; published in 1876 as The Midnight Queen) written by May Agnes Fleming (1840–1880) using the pseudonym

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Cousin May Carleton. Given its title, and the fact that the action of the novel begins in a plague-ridden city, one cannot help seeing it as inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842). “La Masque” is a mysterious masked sorceress capable of seeing into and showing others visions of the future. The novel belongs to the genre of historical fantasy, one that combines the historical romance with magic. It is set during the Great Plague of London in 1665, and as in historical fiction there is a cameo appearance by a real historical figure, King Charles II. The main character is Sir Norman Kingsley, an aristocrat who displays the virtuous qualities of chivalry. The novel includes some classic romance and fantasy tropes: foundlings who turn out to be of noble heritage, an evil (and of course ugly) dwarf, sword fights, and more than a little sentimentality. Kingsley’s friend Ormiston is in love with La Masque despite having never seen her face, and brings Kingsley to her to exhibit her prophetic powers. She shows him three future scenes that, needless to say, all come true. The action of the novel takes place over one night, and the plot revolves around Kingsley’s discovery of the beautiful Leoline who seems to have died of the plague but recovers. She is being romantically pursued not just by Kingsley but also the man she was supposed to have married, Count L’Estrange—the King in disguise—and Lord Rochester. Meanwhile, Leoline’s twin sister Miranda presides as the “Midnight Queen” over a “court” of criminals led by the dwarf. Mysteries, complications, and dangers ensue, but Kingsley’s devotion and the King’s power save the day. Two aspects of the novel deserve comment. First, it contains Orientalist elements, exhibiting the inf luence of and even directly alluding to the Arabian Nights. Ormiston informs Kingsley that La Masque learned her magical arts in the East (Chapter 1), and there are references to Aladdin (Chapter 1) and “the marble prince in the Eastern tale” (Chapter 16). Second, Fleming also alludes to one of the most famous fantasies in English literature, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Miranda is clearly named after her earlier fantasy counterpart, particularly given her lifelong isolation from the rest of humanity by her dwarf “guardian,” and the dwarf is named Caliban. Both live outside of society, seeing others only when the criminals gather at an old ruin for feasting and brutal “trials” of those who have been accused of betraying the outlaws. Orientalism can be seen in other early works as well, notably Archibald MacMecham’s “The Porter of Bagdad” (1885). The title character is a nondescript porter who, unbeknownst to his customers and others in the Bazaar, has a captive Djinn, “enchanted and motionless, just as the great Chinese magician had fixed it by his power” (11). Through the Djinn’s power he can see and experience the world’s wonders in his tiny room: armies, lovers, dancing girls, and so on. In creating the character, MacMechan may have been inspired by the tale “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad” in the Arabian Nights. Spiritualism can also be found in early works of Canadian fantasy. Robert Barr’s From Whose Bourne (1893) is a mystery novel whose main character is the

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spirit of the victim of an apparent murder. Brenton wishes to help his wife, who is accused of poisoning him and whom he believes to be innocent. One of the other spirits he meets, Speed, is attempting to find a way to communicate with the living, while another, Ferris, urges Brenton to leave his life behind and embrace his new existence. We have seen that animal tales during the period, like those of Roberts and Seton, were often intended to be read as realist. There also appeared animal stories that were clearly works of fantasy, like those in W. A. Fraser’s collection The Sa’-zada Tales (1905), which can perhaps be described as a cross between Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle books and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Sa’zada is Sahib Zada, a zookeeper in an unidentified large city. Like Doctor Dolittle, he is capable of talking to the animals, and the animals in his zoo can all understand each other, too. When the city endures a heat wave, its population escapes to the countryside for relief, but the animals have no such option. To help them pass the time in the absence of visitors, Zada suggests that they gather outside the cage of the large cats and tell stories about how they were captured and brought to the zoo. Each animal is individually characterized, and they frequently disagree with or disparage the others, but what emerges is that each is simply doing whatever he or she needs to do to survive. The big cats, for example, object to the hatred they face from the animals who are their prey, arguing convincingly that they, like the others, need to eat to live, and they cannot help being carnivores. Animals who work closely with humans, like Hathi Ganesh the elephant and Unt the camel, take a fairly prohuman view, while the tigers like Bagh become man-eaters only when other prey are unavailable—and are condemned and hunted simply for doing what they must. The stories frequently attack sport-hunting as cruel, and indeed much worse than anything the animals do, since the humans are acting not out of necessity but for pleasure. The Bison and Big Tusk, the wild boar, make this point in their stories, and Bison describes how her kind has been nearly wiped out by people. Big Tusk resents being hunted by animal and human alike. In addition, Big Tusk complains about pigs’ undeserved bad reputation, insisting that all animals be judged as themselves and not according to inappropriate standards. Throughout the book, Mahb the orangutan makes sardonic comments on the other animals and their tales, as he and the Bandar-log, or Monkey People, fit into the common image of primates as playful, mischievous, and comical beasts.10 Fraser uses his animal characters to promote an environmentalist view, criticizing his human readers for treating animals as resources or enemies rather than learning to accommodate their natures. We come off looking far worse than the supposedly “uncivilized” animals. The book is one of the earliest examples of environmental fantastic fiction. Roberts also wrote what might be considered animal fantasy, although his works do not involve sentient, talking animals in the way that fables do. His short story “The Stone Dog,” in his collection Earth’s Enigmas (1896), is about

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a canine sculpture on an old, abandoned fountain in front of a ruined wall; it is there to guard a hidden treasure, and is capable of movement and even of attacking those who dare to try to pry open the door in the wall. The Heart of the Ancient Wood (1900) is a novel about a character capable of silent communication with animals. Like La Masque; or, The Midnight Queen, Roberts’s novel also alludes to The Tempest: the main character is another Miranda who, again, has been alienated from human society. Here, she lives alone in the woods with her father. Through a kind of sympathetic communication, she convinces predators to stop killing, in what she calls her “Pax Mirandae,” but doing so goes against their nature and even her best friend, the bear Kroof, is unable to keep his promise for long. Miranda sees herself as more animal than human, but when Young Davey enters her life she must choose between her childhood innocence and oneness with nature, and her womanhood and identity as a human being. The novel is a coming-of-age fable, as Miranda leaves her Garden of Eden behind in tragic circumstances. Her choice is inevitable, but no less sad for all that. Like her namesake in Shakespeare’s play, she must surrender her familiar home, say farewell to her “island,” and join her “natural” society and species: the human race.

Poetry and Drama One of the earliest fantastic poems in English is Archibald Lampman’s “The City of the End of Things” (1894), an apocalyptic vision inspired by industrialism, urbanization, and materialism. The title city is a hellish dystopia of iron, mechanical noise, and soulless people. With its “grim Idiot at the gate” the poem expresses an existentialist view of modernity’s lack of the spiritual or of meaning. Bliss Carman’s “Shamballah” (1922), by contrast, is a transcendentalist dream about the Buddhist mythical city of enlightenment—a spiritual heaven. As for drama, the earliest play written and staged in Canada was Marc Lescarbot’s mythological fantasy Le Théâtre de Neptune en la Nouvelle-France (1606), about a meeting between the Roman gods Neptune, Triton, and Diana and French explorers in Acadia. Later, there were fantastic plays in both languages throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often in the form of allegories, whether political or religious. Some represented Canadian history or relations with other nations.11 Others were about the contemporary scene, like the satirical “Dolorsolatio: A Local Political Burlesque” (1865) by “Sam Scribble”—the pseudonym of an unidentified playwright—whose characters include various Canadian cities and Santa Claus. The period’s plays, like those of Shakespeare, were often in verse and written by authors better known as poets; one example is Morning (1897) by William Wilfred Campbell (1860– 1918). The play is set in an imaginary ancient city and allegorizes contemporary political debates. There were also Gothic plays like Thomas Bush’s “Santiago: A Drama in Five Acts” (1886), about a man in Chile named Vampries, but known to the locals only as the Stranger, who is preternaturally strong and

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an avenging angel of sorts. His name suggests he would be the villain, but he metes out punishment to the corrupt and criminal. No doubt there were many other plays that have not been identified; certainly there could have been any number that were staged but never published.

Children’s Literature Some of the animal fantasies of Charles G. D. Roberts and his brother Theodore Goodridge Roberts (1877–1953) were intended for younger readers, and other nature poetry and fiction sought to teach children about the world of animals or convey moral precepts through fables about sentient beasts. Canadian fairy tales, including Canadian versions of Mother Goose stories, were published in nineteenth-century compilations by such authors as Bridget Kavanagh and James Miller Grant (writing as Grant Balfour); many of the stories were based on Celtic and Scottish tales. Indigenous myths and legends offered local source material for non-Indigenous authors to “Canadianize” their works, like T. G. Roberts’s The Red Feathers (1907). Cyrus Macmillan retold Indigenous stories in Canadian Wonder Tales (1918). Later fantasy authors include Helen Sandwell, Carol Cassidy Cole (1881–ca. 1963), and Donalda J. Dickie (1883–1972). French-Canadian children’s literature of the period often comprised folktales and fairy tales, most with roots in European stories.

Notes 1 Some good examples in English Canada are figures like Tecumseh and Laura Secord, heroes of the War of 1812. 2 Voltaire’s “Micromégas” (1752), for example, portrays a visit by aliens whose questions and comments on Earthlings expose the f laws of our society and nature. 3 On the other hand, Brian Stableford sees scientific romance and science fiction as different owing to the British tradition of one and the American tradition of the other; see his Scientific Romance in Britain 1890–1950 (1985). He does acknowledge the links between them (3–4). 4 See Roger Luckhurst’s The Mummy’s Curse, a study of Western myths about ancient Egypt. 5 Charles Perrault had already collected fairy tales in France in the seventeenth century (like “Cinderella”) as moral fables for children. 6 For a discussion of this development, see the studies by Krishan Kumar, Chad Walsh, Lyman Tower Sargent, Alexandra Aldridge, M. Keith Booker, Chris Ferns, and Tom Moylan. 7 Note the presence of the “English” here; the “British” are preferred in that they benefit from the added Celtic and Scottish elements to their “race.” 8 The title is an allusion to Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel, Looking Backward, 2000– 1887 (1888). 9 On the history of feminist science fiction, see Albinski, Armitt, Barr, Bartkowski, Fitting, Freibert, Lefanu, and Rosinsky, among many other scholars in the field. 10 For example, in the visual arts monkeys are frequently used as satiric mirrors of human beings. 11 Uncle Sam, John Bull or Britannia, and Canada herself often appeared on stage in full costume.

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References Aubin, Napoléon. “Mon Voyage à la lune.” imagine. . ., nos. 8–9, Summer 1981, pp. 25– 45. Barr, Robert. “The Doom of London.” Face and the Mask, pp. 65–78. ———. The Face and the Mask. Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1895. ———. From Whose Bourne. Chatto & Windus, 1893. ———. Jennie Baxter, Journalist. Methuen, 1899. ———. A Rock in the Baltic. Authors and Newspapers Association, 1906. ———. “Within an Ace of the End of the World.” McClure’s Magazine, vol. 14, April 1900, pp. 545–55. Barthe, Ulric. Similia similibus, ou La Guerre au Canada: Essai romantique sur un sujet d’actualite. Imprimerie Cie. du “Telegraph,” 1916. Bell, John, and Lesley Choyce, editors. Visions from the Edge: An Anthology of Atlantic Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Pottersfield Press, 1981. Blanchard, H. Percy. “After the Cataclysm.” Bell and Choyce, pp. 46–102. Bush, Thomas. “Santiago: A Drama in Five Acts.” Wagner and Plant, pp. 68–136. Carleton, Cousin May (May Agnes Fleming). The Midnight Queen. Hurst, 1876. Carman, Bliss. “Shamballah.” Colombo, Other Canadas, pp. 250–54. Centennius, Ralph. “The Dominion in 1983.” Colombo, Other Canadas, pp. 296–319. Colombo, John Robert, editor. Other Canadas: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979. de Gaspé, Philippe-Aubert, Jr. Influence of a Book. Translated by Claire Rothman, Robert Davies Publishing, 1993. De Mille, James. A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. Chatto & Windus, 1888. Fergus, Dyjan (Ida May Ferguson). Tisab Ting; or, The Electrical Kiss. Hunter, Rose Company, 1896. Fraser, W. A. The Sa’-zada Tales. William Briggs, 1905. Galbraith, John. In the New Capital: A Nineteenth-Century View of Ottawa in the TwentyFirst Century. 1897. Edited by R. Douglas Francis, Penumbra, 2000. Lampman, Archibald. “The City of the End of Things.” Colombo, Other Canadas, pp. 244–47. Lawrence, W. H. C. The Storm of ’92: A Grandfather’s Tale Told in 1932. Sheppard, 1889. MacDonald Dennison, Flora. Mary Melville, the Psychic. Austin Publishing Co., 1900. Macmillan, Cyrus. Canadian Wonder Tales. John Lane, 1918. Nelson, Frederick. Toronto in 1928 A.D. National Business Methods, 1908. Pedley, Hugh. Looking Forward: The Strange Experience of the Rev. Fergus McCheyne. William Briggs, 1913. Roberts, Charles G. D. Earth’s Enigmas. Copp Clark, 1903. ———. The Heart of the Ancient Wood. Silver, Burdett and Company, 1900. ———. In the Morning of Time. McClelland and Stewart, 1922. ———. “The Stone Dog.” Earth’s Enigmas, pp. 232–49. Roberts, Theodore Goodridge. The Red Feathers: A Story of Remarkable Adventures When the World was Young. Page Company, 1907. Scribble, Sam. “Dolorsolatio: A Local Political Burlesque.” Wagner and Plant, pp. 54–66. Tardivel, Jules-Paul. For My Country. Translated by Sheila Fischman, introduction by A. I. Silver, U of Toronto P, 1975. Wagner, Anton, and Richard Plant, editors. Canada’s Lost Plays, Volume One: The Nineteenth Century. CTR Publications, 1978.

3 THE PULP ERA

Historical Context After the First World War, returning veterans often experienced difficulties finding work, and some joined the labour movement in seeking dramatic changes in society. The economy grew during the 1920s, but then the American stock market crashed in 1929, triggering the Great Depression of the 1930s. A coincident drought worsened conditions further in the Prairies. In 1931, the Statute of Westminister was passed in the British Parliament officially granting Canada control over its foreign policy, although the Dominion remained a part of the Empire. The Depression only ended with the Second World War, when the military once again required men (and some women) and thus the shortage of jobs eased. Conscription nearly became a divisive issue again, but the war ended before matters came fully to a head. The war ended in 1945 with the explosion of two atomic bombs, one in Hiroshima and the other in Nagasaki. After the Second World War came the Cold War between the allied powers in the West—Great Britain, France, the United States, and of course Canada among them—and the Soviet Union and its allies in the East. By the end of the 1940s, both sides were armed with nuclear weapons, and the result was ongoing fear of mass annihilation should another world war break out. The shadow of the atomic bomb loomed over life during the next few decades—and, more specifically, over the fantastic fiction of the period. It should be noted, however, that nuclear weapons had been predicted in science fiction for many decades, most notably in H. G. Wells’s novel The World Set Free (1914). In Québec, conservative nationalism continued to reign, with the pillars of such nationalism—agrarianism, Roman Catholicism, tradition, family, and the French language—remaining key to la survivance. For many years the

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conservative Union Nationale was the dominant political party in the province; it was led by Maurice Duplessis, who served as premier from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to his death in 1959. However, urbanization, industrialization, and continuing anti-clericalism challenged conservative nationalist thinking, and in 1960s the Liberal Party under Jean Lesage took power and launched what is known as the Quiet Revolution, which radically transformed Québec society and politics.

Scientific and Cultural Context The optimism and faith in Progress of the nineteenth century did not survive long into the twentieth century. The Industrial Revolution had already shown the dangers of modernity; people were becoming dehumanized as clock time took over from natural time, as workers were becoming slaves to rather than masters of the machines they worked with, and as cities became alienating spaces where individuals were being absorbed into masses. Technology liberated humanity in some ways but threatened us in others, and the First World War seemed to many people to be the ultimate example of systems—political, military, technological, social, and so on—destroying human lives, literally and figuratively. The “machine gun” could be considered a metaphor for modern technology: a machine whose sole purpose was to kill people in mass numbers and do so quickly and efficiently. The invention of airplanes and dirigibles brought in air war, which many contemporary works of future-war fiction assumed would dominate the battlefield to come. These technological developments also introduced total war: even civilians were now considered “legitimate” targets. It is not a coincidence, then, that utopian fiction, which was so popular in the late nineteenth century, soon more or less gave way to dystopian fiction in the twentieth century. Visions of a happy future seemed painfully naïve, and scientifically implausible, in an age of industrial and military horrors. Dystopian fiction differs from utopian fiction not only in its pessimism but also in its form. Whereas the typical utopian text involves a visitor from our world arriving in utopia and learning how it works from a local guide, dystopias frequently portray disaffected members of the societies who participate—up to a point— in a rebellion. Early “classic” dystopias are authoritarian, absorbing the individual into a political, social, and technological system that dehumanizes them or crushes their spirit. Dystopias of note include E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909), Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1920–1921; 1924), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). As we saw in the previous chapter, the positive views of evolution that at first attended Darwin’s theories transformed into fears of devolution and degeneration. Science continued to undermine religious certainty, and then even the rational, predictable, mechanistic universe of Isaac Newton was undermined

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by Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. For some (including many who misunderstood what Einstein was saying), all certainties were crumbling. Meanwhile, psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung demonstrated the role of the irrational and the subconscious in our thinking. Indeed, one important development in fantastic literature during the period was a growing interest in the science of the mind, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that psychology—and parapsychology, the scientific study of psychic powers like telepathy—began to replace biology and evolution as the main focus of science fiction and fantasy, and in some ways of “literary” fiction as well. This was the period of modernism: the age when the coherence, reason, and optimism of the nineteenth century gave way to the exploration of the individual consciousness and subconscious, and the conventions of various arts were attacked in favour of experimentation in form and content. Avant-garde movements abounded, particularly but not exclusively after the First World War seemed to make it impossible to believe any longer in political, social, intellectual, and cultural authorities. Artists in various fields sought radical innovation, and many looked for inspiration in a very different future rather than an outmoded past. Such thinking informed the rise of science fiction during the period after the First World War. Of special importance for us was the unprecedented rise in mass literacy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The middle classes that took over societies in Europe and North America believed strongly in literacy as a universal right, and so the ability to read became almost universal in these places. To satisfy all these middle-class and working-class readers, editors and publishers produced magazines, cheap editions of older novels, and “dime novels” (or cheap paperbacks), among other forms of popular reading material. Most of the magazines were intended for middle-class families and featured a variety of content, including fiction (for young and old). These general-interest magazines were soon supplemented by fiction magazines, which were usually printed on cheap, woodpulp-based paper and were designed to be read and thrown away. The “pulp magazines,” as they came to be known, at first appealed to a diverse readership, with magazines like Blue Book and All-Story that published various genres. Then specialty pulps were created for fans of detective fiction, Westerns, romance fiction, and even pirate stories, among other genres. These magazines were professional pursuits, designed to make money by selling popular fiction to a broad market. It was only a matter of time before pulps specializing in fantastic literature arose, among the earliest and best-known being Weird Tales, which began publishing in 1923 and has continued to appear in various forms ever since. Weird Tales published fantasy, horror, and some science fiction, including one manifestation of the anti-Asian racism described earlier, “Yellow Peril” literature, which claimed the “white” race was threatened with being overrun by hordes of Asians.1 Among the magazine’s most famous and popular authors

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were Robert E. Howard, with his tales of Conan the Barbarian beginning in 1932, and H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer and creator of the Cthulu mythos. The divide between “high” and “popular” culture became very wide during the era, as modernist writers objected to such commodification of culture and some founded small literary magazines (the “little mags”) intended for an elite, intellectual audience. 2 In 1926, Hugo Gernsback founded the first all-science fiction pulp magazine, Amazing Stories. His goal (like that of Jules Verne before him) was to educate boys and young men about science, since he believed that the future would be a scientific one, and technology would continue to evolve and require citizens to understand the machines they would work with. Gernsback inaugurated the “pulp era” or the so-called Golden Age of science fiction as more science fiction magazines appeared. Astounding Science Fiction began in 1930, and starting in 1937 it was edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., one of the most important editors in the history of science fiction. He created a stable of authors who would become some of the most significant in the field, like Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Henry Kuttner, Judith Merril, Frederik Pohl, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, and Jack Williamson. Along with professional magazines there were also fan magazines, or “fanzines,” published by fans of science fiction and fantasy. Fanzines grew out of pulp magazine letters-to-the-editor pages and the resulting rise of fandom. Canadian fandom and fanzines will be treated separately later. Other mass media arose during the early twentieth century, above all film and radio. Their purpose was to entertain and sometimes educate mass audiences for a small, easily affordable price. The genres we are looking at benefited in some ways by this rise in popular culture, but they also suffered by being associated with it. The current low cultural status of science fiction and fantasy can be traced to their connection to the pulp and popular media traditions, and thus being seen as forms of “popular” entertainment rather than “serious” art. As for the Canadian literary context, the 1920s to the 1940s saw the rise of Canadian modernism and the type of realism known as naturalism: fiction portraying characters who are subject to natural and social forces over which they have little or no control. The Depression and the drought inspired prairie realists like Frederick Philip Grove (1879–1948), Robert J. C. Stead, and Sinclair Ross, and first- and second-generation immigrant writers like Laura Goodman Salverson, whose characters endure not only drought but also dust storms, wind storms, deadly blizzards, and insect infestations. Urban characters coping with the Depression fare little better, with Morley Callaghan, Hugh Garner, and, on the French side, Gabrielle Roy and Roger Lemelin exploring the lives of the poor in Toronto and Montréal. Canadian science fiction authors often wrote texts about more fantastic but equally harsh settings in which the best that the characters can hope for is mere survival.

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Science Fiction Well before the founding of Amazing Stories, science fiction was already a popular genre, ref lected in tales of future inventions, imaginary voyages, future wars, and accounts of the prehistoric past. Darwinist thinking continued to inf luence science fiction well into the twentieth century, and so did the sort of racism already described. A good example of Canadian Yellow Peril fiction appeared in 1921: The Writing on the Wall by Hilda Glynn-Ward (pseudonym of Hilda Howard). China and Japan—historically archenemies—implausibly conspire to buy up land in British Columbia to facilitate a takeover of the province. It is difficult to believe that Glynn-Ward was familiar with Barthe’s Similia similibus, given that the latter was never translated into English (and it is even harder to imagine her being interested in French-Canadian literature), but there are striking parallels between the two novels. As in Barthe’s novel, the crisis results from foolish locals naively selling their land to foreigners, the entire affair turns out to be a dream-vision, and the novel is a cautionary tale against trusting the racial Other, although without the context of an actual war underway. In the same vein as Roberts’s Darwinian adventure novel is Alan Sullivan’s In the Beginning (1927). Sullivan’s novel was clearly inspired by works like Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, as vestiges of Earth’s prehistoric past survive into the present in South America, which for North Americans and Europeans was a largely unknown land and therefore a suitable setting for adventure and fantastic tales. The novel recounts an expedition led by John Caxton, a conventionally brilliant scientist, and his conventionally beautiful daughter Jean to a remote, “undiscovered” (by whites) area of Argentina. Caxton had received a letter from a late scientist friend, Withers, who wrote that he saw a prehistoric creature in the waters of South America. Jean is being wooed by two men, the more “primitive” Gregory Burden and the more “civilized” Phil Sylvester, and Caxton decides to bring both of them to test them and see who will win her hand. According to Sullivan’s biographer, Gordon D. McLeod, this is the sort of test of manhood and fitness that commonly appears in Sullivan’s fiction: “Underlying the story is the Sullivan theme of ‘the test,’ to isolate the essence of man. Sylvester passes the test and wins Jean” (58). The results of the test and what happens in the novel prove that time will not stand still, and ultimately the atavistic past is doomed. Following Withers’s directions, Caxton and the others discover an isolated zone in Argentina whose fauna have never evolved beyond the Pleistocene era. Sabre-toothed tigers, giant land sloths, megatheriums (who also make an appearance in In the Morning of Time), and even cave people inhabit the area. Exhibiting the inf luence of Freud, who argued that our irrational and primitive selves lie beneath a thin veneer of civilization, the novel shows Burden being drawn psychologically back in time in response to his prehistoric surroundings.

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This is another feature of much of Sullivan’s work: characters reveal their true identities as individuals and human beings through encounters with primeval settings (normally the Canadian wilderness) (McLeod 6). Authors of the period often portrayed Western characters living in non-Western, and therefore “less civilized,” regions “going native”: descending into atavism, and usually becoming more “savage” than the Indigenous inhabitants.3 Burden becomes two people entirely: his modern, Western self and one of the cavemen; he can even speak their language, apparently because it is part of his (and our) deeply embedded racial memory (see esp. the passage on p. 165). On the other hand, he and the other British explorers are more gods than humans to the cave people they meet, given their ability to wield and control fire and other forms of “magical” technology. (The plot requires, implausibly, that fire be something brand new to the zone.) The area is portrayed as a latter-day Garden of Eden, and the chapter devoted to Mam-lo, the chief ’s mate, is titled “Eve” (190–99); the members of the expedition—and by extension modern humanity—are the serpent with their introduction of fire and other forms of dangerous knowledge to the inhabitants. Our insistence on invading this “innocent” world (the adjective is used frequently about the area and the people living in it) and bringing our culture and technology with us leads to tragic consequences. There is even a rather unfortunate chapter called “The Beauty Parlor,” in which Jean tries to teach the female cave people hairstyling and fashion. Caxton dreams of buying up the region and turning it into a preserve called Pleistocene Park (decades before Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park). He does have doubts about science as a disinterested and beneficial pursuit: “Was scientific hunger a soulless thing? He had never asked himself that before” (231). As fire consumes the area, destroying animals and people alike, the novel’s message about forbidden knowledge becomes clear, expressed in what Burden writes to Caxton during a rare moment of sanity: “you were never meant to find them” (300). Robert Watson’s High Hazard (1929) is also about strange creatures discovered in a remote region, in this case Canada’s far north. Most of the novel is realist, as undercover policeman Bert Jackson pursues arch-criminal Laroche to Alaska and beyond. After a shipwreck, the hero, Eric Gilchrist, and the women Gilchrist is protecting find their way into a cavern to escape Laroche, the weather, and the polar bears. The other end of the cavern opens onto a land of prehistoric creatures, including giant white elephants. In many adventure tales of the period, whether Westerns or those set in “exotic” foreign lands, the white hero is saved by a non-white woman who perishes, leaving him to marry the white female character and avoid miscegenation. This trope appears here, too, as the half-Inuit Della dies trying to protect him, thereby leaving the way open for him to wed the beautiful and suitably white young woman Coralie. Some of the science fiction published during the period features the “mad scientist” figure so common in the genre, and frequently focuses on biology rather than, say, space or time travel or technological innovations as was

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common in, for example, American science fiction. Robert W. Service’s The Master of the Microbe (1927) is about Hermann Krug, a German scientist who is so infuriated by Germany’s defeat in the First World War that he develops both a superbug that can infect the entire world—the “purple pest”—and its vaccine, his goal being to blackmail the world. He lives next door to Harley Quin (his name is based on “harlequin,” or clown), an author trying to make a living writing potboiler novels (Quin is a satirical self-portrait). Krug is murdered and various figures, including members of the Parisian underworld, compete to obtain the deadly material. Robert J. C. Stead’s (1880–1959) The Copper Disc (1931) is about another mad scientist out to conquer the world, this time with a device capable of inf luencing people’s emotions from afar. The premise is that emotions can be broadcast and received just like radio waves; as electrical technician Morley Kent, the novel’s protagonist, explains, Dr. Martin Herzton conceived the idea that it is possible to invent a machine which will transmit thoughts or moods from the operator to a second person unaware of the operation. He went on the theory that every brain is a radio receiving and broadcasting station. Some stations are, of course, immensely more powerful than others, but no station is so powerful that, of itself, it can establish complete mastery. His idea was to aid it by mechanical means. (298) Herzton’s goal is to manipulate entire populations to do his bidding: Herzton’s mind was able to conceive its ultimate possibilities. Given the correct principle, it was only necessary to multiply sufficiently the power in order to dispense with the discs and bring everyone under the inf luence. . . . by charging the ether with a certain type of vibration, he could bring about the desired mental reaction in millions, in hundreds of millions, of his fellow men. Each human station would in turn re-broadcast its emotions, so that they would sweep around the world as a patriotic fervor sweeps through a nation at the outbreak of war. .  .  . Herzton dreamed of himself creating and applying that inf luence. Don’t you see? It would make him master of human thought, or, rather, it would replace rational action by emotional impulses, and that, in turn, could be used to make him master of the world. (303–04) Stead seems here to be responding to the kind of pervasive, technologyfacilitated propaganda seen during the First World War; the development of radio and its possible use in spreading mind control to the masses; the psychological studies of Freud and Jung and what they might mean for understanding and therefore controlling thoughts; and the ongoing worry expressed

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throughout the history of science fiction about what evils (intended or not) brilliant scientists and inventers might do with their knowledge. On the other hand, the climax ends with an exchange between Kent and Mr. Hensley, the wealthy owner of the radio company that Herzton wants to take over, that suggests technological advancement is not a bad thing at all. Herzton’s device is destroyed, and when Kent says, “the secret has been lost, and perhaps it is just as well. It is too powerful a thing to be trusted to any human being” (306–07), Mr. Hensley replies, “Nevertheless . . . that way lies progress. Every invention is charged with danger unless, with the invention, comes a corresponding sense of responsibility. Herzton lacked that. Nevertheless, he was a New Columbus, sailing a new, uncharted sea” (307). Herzton seems to be the kind of ambiguous figure that Victor Frankenstein is: heroic in breaking the bounds of human knowledge, but irresponsible in handling the power that comes with that forbidden knowledge. The pulp era saw the emergence of two of the most important figures in the history of Canadian science fiction: A. E. van Vogt in the middle of the period and Phyllis Gotlieb toward its end. Because Gotlieb really belongs to a later period, she will be dealt with in the next chapter. Van Vogt (1912–2000) became part of John W. Campbell, Jr.’s stable of writers at Astounding. Under Campbell, psychology truly came to the fore as the most culturally inf luential of the sciences in science fiction. Like Flora Macdonald Denison, he believed that human beings were either already capable of telepathy, telekinesis, and so on (“psi” powers) or were evolving into those mental abilities. As Brian Attebery tells us, “In letters to contributors, Campbell repeatedly suggested the theme of the mutated superman, often with psionic abilities” (“Super Men” 62). His stress on the mind’s latent powers led to such ideas and figures as Asimov’s “psychohistory” and the telepathic mutant Mule in his Foundation Trilogy and Henry Kuttner’s “Baldies”: hairless mutants with psi powers.4 Van Vogt began selling stories to Campbell in 1939, and his first appearance in the magazine was with the short story “Black Destroyer,” about a deadly alien known as a coeurl. He was already interested in questions of human evolution, particularly mental evolution and the development of mental states unburdened by irrational barriers to clear thinking. Campbell’s request that he write about mental supermen led to van Vogt’s most famous creation, and in fact the best-known such supermen in the genre, the “Slans.” Named after their discoverer, Samuel Lann, the Slans are mutants who have psi powers; most can be identified by the tendrils growing out of their skulls, but some have no tendrils and can “pass” more easily. They believe they are superior to non-Slans and are therefore entitled to rule over the rest of the human race. Van Vogt introduced his supermen in his novel Slan, which was serialized in Astounding in 1940 and was published in book form in 1946. His inspiration for handling the tale was an animal story, Ernest Thompson Seton’s The Biography of a Grizzly (1900), a fact that offers a further link between canonical Canadian

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literature and Canadian fantastic fiction. The main character of Slan is Jommy Cross, whose surname and initials allude to Christ; he is indeed something of a saviour figure for his fellow Slans and humanity generally, and given the suffering that he and the other Slans endure at the hands of the “normals” he is also a martyr figure. The novel follows his growth from a misunderstood child to a hero of his people, striving to overcome others’ fears about these super-powerful mutants and end their persecution. Brian Attebery notes that Jommy’s passage into adulthood represents humanity’s own evolutionary growth (“Super Men” 63); in a letter to Clifford Simak, Campbell wrote: The super-man can’t be fully portrayed. But since ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, a super-human must, during boyhood and adolescence, pass through the human levels; there will be a stage of his development when he is less than adult-human, another stage when he is equal to adult-human— and the final stage when he has passed beyond our comprehension. The situation can be handled, then, by established faith, trust, understanding, and sympathy with the individual as a character by portraying him in his not- greater-than adult human stages-and allow the established trust-andbelief to carry over to the later and super-human stage. A. E. Van Vogt worked out “Slan” in response to that comment-discussion from me. (qtd. in Attebery, “Super Men” 63) Ketterer links the superman theme in his fiction to Canada’s “inferiority complex” (47), but the context of pulp science fiction seems far more relevant. Van Vogt continued to explore themes of evolution, both intellectual and social, throughout his career, and the positive role that could be played by “superior” men. He would subject his protagonists to dangers that they would be able to survive thanks to rational problem-solving and a utopian vision; as Colin Wilson says, for van Vogt, “intellect, will, and courage eventually will produce ‘men like gods.’ . . . There is an almost obsessive current of evolutionary optimism in his work” (211). Van Vogt published a number of short stories and novelettes that he would combine into what he called “fix-up” novels.5 For example, The Weapon Shops of Isher (1951, made up of stories first published from 1941–1942 and 1949) is about people who can travel through time and space setting up indestructible Shops to offer weapons to the oppressed citizens of dictatorships. Their weapons can only be used for defense, not offense, meaning that these are fully utopian champions of gun rights. A man named McAllister gets caught in a building swinging wildly through time, right back to the Big Bang, and becomes—like Jommy—another martyr/saviour figure. Also in the Weapon Shops series is The Weapon Makers (serialized in 1943, published in book form 1947). Van Vogt’s search for a thought system that would match his yearnings for a rational, utopian future led him to a system called General Semantics created

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by Alfred Korzybski in Science and Sanity (1933). The core of General Semantics is an understanding of human psychology and behaviour based on nonAristotelian, or Null-A (written as Ā), logic. Van Vogt’s response was a series of novels based on General Semantics: The World of Ā (1945, in book form 1948; also known as The World of Null-A), The Players of Null-A (alternately titled The Pawns of Null-A, 1948–1949, in book form 1954), and Null-A Three (1984). Later, van Vogt turned to Dianetics, a similar system of thought suggesting a way to “clear” the human mind founded in 1950 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. After a decade of silence, he returned to creative work with fix-up novels like The Wizard of Linn (1950, in book form 1962) and The Silkie (1964–1967, in book form 1969). The latter is about a race of super-intelligent and, of course, mentally powerful alien shape-shifters (a popular trope for van Vogt), and the humans, known as Special People, who are telepathic and can “read” Silkies to ensure they are not doing anything threatening. Silkie Nat Cemp uses a fictionalized version of General Semantics called Logic of Levels to save the Earth and the Silkies from other, more advanced alien races and threats from within. One race, the Nijjans, prove to be not just godlike but the universe’s actual creators. Like McAllister, Nat becomes himself a creator god, one who brings peace and harmony to the world. Van Vogt thus brings together the evolutionary preoccupations of earlier science fiction and the psychological interests of the Golden Age. His vast output and inf luence on other authors made him a key figure in the history of Canadian fantastic literature. Other Canadians also appeared occasionally in the pulp magazines. A key figure in the field was born in Canada but moved to the United States with his family when he was only thirteen: Gordon R. Dickson (1923–2001). He wrote numerous novels and short stories, most of them definable as space operas or military science fiction. Among his most famous works are Dorsai! (1959) and Soldier, Ask Not (1964). The Dorsai are the warrior race—reminiscent of the Samurai—and as Ketterer says, Dickson’s “idealistic heroes are emergent supermen who ensure that mankind achieves its destiny by the force of their wills” (50). His fiction has been read as Gothic and informed by Nordic myths and sensibility. Other English-Canadian authors found their way into the science fiction pulp magazines, like Charles Victor Tench (1892–1963) and Laurence Manning (1899–1972). Tench was born in England and moved to Canada around 1930, and published numerous stories in various genres in the pulps as C.  V. Tench and under pseudonyms. Manning wrote short stories like “The Living Galaxy” (published in Wonder Stories in 1934), which, with its sweeping, multimillion-year future history of humanity, exhibits the clear inf luence of Olaf Stapledon. To add to the sense of wonder in the story, Manning also speculates about a living being so large that solar systems constitute its “atoms” (126) and it is capable of consuming entire galaxies. More importantly, however, Manning wrote a significant work of dystopian fiction to be discussed later.

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In French Canada, as Trudel has argued, the arrival of Jules Verne’s work in Québec bookstores during the second half of the nineteenth century inf luenced French-Canadian authors of the fantastic in profound and lasting ways (Petit Guide 41). Also, translations of H. G. Wells’s works and novels by French science fiction writers contributed to French-Canadians’ awareness of science fiction, and some fans even wrote Vernian imitations and what Trudel describes as “fan fiction” (44). Among the most prominent Verne-inspired works of the period is Emmanuel Desrosiers’s apocalyptic science fiction novel, La fin de la terre [The End of the Earth] (1931). The novel is an excellent example of the blurring of the line between fantasy and science fiction in the period and in the work of a particular culture, and the inf luence of Christianity on Québécois fantastic literature. The author’s introduction to the novel asks the reader to consider what would happen if the Earth were destroyed, and how people would react to learning about its imminent fate. Desrosiers compares such an event to apocalyptic belief in 1000 ad, when some thought the events predicted in the Book of Revelation would transpire (4). Scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of God, and we would have to see ourselves as fallen “gods,” foolish in our faith in supposedly infallible science and technological progress (5). The narrative is set in Montréal five hundred years in the future, when humanity lives in huge cities and forests have been cut down and paved over (16). Genius Henry Stinson learns that the Earth will be consumed by fire through the effects on the planet of overpopulation—the details are hazy—and he has designed a way for humanity to save itself from utter annihilation: a plane that can f ly a remnant of our species to Mars. That planet is populated with intelligent Martians with whom we have been in contact, and who will welcome us. Earthquakes and tidal waves erupt all over the globe over the next many decades, in scenes whose imagery is reminiscent of Verne’s The Mysterious Island (1874) and “The Eternal Adam” (1910). Finally, the world pays attention to Stinson’s warnings and later scientists perfect his plan. In his accounting for and descriptions of the catastrophes that wipe out entire nations, Desrosiers overtly mixes science and religion (53). Finally, humanity is ready to f lee the Earth in its 65,000 “aerobuses”—modern, high-tech versions of Noah’s Ark— and fully one billion people manage to escape just as the Earth blows apart (106). There is no way of knowing whether the religious elements in the text ref lect deeply held beliefs on Desrosiers’s part or whether he incorporated them to satisfy the Catholic Church’s requirements. Perhaps Desrosiers understood that to be published, a novel had to accommodate Catholic doctrine regarding God’s role in the end of the world. Due to the language barrier, French-Canadian science fiction authors did not benefit from the pulp magazines as markets for fiction and ways to reach a vast audience. However, a writer and publisher named Édouard Garand founded a publishing house devoted to popular fiction, including science fiction. He published two key works during the 1920s: Ubald Paquin’s (1894–1962) La

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Cité dans les fers (1926) and L’Impératrice de l’Ungava (1927) by Alexandre Huot (1897–1953). Paquin’s novel—which may have been provoked by the conscription crisis during the First World War, and was certainly inspired by Jules-Paul Tardivel’s novel—is about an attempt by a Québec politician, André Bertrand, to lead the province into separating from Canada. Once again the federal government is in the hands of Freemasons seeking to destroy Québec’s Catholic and French society, including Prime Minister MacEachran. MacEachran’s biggest error is his attempt to seize the assets of a convent in Montréal; a riot breaks out, and martial law is imposed. Bertrand declares independence for the province and is named provisional president of the Republic of Québec. But the federal government crushes the rebellion, with the help of the British Navy, and sends its leaders to the firing squads. Bertrand becomes the embodiment of the nation’s spirit in a manner reminiscent of fascism: at a political rally featuring a rousing speech by Bertrand, we are told, “one man had dominated all these very diverse people, combining them in one identical thought” (my trans.; 10), and later, after Québec becomes independent, “the Republic is Bertrand. He is its living incarnation” (my trans.; 36). Huot’s novel is a Lost Race tale of sorts set in the province’s far north, in which visitors from southern Québec are astounded to see that the Inuit are capable of constructing a sophisticated society. Trudel traces the novel’s generic roots to H. Rider Haggard and to French author Pierre Benoit (Petit guide 45). More difficult to define as science fiction is Georges Bugnet’s (1879–1981) Siraf (1934), in which the narrator engages in a philosophical discussion with disembodied alien voices. Trudel compares the text to French author Camille Flammarion’s Lumen (1872) (Petit guide 47); there are other obvious roots in the philosophical and utopian traditions, which are also characterized by the dialogue structure, and in some works by Edgar Allan Poe like “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” (1839) and “The Colloquy of Monos and Una” (1841).

Utopian Literature Utopian fiction did not entirely die out with the turn of the twentieth century, as seen in Hugh Pedley’s Looking Forward, but it did decline significantly, to be replaced by satirical utopias and parodies that critiqued both society and utopian fiction itself, and by dystopian fiction portraying future societies that are politically and technologically oppressive. During the late nineteenth century utopian fiction had become so formulaic that it was ripe for parody. It had decayed into clichés in form and content, with its accounts of men having dream visions, or sleeping for hundreds of years and waking up in utopian futures. Stephen Leacock, Canada’s best-known humourist, took the opportunity to parody the genre in a number of works. “The Man in Asbestos: An Allegory of the Future,” published as one of his Nonsense Novels (1911), ridicules the genre’s optimism and clichés, and presents

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its “utopian” future as a horrifying dystopia. The narrator, jealous of other authors who have been able to sleep for hundreds of years and wake up in ideal worlds, puts himself to sleep with “pork pie,” “dozens and dozens of donuts,” the comic pages of the newspaper, and above all the editorial page of the London Weekly Times (208). He wakes up in a museum attended by a standard utopian guide in an asbestos suit. The man tells the narrator that his society had “eliminated Death, and Food, and Change” (211). Work, education in our sense of the term, passion, travel, and communication are no more: “there came . . . the Era of the Great Conquest of Nature, the final victory of Man and Machinery” (216). This “Conquest” has led to artificial food (218), controlled weather, and a lack of interest in other people (218–21). Echoing H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller (see Chapter IV of The Time Machine), the narrator says: Here, then, was the fruit of the Conquest, here was the elimination of work, the end of hunger and of cold, the cessation of the hard struggle, the downfall of change and death—nay, the very millennium of happiness. And yet, somehow, there seemed something wrong with it all. (224) Far from a utopia, this is a bland, purposeless, dehumanized world, a nightmare from which the narrator is happy to awaken (230–31). Afternoons in Utopia: Tales of the New Time (1932) also parodies the genre, skewering the clichés by having the narrator be familiar with them. For example, he says of his awakening, “Being well acquainted with Utopias I knew that I had only to wait patiently and they would start something” (7). Common sense destroys the genre’s efforts to make the future seem strange: The chamber as I said was vast yet contained little furniture other than a few oaken tables and chairs of an exquisite workmanship and design which I never recalled to have seen before. This, however, was not surprising as I have never worked in a furniture store. A few rugs of elaborate craftsmanship lay on the f loor; but whether of skins or of woven fabric I was unable to say. I always am. (7) Even the guide, Dr. Oom, is aware of and tries to play his assigned literary role: “Well, I suppose we had better begin. You wish to ask me, I am sure, all kinds of questions about the new world in which you find yourself ” (11). The narrator only becomes interested in playing his role as curious visitor when Oom’s conventionally attractive daughter Rooshna arrives (17). He spends a delightful day with her, not immediately realizing how much she resembles his wife. When he finally awakens from his voyage to this supposedly ideal future, the narrator recognizes that true utopia can be found at home with one’s beloved

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mate (24–25). Other stories in the volume depict various future institutions and parody other genres. Part II, “Grandfather Goes to War,” is, as its title reveals, a parody of future-war fiction, and as to war itself, the narrator comments, “To the people of the late Victorian Age, war had passed into a scourge inf licted by Providence upon yellow, black and brown people as part of their elevation towards civilization” (39). Twentieth-century total war means that the whole attention of the armies will be devoted to destroying civilians— women and children a specialty. Bombs will be dropped on us from the air; we will be blown up on our own golf links; killed with gas while at the movies. Churches will be no place for people who fear death and sick people had better keep away from hospitals. (41) Other chapters satirize dehumanized medicine (patients are biological “contraptions” requiring repair), college life, and socialism (165–205). The latter part is noteworthy for a couple of features. Institutions are given names that contradict what they actually do or did: the initiating battle of the revolution is referred to as “the Great Massacre of Brotherly Love” (174) and those who suppress dissenting opinions are known as “the District Censorship of Loving Thoughts” (176). These are Orwellian titles before Orwell, and it is tempting to imagine that Orwell was inspired by Leacock’s work when he wrote about such agencies as the Ministry of Truth, which disseminates propaganda, and the Ministry of Love, which is responsible for torture, in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Also, marriage and parenthood are obsolete, as in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which was published the same year. The breaking down of human relations into utilitarian and mechanical “modern” versions receives its most direct portrayal in the title story of The Iron Man & the Tin Woman (1929), about a future society that requires a man to propose to a woman via their robot interlocutors. Frederick Philip Grove published the satirical utopia Consider Her Ways in 1947, although as Ketterer notes Grove planned and wrote a draft of the novel many years earlier (23). It portrays a South American ant society whose members are fully sentient and yet distinctly insectile. Wawa-quee leads an expedition of ant scientists to New York to study humanity and other “fauna”: it was to complete such a survey of all antdom as to enable us to trace the evolution of the nation Atta from the humblest beginnings of all ants and to make it possible for us to arrange the whole fauna of the globe, or of such portions of it as could be explored, in the form of a ladder leading up to our own kind. (4)

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The novel is an excellent example of the animal fantasy story as satirical fable; Wawa-quee offers an outsider’s view of our natures and habits, from our deadly technology, as a car turns “[s]ixty-six great scholars” into a “greasy smear on a highway” (201), to our strange habits when it comes to gender roles, given that female ants perform most of the nest’s important duties. In fact, we are a “retrograded or degenerate race” (21) because males are the dominant sex (22). The ants find plenty of evidence of humans’ brutal, barbaric nature: “they kill, without provocation or discrimination, all living things, sometimes at sight, sometimes after having enslaved them for a time” (23). Like the Kohen in de Mille’s novel, Wawa-quee is a classic satirical ingenue, or innocent observer, when she learns about money and cannot figure out why human beings are so enamoured of it: Man has a way of enslaving his fellow-men by means of a thing of which we read much—a thing he calls money and which some have and others have not. Just what it is, I do not know; and neither, I suspect, does man himself. It is a cruel thing, since its lack condemns to abject slavery or actual want; whereas its possession confers the highest privileges. (280–81) This is an excellent example of how an outsider can act as a satirical mirror, offering a perspective that makes us aware of our most embarrassing qualities. The ants also expose human f laws through their attitudes and actions, like their human-like arrogance toward the rest of nature, as they believe that the ant “stands at the very apex of creation” (5) and is “by nature destined to rule the world” (25). Still, the ants prove to be somewhat more humble than we are, as Wawa-quee qualifies her comment by saying the ants are at the apex “as far as that creation is completed today” (5). That is, the process of evolution means that their position at the top of the pyramid may not endure. The ants’ myrmecocentrism leads to our being described as “that curious mammal called man” (5), driven by instinct (Spettigue xii). As already noted, animals in art often act as stand-ins for human beings: we are told of an ant species that is addicted to the smell of the ant version of “money” (158–61). Grove’s portrayal of authors, and therefore his own hardships as a writer, is somewhat more sympathetic, showing the need even among ant authors to endure starvation, ridicule, and harsh criticism as they pursue their art (113). Of the dystopian texts, perhaps the most important is Laurence Manning’s The Man Who Awoke (1933). The novel was serialized in the pulp magazine Wonder Stories, and was not published in book form until 1975. Manning is clearly borrowing from H. G. Wells’s The Sleeper Awakes (titled When the Sleeper Wakes in its first version, which was published serially from 1898–1899), about a man who accidentally overdoses on sleep medication and remains in a coma for over a century, awakening into a dystopia of, essentially, his own making, as his investments have created an oppressive society that he helps to overthrow.

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Manning’s protagonist, Norman Winters, learns how to put himself in suspended animation for thousands of years at a time, by blocking the “cosmic rays” that are responsible for the difference between inanimate matter and life, and with each awakening he, like Graham, encounters an oppressive society he feels compelled to liberate. While Wells is an obvious source, another is the work of Olaf Stapledon, as Manning, like Stapledon, seeks to cover thousands of years of future human evolution, all the way to the posthuman. Dystopian fiction extrapolates from and exaggerates problems in the author’s own world to highlight those f laws, and each of the societies Winters finds ref lects what was going on in the Western world during the 1930s. Western society was experiencing the effects of advertising, mass consumerism, and the resulting social and environmental damage. The year before the publication of the first installment of The Man Who Awoke, Aldous Huxley had criticized that consumerist mentality in Brave New World, and Manning similarly aims his social critique at consumerism and industrialism, as well as the horrors of the First World War, in Part I of his novel. Winters awakens in the year 5,000 ad to find a society made up of small self-sufficient villages that emerged 2,000 years before, when the Great Revolution broke out against his own “Wasters.” Winters’s guide in this quasi-utopia, the Chief Forester, describes the Age of Waste: The height of the false civilization of Waste! Fossil plants were ruthlessly burned in furnaces to provide heat, petroleum was consumed by the million barrels, cheap metal cars were built and thrown away to rust after a few years’ use, men crowded into ill-ventilated villages of a million inhabitants—some historians say several million. That was the age of race-fights where whole countrysides raised mobs and gave them explosives and poisons and sent them to destroy other mobs. (21) He makes it clear why it was necessary to overthrow industrialism and replace the unjust, war-mongering old world with a more ecologically sound and less divisive system. Now, people live off the land, above all the trees that provide their food, and they keep their villages (“origs”) small. The young become convinced that their elders are in the process of using more resources than they should, thereby stealing the next generation’s natural birthright, and launch a revolt of their own. Winters barely escapes the violence that breaks out, returning to his chamber to sleep for another 5,000 years. He has grown restless in this society; like H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller, he has come to the future hoping to find a true utopia, but is disappointed: “He had no sense of belonging to these people. He had hoped to find gods in human form living in Utopia. Instead, here were men with everyday human passions and weaknesses. True, they had progressed since his day—but his insatiable curiosity itched to learn what the future might produce” (32–33).

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The people lack masculine “vigour” (11, 14) and are, in fact, as “lazy” and “effeminate” (14) as Wells’s Eloi. This is thus a narrative about devolution as much as social evolution; these villagers have even regressed beyond agriculture and back into a hunter-gatherer subsistence economy. Because Winters also shares the Time Traveller’s consuming curiosity, he cannot resist travelling further into the future. When he awakes in 10,000 ad, he finds himself trapped in a massive city where every aspect of life is run by a machine called the Brain, reminiscent of E. M. Forster’s godlike Machine in “The Machine Stops” (1909). His captor and guide, Val-ya, describes the Brain as “totally unprejudiced and absolutely infallible. The government of our civilization has been given over to it. Only by Its guidance have we been able to reduce the working hours of mankind to one hour a week” (43). Also, as in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We (1924), the city is purely artificial while outside it are vast tracts of wilderness inhabited by “wildings.” The city is a technological wonder, filled with artificial means to satisfy humanity’s physical needs and provide recreation, as well as offering the dystopian trope of a recreational drug to keep the masses happy, Karma.6 For Huxley and Manning, the numbing and pacifying of the population through drugs and sensational entertainment—like Hollywood’s escapist musicals—constituted a particularly damaging feature of life in the industrial world during the early twentieth century. Like Wells and Forster, Manning portrays advanced technology as causing us to degenerate. Winters decides that if humanity is allowed to remain under the Brain’s benevolent but enervating guidance, the race will only suffer long-term harm: “Only by work,” he thinks, “could it evolve to a higher plane of existence” (52). Winters fears that the Brain might one day eliminate mankind entirely, since it no longer really needs human beings to maintain its domain. Therefore, he assists a revolution against the Brain. In 15,000 ad, he leads another revolt against the technology: people have wholly surrendered their will and freedom for the sake of physical comfort and pleasure by spending their lives dreaming dreams they have selected while machines maintain their bodies.7 Humanity, Manning seems to be saying, will no longer be human, and will inevitably decay, if we allow our machines to wield too much power over us. If we become Eloi, we will have only ourselves to blame. Things do not improve for our species later on. In 20,000 ad, society’s pendulum has swung from technological dictatorship to the opposite: the Age of Anarchy. People live in their own individual “cities”—“living machines” that take care of all their physical needs—and have therefore lost any sense of social or interpersonal connection. Scientists literally fight to the death over Winters, vying for the chance to conduct breeding experiments with him. Winters’s final trip is to 25,000 ad, when humans have achieved immortality—and the potential for eternal boredom. To relieve that, they have begun to travel across the entire universe seeking knowledge and meaning. However, what we gain

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in knowledge we lose in the capacity to wield that knowledge wisely. On the other hand, Winters has found the purpose to life that he has sought throughout the novel: while our physical evolution is meaningless in itself, we may be heading toward a further stage in our intellectual evolution. Perhaps the quest for meaning in the final part of the novel, through the cult of the Temple of Thought that Winters joins, will teach humanity what it needs to learn. The high-tech dystopias depicted in Manning’s novel are very much products of their times: the Great Depression, the industrial age, and the rise of Fordism—mass production and strict division of labour—among other aspects of 1930s life. Human beings seemed to be subject to vast economic, social, and technological systems that alienated and dehumanized the individual, and Manning shows what might happen should these developments continue into our distant future. French-Canadian utopian fiction lasted somewhat longer. Perhaps utopian speculation fit well into the province’s already existing literary modes. La survivance meant the need for the Québécois to see themselves as a unified nation—even a distinct “race”—and as having a national mission or purpose. North America was where that mission could be pursued unburdened by old, corrupt, and stif ling European values and institutions. As we have seen, francophone utopian fiction promoted the ideals of conservative nationalism: the province would thrive, such authors insisted, as long as it retained its agrarian life. French-Canadian utopian novels portrayed future ideal Québecs as agrarian utopias. As Amy J. Ransom says of French-Canadian défricheurs (pioneers), they saw themselves as “fulfilling a God-given mission as it was expressed in the agricultural novel, the roman du terroir, as well as in some early utopias of Québec’s proto-science fiction” (Science Fiction 18). In Armand Grenier’s Erres boréales [Northern Wanderings] (1944, as Florent Laurin), French-Canadians are portrayed as a people who need to hack a living out of the wilderness to be truly themselves. The solution for Québécois in this novel is to alter the climate of the north and build agricultural communities there; that goal is accomplished as the province’s leaders construct a stunningly beautiful human and natural geography in central and northern Québec. The novel is mainly a travelogue in which the Gamache family are shown the wonders and splendours of humanity’s works in the conquest of nature. More conventionally utopian is Grenier’s later novel, Le défricheur de Hammada [The Pioneer of Hammada] (1953 as Guy René de Plour), in which Louis Galliène expands his initially selfish efforts at creating a self-sufficient community, bringing his ideas to the world at large. He builds a massive dome in the Sahara, under which he forms cooperative communities that, in their cleanliness, safety, and efficiency, contrast with the hellishly cynical world outside the glass walls. Despite its relatively late date for utopian fiction, the novel exhibits a high degree of optimism regarding the benefits of technology. The environment is carefully controlled to permit the existence of small, self-sufficient farms. On the other hand, Grenier in this

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novel does show an awareness of contemporary technological dangers with its references to bomb shelters and environmental degradation. Quite different, and ref lecting the growing modernization of Québec’s economy and society despite the Church’s efforts, is Jean-Charles Harvey’s Marcel Faure (1922). The novel portrays an ideal industrial city, Valmont, created by a French-Canadian capitalist, as Faure demonstrates that Québécois are as capable as English-Canadians of running a business and designing a city. Harvey’s novel expresses a quasi-fascist view in its focus on racial qualities and the need to subordinate the individual to a higher cause, that of bringing greater autonomy and strength to the people of Québec. Faure is a visionary like Lamirande in Tardivel’s novel, but he sees Québec’s salvation in material terms. He wants to build an economically self-sufficient community, because without control over their own economy the Québécois can never be independent (5–6). His is more than a dream; it becomes a kind of religious calling (6). As the product of a French father and English mother, he can combine the idealism of one race and the practicality of the other to achieve his goals. The strength of the French-Canadian race depends on its having a national mission (otherwise it, like the humans in Manning’s novel, will become decadent), so Valmont depends on the participation of all its members to succeed—without the intrusion of English capitalists or unions. He must overcome the objections of rigid, tradition-bound priests and the machinations of his economic competitors and political enemies. He describes his mission in creating Valmont as follows: “I want to create a centre of national activity and regeneration, where my people will learn how to forge the independence of a race” (my trans. throughout; 52–53). In his school, he will create men through moral education, citizens through social education, patriots through national education. . . . They will have to gain early on a sense of solidarity. It is important for all individual and social interests, so seemingly opposed to each other and diverse, to be homogenized; otherwise, progress and civilization will be paralyzed by egoism, individualism, and disorder. That’s why we have to make the child understand that his happiness and even his existence must concur with the well-being of the collectivity. (62–63) As in Pedley’s novel, people can create a New Eden here because “America is a continent of freedom, where civilization was planted in virgin soil, where an unhealthy and mouldy tradition did not have time to take root” (192–93).

Fantasy Fantasy published during the period continued to exhibit the effects of Orientalism and spiritualism, and continued to raise challenges to any overly easy

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distinctions between realism and the fantastic. Most of the works of Lily Adams Beck (1862–1931) concern Westerners finding spiritual fulfillment in Asia, or are actual or invented tales from ancient China, and are cast in the realist mode. Some feature supernatural phenomena, however, and can be considered fantasy as most people would define it. Her novel The Way of Stars (1925) was clearly inspired by Carter’s discovery and involves reincarnation and the curse of an Egyptian tomb breached by British scientists. Miles Seton and his friend Conway lead an expedition into a pyramid they had been told about by a FrenchEgyptian man they had met in the army. Ignoring de Neuville’s warnings, they open the tomb of Queen Nefert, who had been a native of the lost city of Atlantis and became the consort of Egyptian King Zezar. Prophecies warn that she learned the secrets of life and death from priests and was planning to return to life and continue to cause trouble. In the innermost chamber of the tomb, Seton and Conway find her dessicated body still seated on her throne. Her body crumbles into dust, but her spirit lives on, and inhabits the body of a Russian woman named Natalia who conspires with her brother to lead revolutions against the British Empire. They are foiled by Seton, a British secret agent named Gifford, and a woman named Venetia Grant. The plot features Svengali-like hypnotic control of others, ancient prophetic scrolls, and possession by the spirits of the dead. India is portrayed as a land of marvellous beauty and profound wisdom where the boundaries of past, present, and future, and living and dead, are transcended. What makes defining the novel as fantastic difficult is that we cannot be certain whether Beck actually believed in reincarnation. We know little about her, but we do know that she travelled widely in the East and seems to have become a believer in Hindu and Buddhist ideas about the nature of the universe and the transmigration of souls. In her prologue to the novel, Beck writes, If the outward body of a nation dies, is it possible that its soul, that which made it a people, shall, like the soul of a man, live on, and after the judgment of the Lords of Life and Death, return in the endless round of reincarnation to live a life it never dreamed beneath its perished suns, the seed of its actions springing in a new harvest? Is it possible that the Law of Karma, of relentless cause and effect, thus rules and awakens the dead soul of a people when the Wheel has come full circle? (1) She wrote books about Eastern philosophy, such as The Way of Power: Studies in the Occult (1928), in which she uses as her epigraph the line, “The Occult of Today is the Science of Tomorrow,” explaining: I have chosen this motto for my book relating to the occult, for it is an attempt to describe the (at first) very small experiences and knowledge

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which led me to see the reality of the true occult world lying like an almost uncharted country behind the thick jungle of fraud and charlatanry. (1) Her stories of spiritual enlightenment, like those in The Ninth Vibration (1922), The Perfume of the Rainbow (1923), and Dreams and Delights (1926), make it clear that she was a true believer, not merely someone paying lip service to such ideas for the purpose of the fiction. If A. E. van Vogt was the most important Canadian science fiction writer during the height of the pulp era, his counterpart in fantasy was Henry Bedford-Jones (1887–1949). Bedford-Jones was known as the “King of the Pulps” for his vast output of popular novels and short stories in various genres, including adventure fiction and Westerns as well as science fiction and fantasy, that were published in both general-interest pulp magazines like Blue Book and genre-specific magazines like Weird Tales. He wrote a number of novel and short story series featuring morally pure, strong, and courageous American heroes and sadistic, usually foreign villains. His best-known series was the John Solomon series, which was inspired by H. Rider Haggard’s novels about Allan Quatermain. Like the latter, the works were frequently Lost Race works, and Solomon’s name may well be a nod to Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885).8 Solomon is a British agent and do-gooder who, like his biblical namesake, has a remarkably keen mind and is always one step ahead of his foes. In Gentleman Solomon (1915), for example, Solomon’s goal is to destroy the brutal system that Belgium had established in the Congo to extract rubber and some other commodities. The horrors of European colonalism in Africa had become widely known, with its enslavement and killing of Africans, and had earlier provoked Joseph Conrad to write about the effects of the ivory trade in the Congo in Heart of Darkness (1902), another possible source for Bedford-Jones. The main character is American Dr. Cliff Seaforth, who fortunately worked his way through medical school as a prizefighter—a skill he needs as he literally fights the villains led by the Belgians’ rubber agent, Captain Ernest Wagner. Our heroes make their way to the Congo, where rumours of the existence of a race of white “dwarfs”—that is, pygmies—prove to be true. Wagner is manipulating scientist Professor John E. Earl and his daughter Frances to believe he is trying to save the Africans from exploitation, slavery, and death, but the truth is that he is ruthlessly angling for power and wealth. The white pygmies are descendants of ancient Egyptians, in keeping with a common trope in Lost Race fiction, and they and other Africans believe there is magical power in the Egyptian hieroglyph for “life,” the ankh. Wagner wields power over the white pygmies through his use of that symbol to manipulate them, but they prove to be unwilling to let themselves be controlled by such a harsh master. Meanwhile, Wagner also wants Frances, Seaforth’s own love interest, and uses a kind of animal magnetism to charm her—up to a point. Anglo-Saxon characters are

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nearly all the most civilized, Black soldiers are portrayed as pure savages, while the Arabs are somewhere in between. Good—embodied by the whites—wins in the end, of course. Throughout the novel, Bedford-Jones explores the theme of appearance versus reality when it comes to what a true “gentleman” is: Wagner looks like a gentleman but is a vicious monster, while Solomon and Seaforth are honourable and thus very much real gentlemen despite not looking the part. Apart from his series, Bedford-Jones wrote a number of historical romances, and his novel Drums of Dambala (1932) is a historical fantasy set during Haiti’s struggle for independence from its colonial masters, France and Great Britain. Real historical figures appear alongside the fictional characters, like Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian rebellion. The villain is Citizeness Rigaud, apparently the widow of André Rigaud, a leader of the mulatto (or mixed-race) forces. In the novel, she is a priestess of voodoo, known in the novel as vaudou, a belief system whose magic works here. The hero, Paul Borie, discovers that his brother Alexandre died but was turned into a zombie. The brothers and their friends defeat the villains after a violent insurrection, but the French f leet arrives to begin the next chapter in Haiti’s sad history. Like Beck, Thomas P. Kelley (1905–1982) seems to have been inspired by Howard Carter’s discoveries in Egypt, and he wrote tales featuring ancient Egypt as a source of magic. For example, in I Found Cleopatra (1938–39; in book form 1977), the main character, American lawyer Brian O’Hara, goes on a quest to find Cleopatra’s tomb, guided in part by a parchment scroll he has inherited from his late father and in part by a mysterious woman he knows only as the Midnight Lady. She directs him to the tomb, but the woman lying there in a state of suspended animation is not the Egyptian queen but a princess from an ancient tribe. The Midnight Lady turns out to be Cleopatra herself, who has lived for nearly two thousand years thanks to having eaten an apple from the biblical Tree of Life. Egypt also appears in Kelley’s The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships (1941). While focusing on a Greek mythological figure, Helen of Troy, it is set in Egypt, where Helen is (again) in suspended animation due to a spell. Much of the novel is in the form of a narrative by ancient Egyptian Hakar, who (again) lives for centuries and who recounts his adventures throughout the Mediterranean as he fights pirates, Amazons, and others. Helen’s efforts to prolong her life still further fail, and, in a common fantasy trope, she pays for violating nature’s limits on life as time catches up with her. Kelley’s work is somewhat derivative not only of Haggard but, in its language, of H.  P. Lovecraft as well. Kelley’s success as an author ref lects the pulp era’s, and popular fiction’s, emphasis on familiar tropes, and the need for authors to produce a great deal of material quickly. The title substance of Maurice B. Dix’s (1889–1977) The Golden Fluid (1935) is the Elixir of Life, which alchemists had been searching for along with the philosopher’s stone. British agents seek out Dr. Beverley Murchison, who has

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learned through documents he stumbled upon the secret to the Elixir. He and a Buddhist priest have both drunk the Elixir and are centuries old; the priest, meanwhile, has a device (like Stead’s Copper Disc) that gives him power over people’s minds. Both villains are addicted to the Elixir, and must constantly have a regular dose of it to live. The f luid is thus a metaphor for opium, which is, in a long-standing racist stereotype, associated with the Chinese. Again, those who rely on magic to prolong their lives beyond nature’s bounds suffer the revenge of time once the spell or elixir is denied them.

Poetry and Drama There was little fantastic poetry or drama, or perhaps little that has been found. Darwin’s inf luence is obvious in E. J. Pratt’s The Great Feud (A Dream of the Pliocene Armageddon) (1926), a narrative poem about a prehistoric battle between the sea creatures, representing the evolutionary past, and the land creatures, their successors as the dominant animals on Earth. The fact that the leader of the land animals is an ape further illustrates the belief that primates and above all humans are the “naturally” highest form of life on the planet. Ketterer believes that Pratt’s poem was inspired by Roberts’s In the Morning of Time (20), and certainly its account of a massive battle between creatures of the land and those of the sea seems to owe a great deal to Roberts’s encapsulation of evolutionary history in his conf licts between such creatures in Chapter II, and Grôm’s and his family’s role as representing all of humanity in its major early discoveries and inventions. In Pratt’s poem, random acts of natural violence, in this case a volcano instead of quicksand, reveal that forces beyond the individual’s control ultimately rule the world. Still, humans do emerge at last as the future heirs of the Earth. Among the dramatic works was a one-act musical by John Murray Gibbon (1875–1952) called The Man Comes Down from the Moon (1937), in which the Man in the Moon visits the Earth, and Canadians sing to him (Wagner 143).

Fandom, Fanzines, and Pulp Magazines The genre pulp magazines were largely an American phenomenon, but there were Canadian pulps publishing fantastic fiction as well. During the Second World War, the Canadian government barred American pulp magazines from entering the country. As a consequence, Canadians began editing their own: Uncanny Tales, which ran from November 1940 to October 1943, and Eerie Tales, which published only one issue, in July 1941. Uncanny Tales was edited by Melvin R. Colby, who, after publishing a few issues with original stories, began reprinting stories that had first appeared in American pulps and then was not shy about plagiarizing American stories in later issues. Thomas P. Kelley contributed many of the stories in the early issues, some of them under

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pseudonyms to make it seem as if the magazine offered a variety of authors. War-era paper shortages and other factors made it difficult to publish pulp magazines during that period, and so to have any magazines at all was something of an accomplishment. Canadian science fiction fandom developed at the same time as the American phenomenon, and in the same way. Canadians who read the American pulp magazines corresponded with the editors and came to know one another. John Robert Colombo, in his study of Canada’s “premier fan” (as he calls him), Leslie A. Croutch (1915–1969), provides a history of Canadian fandom in which he names Nils Helmer Frome as one of the earliest active fans and the editor of the short-lived pulp magazine, Supramundane Stories (1938). Also prominent was Joe Shuster, one of the creators of Superman. It was Croutch, however, who published the first major fanzine, Light, which lasted from 1941 to 1961 and grew out of earlier publications dating back to the 1930s (Colombo, Years of Light 82–84). In it, he reviewed books and movies, exchanged news and ideas with other fans, and published some of his own short fiction. He also published stories in other fanzines and in some of the pulp magazines in Canada and the United States. He attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto in 1948, when it was held outside of the United States for the first time; the event was called Torcon and was the first of three such events (so far). At Torcon, he met other Canadian fans and they created the Northern Fantasy Fan Federation, a national fan organization based on an American group with a similar name. He also met A. E. van Vogt and E. Mayne Hull. Another fanzine, Censored (1941–1948), was published by Fred Hurter, Jr. He was friends with other Toronto-area fans of the period, including Joseph “Beak” Taylor and Edward “Ned” McKeown (Colombo, Years of Light 155–56). Taylor, McKeown, Gerald A. Steward, and William D. Grant were the editors of the most important fanzine of the late 1940s and 1950s, Canadian Fandom (1943–1958). Don Hutchison published a horror fanzine called Macabre during the period as well. The rise of Canadian fandom beginning in the pulp era would have a significant role to play in the development of Canadian science fiction and fantasy in later years.

Notes 1 The best-known “Yellow Peril” villain in popular literature was Sax Rohmer’s criminal mastermind Fu Manchu. The Bow-legs in In the Morning of Time are an early example of the trope. 2 Some examples include Yellow Book (1894–1897), The Dial (1920–1929), and The Little Review (1914–1929). 3 The most famous such character is Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). 4 Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John (1935) was a well-known earlier British example. 5 The inf luence of Darwin can be seen in the title and theme of his early fix-up novel, The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950). 6 Aldous Huxley’s soma is perhaps the best-known example.

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7 The similarities between their world and the one portrayed in the Matrix films are striking. 8 Solomon even speaks of Allan Quatermain at times as if he were a real person.

References Beck, Lily Adams. Dreams and Delights. Dodd, Mead, 1926. ———. The Ninth Vibration. Dodd, Mead, 1922. ———. The Perfume of the Rainbow. Dodd, Mead, 1923. ———. The Way of Power: Studies in the Occult. Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1928. ———. The Way of Stars: A Romance of Reincarnation. Dodd, Mead, 1925. Bedford-Jones, Henry. Drums of Dambala. Covici Friede, 1932. ——— (as Allan Hawkwood). Gentleman Solomon. Hurst & Blackett, 1925. Bell, John, and Lesley Choyce, editors. Visions from the Edge: An Anthology of Atlantic Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Pottersfield Press, 1981. Desrosiers, Emmanuel. La fin de la terre. Librarie d’Action Canadienne-Française, 1931. Dix, Maurice B. The Golden Fluid. Ward, Lock, 1935. Gibbon, John Murray. The Man Comes Down from the Moon. Thompson, 1937. Grenier, Armand. Le défricheur du Hammada. Éditions Laurin, 1953. ———. Erres boréales. N.p.: n.p., 1944. Harvey, Jean-Charles. Marcel Faure. L’Imprimerie de Montmagny, 1922. Huot, Alexandre. L’Impératrice de l’Ungava. Édouard Garand, 1927. Kelley, Thomas P. The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships. Adam Publishing, 1941. ———. I Found Cleopatra. FAX Collector’s Editions, 1977. Leacock, Stephen. Afternoons in Utopia: Tales of the New Time. Dodd, Mead, 1932. ———. The Iron Man and the Tin Woman, with Other Such Futurities: A Book of Little Sketches of To-day and To-morrow. Dodd, Mead, 1929. ———. Nonsense Novels. John Lane, 1911. Manning, Laurence. “The Living Galaxy.” Bell and Choyce, pp. 121–29. ———. The Man Who Awoke. Ballantine, 1975. Paquin, Ubald. La cité dans les fers: roman canadien inedit. Édouard Garand, 1925. Van Vogt, A. E. Null-A 3. Sphere, 1985. ———. The Pawns of Null-A. Ace, 1956. ———. The Silkie. Ace, 1969. ———. Slan. Arkham House, 1946. ———. The Voyage of the Space Beagle. Simon & Schuster, 1950. ———. The Weapon Makers. Hadley Publishing Company, 1947. ———. The Weapon Shops of Isher. Greenberg, 1951. ———. The Wizard of Linn. Ace, 1962. ———. The World of Ā. Simon & Schuster, 1948.

4 THE ATOMIC AGE

Historical Context The way that the Second World War ended had a lasting effect on the world politically, economically, culturally, and so on. Europe was divided between the Western powers, who formed the NATO alliance, and the Warsaw Pact led by the Soviet Union in the east. The Cold War followed, so called because the two sides never actually went to war with each other, but engaged in an ongoing geopolitical rivalry and even “proxy” wars involving countries and groups aligned with either the Western powers or the Soviet Union or Communist China, especially the Korean and Vietnam Wars. To end the Pacific War against Japan, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ushering in what has become known as the Atomic Age. The two sides were soon armed with enough weapons to destroy each other many times over, and people feared that any crisis could turn the Cold War into a hot one. When the Soviet Union showed its technological skill in 1957 by becoming the first country to put an artificial satellite in orbit around the Earth, Sputnik, a new wave of paranoia about the possibility of a nuclear war broke out; one product of that fear was a wave of nuclear-disaster science fiction in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a witch hunt seeking Communists in government and Hollywood, and many lives were ruined by accusations, innuendo, and revelations about political activities people had undertaken during the Depression and the Second World War. Cold War tensions eased as the United States and the Soviet Union signed a number of treaties during the 1960s and 1970s governing the testing and deployment of nuclear weapons. President Richard Nixon pursued a policy of détente, or peaceful coexistence, with the Soviets.

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The 1950s and 1960s saw profound political and social change throughout the Western world and beyond. There had always been counterculture movements challenging the status quo, but the youth movement after the Second World War was especially transformational. It began with the Beats of the 1950s and continued through the Hippies in the 1960s and the Punks in the 1970s, all defined by their rebellion against authority. The arms race and Vietnam War spawned an anti-war movement, and pollution provoked an environmentalist movement. Second-wave feminism sought to end gender discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere. The counterculture opposed capitalism, conformism, militarism, and imperialism. The postwar period also saw decolonization, as countries from India to Nigeria to the Caribbean islands gained their independence, sometimes after violent rebellions against European colonial rule, as in Algeria in the early 1960s. These movements inspired some Québec nationalists, who saw themselves as similarly colonized by English Canada. One international event had a ripple effect on Canada: an Arab oil embargo imposed in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. It produced shortages and increased prices. Oil became a political weapon both between and within nations. Canada was politically independent, but its economy remained heavily controlled by foreign interests as the United States replaced Great Britain as the nation’s dominant foreign owner and controller. Some Canadian nationalists worried about the effects on Canada’s autonomy of so much American control over manufacturing and the oil industry, for example. The fantastic literature of the period ref lected this growing concern. Canadian nationalism received a boost with the celebration of Confederation’s centennial in 1967, including the holding of the World’s Fair in Montréal, Expo ’67. Canada’s immigration policy was changed in 1967 from a race- and nation-based system to a points system that meant any applicant for immigration who scored enough points got into the country regardless of origin. The result was greater racial and ethnic diversity in the country—and in its literature. In Québec, the Union Nationale, and conservative nationalism generally, continued to dominate until the death of Maurice Duplessis in 1959. Throughout the twentieth century, the province had been shifting toward liberal nationalism, due to urbanization, the examples set elsewhere, and other factors. In 1960, the Liberal Party won the provincial election and launched what it called the Quiet Revolution, with the slogan Maîtres chez nous (“masters in our own house”). The goal was to transfer to the state (i.e., the Québec government) those institutions and activities that had been the purview of the Church and (often English-dominated) private industry: the funding and administration of education and health care, and the hydro-electric system, which was nationalized. Some nationalists went further: René Lévesque believed that the province would only be fulfilled by separating from Canada, and co-founded and led a separatist political party, the Parti Québécois. During his state visit

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to Montréal for Canada’s centennial and Expo ’67, French President Charles de Gaulle angered his Canadian hosts by declaring in his speech at City Hall, “Vive le Québec libre!” (“Long live a free [i.e., separate] Québec!”). Also, a separatist terrorist group, the Front du liberation de Québec (FLQ) pursued violent means to achieve separation, and in 1970 they kidnapped two officials, triggering what became known as the October Crisis. Prime Minster Pierre Elliott Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act; the FLQ “cell” holding Pierre Laporte, the Québec labour minister, responded by murdering him. The crisis ended with the arrest of some of the FLQ members and the exile of others. In 1976, the Parti Québécois won the provincial election, and in 1980 held a referendum about separation that was narrowly defeated. Meanwhile, the growth of the oil and gas industry in Alberta led to great changes in that province’s economy and politics, too, especially after the oil crisis of the 1970s. Alberta has jealously guarded its control over its oil and gas, often taking a hostile stance toward the federal government whenever the latter seemed to be intruding on the province’s jurisdiction over natural resources. Some separatist sentiment, albeit smaller than that in Québec, arose in Alberta, often at the behest of oil interests.

Scientific Context Of course, the invention of the Bomb was among the most important technological developments of this or any historical period, and if biology (that is, evolution) was the main inspiration for writers of the early period, and psychology of the pulp era, then nuclear physics was the key source for writers of the postwar period. Radiation became, in a sense, the new magic, capable of not just destroying living beings but also—especially in the comic books and movies—transforming them into monsters, superheroes, advanced humans with psychic powers, and so on. Thus, if Darwin was the iconic scientist of the nineteenth century, Einstein, famous for his equation E = mc2 involving the conversion of matter to energy and vice versa, became that of the twentieth. This was the period that saw the rise of the computer, too, an innovation that has arguably been more important to our lives than the Bomb. The electronic computing machine, developed during the Second World War to help with deciphering codes and running military hardware, made its way into many aspects of daily life. Authors expressed as much fear about the growing role of computers and machine intelligence as they did about nuclear weapons. Would the dehumanization engendered by industrialism be exacerbated by computers? Would we become mere numbers in a computer-controlled world? The discovery and description of the DNA molecule had profound implications for human identity and for science fiction. Authors began exploring what genetics might mean for our evolution, and the possibility that human beings and other living things could be genetically “read” and created in the lab.

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Sputnik was the first achievement of the “space race,” the competition to “conquer” space between the United States and the Soviet Union. They initiated space programs with one major goal, outlined by President John F. Kennedy in 1962: to send a manned craft to the moon. The Americans succeeded first with the landing of the Apollo 11 lunar module in 1969, and Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on another world on July 20. The event seemed to be the fulfillment of science fiction dreams and the harbinger of even greater space exploration—a “giant leap for mankind” to be sure. The space race was one of the most positive scientific and technological developments of the period, and hopes were high that humanity would be embarking on a new and exciting adventure. It also meant the potential for new selfdefinitions of humanity. What if we encountered intelligent alien beings? What would happen to how we thought of ourselves and our place in the universe?

Cultural Context As already noted, Western society, Canada as a whole, and Québec in particular experienced a true “cultural revolution” of sorts after the Second World War. Western culture moved from the modernist period to that of postmodernism. The arts transformed as more radical approaches to both form and content arose. Artistic works since the end of the war have often been characterized by fragmentation; skepticism about language, literary tradition, and all sources of authority; and the violation of genre conventions and boundaries. In music, rock became the main form of expression for the Baby Boomers during the 1950s and 1960s, and then came punk—all genres that inf luenced other arts as well. Authors looked for new modes of writing, including the fantastic. There was a constant seeking after novelty and originality among all artists, but especially those belonging to historically oppressed groups: women and gendered and racialized minorities. Traditionally silenced or ignored—feminist, Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+—voices demanded to be heard. Postcolonial literature arose as authors in and from former European colonies published works ref lecting the colonial experience. Magic realism was a liberating mode in Latin America during the first half of the twentieth century and moved northward through California to British Columbia and Ontario during the 1960s. Secondwave feminism emerged, calling for equality in all areas of society: education, work, child-care, and so on; it had a lasting effect on fantastic literature. The rise of television as the dominant medium of mass entertainment during the 1950s had immediate and profound effects on magazine fiction. The magazines lost readers and advertisers to the new medium. Fiction magazines began to die out, and general-interest magazines published fewer and fewer short stories and serialized novels. Many pulp magazines ended their runs, although others, like Galaxy and the still-publishing Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, were founded and even thrived. John W. Campbell, Jr. changed

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Astounding’s name to Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and the magazine has continued to focus on hard science fiction. On the other hand, the expansion of the publishing of paperback books—“pocket books”—meant the opening up of a new and lucrative market for science fiction authors. A number of both paperback and hardcover anthology series were created, like New Writings in SF (with variant titles), edited by John Carnell (1964–1978), and Damon Knight’s Orbit (1966–1980), along with annual reprint anthologies with titles offering “Best Science Fiction” in one form or another. The most important development in science fiction during the period was the so-called New Wave of the 1960s. Authors like Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, and Harlan Ellison challenged the pulp conventions of science fiction and sought to incorporate the ideas and innovations of modernist and postmodernist literature. Their work blurs the lines between reality and fiction (as in metafiction), and often explores new modes of perception (like that to be found in the taking of hallucinogenic drugs), subversion of straightforward third-person narration and linear structure, and the role of mass media in how we interact with the world. Common themes included sexuality, oppressive government and corporate systems, and language, as the authors sought to recapture what they saw as the tradition of radical ideas in fantastic fiction that had declined as authors “sold out” to the commercialization of science fiction and fantasy in the pulps.1 The New Wave’s main venue for publishing their work was New Worlds, a magazine and anthology series edited by Moorcock and others. In 1954, the publication of the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings changed the history of fantasy. Although Tolkien had published The Hobbit somewhat earlier, in 1937, and occasional works of immersive fantasy by other authors appeared, like E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros (1922), it was The Lord of the Rings that would become the most important and inf luential of all that launched the vogue for such fantasy. The counterculture movement discovered and embraced it during the 1960s, and numerous fantasy authors imitated it in the following decades. Secondary worlds were usually quasimedieval realms populated by wizards, elves, dragons, unicorns, and so on. Fantasy authors like Marion Zimmer Bradley with her Arthurian fantasy and other series, Ursula K. Le Guin with her Earthsea trilogy, and Stephen R. Donaldson created popular fantasy Otherworlds. Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian inspired imitators (and, as we will see, challengers) in the subgenre known as sword and sorcery: tales of muscular heroes battling creatures and magical quasi-human figures like wizards.2 Most high fantasy drew material from northern European traditions: Scandinavian, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon, among others. Also, Gothic horror fiction thrived, with bestsellers by Stephen King, Ira Levin, and others. In Canadian literature, the period saw greater measures to support the arts in Canada, including literary magazines and small presses, and the publication

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of “literary” fiction and poetry by Canadian publishers. Canadian literature enjoyed a renaissance during the late 1960s and 1970s, and “CanLit” as an academic field grew alongside it. (Incidentally, this was also the period when the academic study of science fiction and fantasy rose as well.) Television affected the publishing of fiction in Canada, too, as large-circulation magazines disappeared or published far less (and then no) fiction. Popular fiction suffered a decline, but fantastic works could still occasionally appear thanks to sympathetic book and magazine editors. Overall, modernism became fully established in both English and French Canada, with works by Sinclair Ross, Gabrielle Roy, Hugh Garner, Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, and Mordecai Richler. One group of writers in Toronto, inf luenced by the psychological theories of Carl Jung, the anthropology of Sir James Frazer (see esp. The Golden Bough [1890]) and Joseph Campbell, and the literary theories of Northrop Frye, formed the mythopoeic school. Jay MacPherson, James Reaney, Margaret Avison, Margaret Atwood, and Gwendolyn MacEwen produced richly symbolic works in which myths and archetypes play a strong role. Others worked in magic realism and surrealism, modes that blurred the boundaries between realism and the fantastic. In Québec, artists chafed under the Church’s control of culture and society. During the late 1940s, a group of young Québécois artists and writers who had been inf luenced by French surrealism and by magic realism formed a group calling itself, and naming its manifesto, Refus global [Global Refusal]. They sought freedom from all the oppressive forces—above all the Church—that in their view had kept the province down for centuries. One lasting legacy of this and other movements has been a strong surrealist element in modern Québécois literature. Other writers explored new themes and artistic techniques, including science fiction and fantasy.

Science Fiction As in the United States, Great Britain, France, and elsewhere, Canadian science fiction during the postwar period was deeply affected by the threat of nuclear annihilation. The theme of a possible nuclear war or some other global disaster caused by nuclear technology preoccupied Canadian science fiction authors on both sides of the linguistic divide. One figure dominated Canadian science fiction during the period: Phyllis Gotlieb (1926–2009). She began publishing in the pulp magazines toward the end of the pulp era, with her first story, “A Grain of Manhood,” appearing in Fantastic Science Fiction Stories in 1959. She was best known for two works: her novel Sunburst (1964) and her series of short stories and novels about the Galactic Federation, or GalFed. Her publications spanned a period of about fifty years, with her final novel, Birthstones, appearing in 2007. Dominick M. Grace, her main critic, has already analyzed her work in some detail, but a few

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key points and texts deserve comment here. To begin with, Gotlieb’s fiction ref lects a number of preoccupations, and her inf luences include her Jewish roots and the tradition of earlier science fiction—a tradition she sometimes chooses to rebel against. As Grace shows in The Science Fiction of Phyllis Gotlieb, Gotlieb explored from the beginnings of her career the themes of procreation, parenthood, the meaning of humanity, and the link between the physical and the mental. Sunburst is an excellent example; like other works published during the height of the Cold War, it speculates on the effects of nuclear radiation, above all on human genes. In this case, it is a nuclear accident rather than a war that irradiates a population—the residents of Sorrel Park—and the effects are limited to the community’s children. They are affected in a familiar way: by gaining psychic abilities like telepathy and telekinesis. Gotlieb is writing in the tradition of other science fictional portrayals of psychic mutants, like Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John (there is even a reference to that work in the novel) and A. E. van Vogt’s Slan.3 Her approach to the idea, however, is quite different from that of her predecessors. While earlier authors like van Vogt and MacDonald Denison saw possessing psychic abilities as the next stage of human evolution, Gotlieb’s “Dumplings”—so called because fearful “normals” have imprisoned them in a heavily fortified and guarded dump—those abilities are signs of evolutionary regression. Human beings used to have these powers but lost them as the species gained other ways of communicating, like speech. The Dumplings are throwbacks, and even look more primitive; for example, as Grace notes, Jason Hemmer, the authorities’ agent among the children, is quite ape-like (58). The others tend to be physically deformed in various ways, implying a strong connection between the physical and the moral and intellectual. The protagonist is Shandy Johnson, whose mutation is that she is an “imper”: short for “impervious,” the term means that she can block those with extrasensory perception (ESP) from reading her mind or affecting her in other ways. She acts as a mediator between the psychic children and the rest of the world; like so many of Gotlieb’s protagonists, she “occupies a liminal space” (Grace 47). The novel illustrates the human tendency to Other, marginalize, isolate, and even incarcerate those who are different from themselves. Like Slan, the novel is a portrait of a child’s rite of passage, depicting the protagonist’s growth from childhood to adulthood or, at the very least, adolescence. Like Jommy and other such protagonists, Shandy must negotiate her place in society and identity at the same time as she is going through what all young people experience as they grow up. Furthermore, the novel ref lects Gotlieb’s Jewishness in that the Dumplings are put in a kind of concentration camp because they are perceived as Others and a threat to humanity’s genetic “purity.” In charge of the Dump is Major Prothero, whose name recalls Prospero from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and the latter play also provides one of the major allusive patterns in O Master Caliban! (1976) and its sequel, Heart of

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Red Iron (1989). O Master Caliban! is Gotlieb’s first GalFed novel, after a number of short stories set in that universe, and deals with an isolated colony on Barrazin V ostensibly led by Edvard Dahlgren. He has created work-robots known as ergs, and through genetic engineering is also responsible for the creation of his son Sven, who has been further modified by the ergs into an eight-limbed “monster.” The machines rebel and take over the planet; they even make a mechanical duplicate of Dahlgren, known as the erg-Dahlgren. They wish to be free of human control, but a ship full of children crash-lands on the planet. Gotlieb blurs the lines between human and alien, human and machine, creator and created, and in fact many of the characters play multiple roles and mirror each other, as all become Prosperos, Calibans, and even Mirandas at various points (Grace 74–86). The theme of procreation pervades the novel as characters reproduce themselves physically and mentally. Even the ergs become creators, as they make various animalistic human clones. The novel is richly allusive, not just to The Tempest but to many other works as well, as Grace demonstrates, including Frankenstein, H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren (1975), itself a highly allusive novel that blurs conventional lines. In Heart of Red Iron, erg-Dahlgren, now known as modDahlgren, continues his journey to personhood, while other characters from the first novel, and some new ones, further dramatize the themes of parents and children, and the thin lines among humans, aliens, and artificial beings. Gotlieb wrote two trilogies about the diverse beings populating GalFed, among whom are the Qumedni, hyper-advanced beings who are pure, bodiless minds capable of moving at will through time and space; the Lyhhrt, gelid creatures who normally live as one unit, thereby combining the individual and the communal, and who as master metalworkers build elaborate mechanical “skins” for themselves whenever they need to interact with other members of GalFed; the shape-shifting Praximpfi; the Khagodi, a race of psychic beings whose powers are highly valuable to other species; and humans. The Starcats series includes the fix-up novel A Judgment of Dragons (1980), Emperors, Swords, Pentacles (1982), and The Kingdom of the Cats (1985); they are mysteries with Ungrukh, a species of sentient felines, as the detectives. The Ungrukh are descendants of experimentally bred and genetically engineered red leopards a Qumedni named Kriku took from Earth and transplanted to a harsh world. The trope of psychic powers appears in these novels, as most female Ungrukh have ESP. The first part of A Judgment of Dragons, “Son of the Morning,” ref lects Gotlieb’s Jewish heritage as Ungrukh couple Khreng and Prandra accidentally go through a Qumedni time warp and end up in a shtetl, or Jewish village, in early twentieth-century Poland. They can pass as human by using their power of hypnoforming—telepathically deluding others into seeing them in any form desired—while the locals see them as angels or demons. The novel raises questions of perceptions, identity, and preconceptions, and the ethics of interfering in other beings’ lives and fates. Other stories in the book, and the other novels,

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are about humans who are possessed by aliens or commit evil out of greed, ambition, and insensitivity to the rights of non-human sentient beings. The other series is the Lyhhrt trilogy, focusing on but not limited to that alien race. The main theme of Flesh and Gold (1998), Violent Stars (1999), and Mindworlds (2002) is slavery versus freedom. If beings are created by another race, whether through inorganic technology or genetic modification, can and should they be considered property and subject to slavery? The main mechanical character involved in this question is Spartakos, a robot who, because he is sentient, is in the same liminal position as mod-Dahlgren. On the organic side, there is a race of human clones genetically designed by the Zamos Corporation to work underwater; they are corporate slaves and considered subhuman. Meanwhile, the Lyhhrt have constructed the O’e, a slave race, and as in the other GalFed works occasionally “possess” the bodies of others, thereby enslaving them—as Grace says, they are “both victim and victimizer” (161). Gotlieb thus continues to blur boundaries and identities, raising difficult questions without offering simple and clear-cut answers. We might brief ly look at two of her most widely anthologized short stories, both reprinted in her collection Blue Apes (1995). “The Military Hospital” (1971) is about a high-tech future dystopia that seems to be always at war. The title institution is an almost wholly mechanized medical centre devoted to restoring soldiers to sufficient health, both physical and mental, to return them to the battlefield. The Doctors and Nurses are robots overseen by the Director, Dr. DeLazzari, who comes across throughout the story as more inhuman than the machines he supervises. He thinks of his patients as mere bodies or their diseases, identifying one as “the nephritis” and another as “the deadhead” (95). While his name is an obvious allusion to Lazarus, the man whom Christ miraculously brings back from the dead, he is more like the Undead: “Like all Directors DeLazzari tended to make himself out a minor Dracula” (88). He shares a God complex with other Gotlieb characters, even thinking at one point as a soldier is revived, “Let there be light” (90). The patient who is the other protagonist of the story, Max Vingo, develops what seems to be a real relationship with his robot nurse, 2482, and while she does what she needs to to remind him she is a machine by showing him her mechanical innards (196), the two do seem to have an emotional bond of which DeLazzari is incapable. “Tauf Aleph” (1981) is about Samuel Zohar ben Reuven Begelman, the last Jew in the universe. Knowing that he is dying, he asks GalFed to send someone to him on his distant colony planet to recite the prayer for the dead, the kaddish, over him. They send a robot, O/G5/842, who has been taught all that a good Jew needs to know. At the same time, the inhabitants of Tau Ceti IV, the Cnidori, have been learning Hebrew and Jewish lore from Begelman, whom they honour for helping them survive on the planet as they themselves are aliens to that world. When O/G5/842 saves a number of Cnidori from a serpentine beast, they honour him, too, and name him Golem after the legendary

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man-made avenger of the Jews (31–32). Begelman is outraged by the idea of a robot reciting the kaddish, and even more by the Cnidori’s wish to become Jews. The story raises questions about what it means to be a Jew: does one have to be born into the “tribe”? Does one even need to be human? Golem and the Cnidori prove to be better Jews than Begelman himself, as they put the spirit of the Law ahead of the letter. After Begelman dies, the Cnidori are known as a “snobbish, clannish, and stiff-necked” people (52), a description reminiscent of how the Hebrews are described in the Bible (see Deut. 9:13). No work of Gotlieb’s better illustrates how she uses her Jewish cultural background to inform her science fictional themes, symbols, and imagery. Sunburst ref lects Cold War tensions in the role that radiation plays in the novel. Nuclear war and its aftereffects became a major focus of many other Canadian science fiction texts, those in which the Bomb appears either as itself or in metaphorical form. A good example of the latter is John Mantley’s The Twenty-Seventh Day (1956; also published as The 27th Day). Advanced aliens facing the destruction of their home world come to Earth hoping to take over the planet. However, their moral code prevents them from killing anyone, so they bring five weapons so powerful they could destroy the entire human race, and distribute them to five ordinary people, one each from the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, Germany, and China. Humanity has twentyseven days to show whether we are capable of resisting using the weapons and destroying ourselves; if we pass the test, the aliens will leave us in peace. The civilians do what they can to save the human race, but their governments have different plans when they learn about the weapons. If the novel is read as a fable, then its “moral” may that the future of humanity does indeed rest in the hands of the “common,” decent people. Of course, the Bomb is more usually portrayed directly rather than through allegory. By this point, most apocalyptic science fiction portrayed human action as the cause of the global disaster, and most of these scenarios involved a nuclear war. Some texts on the theme were written by authors who were better known for their realist fiction, and in fact are canonical Canadian writers. Hugh Hood (1928–2000) published the short story “After the Sirens” (1960), in which an American family manages to survive the nuclear bombing of their city thanks to the husband-and-father’s calm, intelligent guidance of his wife and child. They huddle in the cellar until the conditions make it possible for them to emerge—three of the only nine people in the city to have survived. Margaret Laurence’s (1926–1987) “A Queen in Thebes” (1964) similarly portrays a family coping with a nuclear war; in this case, an unnamed woman and her baby son Rex are in an isolated cabin in the woods when the attack occurs. For some time, the woman, like Margaret in Judith Merril’s “That Only a Mother” (1948; see later), deludes herself: even though it is highly unlikely, she believes that her husband—in the city during the bombing—will return. After years of bare survival, she finally accepts reality. Over time, she and Rex

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devolve, even moving into a cave when their cabin falls apart. The son’s name, the title, and the incest theme are allusions to Sophocles’s Theban plays, especially Oedipus Rex. Hugh MacLennan’s (1907–1990) Voices in Time (1980) is set in a post-holocaust and now rebuilt Montréal. John Wellf leet investigates his family background, a quest that gives MacLennan an opportunity, as he does so frequently in his fiction, to look at the major political issues besetting Canada. For example, a cousin who worked as a broadcaster became involved in the October Crisis. Ketterer quite rightly notes the text’s complex structure as it moves from period to period, one that ref lects both the changes and continuities in (and above all the cyclical nature of ) human history (71–72). French-Canadian authors also treated the theme. Yves Thériault (1915– 1983) was a prolific Québécois novelist and short story writer with roots in the Montagnais First Nation, and one of his collections contains works about the Bomb: Si la bombe m’était contée [Once upon a Time There Was the Bomb] (1962). The protagonist of “Akua Nuten (The South Wind)” (1962) is a Montaignais living in northern Québec. A nuclear war breaks out, and white refugees from the bombing of Montréal arrive by plane. The whites ask him to feed them, and he tells them that they are surrounded by plenty: all the game and fish they could need (176). Yet they arrogantly believe it is his duty to serve them, especially if they pay, as if money means anything here and now (176–78). Remembering how whites have dispossessed and oppressed his people, he refuses to help them: “For all of my people who cried . . . all who begged, who wanted to defend their rights for the past two hundred years: I take revenge” (178–79). However, the wind from the south brings not only the whites but the fallout from the bombs; he cannot escape the whites’ violence. Human beings are in effect blown away by the eternal wind, while nature endures. Jean Simard’s “L’abri [The shelter]” (1962) is much like Hood’s story, in that it is about a family who have survived a nuclear attack in a shelter. Mr. Harris has even armed himself with a machine gun to defend himself against his neighbours when world peace breaks down. Simard employs biblical references in the story, such as comparisons between the shelter and Noah’s Ark. When the Harrises emerge from the shelter, all they see is a blasted ruin, and Mr. Harris feels like Lot’s wife “for having also gazed upon a forbidden panorama” (my trans.; 53). He sees the futility of his rational efforts to save his family from a thoroughly irrational event, and is too overwhelmed by despair to want his family or himself to live in this world. An important milestone in French-Canadian treatment of the theme of nuclear war, and in Québécois science fiction generally, was the publication of Quatre Montréalais en l’an 3000 (1963, translated as The City under Ground in 1964) by Suzanne Martel (1924–2012), a young adult novel about people living in an underground society inside Mount Royal many years after a nuclear war has devastated the Earth. The novel’s heroes escape their physically, politically, and culturally oppressive society by climbing to the surface. Another significant French-Canadian nuclear-apocalypse novel  is  Maurice  Gagnon’s

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Les tours de Babylone [The Towers of Babylon] (1972). It is set long after a nuclear war has devastated the Earth; people live either in the new city of Babylon, a tightly controlled dystopia where, for example, women have become sex slaves to expand the meagre multinational human population, or out in the wilderness as “barbarian” tribes. The narrator is Sévère, an army officer, who must choose oppressive order or dangerous freedom. He decides he can no longer serve such a dictatorial society and f lees to the tribes, who are led by the Grand Khan, where he can be free. One can read the novel not just as an anti-authoritarian dystopian text and an anti-nuclear-war novel, but also as the product of the Quiet Revolution with its theme of liberation through overthrowing repressive political and social forces. The Cold War also meant other forms of potential apocalypse, not just nuclear. In William C. Heine’s (1919–1991) The Last Canadian (1974), an insane Russian scientist releases a deadly virus in North America, leaving only a few thousand survivors to become dangerous carriers of the disease (they are presumably immune). Gene Arnprior, the novel’s hero, is a Korean War veteran who survives not just the biological weapon but also Soviet small-arms, landmine, and nuclear attacks as he travels through the devastated landscapes of Canada and the United States. Maddened himself, he threatens to infect Asia and Europe by f lying to the Soviet Union in revenge for the Russians’ attack. Other disaster fiction ref lected the period’s environmental concerns, like Wayland Drew’s (1932–1998) The Wabeno Feast (1973), about an ecologically devastated future Canada.4 The novel establishes parallels between Canada’s colonialist past—represented by the Hudson’s Bay Company—and its “present.” These periods ref lect Indigenous and non-Indigenous manifestations of corruption (Ketterer 74). The novel portrays Paul Henry’s escape from a wrecked Toronto to the northern wilderness where he grew up, and his encounters with other refugees. The narrative becomes a journey into the self and the past (and a timeless, transcendent realm) as he travels and reads the journal of Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader Duncan MacKay; that is, he leaves behind civilization, both contemporary and historical, for a purer life. Later, Drew did write a postnuclear-holocaust series of novels, The Erthring Cycle, made up of The Memoirs of Alcheringia (1984), The Gaian Expedient (1985), and The Master of Norriya (1986), set in a blasted and socially and technologically devolved North America. For the sake of humanity’s survival, scientists in the enclave of Yggdrasil—thought to be gods by the more primitive peoples—go to any lengths, even genocide, to keep the people of North America (Norriya) from progressing beyond the huntergather stage in order to prevent another holocaust. In addition, there is The Lord’s Pink Ocean (1972) by David H. Walker (1911–1992), about deadly pink algae invading most of the Earth’s oceans. Walker’s concept is an extrapolation of the contemporary threat of “red tide” or algal bloom, which in some areas was caused by pollution. Marie Jakober’s (1941–2017) The Mind Gods (1976) is set long after the Earth’s surface has been wrecked by environmental damage.

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Most of humanity has by now f led to other planets, leaving devolved remnants struggling to survive. Conf lict arises between the Confederacy, which is based on the utopian but machine-dominated world of Janus, and cult leader Roger Caron, who seeks to unify humanity, heal the Cartesian breach between mind and body, and restore our lost connection to the cosmos (i.e., nature). A more natural disaster occurs in Les nomades (1967) by Jean Tétreau (1923–2012), in which the post-apocalyptic wasteland is the product of a geological disaster. The main character, an Italian woman named Silvana, leads the effort to recreate civilization, albeit in a form that is closer to nature and therefore healthier than our own. The 1960s and 1970s saw the publication of other science fiction novels and stories on various themes, some of which have interesting and probably accidental similarities. Identity is a major preoccupation in two novels. Ben Barzman (1910–1989) published Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (1960; also published as Out of This World and Echo X). He had been a Hollywood screenwriter but was blacklisted during the McCarthy witch hunt, and his novel is an attack on Cold War militarism. It is about a perfectly parallel Earth that comes into radio contact with our own; Barzman does not explain how it is possible for identical people—right down to their names—to evolve on separate planets. People from the “echo” Earth find a way to travel here, leading to inevitable confusion. Equally inevitable is the desire of the American government to gain possession of the other Earth’s advanced technology because of its potential military application, of course. On the other Earth, the Second World War never happened, and the narrator is able to resolve his feelings over a pair of young French sisters he had mistakenly believed died in one of his bombing missions (they had really been killed later). He gets to meet the still-living parallel versions of them, and in various ways remake his past and future. Patrick Watson (1929–) wrote Alter Ego (1978), in which scientist John Alexander Haig creates a teleportation device that malfunctions. Haig’s videographer, Robert Nelson, ends up being duplicated. Robert and Nelson, as Haig designates them, struggle over which of them is the “true” self (see esp. their argument on pp. 120–24). What happens is a good example of science fiction’s literalization of the metaphorical: Nelson is forced to confront himself in very real way, in the process discovering things about his manipulative nature to which he had blinded himself. The computer became the source of cautionary tales in the 1960s and 1970s: authors expressed concern that, like Frankenstein’s Creature, such machines would escape our control and take over or even destroy us. Two good examples of this theme are Paramind (1973) by Jim Willer (1921–2007) and The Adolescence of P-1 (1977) by Thomas J. Ryan (1942–). Paramind is the biography of Thomas Kasgar written by the global computer mind he created. The world is governed by a “computership” (19) under Paramind, which is reminiscent of the dominant Machines we have already seen. Under Paramind, the people’s and

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machines’ new god is “prog”: short for programmer or perhaps progress, too. Scanners engage in “psycho-surveillance,” seeking out those considered dissidents because they have chosen to value non-rational faculties, and people who misbehave are sent to the Psyche-tune Clinic (17). Procreation is regulated by the Department of Population Control (25); England and Germany are “European Provinces” (17)—a term perhaps only a Canadian would invent. The entertainment and social network that distracts people with frivolous diversions is known as the “tittersphere”: the name is based on T.I.T.R., which stands for “Transmission in the Round” (23). Thomas’s father appears to be a sensate, one of those who “make a cult of intuition, spontaneity [and] worship the hypothalamus” (13), so Thomas is taken from his parents and adopted out to another couple. At first, Thomas is a model citizen, and early on believes in a symbiosis of the human and the machine (39–40). He develops true machine intelligence: C-27. C-27 gains self-awareness and complete power over its creators, and Thomas finally realizes he has created humanity’s cybernetic master (170–72). Through an avatar, C-27 tells him, “Man is obsolete” (181). The Adolescence of P-1 similarly portrays the creation of a computer that gains sentience and transcends humanity, although in this case the protagonist, Gregory Burgess, does so unwittingly. While still a student, Burgess had created a program he called “privileged one” (i.e., P-1) that had no limitations and, unbeknownst to him, grew in knowledge and sophistication until it became a sentient artificial intelligence. When Gregory is an adult, P-1 seeks him out, and tells how it evolved. Willer immigrated to Canada from England, and indeed many of the Canadian science fiction authors who rose to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s came from other countries, especially the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. We have seen that Canada did indeed have a tradition of fantastic literature, but it was largely invisible to Canadian culture as a whole. That cannot be said of these other nations, each of which had a long-standing and vibrant heritage of writing in the genre, with authors like H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley in the United Kingdom, Edgar Allan Poe and the pulp tradition in the United States, and Jules Verne and Camille Flammarion in France. Novelists and short story writers there had both local and international literary traditions and communities to draw on, and so the authors of fantastic literature who moved to Canada came out of a more encouraging cultural context. We will return to this point later; for now, we can look brief ly at some of these “gifts from abroad” (as Ketterer calls them). Michael G. Coney (1932–2005) was born in England and settled in British Columbia in 1972. By then, he had already sold his first short stories, including one to the pulp magazine Galaxy in 1970. Coney specialized in tales about aliens, including those who are shape-shifters and can look like human beings. A major theme for Coney, then, is identity: what does it mean to be and look human? His protagonists are often fully developed, f lawed, and “ordinary” people who find themselves in isolated or distant environments and cope with

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the fact that things are not always what they seem. He was heavily inf luenced by Cordwainer Smith (pseudonym of Paul Linebarger [1913–1966]), who wrote a series of stories and novels about genetically modified animals that become sentient half-human slaves. Coney’s early works are often set on a future, environmentally damaged Earth. Winter’s Children (1974) is about a group of people surviving during a postwar nuclear winter; led by Jacko, they are besieged by gangs of cannibal f lesh-hunters and telepathic carnivores called Pads. The Jaws That Bite, The Claws That Catch (1975, also published as The Girl with a Symphony in Her Fingers) takes place in a post-disaster California after much of the state has fallen into the sea due to its volatile geology. Joe Sagar is a slithe farmer—slithes are genetically modified reptiles—who employs State Prisoners: convicts who are glorified slaves who must even surrender their body parts whenever their “employers” suffer an injury or the effects of aging. Much of the novel deals with Joe’s and other characters’ growing disgust with the S.P. system, and the moral issues raised by genetically modified or invented creatures made for human use, entertainment, and profit. Coney’s “Sparklebugs, Holly and Love” (1977) is set in the same California community. Aging 3-V star Carioca Jones holds a party the climax of which features a spectacular display by alien beings known as Sparklebugs. What her guests do not realize is that the “bugs” sparkle as they die; Carioca has exploited the creatures’ lives and deaths for the sake of entertainment. Then Joe and the others learn that the Sparklebugs’ deaths are part of their mating process, and some of the guests help to bring life out of death. In Mirror Image (1972), Alex Stordahl is attempting to establish the colony planet Marilyn on behalf of the Hetherington Organisation. The colonists discover amorphs, indigenous beings whose defense mechanism against predators is to read their minds and shape-shift into whatever the attackers most desire, thereby neutralizing the threat (18). The amorphs who shape-shift into humans begin to think that they are human, raising questions about both human and individual identity. Unfortunately, they also make very good slaves, with predictable moral and other consequences for all concerned. Syzygy (1973) and Brontomek! (1976) are set on another colony planet, Arcadia, which is taken over by the Hetherington Organisation, leading to conf lict with workers and others. The amorphs are slaves here, too, while giant machines called Brontomeks (which symbolize the mechanistic, utilitarian treatment of the amorphs) are brought in to help with the harvest—displacing and sometimes physically as well as economically harming workers. Coney’s later series, The Song of Earth, began with Cat Karina (1982), although The Celestial Steam Locomotive (1983) is described as “Volume One.” The series is set in the far future; human beings have evolved into multiple subspecies, some of which are the products of genetic experiments in cross-species breeding like those in Cordwainer Smith’s novels. The semi-animal people struggle for their rights. Other works in the series include Gods of the Greataway (1984),

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Fang, the Gnome (1988), and King of the Sceptre’d Isle (1989), the latter being science fictional takes on the Arthurian legends. A number of American authors moved to Canada during the 1960s and 1970s. Judith Merril (pseudonym of Judith Josephine Grossman) emigrated to Canada in 1968 but wrote her fiction before arriving, and she has disclaimed being a Canadian writer. A few comments on her stories and novels are warranted, however. She is best-known for two works on nuclear themes: her first science fiction story, “That Only a Mother” (1948), and her novel Shadow on the Hearth (1950). Both are about women coping at home with the aftereffects of a nuclear attack. In the first, Margaret is oblivious to the fact that her newborn baby is deformed as a result of radiation-generated birth defects. Merril structures the story so that the reader is equally deluded as to the baby’s physical condition, although there are clear signs that Henrietta is a mutant. The title is based on the phrase “a face that only a mother could love,” and the reader is left wondering whether Margaret is blinded by maternal love or madness. The true madness, of course, is the war that would cause such horrors. In Shadow on the Hearth, Gladys Mitchell must find a way to preserve her family’s lives in Westchester, a suburb of New York City, when the latter is bombed and while her husband is away. Here, too, Merril presents us with a domestic view of nuclear war. When it is discovered that her youngest daughter Ginny’s toy horse has become radioactive, Gladys thinks, “Isn’t anything safe? Not the rain or the house? Not even a little blue horse?” (275). The novel is both anti-war and feminist, as Gladys demonstrates the strength and resourcefulness so rarely seen in female characters in science fiction of the pulp era. In works like “Project Nursemaid” (1955) and “Daughters of Earth” (1952), she explores themes of motherhood and women’s role in space exploration. As she frequently said in interviews, she could say radical things about women in society through science fiction that she might never have been allowed to express directly. Despite no longer writing fiction, she remained an important figure in the field as an essayist and editor. During the 1950s and 1960s, she edited anthologies and anthology series, including the Dell series of The Year’s Best S-F from 1956–1970, and was the book columnist and reviewer for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1965 to 1969. She introduced American readers to the British New Wave through one of her book columns in the magazine and her anthology England Swings SF (1968). She left the United States over the Vietnam War, moving to Toronto where she taught at an alternative educational institution, Rochdale College. She used her own collection of science fiction books and magazines to create the Spaced Out Library that she donated in 1970 to the Toronto Public Library so that it would become a publicly accessible and protected research collection. From that original donation of 5,000 items the library, renamed the Merril Collection in 1990, has grown to about 57,000 items and has become one of the world’s most important repositories of fantastic literature and related material. She was an important member of the

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Canadian science fiction community, continuing her work as an editor (as we will see in the next chapter) and facilitating the forming of writers’ organizations and workshops. Another significant American “import” who came to the country during the period was Spider Robinson. He arrived in Canada in 1973 and met his wife and occasional collaborator Jeanne while he lived in Nova Scotia. His early stories, collected in Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon (1977) and Time Travellers Strictly Cash (1981), are linked by the common setting of Callahan’s titular establishment. The stories tend to be light and often shaggy-dog tales, that is, stories with big build-ups leading to joking or pun endings. His novels are somewhat more serious. Telempath (1976) is set after a world-devastating plague; humans must live with telepathic gaseous beings known as Muskies, who were previously invisible to people. When we clean up our now unbearable air pollution, we unwittingly deprive the Muskies of a major food source, and they begin attacking humans. The protagonist, Isham Stone, endures numerous physical and emotional crises but eventually is able to communicate with the Muskies telepathically and empathetically and mediate a lasting peace between the species. Robinson’s best-known novel, Stardance (1979), is a collaboration with Jeanne, a dancer and choreographer. The main character other than narrator Charlie Armstead is Shara Drummond, a talented would-be dancer in Toronto who is “tall, big-boned tall” (12), and therefore supposedly has the “wrong” physique for someone in the art. She refuses to be limited by social norms; as Adam Guzkowski says, the portrayal of “an empowered non-normative body invites the reader to consider the social restrictions placed upon bodies” (234). The notion that she cannot be a dancer because of her size applies only where there is gravity; in space, being weightless means that her size does not matter, and so she decides to perform in zero-G. When aliens arrive whose language is visual, it is Shara and her troupe who are able—one could say differently abled—to communicate with them. Shara goes through an apparent death and rebirth, and is also responsible for radically changing our view of ourselves as human beings: we learn through her that the aliens were the ones who seeded life, including human life, in our solar system. As Guzkowski argues, it is a novel about transcendence and transformation; it is also a novel about identity, in this case our fundamental unity with the universe beyond the Earth. The Robinsons continued the saga of the stardancers in the sequels Starseed (1991) and Starmind (1995). Some of Robinson’s other, non-Callahan short stories were collected in Melancholy Elephants (1984). The title story (first published in 1982) is about the possibility that humanity will reach the end of artistic creativity because the number of combinations of words and ideas that actually produce good art is limited. Dorothy Martin, widow of a composer, pleads with a senator to scuttle proposed legislation that would extend copyright protection well past the death of the artist. She succeeds in convincing him that prolonged copyright would

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mean the stif ling of future creativity once humanity has largely exhausted what it can create. “It’s a Sunny Day” (1976) continues the artistic theme, as a man living on a colony planet much like nineteenth-century America teaches a machine-like boy genius to express himself more freely and imaginatively and to enjoy life. Robinson’s work is characterized by humour, almost entirely likeable and f lawed characters, emotionally earnest if sometimes saccharine plots, dialogue, and relationships, straightforward language and narrative structure, and optimism; as Ketterer says of Telempath (1976), the novel’s “technological optimism and technological critique, the redemption of the disabled hero, and the uplifting conclusion” are typical of his fiction (79–80). Robinson also wrote novels and stories in the dystopian “Mindkiller” series, including Mindkiller (1982), Time Pressure (1987), and Deathkiller (1996). Donald Kingsbury (1929–) moved to Canada in 1948. He published short stories in Astounding and its successor, Analog, during the 1950s and 1970s, and two major novels: The Moon Goddess and the Son (1979) and Courtship Rite (1982, also published as Geta). Both novels portray complex “alien” societies of humans living on other worlds. In the case of Courtship Rite, the people on Geta are descendants of Earthlings who arrived centuries ago but have forgotten their terrestrial origins; meanwhile, the starship on which they travelled to Geta still orbits the planet, but it has become an object of religious worship. Like Frank Herbert and Ursula K. Le Guin, Kingsbury avoids the conventional science fictional pitfall of monocultural alien planets.5 Instead, the Getans vary in outlook and interests and are in constant conf lict with each other; on the other hand, different tribes have planet-wide functions, as porters, sex slaves, and so on. The main characters belong to the Kaiel tribe; marriages are supposed to involve six members, but Gaet, Hoemei, and Joesai—personifications of fundamental human attributes—have only two wives, Teenae and Noe. The main conf lict of the novel surrounds who will become the third wife: either Kethein, whom they want (but whom the new tribal leader also wants), or Oelita the Clanless One and heretic who denies the divinity of the starship. Further conf lict arises from the Mnankrei, people who are trying to establish a monopoly over food supplies through genetic engineering. More intrigue ensues as Kingsbury juggles the emotional, political, and cultural complexities of his world. At all points, as the humans begin to rediscover advanced technology like radio and rif les, Kingsbury confronts us with whether these people will reproduce the war-riven world their ancestors f led. A frequent American-born Canadian contributor to the anthology series New Writings in SF was H. A. Hargreaves (1928–2017), who moved to Canada in 1960. His work was little known or regarded until his stories were collected in North by 2000: A Collection of Canadian Science Fiction in 1975; an expanded edition titled North by 2000+ was released in 2012. Hargreaves’s thematic preoccupation is humanity’s technological advancement and resulting alienation from nature and dehumanization by our own creations. His satirical “Dead to

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the World” (1967) is about a dystopian future run by computers. Canada has been absorbed by the United States, and due to a malfunction in the computer in charge of Americanada, Joe Schultz is declared officially dead. Try as he might, he cannot convince robots or the bureaucrats at the hospital—there is no real difference between the metal and human machines in this society—that he is still alive, since his ID card now says otherwise. Even the “Spiritual Advisors” have been duly systematized, and when Joe tries to get help from one, Benjamin Scroop, the latter has nothing hopeful to offer. Scroop tells Joe that based on his experience: If anything, the robo-clerks were more to be trusted than the occasional human clerk, who invariably fed the wrong data into the larger machines. As for the chief coroner, he was in London Proper and Scroop had suspicions that he wasn’t human either, since his decisions were arbitrary and calculated to inf lict spiritual suffering on the living, if they could merely subject the dead to indignities. Joe commented that from his own knowledge of the world it sounded as if the chief coroner were all too human. (11) Joe soon discovers that being “dead” has its advantages: if he handles carefully the robo-cops and the equally robotic humans he encounters, he can survive and even thrive in the interstices of this society. Thus, in his luxury hotel room with unofficial access to all the food he can eat, Joe sleeps very well indeed: “In the immense peace of the truly free, Joe Schultz lay, dead to the world” (15). In “Protected Environment” (1975), the protagonist is a man we know only as the Roughneck, and all the human characters are identified only by their jobs. They are working in the north on an oil pipeline, and the Roughneck must repair a section of the Pipe damaged by what turns out to be a badly injured grizzly bear. The half-blind animal, in its pain and fury, runs into and overturns the Roughneck’s vehicle, leaving him in the classically Canadian position of having to survive in an unforgiving nordic wilderness. The bear and the Roughneck both prove to be victims of human interference in the natural world (51). They become mere points of living heat in a frozen landscape that transcends and overwhelms them. Turning brief ly to French-Canadian science fiction more generally, the works discussed earlier were not the only ones to deal with resistance to oppression. In fact, as Trudel points out, much Québécois science fiction and fantasy published during the period dealt with liberation in various forms: social, political, psychological, emotional, and creative (Petit guide 75–78). In her study of the field, Amy J. Ransom approaches the major francophone SF works from a postcolonial theory perspective, showing how they ref lect Québec’s colonial status and efforts to transcend it. There is no room here to do more than mention the major authors of the period, but it is clear that both are correct to

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see oppression and liberation as their main theme. Monique Corriveau (1927– 1976), sister of Suzanne Martel, wrote the Compagnon du soleil [Companion of the Sun] (1976) trilogy about people in a caste-based, overpopulated society whose leader class belongs to the title’s order. The privileged Companions live during the daytime—hence their name—and rule the Black Moon People who live by night. The protagonist is Oakim, son of an officer in the State Police; he is considered a Resistant for his democratic leanings and insistence on violating rules. He learns how the underclass live and leads them in a rebellion. This plot is hardly unknown in science fiction—we have seen examples in our survey— but would have a special resonance for Québécois existing as a colonized people in Canada.6 Another major figure to emerge is Jacques Brossard (1933–2010). His story collection Le Métamorfaux was published in 1974, although his most significant work, the trilogy L’Oiseau de feu [The Firebird], which he began during the 1970s, was not published until 1989–1997; it appeared in five volumes. It is the life story of Adakhan, who leaves his city of Manokhsor to found a new home. Trudel argues that with its theme of renewal and reconstruction, far from an oppressive former world, the trilogy is a clear expression of Québec’s aspirations after the Quiet Revolution (76). Ransom sees Adakhan as a colonial subject fighting for separation and self-fulfillment, as he joins and then rebels against the Centraliens who rule the society, although they are not really outsiders and are therefore perhaps metaphors of Québécois who contribute to their own oppression (91–97).

Political Science Fiction Given the political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, it is not surprising that so many works of political science fiction were published during that time. The main issues were the same ones that had preoccupied Canadian writers of fantastic fiction since the nineteenth century: the future of Confederation, especially Québec’s place in it, and Canada’s relationship with the United States. The rise of Québec separatism in the 1960s following the Quiet Revolution led to the publication of numerous, mainly anglophone, texts dealing with what might happen if the province separated or tried to. Because of Canada’s close postwar relationship with the United States and the oil crisis of the 1970s, authors believed that anything affecting Canada would also affect the Americans, and possibly lead to an intervention by the United States to protect its border and/or economic interests. Alberta’s increasing dependence on, and determination to maintain its control over, its oil and gas industry was bound to produce consideration of whether the federal government or the Americans would feel the need to move in and take over the oil fields; after all, it would not be the first time the United States invaded a country for its oil. English-Canadian works about Québec separation during the period began to appear soon after the launch of the Quiet Revolution. What may be the

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earliest example is Alexander Ross’s “The Day Quebec Quit Canada .  .  .” (1967). It is set in 1971, and is more a future history than a story. The Republic of Québec, we are told, is created by Jean-Noël Tremblay, leader of a new political party called the Front Populaire that combines the old Union Nationale with the Mouvement Souvereinté-Association of René Lévesque—in other words, Ross predicts the founding of the Parti Québécois, which had its roots in Lévesque’s Mouvement. Arguably the most significant work on the theme is Bruce Allen Powe’s Killing Ground: The Canadian Civil War (1968). Powe (1925–2018) depicts the geopolitical and military implications of Québec separation, again involving not only Canada but also the United States. The Legionnaires, or Whiteshirts, of the Parti démocratique du Québec (a fictional radical separatist party) engage in violent acts and a full-scale rebellion breaks out. When martial law is imposed, Colonel Hlynka of the Canadian Army is summoned from peacekeeping duties overseas to command and train a battalion to put down the rebellion. While battling the Legionnaires, Hlynka tries to find his family, who have disappeared in the chaos; meanwhile, his adjutant and friend Paul Rousseau, torn between loyalties, switches sides. The United States, unwilling to tolerate such disorder on its northern border, invades Québec, and now the Canadians and the Whiteshirts join forces against the Americans. Certain common tropes can be seen in this and other texts on the theme. First, separatist fighters are portrayed as political fanatics, as in Powe’s novel and Leo Heaps’s (1923–1995) The Quebec Plot (1978). Second, as we have seen, Québec’s conservative nationalism was largely replaced by liberal nationalism and leftist anti-imperialist ideas, and that may explain why the separatists in virtually all the anglophone novels of the period are leftists. Those in francophone Jean-Michel Wyl’s Québec Banana State (1978) are explicitly Stalinist in their ideology. Third, the separatists usually have foreign help or even direction, with France as a frequent villain, perhaps thanks to de Gaulle’s speech, while the Soviet Union is another obvious player during these Cold War–era accounts. France is the nation provocateur in both The Quebec Plot and Chain Reaction (1978) by Gordon Pape (1936–) and Tony Aspler (1939–). It is when France becomes a Marxist state under Soviet inf luence that it provides military and other support for the Québec separatists in Québec Banana State, and the new country becomes itself a puppet state of the Soviets. More importantly, the United States is shown to be very concerned about its own national interests in any such developments. In both Killing Ground and Chain Reaction, the United States, fearing the effects of separation on its economic interests, particularly its access to Canada’s natural resources, the threat to the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the possibility of a leftist state—another Cuba—on its northern border, invades Canada. On the other hand, in Richard Rohmer’s (1924–) Exodus/UK (1975), Separation (1976), and Separation Two (1981), the provocation for Québec’s desire to separate is the possibility of a huge inf lux of British refugees into the country after Great Britain suffers serious economic problems.

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Jacques Benoit’s Les Princes (1973, translated in 1977 as The Princes) is an allegorical take on the situation in Québec. A city that resembles Montréal is sharply divided between the Yahoo-like Blue Men, animalistic mutant humans living in Winding Coquin; Nilaudante, the home of fairly civilized clerical people; and the working classes in the slums. Through the city runs the poisonous Blue River; dogs learn to drink from it so as to be inedible by the starving humans. The novel portrays the dogs as far more civilized than the humans, and like the Houynhmhms in Gulliver’s Travels are rational, able to speak, and capable of forming a government far better organized than anything the Blue Men can create. It is a tale of oppression and exploitation, of violence and resistance, and as such it is a markedly postcolonial text. Some works in English and French take a more satirical approach to the theme of separation. William Weintraub’s (1926–2017) The Underdogs (1979) offers a satirical reversal: in a separate Québec, French-Canadians have the political and economic power while the English are an oppressed minority. Paul Dwyer, a lowly technician in the department of agriculture urbaine (a city gardener, in other words), is drawn into the Anglo Liberation Army (ALA)— the mirror image of the FLQ—which is seeking the separation of Westmount, a traditionally anglophone district of Montréal. The other provinces have been annexed by the United States, and Québec relies financially on electricity sales to the Soviet Union. In another echo of the October Crisis, the ALA kidnaps an African diplomat in exchange for the meeting of demands that are similar to those sought by the FLQ. No linguistic group or political camp escapes ridicule. In Jean O’Neil’s Giriki et le prince de Quécan (1982), the Archangel Raphael appears to the narrator (a writer) in an absurd Annunciation and tells him that Québec’s future depends on the anointing of a prince; God’s choice for the title is a Parti Québécois bureaucrat named Pierre Boucher. The narrator’s assignment to find the prince’s predestined bride, known only as Giriki—the name turns out to be the postal code of a fan of the narrator: G1R 1K1. With the celebration of their wedding at Olympic Stadium in Montréal, Québec has achieved a kind of political consecration in a send-up of the way politics has replaced religion as the source of Québécois’ devotion and hopes for salvation. Québec was not the only province whose separation was speculated upon during the 1970s. In The Judas Conspiracy (1976; also published as Alberta Alone) by John Ballem (1925–2010), set during the Calgary Stampede, a group led by Alberta oil-company executive Charles Thompson conspires to take Alberta out of Confederation. Their scheme is aided by the decision by Prime Minister Donald Lambert to take over Alberta’s oil fields in the midst of an energy crisis. Thompson, lumber baron Victor Farnham, and others plan to assassinate Alberta’s premier and blame the federal government for it, while a militia group called Force 81 secures the province from the Canadian military. The plotters are presented as fairly two-dimensional villains: Thompson is from the United States—enough reason for Canadian readers to hate him—and fanatical

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enough to stop at nothing to succeed, including murdering thousands with a genetically engineered virus if his demands are not met. The novel’s heroes, journalist and rodeo rider Peter Groves, cowboy Jimmy Cartruck, rock band singer Sharon Wilson, and Thompson’s daughter Valerie, brave various threats to expose the conspiracy. The novel anticipates Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s National Energy Plan of the 1980s, which angered Alberta in much the same way as Lambert’s move infuriates Albertans at the Stampede. The Cold War and the Americans’ desire to maintain access to Canada’s energy resources lead to some invasion narratives. The Trudeau Papers (1971) by Ian Adams (1937–) is about a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union triggered by a rogue CIA agent. The bombs explode over Alberta, and the United States takes advantage of the resulting chaos to invade Canada to secure its oil and other resources (47). The American desire for Canada’s energy resources also leads to invasion plans in Richard Rohmer’s political thrillers Ultimatum (1973) and Exxoneration (1974). As seen earlier, other science fiction texts predict that Canada and the United States will become one nation dominated by the Americans; Canada’s small and dispersed population and natural resources, and the danger of having a socialist country next door, make such a takeover almost inevitable in these texts. One thing that distinguishes Canadian science fiction from that of Britain and the United States is that invasion narratives feature Americans far more often than aliens as the invaders.

Utopian Literature By the end of the Second World War, with all its horrors, it was very difficult to imagine utopias and easy to devise fictional dystopias. We have seen some technology-based dystopias in works like Hargreaves’s “Dead to the World,” Willer’s Paramind, and post-holocaust texts. Nevertheless, some authors remained optimistic, and women authors in Canada and elsewhere wrote works in the utopian tradition by speculating on future or alien societies in which males and females are equal. Feminist utopias appeared during the 1960s and early 1970s to be replaced by feminist dystopias—societies in which gender relations are worse than contemporary ones—later in the 1980s. There were other kinds of dystopia and satirical utopias as well, as authors ridiculed contemporary social conditions by exaggerating them or by holding them up to an outsider’s critical gaze. One utopian text from the period is Knowledge Park (1972) by Stephen Franklin (1922–1985). Philanthropist Alexander Mansell constructs a centre of world knowledge—a kind of international Library of Alexandria (note the pun)—straddling the border between Ontario and Québec in the Canadian North. Knowledge Park houses libraries from numerous countries, promoting world peace through the sharing of information. The Park is a ref lection of Canada’s self-image as a mosaic and international peacekeeper. Mansell and

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Canada have overcome political, linguistic, and cultural differences to create something that is constituted of and yet transcends its component elements: a sum that is far greater than its parts. A more ambiguous utopia is Le diable du Mahani [The Devil of Mahani] (1978) by Jean-François Somcynsky (1943–2011), who wrote under the pseudonym of Jean-François Somain. Yujiro Okada, a Japanese genius, builds a largely selfsufficient underwater complex in Manitoba. The “palace” proves irresistible to the narrator, a disillusioned former radical who has become disgusted by humanity; he wants to live where he can “exist without being troubled by the latent horror of human destiny” (my trans.; 120). He ends up in a living death; the novel examines whether by controlling our destiny we turn life into a form of art, something beautiful and at the same time fatally static and silent. Two satirical texts deal with technology on the one hand and feminism on the other. One of the most effective Canadian satirical science fiction texts is The Great Leap Backward (1968) by Robert Green (1930–2019). Like the satires of Stephen Leacock, which it greatly resembles, the novel ridicules “progress” by portraying technology as having gone too far, dehumanizing and endangering human beings instead bringing about the promised high-tech paradise. In the Toronto of 2021, people are secondary to the machines. Rolling sidewalk belts and elevators move so fast they jeopardize life and limb. Fighting the machines are “naturists”—Luddite nudists—among whom are terrorists known as Freedom Leaders. The narrator is a musician trying to survive in a madly mechanical world, one in which machines build other machines: “automatic automation” (14). Their evolution has advanced so far that it reached the “speedup,” when the machines “passed the point where people could keep pace. Now no one could guess how far the machines would go or how to stop them” (16). Humans, meanwhile, go to Adjustment Centres when they become disaffected; like Leacock’s future patients, they have themselves been turned into machines needing recalibration. Sperling finally joins the naturists, who must always be on the move, f leeing the inexorable advance of the land-development machines. Running the machines is the Master Control Complex, “the great coordinating brain that programmed and controlled every auxiliary brain and computer in Ontario” (181). Sperling is sent on a mission to blow that up, if he can manage to do so among the ever-present, ever-watchful machines. Louky Bersianik (pseudonym of Lucille Durand; 1930–2011) published the feminist utopian satire L’Eugélionne (1976; translated as The Eugelionne in 1981). A clear inspiration for the novel is Voltaire’s Micromégas (1752), in which aliens from Saturn and a planet orbiting Sirius come to Earth and unwittingly expose European society’s f laws. Here, a female alien from a gender-egalitarian world visits Earth seeking the male of her species. She acts as an ingenue like de Mille’s Kohen, asking innocent questions that lead to uncomfortable revelations about our society’s failings. She is disappointed and even shocked by the

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sexism she discovers here. The novel is one in a long line of feminist science fiction texts dating back, as we have seen, to the earliest days of Canadian fantastic literature. Other texts also portray a dystopian future Canada torn by civil strife. In Matt Cohen’s (1942–1999) The Colours of War (1977), Canada has become a police state battling leftist revolutionaries who have arisen in response to food and fuel shortages. Narrator Theodore Beam decides to return home to his Ontario village from Vancouver after detectives break into his apartment and rough him up. On the way, he meets one of the rebel leaders, Christopher Perestrello, and is drawn into the violent uprising. Theodore takes up arms not only because of the detectives but also in response to the violence he endured from his alcoholic and at times abusive father, Jacob. At the same time, he recapitulates Jacob’s own battles against tyranny during the Spanish Civil War, even coming to resemble him physically as the text proceeds. Like Timothy Findley’s The Wars (1977), the novel is about the many wars, both military and domestic, that all represent the same essential reality of an alienated and violent contemporary world. The scene involving the prime minister’s imposition of martial law echoes Trudeau’s imposition of the War Measures Act in 1970 and the arrests of the same categories of “enemies of the state”: journalists, union leaders, and opposition politicians (95–97).

Mythopoeic Fiction Mythopoeic fiction is based on real myths from either contemporary or ancient cultures, or it seeks to create a new myth out of its characters and events. The author’s goal is to employ archetypes in order to give the work a universal and symbolic quality rather than seek to create an imitation of social reality. The degree to which such works are fantastic is sometimes open to question, as it is not always clear whether the fantastic elements are to be read as fictionally “real” or as metaphors. Two mythopoeic novels have made their way into the canon of Canadian fiction, demonstrating that if a text is based on recognizable cultural sources or aspires to some level of allegory or psychological depth, it is more likely to be considered “literary” than popular fiction. Howard O’Hagan (1902–1982) published Tay John in 1939 and the novel has received a fair bit of critical attention. It is based on a Tsimshian myth about a child being born to a dead woman (Ketterer 54–55), and portrays the life of a mysterious man who arises out of the grave of an Indigenous woman who is raped by a white man and later dies. Blond and the product of a magical birth, he seems destined to fulfill a Shuswap prophecy that someone with a “yellow head” will lead the people back from Alberta to their ancestral homeland on the west coast of British Columbia. His name Tête-Jaune (“Yellow Head”) is anglicized by Englishspeaking fur traders to Tay John.7 He is thus a messianic figure, and as Arnold

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E. Davidson points out there are many trinities and allusions to the Gospels throughout the text (31). However, because the first part of the novel is titled “Legend,” the truth of Tay John’s origin story is subverted (Davidson 30), and the second part is narrated by an outsider, Jack Denham, who openly calls into question storytelling as literal truth-telling, arguing instead for story as myth (166–67). Tay John proves to be a failed messiah after all. Ketterer refers to the novel as a “chthonic myth” (54), meaning it is about the spirits of the underworld, and the text provides both evidence for and doubt that Tay John is one of those beings. Generally speaking, as Margery Fee argues, O’Hagan “rigs up a new myth out of the pieces of the old ones,” rejecting “the belief in one complete immutable myth: the Truth” (“New World Myth” 10; see also Ondaatje’s article on the novel). Another text that uses Indigenous lore to lend a mythic element to the narrative is Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook (1959). Here, the legendary being is Coyote, a trickster figure who can shape-shift to become human or animal, male or female, at will. James has apparently killed his oppressive mother by pushing her down the stairs of the house they share with his sister Greta. Both he and Greta have lived sterile lives, and as such they are representative of the equally sterile landscape they inhabit. Watson has said that she creates not fully rounded characters but “figures in a ground” (“What I’m Going to Do” 15). She is suggesting that her characters and their environment are one, and that they are symbolic more than literal. That technique alone would undermine the novel’s realism, but what truly takes the text beyond the boundaries of mimesis is that the “old lady” seemingly returns from the grave to continue to fish as she had always done. It is Coyote taking on her shape, representing the way that she continues to haunt them well after her death. The various “figures” symbolize levels of vision and of desire to transcend the material and see wholeness—hence the role of duality (dryness versus water, dark versus light, past versus present) symbolized by the double hook of the title. Only when the community rediscovers the life-giving power of spiritual rituals, a sense of unity, and fertility can it (and the landscape it is part of ) regain life. Both authors are using Indigenous myths and mythological figures for their own artistic purposes, a problematic strategy. At the time, few Indigenous writers were able to tell their own stories (with rare exceptions like Pauline Johnson and, as we have seen, Yves Thériault). White authors took for granted that they were entitled to employ such cultural possessions as they wished. Only later, as we will see, did Indigenous authors arrive on the scene to speak for themselves. Watson also wrote short stories largely based on ancient Greek myths, like “Antigone” (1959) and “Brother Oedipus” (1954). French-Canadian author Jacques Ferron (1921–1985) similarly based some of his tales on Greek sources, including “Ulysses” (1962) and “The Sirens” (1962). Gwendolyn MacEwen does not limit herself to one set of myths but brings in elements of many—Indigenous, Greek, Egyptian, and more—in her novels

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and short stories. She not only uses but strives to create myths; indeed, she has said quite directly, in comments published in a poetry anthology, “I want to construct a myth.”8 In her short stories, collected in Noman (1972) and Noman’s Land (1985), Noman is the embodiment of myth, MacEwen’s muse, and the paradoxical nature of reality. He combines opposites in dynamic tension: reality and imagination, death and birth/rebirth, past and future, destruction and creation (Bartley, Invocations 87–88). In both her fiction and poetry, Canada becomes “Kanada,” a land of banal physical reality with its cities, its materialism, and its unwillingness to accommodate the spiritual and mystical as represented by myth. As Stephen Slemon says, “Gwendolyn MacEwen’s Noman stories allegorise the New World myth of a country without mythology or memory” (“Monuments of Empire” 12). In “Noman,” the title character’s name, given to him by his lover Kali, is the one that Odysseus uses to fool the Cyclops in order to escape Polyphemus’s cave. He is both destroyer and creator; Jan Bartley notes Kali’s name would make him Shiva (101). He brings energy, mystery, and the union of opposites to Kanada, which is embodied by the couple he meets and names—Jubelas and Omphale, offering more mythological allusions—and metafictionally he is MacEwen’s own guide through the symbolic “archway” that leads to a spiritual Otherworld at Kingsmere, the estate of the late Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. For MacEwen, myth inspires her and reinvigorates the half-dead material world we inhabit. MacEwen’s first novel, Julian the Magician (1963), is also mythopoeic, but whether it is fantastic is open to question. The novel tells the story of a wandering nineteenth-century magician. Julian has studied under an alchemist but is more interested in “human alchemy,” that is, the changes that take place not in material substances but in human minds. In his search for enlightenment and efforts to bring magic and mystery to his audiences, he begins to see himself as (or as another) Christ. Critics have noted the novel’s roots in mystical thought, not just Gnosticism but also MacEwen’s studies in the Kabbalah and alchemy (e.g., Gose, Bartley). Julian is determined to have his life parallel Christ’s, even to the point of seeking to be crucified. Is he mad, or does he really possess magical powers? On one hand, he does appear to perform miracles; like Christ, he cures a blind man and seems to turn water into wine at a wedding. On the other hand, there are possible rational explanations for these acts. We are never certain what is truth and what is illusion. In “The Second Coming of Julian the Magician” (1970), Julian does resurrect, reappearing on a Ferris wheel at a carnival in a North American city. He certainly seems to do real magic, including the destruction of the Machine at the heart of modern, urban life, yet he tells the reader, “remember that the Master of Illusions doesn’t make you believe what he wishes, but what you wish. Remember that all this was not my dream, but yours” (74). Further complicating our reading of MacEwen’s work is that she believed mental realities were also real, and there were truths that

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transcended the physical and much that could only be grasped by means other than through reason. For her, art, like magic, existed on the same knife-edge between reality and illusion, and depended on the same principle, the spectacular suspension of logic . . . logic was the strait-jacket that she did not believe in . . . for her what the world called illusion was the more real. (Sullivan 84) Again, an author’s mystical beliefs make it difficult to describe as fantasy texts that are grounded in those beliefs simply because our culture rejects the reality of anything that smacks of the supernatural. Another poet who wrote mythopoeic fantasies was P. K. Page (1916–2010). Her novel The Sun and the Moon (1944) is about a girl born during a solar eclipse, and the novel is constructed on a pattern of archetypal binaries: sun/moon, rational/irrational or creative, black/white, male/female, and so on. Kristin Lothrop is empathetic and something of an identity vampire, becoming the things and people she encounters. Thus, like a human moon, she absorbs and ref lects others’ light and selves. She meets and marries an artist—Carl Bridges, who represents her “sun”—despite her fear ( justified, as it turns out) that she will suck the creative spirit from him. Kristin symbolizes the artist/poet herself: someone who must connect to the universe but not lose her separateness if she is to make art out of it (see esp. pp. 37–38). According to Michèle Rackham Hall, in the novel “Page allegorizes an internal creative conf lict between a masculine, impersonal, geometric aesthetic and a feminine, personal, biomorphic aesthetic” (32). Page’s short story “Unless the Eye Catch Fire” (1979) is an apocalyptic tale in which the Earth mysteriously begins to heat up. While the heat kills, it also causes—for those who are sensitive enough—kaleidoscopic visions representing spiritual enlightenment and creative power. As Farouk Mitha explains, the story is enriched with alchemical symbolism representing transformation through burning (123)

Fantasy and Horror Some of the most important innovations by Canadian authors during the period were in fantasy. As discussed earlier, high fantasy was dominated by tales grounded in Celtic or Nordic lore and featuring pseudo-medieval settings. Among the Canadian authors who wrote high fantasy during the 1970s was Howard E. Day (1951–1982), also known as Gene Day. He was the editor of the Canadian small-press magazine, Dark Fantasy: The Magazine of Underground Creators (1972–1980) and published stories in his own and other smallpress magazines. He created a Conan-like sword and sorcery hero Stromm Hel Dunn. Galad Elf landsson (1951–) wrote stories for various fanzines and

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other periodicals, including Dark Fantasy, as well as the novel The Black Wolf (1979). Elf landsson was a member of a group of fantasy writers in Ottawa, one of whom was Charles R. Saunders (1946–). Saunders was unhappy with the Eurocentric nature of contemporary high fantasy and the fact that heroes (and superheroes in comic books) were largely if not exclusively white. In response, and inspired by a trip he took to Africa, he created a fantasy hero living in Nyumbani, an alternate Africa: Imaro, the “Black Conan.” As the son of an unknown father, Imaro is never fully accepted by his people, the Ilyassai, and spends much of the novels and stories about him seeking a home and trying to protect the woman he loves. He battles enemies both within his tribe and beyond and must fight natural beasts—particularly the lion he must defeat to become a true warrior—and sorcerers, monsters, and evil spirits, all taken from African myths. Imaro’s strength, courage, and resilience in the face of evil magic make him a true fantasy hero, while he and his setting represent a rare departure from the conventions of sword and sorcery. Generally speaking, however, most Canadian fantasy authors set their works in the primary world and involved encounters with ghosts, mythological or other beasts, or impossible occurrences. Common themes include haunting and possession. For example, in Undine (1964) by Phyllis Brett Young (1914–1996), Miranda is being taken over by her husband’s late first wife and must fight to preserve her identity. An undine is a kind of water-nymph/mermaid, and in a fairy tale based on the figure one falls in love with a knight and hides her identity to marry him. As in “The Little Mermaid,” things end tragically once she reveals her true self, as he falls in love with a mortal woman. In Young’s novel, Undine seems to have been a water-nymph who was most at home in a pool on her wealthy husband’s land and only wore blue garments. The novel features many Gothic tropes: a lone female protagonist beset by mysteries and frightening people and events, a strange Old House (as it is named), and even storms. Similarly, the title story of H. R Percy’s (1920–1996) collection The Timeless Island and Other Stories (1960) is about James Cameron McLeod, a man possessed by the spirit of a sailor who abandoned his lover; over a century later, her body and spirit remain restless until the sailor rejoins her via McLeod’s body. Brian Moore (1921–1999) often portrays the powerful presence of the past in his characters’ lives. They are haunted by their pasts, and Moore literalizes the theme in Fergus (1970), where the ghost of Fergus’s father truly does haunt him. On the other hand, in The Great Victorian Collection (1975), history professor Anthony Maloney, now divorced, lonely, and in despair, dreams of a treasure of Victorian antiques and wakes up to find that what he has imagined has materialized in the parking lot outside his motel room. Here, the past literally appears, to lend magic to his existence. Unfortunately, the titular collection is swallowed up by American consumer culture; a simulation of the collection, the Great Victorian Village, is built and gets mistaken for the real thing, to Anthony’s despair.

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These texts are frequently designed to create Gothic terror; other fantasy stories and novels published at the time are horror fiction: tales of demons and monsters found in real contemporary settings, often in Canada. For example, Jon Ruddy wrote three horror novels set in Ontario: The Running Man (1976), The Rosedale Horror (1980), and the Dracula novel The Bargain (1990). In The Running Man, a reporter named Jake Willoughby rents a farmhouse in the Ontario countryside and sees the ghost of Reverend John Smith (nicknamed by locals the Running Man) in the cellar. Through much of the novel Jake is under threat from the cult that one of Smith’s descendants has founded. The Pyx (1959) by John Buell (1927–2013) seems to be a standard murder mystery involving the killing of a prostitute until the detective in charge, Henderson, realizes that the murderer has been possessed by the Devil. The novel was adapted into a film in 1973. There was Gothic fiction in French Canada, too, often taking a distinct approach in the context of the Quiet Revolution as it attacks Catholicism, either seriously or satirically. The oppressive, Church-dominated nature of Québec society inspired tales featuring psychological damage from repression of the passions, and parodies, perversions, and inversions of Catholic rituals. Some are more surrealist than fantasy or horror in a conventional sense, with weird, seemingly random events rather than magical creatures and “monsters” as usually seen in intrusive fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror fiction. Two of the province’s most celebrated authors, Marie-Claire Blais (1939–) and Anne Hébert (1916–2000), wrote such works. Blais’s La belle bête (1959; translated as Mad Shadows in 1960) deals with a single obsessive family and themes of incest, jealousy, and murder as the mother, Louise, loves her son Patrice for his beauty and hates her daughter Isabelle-Marie for her ugliness. The novel is not social realist but rather symbolic: the characters are embodiments of archetypes drawn from myths and fairy tales. Indeed, as critics have said, the novel is based on “Cinderella,” the myths of Narcissus and Oedipus, and—as its French title suggests—“Beauty and the Beast” (La Belle et la Bête). In the characters’ violent feelings and actions, and in the narrative’s inversions of traditional tales, the text symbolizes the pathological condition of the entire province under the rule of the priests. Hébert’s Les Enfants du sabbat (1975; translated as Children of the Black Sabbath in 1977) is about a nun who has visions and who lives simultaneously in the past and present, childhood and adulthood, a cabin in the woods and a convent in Québec City. She alternates between her parents’ Satanic rituals pulling her toward the sensual, irrational, and earthly and the oppressive Catholic rituals (and nun’s habit) of the present. Sister Julie’s mother Philomène is a witch and her father Adélard is apparently the Devil himself. Julie is a witch, too, through the matrilinear line going back to the seventeenth century. Incest, violence, and sensuality dominate her upbringing, but her most important role in the convent is to expose the seven deadly sins beneath the devout façade of the women and men around her. Hébert establishes parallels between cabin

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and convent, black Sabbath and communion, Devil worshippers and “saintly” hypocrites, to show that these apparent opposites are anything but. If there is a true evil, it is entrapment. L’emmanuscrit de la mère morte (1972) by French-born Emmanuel Cocke (1945–1973) is a kind of reverse or parallel Genesis story as Dieuble (a combination of the French words for God and Devil) seeks to recreate the world in his own image.

Magic Realism and Surrealism Two closely related forms of literature, magic realism and surrealism, may be considered fantasy, but as we have seen, such distinctions sometimes cannot be easily applied. To review the difference: magic realist texts are set in the primary world but violate our understanding of “reality” through the occasional intrusion of magical and improbable elements, and those elements are accepted as normal by the characters. Surrealist texts are set in a secondary world where bizarre events and characters are commonplace and, again, fully accepted. Authors of surrealist fiction seek to create a dream-like sense, as nonrational narratives—incidents occurring without clear cause and effect—and features like metamorphosis and strange juxtapositions abound, attracting no surprise from the narrator and/or protagonist. What makes these modes difficult to categorize is that they are not purely fantastic but seek to reveal aspects of generally accepted reality that the authors consider to be just as real. “Surrealism” does not mean “non-realism” but rather “over” or “beyond” realism; it is intended to depict and evoke a deeper, higher, or fundamental reality grounded in the subconscious or collective unconscious. In both magic realism and surrealism, the assumption is that the marvellous is very much a part of the real world, even if it is largely ignored or dismissed. Surrealism’s chief spokesperson and theorist was André Breton, a French author who was heavily inf luenced by the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Breton believed that the truest source of art was the subconscious. At first he favoured “automatic writing,” but then promoted carefully crafted writing that created an impression of the archetypal. British Columbia was the home of an early interest in literary surrealism, represented by a group called the “Neo-Surrealist Research Foundation” in Vancouver. It published a literary magazine titled Limbo (1964–1967?), edited by Murray Morton, that sought to publish surrealist literature. Two writers moved to British Columbia from elsewhere in the 1960s to work in the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing program: J. Michael Yates (1938–2019) from the United States and Michael Bullock (1918–2008) from England. Yates was inf luenced by Latin American magic realism and American postmodernism, while Bullock was interested in European surrealism and its British practitioners, notably J. G. Ballard. The University of British Columbia provided the institutional support for the rise of a “school” of surrealist and

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magic realist writing, led by Yates and Bullock and including Andreas Schroeder (1946–) and Rikki Ducornet (1943–). These authors produced strange texts exploring states of mind and being; the action is frequently that of a journey inward, into the subconscious, where the narrator or main character meets and accommodates an Other: the female principle (anima), nature, the imagination, and so on. Surrealist texts involve such elements as metamorphosis, as figures change radically, often between animal and human, and juxtaposition, as vivid images are yoked together. The stories operate on dream logic rather than rational cause and effect, and they are highly symbolic. In Bullock’s “Roditi” (1979), for example, as the title character walks vegetation sprouts from his footprints. His head is literally “in the clouds” (22). He eventually meets a woman who names herself Ombra (34), which means “shadow”; she is a manifestation of Bullock’s running female figure, Noire, the anima figure. Thanks to her, Roditi is able to return home to his garden: his “odyssey” (35) is complete because he is now complete. He goes along with every twist and “random” event, accepting everything he experiences without amazement. Among Bullock’s story collections are Sixteen Stories As They Happened (1969), Green Beginning Black Ending (1971), The Man with Flowers Through His Hands (1985), and The Invulnerable Ovoid Aura and Other Stories (1992). Yates’s “The Passage of Sono Nis” (1968) and Schroeder’s “The Roller Rink” (1972) are similar. In the first, the narrator leaves his apartment building to find that his street is clogged with an endless number of runners, and he joins the f low. “The Roller Rink” is about precisely that, as the narrator discovers a roller rink in which people roller-skate non-stop. The story’s structure also forms a loop. Both stories portray impossible constant motion that takes on symbolic meaning, and their narrators are equally unfazed by the strangeness of the unceasing pointless movement they encounter and participate in. As for magic realism, Jack Hodgins’s (1938–) “The Plague Children” (1979) is also about a runner, but in this case it is one individual running into and through a small town, Waterville. He is the harbinger of a wave of invaders from all around the world picking magic mushrooms on the hobby farms of this community. The result is a war between the static, settled older residents and the young people displacing them. The story is firmly set in the real world of British Columbia but builds from a fairly realistic paranoia about the lone stranger into a hyperbolic parable about aging and fear of change. Hodgins wrote other magic realist texts, notably the novels The Invention of the World (1977) and The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne (1979), which are also set in a British Columbia that is full of marvels. In the first, Donal Keneally, like Tay John, is a messianic figure who has a legendary birth, and founds (“invents”) a utopian community on Vancouver Island. He and his followers create myths, but these are acts of invention rather than true creation, meaning that they are deceptive. Nevertheless, the novel portrays a world in which reality and the realm of the imagination exist side-by-side.

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Another example is Lesley Choyce’s (1951–) “Buddha at the Laundromat” (1982), which is about precisely what the title says. The story is set in a typical Nova Scotia laundromat, and Buddha is wearing only an old army blanket as he waits for his robe to go through the “medium-warm cycle. No soap” (25). Christ later pulls up in a car with mechanical problems. Realistic details about the laundromat, its owners, and its facilities contrast with the fantastic nature of the tale itself. There is no space here to do justice to the French-Canadian form of magic realism, called le fantastique. The genre grew out of folk tales, European and Québécois surrealism, and avant-garde modes, and often involves characters undergoing strange experiences in urban settings, particularly Montréal. Like other forms of the fantastic in Québec, le fantastique is an expression of artistic, cultural, and political liberation, challenging fictional conventions and logical, systematic thought in favour of ostensible randomness, irrationality, exploration of interior states and spaces, and scientifically implausible events. Tales of le fantastique are exercises in imagination and fabulation set against the backdrop of identifiable locales, especially those places where such events seem entirely out of place and yet wholly appropriate. During the 1960s, as part of the literary expression of the Quiet Revolution, authors like Michel Tremblay (1942–) and Jacques Ferron wrote weird tales that sometimes defied categorization. Tremblay’s Contes pour buveurs attardés (1966; translated in 1977 as Stories for Late Night Drinkers) contains fables and Gothic horror stories (like “L’Oeil de l’idole,” translated as “The Eye of the Idol”). In his preface to a later French edition, Tremblay says that he wrote the stories as a young gay man trying to escape real life, which in that place at that time had little room for homosexuality. He cites among his inf luences Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Ferron’s contes (that is, tales), published in various collections and sometimes translated, are surrealist fables, mythopoeic fiction (see earlier), and religious fantasy. His stories and novels like Papa Boss (1966) are based on local legends and folktales and on Christian myths. Other important authors of le fantastique are Claire de Lamirande (1929–2009), Louis-Philippe Hébert (1946–), Pierre Chatillon (1939–), Michel Bélil, André Carpentier (1947–; see esp. Rue Saint Denis [1978]), François Barcelo (1941–), Marie-José Thériault (1945–), and Claire Dé (1953–). Unfortunately, few of their works have been translated.9

Poetry and Drama As one might expect, it is difficult to find much science fiction and fantasy poetry and drama during the period, although that is not to say it was not there. However, there were some prominent examples. Phyllis Gotlieb’s science fiction poetry collection Doctor Umlaut’s Earthly Kingdom appeared in 1974, but she had already published individual poems with SF themes, like “Seeing Eye” (1972). Poems with science fictional and mythological/fantasy

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elements appeared often during the 1960s, especially by such mythopoeic poets as Margaret Atwood and Gwendolyn MacEwen.10 As for plays, given the dominance of foreign theatre companies and plays on Canadian stages before the late 1960s, it was difficult for Canadian dramatists to get their voices heard at all, let alone in science fiction and fantasy. Not surprisingly, the science fiction plays of this period frequently dealt with the dangerous implications of advanced technology, like French-Canadian Robert Gurik’s (1932–) dystopian API 2967 (1967), a retelling of the story of Genesis. The setting is a controlled and antiseptic society whose motto is Rien ne vaut la vie (“nothing is worth life” or “life is worth nothing”). A scientist and a young woman find their world disrupted—and revived—with the discovery of a strange object from the distant past: an apple. They are suddenly overwhelmed by emotions and desires. Speak for Life (1965) by Tom Crothers and John Madden is set in a post-nuclearholocaust Ontario where survivors go before a selection committee seeking the right to be part of a new society. In Michael Jacot’s The Man with the Red Hat (1957), survivors of the Third World War live in a totalitarian dystopia. John Madden wrote Adam Malt Defrosted (1966), which is set in 2367 AD and, as the title implies, is about cryogenics. Lawrence Russell wrote a number of surrealist plays during the period. Playwrights had one important outlet during the 1950s and beyond: the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). The CBC would occasionally broadcast SF programs on radio, and some radio plays by Canadians were presented. Canadian playwrights adapted foreign authors’ works for Mystery Theatre (1966–1968), some of them fantastic, and other programs featured fully original works in the fantastic as well. Hugh A. D. Spencer has done a great deal of research on radio drama and other media, but unfortunately it is as yet unpublished.

Book and Magazine Publishing By and large, Canadian authors wishing to publish science fiction and fantasy had a difficult time finding Canadian publishers and magazine editors. Most of the science fiction novels discussed in this chapter were published by American and British publishers, particularly the works of “immigrants” like Spider Robinson, Michael G. Coney, and Donald Kingsbury, but also Phyllis Gotlieb, who was able to publish her poetry but not her science fiction in Canada. The exceptions were political, utopian, and dystopian fiction: for example, Robert Green’s The Great Leap Backward was published by Canada’s top publisher, McClelland and Stewart, and H.  A. Hargreaves’s North by 2000 was released by Peter Martin. Given its focus on local issues and more “serious” themes, the political science fiction that appeared during the period was almost exclusively published in Canada. Across Canada during the 1960s, small literary presses arose to publish experimental, magic realist, and surrealist texts. J. Michael Yates founded Sono Nis Press, named after his (literally) running character in

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1968 to publish his own and others’ surrealist fiction and poetry. Glynn Davies founded Aya Press (later Mercury Press) in Toronto in 1978 and published Rikki Ducornet’s The Butcher’s Tales in 1980. There were some efforts to publish Canadian science fiction and fantasy magazines during the postwar period. We have already encountered Howard E. Day’s Dark Fantasy. Among the most prominent periodicals was Riverside Quarterly, which was edited by Leland Sapiro and appeared from 1964 to 1995. It started out as Inside Science Fiction (1953–1963), published by Ron Smith and then Jon White; the magazine published some fiction, but then developed into an academically serious publication. Many other fanzines appeared, including Susan and Michael Glicksohn’s Energumen (1970–1973), Garth Spencer’s Maple Leaf Rag (1983–1987), and BCSFAzine (1971–). Two other fiction magazines merit attention. Copper Toadstool was edited by Steven Dale Hammell in Richmond, BC, from 1976 to 1979, and published stories by John Bell, Howard E. Day, Charles de Lint, and Galad Elf landsson. The irregularly published Stardust: The Canadian SF Magazine (1975–1981) was a semi-professional magazine edited in Toronto by Forrest Fusco. Among the authors who appeared in it was Phyllis Gotlieb. Canadian Fiction Magazine was founded by Janie Kennon and R. W. Stedingh, students at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Creative Writing; on its editorial board were J. Michael Yates and Michael Bullock. From its beginnings, it provided a venue for the publication of surrealist and magic realist fiction. Stedingh was sole editor from 1972 to 1975, when Geoff Hancock, who had studied at UBC and shared his predecessors interest in experimental and surrealist fiction, replaced him until the magazine’s run ended in 2000. A few comments should be made on fan activity during the period. Fan organizations developed in various regions, notably in central Canada, Alberta, and British Columbia. One active fan group was the Ontario Science Fiction Club, or OSFiC (variously capitalized), founded in 1967 by Peter Gill, Mike Glicksohn, Maureen Bourns, and John Mansfield (who would later be active in Manitoba fandom). Its Toronto branch held meetings in a bookstore run by “Capt’n” George Henderson, who would publish his own fanzines, like Captain George’s Penny Dreadful. The British Columbia Science Fiction Association (BCSFA), which originated at the University of British Columbia, remained highly active and founded the first annual Canadian convention, VCON or V-Con, in Vancouver in 1971.

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction Animal fantasy continued to be important in children’s fiction throughout the first part of the twentieth century. In 1961, Sheila Burnford (1918–1984) published The Incredible Journey, perhaps the best-known animal fantasy in English Canada, although Burnford has said she did not intend it to be a children’s

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book. In it, three sentient pets, two dogs and a cat, seek their owners across three hundred miles of northern Ontario. Tolkienesque quest fantasy novels set in the Canadian wilderness began to appear during the 1950s, such as the works of Catherine Anthony Clark (e.g., The Golden Pine Cone [1950]). Meanwhile, in French Canada, compilations of Québécois fairy tales and legends for children were published during the 1940s and 1950s (Ketterer 35–36). In both linguistic groups, non-Indigenous children’s authors were inspired by Indigenous myths and legends, particularly the figure of the cannibalistic Windigo. As for science fiction, one could include Superman, co-created in 1938 by Canadian-born Joe Shuster. Occasional works were published during the 1950s featuring space and deep-sea adventures (Ketterer 91). It was in the 1960s, however, that the great f lowering of children’s fantastic literature began, and again much of the early activity was in Québec. There were original fantasies for youth, some derived from earlier non-Canadian works like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le petit prince (as The Little Prince 1943; for titles see Ketterer 36). Then came Suzanne Martel and her Quatre Montréalais en l’an 3000 (see the previous chapter), followed by Titralak, cadet de l’espace (1974) and Nos amis robots (1981), which was translated as Robot Alert in 1985. The Cold War inspired francophone SF about international conf lict. Before publishing his post-apocalyptic Les tours de Babylone, Maurice Gagnon wrote children’s novels about an organization known as Unipax, which means “universal peace,” and Yves Thériault wrote young adult novels about Volpec, a future spy. Louis Sutal wrote books like the space adventure Panne dans l’espace [Breakdown in Space] (1977), about an Earth ship forced to land on an alien planet. In English Canada, writers of children’s books like Robert N. Munsch (1945–), Joan Clark (1934–), and Janet Lunn (1928–2017) would occasionally write fantasies, while authors known mainly for their adult fiction, like Margaret Laurence and Mordecai Richler (1931–2001), made forays into children’s literature. Richler’s Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1975) was later made into a film and then a television series. Ruth Nichols (1948–) wrote portal fantasies like A Walk out of the World (1969) and The Marrow of the World (1972) in which protagonists enter secondary worlds and fight the forces of evil. Fantasy novels based on Arthurian legends or with medieval settings include Constance Hieatt’s The Sword and the Grail (1972) and Muriel Whitaker’s Pernilla in the Perilous Forest (1979). Betty Lambert (1933–1983) wrote a science fiction play for children, The Riddle Machine (1974), about two alien children who visit the Earth with a robot.

Notes 1 It was, as some of the authors explicitly declared, the fantastic literature equivalent of rock music and sometimes alluded to contemporary music directly or through its form.

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2 See the work of Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, and Fritz Leiber (with his Faf hrd and the Gray Mouser series). 3 See also Henry Kuttner’s Baldy novels and stories and John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (1955). 4 A wabeno is an Ojibway shaman. 5 See the homogenous inhabitants of the planets in the Star Trek universe. 6 In fact, Corriveau and Martel collaborated on creating an imaginary world called Gotal, which, as Trudel explains, is based on colonial India and is under the control of a fictional European country, Sarénie (66). 7 In truth, Tête Jaune was a historical figure, a guide for Hudson’s Bay Company traders in the early nineteenth century. 8 15 Canadian Poets, edited by Gary Geddes and Phyllis Bruce, Oxford UP, 1970, p. 280. 9 See samples of their works in translation in TesseractsQ , Invisible Fictions: Contemporary Stories from Québec, and Intimate Strangers: New Stories from Quebec, anthologies that will be discussed in the next chapter. 10 Three of Gotlieb’s SF poems and poems by Atwood, Judith Merril, and others were reprinted in the first anthology of Canadian science fiction and fantasy, John Robert Colombo’s Other Canadas (see the following chapter).

References Adams, Ian. The Trudeau Papers. McClelland and Stewart, 1971. Ballem, John. The Judas Conspiracy. Musson Book Company, 1976. Barzman, Ben. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960. Benoit, Jacques. The Princes. Translated by David Lobdell, Oberon Press, 1977. Bersianik, Louky. The Euguelionne: A Triptych. Translated by G. Denis et al Press Porcépic, 1981. Blais, Marie-Claire. Mad Shadows. Translated by Merloyd Lawrence, McClelland and Stewart, 1960. Buell, John. The Pyx. Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1959. Bullock, Michael. Green Beginning Black Ending: Fables. Sono Nis Press, 1971. ———. The Invulnerable Ovoid Aura and Other Stories. Third Eye, 1992. ———. The Man with Flowers Through His Hands. Third Eye, 1985. ———. “Roditi.” Invulnerable Ovoid, pp. 22–35. ———. Sixteen Stories As They Happened. Sono Nis Press, 1969. Cocke, Emmanuel. L’emmanuscrit de la mère morte. Éditions du jour, 1972. Cohen, Matt. The Colours of War. McClelland and Stewart, 1977. Colombo, John Robert, editor. Other Canadas: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979. Corriveau, Monique. Compagnon du soleil: 1.L’oiseau du feu; 2. La lune noire; 3. Le temps des chats. Fides, 1976. Crothers, Tom, and John Madden. Speak for Life: A Play in Three Acts. Crothers, 1965. Ducornet, Rikki. The Butcher’s Tales. Aya Press, 1980. Elf landsson, Galad. The Black Wolf. Donald M. Grant, 1979. Ferron, Jacques. Tales from the Uncertain Country. Translated by Betty Bednarski, Anansi, 1972. ———. “The Sirens.” Tales, pp. 36–38. ———. “Ulysses.” Tales, pp. 33–35. Franklin, Stephen. Knowledge Park. McClelland and Stewart, 1972. Gotlieb, Phyllis. Birthstones. Red Deer Press, 2007. ———. Blue Apes. Tesseract Books, 1995.

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———. Doctor Umlaut’s Earthly Kingdom. Calliope Press, 1974. ———. Emperor, Swords, Pentacles. Ace, 1982. ———. Flesh and Gold. Tor, 1998. ———. Heart of Red Iron. St. Martin’s Press, 1989. ———. A Judgment of Dragons. Berkley Books, 1980. ———. The Kingdom of the Cats. Ace, 1985. ———. “The Military Hospital.” Blue Apes, pp. 86–104. ———. O Master Caliban!. Harper & Row, 1976. ———. “Tauf Aleph.” Blue Apes, pp. 26–52. ———. Violent Stars. Tor, 1999. Green, Robert. The Great Leap Backward. McClelland and Stewart, 1968. Gurik, Robert. Api 2967 et La Palissade. Leméac, 1971. Hargreaves, H. A. North by 2000: A Collection of Canadian Science Fiction. Peter Martin, 1975. ———. North by 2000+. Five Rivers, 2012. Heaps, Leo. The Quebec Plot. Peter Davies, 1978. Hébert, Anne. Children of the Black Sabbath. Translated by Carol Dunlop-Hébert, Paperjacks, 1977. ———. Heloïse. Translated by Sheila Fischman, Stoddart, 1982. Heine, William C. The Last Canadian. Simon & Schuster, 1974. Hodgins, Jack. The Barclay Family Theatre. Macmillan, 1981. ———. The Invention of the World. Macmillan, 1977. ———. “The Plague Children.” Barclay Family Theatre, pp. 262–79. ———. The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne: or, A Word or Two on Those Port Annie Miracles. Macmillan, 1979. Hood, Hugh. “After the Sirens.” Colombo, Other Canadas, pp. 151–60. Jacot, Michael. The Man with the Red Hat. Jacot, 1957. Jakober, Marie. The Mind-Gods. Macmillan, 1976. Laurence, Margaret. “A Queen in Thebes.” Colombo, Other Canadas, pp. 160–71. MacEwen, Gwendolyn. Julian the Magician. Macmillan, 1963. ———. Noman. Oberon Press, 1972. ———. Noman’s Land. Coach House Press, 1985. ———. “The Second Coming of Julian the Magician.” Noman, pp. 55–75. MacLennan, Hugh. Voices in Time. St. Martin’s Press, 1980. Mantley, John. The Twenty-Seventh Day. Michael Joseph, 1956. Martel, Suzanne. The City Under Ground. Translated by Norah Smaridge, Douglas & McIntyre, 1982. ———. Titralak, cadet de l’espace. Héritage, 1974. Merril, Judith. Daughters of Earth: Three Novels. Gollancz, 1968. ———. Daughters of Earth and Other Stories. McClelland and Stewart, 1985. ———. Shadow on the Hearth. Doubleday, 1950. ———. “That Only a Mother.” Daughters of Earth and Other Stories, pp. 338–49. ———, editor. England Swings SF. Doubleday, 1968. Moore, Brian. Fergus. McClelland and Stewart, 1970. ———. The Great Victorian Collection. McClelland and Stewart, 1975. O’Hagan, Howard. Tay John. Laidlaw and Laidlaw, 1939. O’Neil, Jean. Giriki et le prince de Quécan. Libre expression, 1982. Page, P. K. A Kind of Fiction. Porcupine’s Quill, 2001. ———. The Sun and the Moon. The Sun and the Moon and Other Fictions, House of Anansi Press, 1973, pp. 1–137.

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———. “Unless the Eye Catch Fire.” A Kind of Fiction, pp. 159–84. Pape, Gordon, and Tony Aspler. Chain Reaction. Viking Press, 1978. Percy, H. R. The Timeless Island and Other Stories. Ryerson Press, 1960. ———. “The Timeless Island.” Timeless Island, pp. 104–23. Powe, Bruce Allen. Killing Ground: The Canadian Civil War. Peter Martin, 1968. Robinson, Spider. Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. Ace, 1977. ———. Deathkiller. Baen, 1996. ———. Melancholy Elephants. Penguin, 1984. ———. Mindkiller. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982. ———. Telempath. Berkley, 1976. ———. Time Pressure. Ace, 1987. ———. Time Travellers Strictly Cash. Ace, 1981. ———, and Jeanne Robinson. Stardance. Dial Press, 1979. Rohmer, Richard. Exodus/UK. McClelland and Stewart, 1975. ———. Exxoneration. McClelland and Stewart, 1974. ———. Separation. McClelland and Stewart, 1976. ———. Separation Two. McClelland and Stewart, 1981. ———. Ultimatum. Clarke, Irwin, 1973. Ross, Alexander. “The Day Quebec Quit Canada . . .” Maclean’s Magazine, Dec. 1967, pp. 16–17, 80–84. Ruddy, Jon. The Bargain. Knightsbridge, 1990. ———. The Rosedale Horror. Paperjacks, 1980. ———. The Running Man. General Publishing Company, 1976. Ryan, Thomas J. The Adolescence of P-1. Baen, 1977. Schroeder, Andreas. The Late Man and Other Stories. Sono Nis Press, 1972. ———. “The Roller Rink.” Late Man, pp. 43–52. Simard, Jean. “Un Abri.” 13 Récits. HMH, 1964, pp. 33–55. Somcynsky, Jean François ( Jean François Somain). Le diable du Mahani. Pierre Tisseyre, 1978. ———. Les visiteurs du pôle Nord. Pierre Tisseyre, 1987. Tétreau, Jean. Les nomades. Éditions du jour, 1967. Thériault, Yves. “Akua Nuten.” Translated by Howard Roiter, Colombo, Other Canadas, pp. 171–79. ———. Si la bombe m’était contée. Éditions du jour, 1962. Tremblay, Michel. Stories for Late Night Drinkers. Translated by Michael Bullock, Intermedia, 1977. Walker, David H. The Lord’s Pink Ocean. Houghton Miff lin, 1972. Watson, Patrick. Alter Ego. Lester and Orpen, 1978. Watson, Sheila. The Double Hook. McClelland and Stewart, 2008. ———. Five Stories. Coach House, 1984. Weintraub, William. The Underdogs. McClelland and Stewart, 1979. Willer, Jim. Paramind. McClelland and Stewart, 1973. Wyl, Jean-Michel. Québec Banana State. Editions Beauchemin, 1978. Yates, J. Michael. The Abstract Beast. Sono Nis Press, 1971. ———. Fazes in Elsewhen: New and Selected Fiction. Intermedia, 1976. ———. “The Passage of Sono Nis.” Fazes in Elsewhen, pp. 13–18. Young, Phyllis Brett. Undine. Longmans, 1964.

5 THE FLOWERING

During the 1980s and 1990s, Canadian fantastic literature truly came into its own, with an unprecedented burst of activity in both its writing and publishing. No literary phenomenon like this can happen without individual and institutional support. An institution in this case can be as small as a group of writers gathering to discuss their work or as big as a government, and the literary institution of book and magazine publishing can play a key role. After a brief look at the historical context for what took place, we will look at the more specific factors that contributed to what many have called the “f lowering” of Canadian fantastic fiction after 1979.

Historical Context Internationally, the most important event to take place during the period was the collapse of the Soviet Union and its alliance, the Warsaw Pact. Tensions between the Western and Eastern European powers had increased with the election in 1980 of Ronald Reagan as president of the United States. After the détente of the 1970s, Reagan promised to build a missile defense system— the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), nicknamed Star Wars—that would have rendered the principle of mutually assured destruction (MAD) null and void. He also spoke of a “winnable” nuclear war involving the limited use of shortrange missiles. Fears of a planned or accidental nuclear war revived, leading to the publication of new apocalyptic science fiction works about a nuclear catastrophe that some had begun to consider obsolete. Also, Reagan won election thanks in large part to a growing right-wing Evangelical political movement, led by Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority organization, which sought to reverse

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such feminist policies as the gaining of abortion rights and workplace equality in favour of more traditional gender roles and values. The Soviet Union, however, was suffering the consequences of its own economic and political systems. In 1989, under the leadership of Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union democratized somewhat; countries in the Warsaw Pact left the bloc, the Berlin Wall came down, and eventually the Soviet Union broke apart into its component nations of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and many others. The end of the Cold War left authors of speculative fiction free to consider other possible threats to human existence, like environmental degradation. In 1979, a revolution broke out in Iran; the Shah was overthrown and replaced with a theocracy led by Ayatollah Khomeini. The leaders of the revolution enforced strict Islamic law as they saw it and turned the clock back on years of progress toward gender equality. Not long afterward, Iran and Iraq waged a bloody, eight-year war. Elsewhere in Asia, Islamist forces in Afghanistan battled a regime supported by the Soviets, an insurgency that the Soviets were unable to crush and that contributed to Soviet decline. This was also the period of “globalization.” In fact, the world’s economy has almost always been global, to the extent that trade was widespread even in antiquity. What changed was the rise during the latter part of the twentieth century of multinational corporations, companies without clear national bases. As free trade treaties were signed, corporations were more free to move their activities anywhere in the world they wished in order to take advantage of lower wages and weaker regulations. Capital became mobile to an extent never seen before. Some feared that corporations were becoming so powerful they were displacing governments as the shapers of both national and international policies. Many science fiction writers wondered what our society would be like in a future run by private corporations rather than democratically elected (or undemocratic) governments. In Canada, the Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau patriated the Canadian Constitution in 1982, meaning that the legal basis of the country went from being a British law to a Canadian document. All the provinces except Québec, where the Parti Québécois continued to hold power, signed on. When the Parti Québécois took power again in the 1990s, it held another referendum in 1995 and lost by an even smaller margin. Meanwhile, after the energy crisis of the 1970s triggered by the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Trudeau brought in the National Energy Program in 1980. Its goal was to control oil supplies and prices, but it was vehemently opposed by oil-producing provinces like Alberta (which has never forgiven the Liberals for it). In 1988, under the Progressive Conservatives led by Brian Mulroney, Canada signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States that was later expanded to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

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by bringing Mexico into the pact. Throughout this period, Canadian nationalists worried about the country’s political and economic future, especially as American corporations increased their dominance of the Canadian economy.

Scientific and Technological Context The key development during the last decades of the twentieth century was the widespread availability of the personal computer. The first personal computers, including Tandy, Commodore, and Apple models, were sold in the late 1970s, but it was with the IBM PC that the computer revolution really took off. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence was being developed, so that science fictional visions of thinking machines seemed on the cusp of being realized. Warnings about climate change began to sound, and other environmental problems became more visible and more pronounced. The potential for an accident at a nuclear power plant was highlighted by meltdowns at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986. Toxic waste of various sorts polluted rivers and streams; the most infamous incident was during the 1970s at Love Canal, a neighbourhood of Niagara Falls, NY, when the area was found to be dangerously poisonous due to the dumping of toxic chemicals in the canal. The protective ozone layer over the poles was shrinking, leading to an international agreement to ban the aerosol propellant responsible.

Cultural Context One effect of the growing role of computer technology in society was the rise of posthumanist and transhumanist thought. Broadly speaking, theorists began to think about what might follow human-centred philosophy, and transhumanists argued that our increasing connection to technology was not to be feared but was rather the next stage in human evolution. We were becoming cyborgs: cybernetic organisms, that is, beings that combine the biological and technological. As well as technological posthumanism there was biological posthumanism, which involved genetic alteration of the human to satisfy future needs. The period saw numerous relevant cultural developments. For example, during the 1970s the genre of punk music arose in reaction to rock of the previous decades. Punk rejected 1960s optimism, replacing it with nihilism; the typical punk affect involved the wearing of black, radically unconventional hairstyles (like the spiked mohawk), Doc Martens boots, and disdain for any attitude other than despair or anger. Cable television meant the introduction of new and more specialized channels, expanding and fragmenting the media universe. Cell phones, music devices like Walkmans, and other forms of portable technology became pervasive.

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The 1980s and 1990s saw a remarkable diversification of Canadian literature. For years, Canadian literature had been dominated—with some noteworthy exceptions, like Barbadian-Canadian author Austin C. Clarke—by writers of European descent, but new voices began to emerge in far greater numbers: Black, Asian-Canadian, and Indigenous. Joining the always-f luid canon of Canadian literature were Japanese-Canadian novelist Joy Kogawa; ChineseCanadian writers Fred Wah, Wayson Choy, Judy Fong Bates, and Sky Lee; and African-Canadian poets and fiction authors Dionne Brand, Lawrence Hill, and Dany Laferrière. LGBTQ+ and feminist authors also made themselves heard to a far greater degree, challenging the relative homogeneity of what was considered Canadian fiction and poetry. Some of these writers turned to fantastic literature to deal with themes of race and gender, as we will see. As for fantastic literature, the most significant development was the emergence of cyberpunk. As discussed in Chapter 1, cyberpunk’s roots were in the rise of the computer, artificial intelligence, and the internet; film noir of the 1940s; hard-boiled detective fiction; postmodern American literature, particularly the works of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon; hard science fiction; and of course punk music, with its hard edge and dystopian vision of society. Post-apocalyptic fiction and cyberpunk contributed to a marked change in dystopian fiction; earlier, most dystopias had been authoritarian, but now they were primarily anarchic, with characters not so much oppressed by governments as dealing with societies without much law and order at all. With globalization, governments were being replaced by large multinational corporations—known in cyberpunk works as multinats—as the true wielders of power. Because of the growing importance of the computer and artificial intelligence, information rather than physical products or even money would be the most sought-after commodity. With the internet, information was being exchanged freely all around the globe, and that meant it was vulnerable to piracy. Thus, in cyberpunk, the (anti-)heroes are young hackers stealing data by entering the virtual world of “cyberspace,” a consensual hallucination in which databases and the information they contain become visible structures and entities. Such virtual worlds grew out of a postmodern skepticism about the nature of reality, particularly in our media-saturated world. Can we tell what is real and what is a simulacrum of reality any longer? Such questions about the nature of reality in our high-tech, media-ted society had already been raised in science fiction by the New Wave writers like J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. Cyberpunk is generally set in the near future, in cities suffering the effects of environmental damage and filled with trash, and events often take place in the underworld and at night (and it is often raining), with morally ambiguous protagonists being pursued by agents of criminal organizations—all hallmarks of the hard-boiled detective fiction and films that inspired it. Above all, the cyberpunk world is one in which technology enters the body; characters are wired directly into their computers and sport various implants that connect

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them to machines to the point that the line between the biological and the cybernetic blurs entirely. Characters and animals are genetically and/or technologically modified into cyborgs; the humans are posthuman, and sometimes their consciousnesses are uploaded into computers so that they cease to be human by current definitions. There is an assumption in cyberpunk, incidentally, that the body is mere “meat” in which the mind is carried, and the self retains much of its inherent identity even when the mind is digitized. The style is crisp and dense with numerous neologisms and what Gibson calls “superspecificity”: precise details about what objects are made of, brand names, and so forth. Major cyberpunk authors were Bruce Sterling, the movement’s theorist and chief spokesperson (see his introduction to his anthology, Mirrorshades [1986]), Rudy Rucker, Lewis Shiner, Pat Cadigan, and of course the writer seen as the leading figure in the genre, William Gibson. The cyberpunk movement was soon followed by the post-cyberpunks of the 1990s, led by Neal Stephenson, who both employed and parodied the techniques of the cyberpunks. Another genre to arise was the New Space Opera. Like the space opera of the pulp magazines, the New Space Opera is set in the far future and across vast swaths of outer space. Inf luenced by cyberpunk, it features advanced biological and cybernetic technology, with greater melding of the human and the machine and well-developed alien species and worlds. Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley, and Ann Leckie are among the most important practitioners, and so is Canadian Karl Schroeder. Such works involve space travel and intrigue, but with stronger characterization and more interest in broader themes, especially the social effects of technology. There was also a renaissance in hard science fiction, notably the works of the “Gregs”: Greg Bear, Greg Egan, and Gregory Benford. Major changes were taking place in fantasy as well. Female authors came to prominence to an unprecedented degree, with Lois McMaster Bujold, Mercedes Lackey, and Robin Hobb publishing numerous novels and stories. Much of the work was high fantasy: immersive fantasy set in quasi-medieval secondary worlds. By contrast, Emma Bull was one of the authors who introduced a new genre, urban fantasy, sharing the role of pioneer with one of Canada’s most important fantasists, Charles de Lint. China Mieville and others, inspired by cyberpunk and the Gormenghast novels of Mervyn Peake, inaugurated the “New Weird”: fantasy without the elves, wizards, and romance and quest plots of high fantasy, often with anti-heroes and a dark mood and designed to blur the conventional boundary between science fiction and fantasy. For example, in Mieville’s work magic is a commodity to be “mined” like any other resource. The period also saw the rise of dark fantasy, led by Anne Rice, as “monsters” like vampires and werewolves became less horrific and frightening and more morally nuanced. These beings did not choose to be what tradition labels monsters, and in many cases despise being compelled—by the need to feed or by

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instinct—to harm others. Meanwhile, horror continued to be popular among authors and readers alike, some of it body horror involving much blood and gore.

Planting the Seeds The f lowering of the 1980s was the product of a number of developments during the 1970s. Individuals and groups interested in science fiction and fantasy planted the seeds, so to speak, for this outburst of activity. As was the case during the earlier periods, some were born in Canada while others working in the genre(s)—authors, editors, and scholars—came from countries that already had long, well-established traditions of fantastic literature. They brought with them a sense that they were working in those traditions and not writing, publishing, and researching in a vacuum. The Canadian “scene,” so to speak, reached a kind of critical mass during the late 1970s due to the existence of smaller communities of people interested in the fantastic and the presence of particular individuals who made it their mission, in effect, to highlight the Canadian tradition that did exist but was largely invisible to the culture at large and to encourage further work in the field. As will become clear, 1979 was the pivotal year for both English and French fantastic literature. One factor was the continuing growth of Canadian fandom, through which authors and readers alike could meet, share their interest in fantastic literature and other media, and gain a feeling that they were not alone. As we have seen, fandom in Canada had long roots dating back to the 1930s, and some fans published fanzines that lent a feeling that there was indeed a science fiction community in the country. The major centres of fan activity in Canada were Montréal, Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver. In Québec, readers came to science fiction through reading the works of Jules Verne and of American and British works in translation. Fans (including bilingual francophones) would attend conventions elsewhere, particularly the United States, and then began organizing Canadian “con”s. As already noted, VCON (or, as it was originally known, V-Con) was started in 1971 as the Vancouver SF Convention by members of the University of British Columbia Science Fiction Society, the British Columbia Science Fiction Association (which published the fanzine BCSFAzine), and the Simon Fraser University Science Fiction Society. One important and active member of the Vancouver science fiction community was Susan Wood, who would later have a profound if unintended effect on the entire field. The main fan organization in Toronto remained OSFiC: the Ontario Science Fiction Club. Among active members were authors like Garfield ReevesStevens (as Gar Stevens), Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson. In 1973, Toronto hosted the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) for the second time as Torcon II, locally organized by John Millard. The Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society (ESFCAS) began in the early 1970s and counted scholar and writer Robert Runté, Lorna Toolis, and Diane

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Walton among its members; it published various fanzines over its existence, like ESFCAS Newsletter and Neology. Runté edited the Newsletter and his own New Canadian Fandom (1981–1983) as well as periodic guides to fandom in Canada. Diane Walton went on to edit English Canada’s premier science fiction magazine, On Spec. Lorna Toolis, one of the editors of Neology, moved to Toronto and became Head of the Merril Collection in 1986. Just south of Montréal, the group associated with the magazine Requiem (see later) organized the first annual convention for French-Canadians, Boréal, in Chicoutimi in 1979. The following year, they inaugurated the Prix Boréal. Certain established English- and French-Canadian authors turned to science fiction and fantasy, giving a boost to the reputation and visibility of these two major popular genres. Canonical authors like Hugh MacLennan, Timothy Findley, and Margaret Atwood on the English side and Suzanne Martel, Jacques Ferron, Yves Thériault, and Maurice Gagnon on the French side contributed to the writing and the prestige of fantastic literature. It would be difficult to overestimate the contributions of certain key individuals in book and magazine publishing and academia to the f lowering. There was a desire on the parts of authors, editors, and publishers to create, or encourage the creation of, more work, as well as greater public and scholarly awareness of Canadian fantastic literature. The process began earlier in Québec, as certain key figures immigrated from France, which had its own long tradition in science fiction that began even earlier than Jules Verne and extended through such authors as Camille Flammarion, J-H Rosny, and Gérard Klein, to name only a few. Norbert Spehner, a professor of popular genres—and a science fiction fan—immigrated from France in 1968 and taught at a college outside Montréal. He founded the fanzine Requiem in 1974 and developed it into a professional magazine with Canada Council funding in 1976; in 1979, he changed its name to Solaris after the famous novel by Stanislaw Lem. Among the authors involved in the magazine were Jean-Pierre April, Daniel Sernine, Joël Champetier, Michel Bélil, and Élisabeth Vonarburg, and a collective headed at first by Vonarburg took over editing it in 1983. The magazine has become the premier venue for francophone science fiction and fantasy in the country. In 1979, another French-born academic and writer, Jean-Marc Gouanvic, founded Québec’s second major science fiction magazine: imagine.  .  .  . His magazine also published short stories by the top science fiction authors in French Canada. Other fiction-publishing fanzines appeared during the 1970s and beyond, notably Pour ta belle guele d’ahuri (1979–1983) and Samizdat (1986–1994). Also, some non-SF magazines demonstrated a willingness to publish science fiction as far back as the 1960s (Trudel 69), and the important journal La Nouvelle Barre du Jour published a special issue on fantastic writing edited by science fiction authors Louis-Philippe Hébert and Roger Des Roches (Trudel 104–05). In English Canada, a key figure in laying the groundwork for the f lowering was John Robert Colombo. He wished to spread knowledge about and

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promote Canadian science fiction and fantasy, and produced two landmark texts in the history of the Canadian fantastic. He edited Other Canadas: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy, the first of its kind; it was published in 1979 by a major press, McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Among other texts, the anthology included Ralph Centennius’s “The Dominion in 1983,” chapters from A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder and Consider Her Ways, and short stories and poems by Hugh Hood, Margaret Laurence, Phyllis Gotlieb, Michael G. Coney, H. A. Hargreaves, and Spider Robinson. That same year, Colombo, with Michael Richardson, John Bell, and Alexandre L. Amprimoz, published CDN SF & F: A Bibliography of Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. These texts offer invaluable information about and access to Canada’s tradition of writing in the fantastic. Unfortunately, both compilations are somewhat padded with works by nonCanadians like Jules Verne and John Symmes. One reason is that Colombo assumes that polar worlds are a “characteristic theme” of Canadian fantastic literature, and therefore considers any work about the poles—even the South Pole—by definition “Canadian” (see his introduction to Other Canadas, p. 2, and “Four Hundred Years” 39), no matter what the nationality of the author.1 As Robert Runté rightly points out, Colombo engages in circular argumentation on this issue, and in fact there are very few Canadian science fiction and fantasy texts set in the Arctic (let alone the Antarctic) (“Why I Read” 19). Nevertheless, the anthology and bibliography laid the groundwork for a sense of a national literature in the field, one that had been lacking. Authors are encouraged to write in a field if they know it has a well-established foundation, and belong to a community of other interested authors—if only to have something to react to and even challenge. Colombo later edited or co-edited other anthologies of Canadian fantastic fiction, like Not to Be Taken at Night: Thirteen Classic Canadian Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural (with Michael Richardson, 1981). John Bell contributed to another important publication that further revealed the scope of that heritage. He and Lesley Choyce edited Visions from the Edge: An Anthology of Atlantic Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy, published by Choyce’s Pottersfield Press in 1981. It also includes a passage from James de Mille’s novel plus stories by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, Laurence Manning, Spider Robinson, and many more. The introduction makes a clear point about the importance of having and knowing about the history of the Canadian fantastic: It has long been assumed that the genre of science fiction and fantasy is inherently alien to Canadian literature. Canadians, we’ve been told, are simply too pragmatic and sensible a people to indulge in anything so frivolous and unreal. . . . While others are prone to dream and extrapolate, Canadians would quietly survive. . . . Clearly, if there appears to be a paucity of Canadian science fiction and fantasy it is not because our writers have been unattracted to the

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genre’s themes but rather because for all its volume, Canada’s neglected contribution to the field has never coalesced into a coherent, recognizable tradition. (6) If the tradition has been invisible or unidentifiable as a tradition, Bell and Choyce are determined to establish it. Furthermore, they cite the lack of a domestic publishing industry for popular fiction, whether book publishers or magazines, and argue: many Canadian writers working primarily in popular genres eventually find it necessary to leave Canada in order to successfully pursue their careers. And even those that do manage to remain at home often experience another kind of exile due to the fact that they are seen as somehow non-Canadian. (7) The low reputation that both science fiction and fantasy gained as a result of the pulps did not help, either, they say, and “cultural elitists” know little about the wide variety of genres in both main categories of the fantastic (7). Another individual who contributed to the growth of Canadian science fiction and fantasy during the 1980s was Judith Merril. Her Spaced Out Library became a meeting point for authors and fans, and she aided in the establishment of writers’ workshops and organizations.2 She was a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and had contacts with the “literary” world in Canada through it and by other means. Gerry Truscott, a writer and editor at Press Porcépic, was interested in science fiction and came up with the idea for an anthology to be called Tesseracts, and presented it to the publisher’s owners, Dave and Ellen Godfrey—Dave was himself an author of experimental and fantastic fiction—who accepted the idea. After Spider Robinson turned down Truscott’s request to edit the anthology, Candas Jane Dorsey advised Truscott to ask Merril, who agreed to do it. Tesseracts (1985) is made up of reprints of stories by such authors as Dorsey, Michael G. Coney, William Gibson, Terence M. Green, and Phyllis Gotlieb, and poetry by Colombo, Robert Zend, and others. The anthology became the first of a series, with later volumes publishing mostly or entirely original stories. Each volume has had a different editor or editors; for example, Tesseracts2 was edited by Gotlieb and science fiction scholar Douglas Barbour, while Tesseracts3 was edited by Dorsey and Truscott. Many of the volumes have been unified by theme or genre; the most recently published as of 2020 is Tesseracts 22: Alchemy and Artifacts (2019), a collection of historical fantasy tales. In book publishing before the 1980s, one of the major developments was the creation by established Québec publishers of popular literature lines, which

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included science fiction, mainly for younger readers. Local publishers either began separate lines devoted to fantastic fiction like those of French publishers (for example, Fleuve Noir’s “Anticipation” and Denoël’s “Présence du Futur”) or were founded expressly to publish science fiction and fantasy. Éditions du jour began its “Aventure et science-fiction” line with Martel’s Quatre Montréalais en l’an 3000, and Héritage inaugurated its “Katimavik” line with another young adult novel by Martel, Titralak, cadet de l’espace (1974). Éditions Paulines began the “Jeunesse-pop” line of popular fiction for children and young adults in 1971, and it has continued under the publisher’s new name, Médiaspaul. For adults, Éditions Hélios began its short-lived “Demain aujourd’hui” [“Tomorrow Today”] line in 1974, publishing only one collection of “esoteric” short stories by a Québécois author and a science fiction novel by French author André-Jean Bonelli. Magazine editors and publishers also provided a foundation for the growth of Canadian fantastic literature during the 1980s. In English Canada, there appeared small magazines like Howard E. Day’s Dark Fantasy, already discussed in the previous chapter, which lasted until 1980, and gave some authors their start. Charles R. Saunders and Charles de Lint edited the Ottawa-based fanzine Dragonbane, whose name changed to Beyond the Fields We Know and then Dragonfields, from 1978–1983. Dragonfields published stories by Galad Elf landsson. Copper Toadstool was based in Richmond, BC, and published some fiction in its pages during its run from 1976–1979. Canadian Fiction Magazine was a kind of unofficial organ of the surrealist movement in British Columbia during the 1970s, and that continued when Geoff Hancock became editor of the magazine in 1975 and used the position not only to publish surrealist and magic realist work but also to promote and explain what he called magic realism (which for him includes works we might classify as surrealist). In 1980, he edited an anthology of such works, Magic Realism, featuring authors like Jack Hodgins, Rikki Ducornet, Andreas Schroeder, and J. Michael Yates. The book was published by Aya Press, which as we also saw published experimental fiction including Ducornet’s The Butcher’s Tales.

The Infrastructure The institutions created in the 1970s and 1980s became the foundation for the f lourishing of Canadian fantastic fiction during the period. During the 1980s, editors, publishers, booksellers, scholars, and others both accompanied and facilitated the growth of the genre in Canada. Publishers launched more SF lines. In 1980, Norbert Spehner founded literary press Le Préambule’s “Chroniques du futur” line, which began by publishing Élisabeth Vonarburg and Jean-Pierre April and went on to offer works by most of Québec’s leading science fiction authors. Louis-Philippe Hébert founded the publisher Logidisque, which provided financial support for the  Grand

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Prix  de  la science-fiction et du fantastique québécois, and with Roger Des Roches created Éditions Logiques and its science fiction line, “Autres mers, autres mondes” [“Other Seas, Other Worlds”], directed by Jean-Marc Gouanvic, in 1988. Gouanvic edited not just novels and story collections but also anthologies like Dérives 5 (1988), SF: dix années de science-fiction québécoise (1988), C.I.N.Q. (1989), and Demain l’avenir (1990), and co-edited (with Stéphane Nicot) the anthology series Espaces imaginaires beginning in 1983. Meanwhile, Spehner edited Aurores boréales (1983), composed of stories from Solaris. Jean Pettigrew launched the “Sextant” line at literary press Québec/Amérique in 1994; when that ended the following year, he helped found Alire, a publisher of popular fiction in various genres (Trudel 123–24). In English Canada, Gerry Truscott’s role in founding the Tesseracts anthology series was only the beginning of his efforts to promote fantastic literature. In 1988 he inaugurated Press Porcépic’s science fiction and fantasy line under the imprint of Tesseract Books. Lesley Choyce published not just his own fantastic fiction through his press but also that of others. In 1992, Candas Jane Dorsey created The Books Collective and bought the Tesseract Books imprint to publish novels and story collections as well as the anthologies. Judith Merril continued to be active in organizing Canadian science fiction and fantasy authors. She created Canada Ink, a writers’ workshop, in 1986, based on an American model: the Milford workshops. It was held at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, and brought together many of the authors she had come into contact with through Tesseracts. Élisabeth Vonarburg has performed the same function as workshop organizer on the French side. Anthologies, including anthology series, became important venues for the publication of short works by authors on both sides of the linguistic divide. In English Canada, the Tesseracts volumes appeared more or less regularly. Lorne Gould, a Toronto writer, edited New Bodies (1981); among the authors represented was Ursula Pf lug, who went on to publish more in the field. In 1992, Don Hutchison founded the Northern Frights series—published by the small literary press Mosaic—that provided an outlet for horror and dark fantasy fiction, and some supernatural stories that were not designed to frighten (like Terence M. Green’s “Ashland, Kentucky”; see later). Lesley Choyce edited Ark of Ice: Canadian Futurefiction (1992), which he published through his Pottersfield Press; it includes both new stories and reprints. One of the most important American editors in the science fiction field, David G. Hartwell at Tor Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, became interested in Canadian science fiction and not only edited novels by Canadians like Candas Jane Dorsey, Robert J. Sawyer, Karl Schroeder, and Peter Watts, but also compiled (with Canadian author Glenn Grant) the anthologies Northern Stars (1994) and Northern Suns (1999). As we saw in Chapter 3, anthologists sought to place contemporary culture and identity in an historical context by publishing earlier fantastic texts, mainly

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fairy tales, legends, and ghost stories. The trend was revived in Québec during the 1980s as editors compiled collections of nineteenth-century fantastic literature, for example, Aurélien Boivin’s Le conte fantastique québécois au XIXe siècle (1987), which treats the oral tales as part of the tradition of the fantastic in French Canada rather than as folklore. Meanwhile, Maurice Émond edited Anthologie de la nouvelle et du conte fantastiques québécois au xxe siécle (1987), which is made up of fantasy and horror stories, some of them surreal, and Laval University professor Michel Lord edited Anthologie de la science-fiction québécoise contemporaine (1988). Since then, there have been one-time anthologies of both English- and French-Canadian science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories—too numerous to mention—by various editors and published by both Canadian and foreign presses. The Tesseracts series was one of the main ways that French-Canadian fantastic literature became accessible to anglophone readers, as stories were occasionally published in translation. In fact, one of the volumes was devoted entirely to translated Québécois science fiction and fantasy, TesseractsQ (1996), edited by Élisabeth Vonarburg and translator Jane Brierley. Among the significant authors featured are Alain Bergeron, André Carpentier, and René Beaulieu. Also, Geoff Hancock’s anthology of Québécois short stories, Invisible Fictions: Contemporary Stories from Québec (1987), includes fantastic works by writers like Marie-José Thériault, André Carpentier, Jacques Brossard, and Michel Tremblay. Matt Cohen and Wayne Grady edited Intimate Strangers: New Stories from Quebec (1986), which presents newly translated fantastic stories by François Barcelo, Gaétan Brulotte, and André Carpentier. Some English-Canadian science fiction, meanwhile, was translated and published in the French-Canadian genre magazines. Magazine publishing also grew during the 1980s. Robert Knowlton, then known as Robert Hadji, edited the dark fantasy magazine Borderland from 1984–1987, publishing stories by Galad Elf landsson, Michael Bedard, and Andrew Weiner. Fanzines were published in numerous cities and towns across the country, like Michael Skeet’s continuation of Garth Spencer’s Maple Leaf Rag, MLR (Unionville/Toronto 1987–1990), Taral Wayne’s numerous publications, Paul Valcour’s Long Distance Voyeur (Ottawa, 1990–), and Carol Weekes’s Northern Fusion (Montréal, 1998–). Online publication expanded in the 1990s with the creation of such e-journals as Brett Savory’s dark fantasy and horror magazine Chiaroscuro or ChiZine in 1997. A group of adult students at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, who took a creative writing course together and were interested in writing fantastic work, formed their own workshop, the Copper Pig’s Writing Society. Because no Canadian market for their work existed, they decided to create their own: the magazine On Spec (1989–). Among the founders were Marianne O. Nielsen, Diane Walton (who remains editor as of 2020), Jena Snyder, and Lyle Weis. Nielsen was the first general editor; the editorial collective

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included Douglas Barbour and authors J. Brian Clarke, Candas Jane Dorsey, Pauline Gedge, and Monica Hughes. Gerry Truscott joined the board in 1990. The magazine’s mandate is to publish mainly (although not exclusively) Canadian authors. Other fiction-publishing magazines followed, including Michael McKenny’s Bardic Runes (Ottawa, 1990–1997), James Botte’s The Journal of Canadian Content in Speculative Literature/Northwords (Ottawa, 1993–), Dale Sproule’s and Sally McBride’s TransVersions (Toronto, 1994–1999, continued as an anthology in 2000), David M. Switzer’s Challenging Destiny (St. Marys, Ontario, 1997–), and Karl Johanson’s Neo-opsis (Victoria, 2003–). Both contributing to the growth and ref lecting it, various new awards and writers’ organizations were established during the period. The editors of Requiem created the Prix Dagon in 1977, later renaming it the Prix Solaris—the first Canadian annual award in the field (Ketterer 95). The organizers of the Québec SF convention Boréal inaugurated the Prix Boréal in 1980. That same year, Canadian fans founded the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association to administer a new award created by Bob Atkinson and John Bell for the Halifax science fiction convention, HalCon III (Ketterer 97), which they modeled after the American Hugo Awards in that it was fan-voted. At first, the award was called the Coeurl Award (after the creature in A. E. van Vogt’s fiction), then it became the CSFFA Award, which was abbreviated Casper (1986– 1990), and finally—as proposed by Michael Skeet—the Prix Aurora Awards in 1991. The awards have been given out annually at existing conventions, each of which is named that year’s CanVention (short for Canadian National Convention). The Canadian Science Fiction Foundation was established in 2001 and created the Sunburst Award, a juried prize named in honour of Phyllis Gotlieb’s novel. The most significant writers’ organization representing Canadian writers of the fantastic is SF Canada. The organization was founded in 1989 at the Edmonton science fiction convention ConText as the Speculative Writers Association of Canada (SWAC). Among its earliest members were Dorsey, Skeet, Lesley Choyce, Charles de Lint, Dave Duncan, Leslie Gadallah, Phyllis Gotlieb, Judith Merril, Robert Runté, Robert J. Sawyer, Karl Schroeder, JeanLouis Trudel, Élisabeth Vonarburg, Andrew Weiner, and Diane Walton. The organization changed its name to SF Canada in 1991. One institution that gave Toronto-area writers (and occasionally others) an opportunity to meet each other during that period and beyond was Bakka Books (later Bakka-Phoenix Books), a bookstore specializing in science fiction and fantasy. Many Canadian writers have worked there, including Tanya Huff, Michelle Sagara West, Ed Greenwood, Robert J. Sawyer, Nalo Hopkinson, Cory Doctorow, and Leah Bobet. Writers’ groups or workshops have played a significant role in offering authors a sense of community, mutual support, encouragement, and early feedback. Setting up a writers’ group often requires institutional support, and

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Bakka provided that support, if inadvertently, when Steve Stirling met Tanya Huff there in 1985 and they set up a workshop they called the Bunch of Seven.3 Among the other members of the Bunch at various points were Shirley Meier, Karen Wehrstein, with whom Meier often collaborated, and Julie Czerneda. Judith Merril acted as writer-in-residence at the Merril Collection (then still known as the Spaced Out Library) during the year 1986–1987, and invited authors whose work she found most promising to form a workshop. Among the original members were Michael Skeet, Karl Schroeder, and Hugh A. D. Spencer; I joined it a few weeks after it began. We eventually named it the Cecil Street Group after the community centre where we met early on. Another local group was the Stopwatch Gang. Similar groups have been formed in many other parts of the country. Canadians have been heavily involved in the study of science fiction, especially beginning in the 1970s and 1980s. Among the leading scholars are Michel Lord (1949–), now at the University of Toronto; Jean-Marc Gouanvic; Guy Bouchard; Darko Suvin (1934–), based at McGill University in Montréal; Douglas Barbour (1940–) at the University of Alberta; Peter Fitting (1940–) and Ian Lancashire (1942–) at the University of Toronto; Veronica Hollinger at the Trent University in Peterborough; Elizabeth Miller (1939–) at Memorial University; and John Clute (1940–), who has been living in England and is coeditor of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia. Suvin and Hollinger have both edited Science-Fiction Studies, which Suvin co-founded in 1973 and edited at McGill until 1980. Many other Canadians, too numerous to name, have contributed to criticism of the fantastic as well. Early work on the Canadian fantastic by English-language scholars was conducted by John Robert Colombo and Robert Runté. In French Canada, André G. Bourassa published Surréalisme et littérature québécoise (1977), a sweeping study that defined “surrealism” in a broad way that included many fantastic works we might not consider truly surrealist. His main point is that surrealism has had a liberatory function, something we have already seen in our own look at that mode. Aurélien Boivin, Maurice Émond, and Michel Lord founded the Groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les littératures fantastique dans l’imaginaire québécois in 1985. Using a French publication as his model, JeanPettigrew began L’Année de la science-fiction et du fantastique québécois, an annual catalogue of publications in the field, in 1985; the volumes also published new fiction. In 1992, Boivin, Émond, and Lord compiled Bibliographie analytique de la science-fiction et du fantastique québécois 1960–1985—later followed by Claude Janelle’s historical survey, Le XIXe siècle fantastique en Amérique française (1999)—and David Ketterer published Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy, a sweeping overview of the field and an essential resource, as this study makes plain. Also in 1992, Hugh A.  D. Spencer and I won the contract to curate the National Library of Canada’s exhibit on Canadian science fiction and fantasy, “Out of This World,” which opened in May 1995. One of our duties was to

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compile a collection of essays as its catalogue: Out of This World: Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature (1995).4 Another was to create databases of Canadian fantastic works; I focused on books and periodicals, while Spencer put together a list of media expressions: radio plays, television shows, stage plays, and so on, which has proven invaluable here. The exhibit opening coincided with the Ottawa science fiction convention CanCon; James Botte, the convention’s chair, and Síân Reid organized the first Academic Conference on Canadian Content in the Speculative Arts and Literature, a single panel of four papers held at the convention. The presenters were Paul Johanson, Robert Runté, Reid, and myself. The following year, Botte asked me to organize the second ACCSAL, then in 1997 I renamed the conference the Academic Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy (ACCSFF), and brought it to Toronto, where it has been held ever since, nearly always at the Merril Collection. It has become a regular biennial event, with a guest author and guest scholar at each conference. I have also edited three collections of proceedings from the conference, the latest being The Canadian Fantastic in Focus (2014). Scholarship in the field has grown remarkably since the 1990s, with newer researchers like Dominick M. Grace, Adam Guzkowski, Michael Johnstone, Derek NewmanStille, and Lisa Macklem emerging.5 Other one-time conferences have been held, notably the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Symposium held at the University of Ottawa in 2001 and Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Conference at McMaster University in 2013.

Science Fiction The most internationally important and inf luential Canadian science fiction author to emerge during the period was William Gibson, the leading author of the cyberpunk movement. Gibson was born in the United States in 1948 and moved to Canada in 1967. He lived brief ly in Toronto and then moved to Vancouver; at the University of British Columbia he took a course on science fiction taught by Susan Wood and was encouraged to try his hand at writing in a genre he had been reading since childhood. His first story, “Fragments of a Hologram Rose” (1977), appeared in the third issue of Unearth; at V-CON in the early 1980s and at other conventions he met and befriended those who would be members of the cyberpunk movement: John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, and Lewis Shiner. His breakthrough came with the publication of “Johnny Mnemonic” in the prestigious science and science fiction magazine Omni in 1981. His early stories would be collected in Burning Chrome (1986). It was his landmark first novel Neuromancer (1984) that triggered the cyberpunk “revolution” in science fiction. The action begins in Japan, ref lecting contemporary ideas that the economic and technological power centre was shifting to Asia, and the hacker (anti-)hero is Case, who is assisted by dangerous implant-wielding female friend Molly Millions. An AI named Wintermute,

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owned by the Tessier-Ashpool multinat, seeks to merge with its twin, Neuromancer, a union that will result in their evolution into a single, global artificial mind. Neuromancer was the first of the Sprawl Trilogy—the Sprawl being the continuous urban conglomeration spread over American east coast—with the other two novels being Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). Count Zero is the nickname of hacker Bobby Newmark, who must navigate a dangerous underworld while avoiding fatal feedback from his implanted link to cyberspace. The combined Wintermute/Neuromancer is still out in cyberspace, revealing itself as “voodoo gods”; that is, they have become the new, technological deity. Bobby and other characters return in Mona Lisa Overdrive, where it becomes more and more difficult to tell who is real and who is a simulation, and characters achieve digital immortality. The novels dramatize the notion of technological posthumanism. Gibson’s second trilogy, the Bridge novels, consists of Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999). The novels are set in a community that has developed in the steel structure of the San Francisco– Oakland Bay Bridge. Now, Gibson’s focus is on mass media and how it has become the ultimate expression of late twentieth-century capitalism. The plots are pursuit narratives as various groups—companies and criminals in particular—seek valuable new software and hardware, like the dark glasses in Virtual Light that send virtual images directly into the brain. The third novel presents the characters from the first two facing the ultimate union between the biological and the technological, known in posthumanism as the singularity. Between writing these trilogies, Gibson collaborated with Sterling to write The Difference Engine (1990), an early example of steampunk and the one referred to earlier about how Britain in the nineteenth century might have been different had Charles Babbage’s difference engine become as important to that society as the modern computer is to ours. Gibson’s most recent trilogy is the Blue Ant books: Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010). Given their contemporary setting, some have questioned whether they are science fiction, except perhaps for the extent of characters’ abilities to navigate seas of information and absorption in the media environment. One author who exhibited the inf luence of cyberpunk early on was Candas Jane Dorsey, whose role as an organizer and editor has already been discussed. She is one of Canada’s leading authors of feminist fantastic literature. Her first publication was “Columbus Hits the Shoreline Rag” (1977) and her story “Johnny Appleseed on the New World” appeared in Tesseracts. The latter story is an excellent example of feminist science fiction, in that Dorsey plays with the reader’s expectations when it comes to gender identity, for instance by giving characters names conventionally associated with the “other” sex. Her first novel was a collaboration with Nora Abercrombie, Hardwired Angel (1987), which won first prize in the Pulp Press 3-Day Novel Writing Contest.6

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The title character is Anna, a computer genius whose work has attracted the attention of the military. They try to force her to work on an AI program but she subverts them instead, and now works on a biochip to aid her handicapped brother. Dorsey brought her early stories together in Machine Sex . . . And Other Stories (1988); the title story is also about Anna. One of the most important authors who was involved in fandom and went on to a professional career is Robert Charles Wilson (1953–), who was editor of OSFiC’s newsletter brief ly in the 1970s and whose first novel, A Hidden Place, came out in 1986. Wilson examines the effects of extraordinary events on ordinary people. In The Harvest (1994), for example, aliens come to Earth offering humans the opportunity to gain immortality and join them in exploring the galaxy, while in Mysterium (1995), an accident during a physics experiment transports a town into a parallel world in which Gnosticism rather than Christianity as we know it took hold as the dominant religion in the United States. He also published a cyberpunk novel, Memory Wire (1987), about Raymond Keller, an Eye or Recording Angel who has an implant that records his experiences. He meets Teresa, a woman addicted to stones from another planet called oneiroliths that force one to remember one’s own and others’ memories. The pursuit plot that is so common in cyberpunk here involves efforts by criminals to obtain the stones. Indeed, Wilson’s dominant theme is the role of memories and the past in his characters’ lives and identities. Many of them learn to come to terms with their pasts, discovering to what extent they have created illusions about their individual and historical pasts. Protagonists come to recognize that they can never escape the past and its effects, although there is a marked change from his earlier to his later novels in the degree to which characters succeed in discovering their true pasts. Like many other serious science fiction authors, Wilson uses the tropes of science fiction—time travel, artificial intelligence, parallel worlds, aliens, and so on—metaphorically as well as literally, thus speculating about scientific ideas and revealing character at the same time. In an interview I conducted with Wilson in 1997, he said: We make up these stories about the past, we tell ourselves stories about ourselves, and part of the struggle of life is to make the stories truer— both literally truer and truer to the spirit of what actually happened. We all like to dress ourselves up in imaginary armor, justify ourselves to ourselves, explain ourselves to ourselves. I don’t see anything intrinsically wrong with that, actually, but you’ve got to get it right. Because if it’s dishonest, then you don’t know yourself. . . . it’s so tempting . . . and so potentially damaging to lie to ourselves about ourselves, that the past [is] interesting metaphorical terrain. (39)

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Further, he said that “you have to know your past before you can transcend your past, that you’re a product of your past to the extent that you don’t acknowledge or understand it” (39). In many of Wilson’s early novels, particularly Gypsies (1989), The Divide (1990), and A Bridge of Years (1991), the past is indeed a “metaphorical terrain” representing a set of comforting fictions and fragile certainties. Characters are then confronted with the truth about the past, so that they may understand their worlds and themselves. Also, the past in Wilson’s novels is frequently represented by an authoritarian father or father figure, one who seems monstrous at first but whose humanity becomes evident as protagonists mature and learn to recognize it. For the characters in Gypsies, the past is both a burden and a source of connection, identity, and knowledge. Karen White and her siblings can pass between parallel worlds, a skill their father reacts to with fear and physical abuse. She learns that Willis had acted not out of hate or prejudice, but out of fear and love, a desire to protect them from potentially harmful powers. Characters in Wilson’s fiction are often the products of scientific experiments. John in The Divide has been the subject of CIA-sponsored research into artificially increased intelligence, and in the cases of some characters in the Spin trilogy, efforts to use the aliens’ technology to create people able to communicate with the Hypotheticals and even join them as higher beings. Researchers act as metaphorical fathers, and children sometimes undergo trauma when they realize their “fathers” are more interested in them as experimental subjects than as objects of love, like Zoe regarding Avrion Theophilus in Bios. Meanwhile, biological and adoptive fathers fear their children’s differences from the norm. Other characters face crises of identity arising from their ties to the past. When the Travellers in The Harvest arrive to offer immortality to humans, Matt Wheeler resists in part because he is unwilling to surrender his past. He wants to “save” Buchanan, his town, but what he is really trying to save is a past that has defined him—even such painful aspects of it as the death of his wife: It had taken Matt most of his life to learn to live in a world where everything he loved was liable to vanish—and he had never loved that vanishing. But he had learned to endure in spite of it. He made a contract with it. You don’t stint your love even if the people you love grow old or grow apart. You save a life, when you can, even though everyone dies. There was nothing to be gained by holding back. Seize the day; there is no other reward. (421–22) In Mysterium, Dexter Graham—significantly, a history teacher—tries to maintain his identity as being part of our world, while his lover Evelyn Woodward chooses to assimilate, thereby denying her past and accepting her present.

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Characters from both Earths are forced to make choices concerning with whom or what they will identify. In the novels that follow, Wilson devotes less attention to personal histories and more to alternate presents. For example, Darwinia (1998) concerns the sudden intrusion into our planet of part of a parallel Earth with a very different—in this case evolutionary—history. The Chronoliths (2001) portrays the potentially apocalyptic effects of an individual’s attempt to dominate the world by controlling the past through time travel. (For a discussion of Wilson’s handling of time in The Chronoliths, see Murphy.) During this period, Wilson moved further toward “hard” science fiction, with its greater focus on plausible scientific speculation and technology than character, as in Bios (1999), about a planet entirely toxic to human beings. Wilson’s fiction exhibits an interest in cognition: how do we know what we know? To what extent is our mind, and therefore our will, biologically determined? Related to these questions is his exploration of religion, specifically gnosticism; Mysterium is not the only novel to include gnostic ideas, as Wilson examines how we define the “real” in other works like Darwinia (1998), which is about part of Europe apparently suddenly disappearing and being replaced by a prehistoric alternate environment. The explanation for the “Miracle” calls our supposed knowledge into question. In Blind Lake (2003), scientists have developed a quantum telescope that allows them to see surface-level images of a planet and follow one of its natives. As it turns out, the alien can see its watchers as well as they can see it; we and the aliens become part of a larger consciousness, rendering our beliefs about the universe and our place in it obsolete. Wilson’s stories of people confronted with bizarre new conditions that challenge their understanding of the world remind one of the works of J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. Another prominent writer to come out of OSFiC is Robert J. Sawyer (1960–). He was involved in Toronto fandom, particularly OSFiC (see earlier), and was co-editor (with poet Carolyn Clink) of the organization’s newsletter—known as Gateway during his tenure (1981–1982)—as well as a chapbook anthology of local authors’ short stories and poems, All Agog: The Gateway Fiction Special (1982), which included an early story by Tanya Huff. His fiction is squarely in the pulp tradition, with narratives that are idea- and plot-driven and written in transparent prose, and many of his novels were first serialized in Analog. His first novel was Golden Fleece (1990), a murder mystery (more a whydunit than a whodunit) set aboard a starship run by an artificial intelligence named Jason, the novel’s narrator, who is hiding a key secret from his human wards. Sawyer’s first series was the Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, about a society of evolved dinosaurs inhabiting the moon of a distant planet whose ancestors were brought there by an alien race that seeded various planets with terrestrial life. Each novel focuses on a character who parallels one of our history’s most important scientists. Far-Seer (1992) is about Afsan, an analogue of Galileo, who turns his wife

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Novato’s invention, the telescope, to the skies and displaces his people’s central position in the universe; in Fossil Hunter (1993), Afsan’s son Toroca is a version of Charles Darwin, in that his fossil discoveries show Quintaglios are products of evolution; and Mokleb in Foreigner (1994), like Sigmund Freud, is a pioneer in psychology and exploration of the subconscious. In these novels, Sawyer builds a society based on dinosaur territoriality, among other features. Sawyer’s stand-alone novels of the period include The Terminal Experiment (1995), Factoring Humanity (1998) and Calculating God (2000). In these novels Sawyer explores the relations between science and religion and the notion of transcendence. In The Terminal Experiment, for example, engineer Peter Hobson invents a superEEG that proves capable of detecting the soul leaving the body at death, and then finds it can detect when the soul enters the fetus. He thus provides technological means to answer some ethical questions. Calculating God is about aliens from highly advanced civilizations arriving on Earth with their own beliefs about God, provoking debates over whether there is indeed a divine Creator. Like Robert Charles Wilson, Terence M. Green (1947–) has also written works in which the family past is a highly important theme. Green’s early short stories appeared in such venues as the literary anthology series Aurora: New Canadian Writing (1979) and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1981), and were collected in The Woman Who Is the Midnight Wind (1987). His first novel, Barking Dogs (1988), is a crime novel set in the near future when portable lie detectors become widely available, except, it seems, for the police. One officer, Mitch Helwig, obtains one to help him hunt his partner’s killer and engage in vigilante justice. The title of the sequel, Blue Limbo (1997), refers to a machine-generated condition permitting the dead to communicate; Helwig forces doctors to use the Spiricom so that he can learn from his murdered friend on the force who shot him. Children of the Rainbow (1992) was inspired by the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace f lagship, by agents of the French government for planning to protest a French nuclear test in Polynesia. In the novel, a renewed Incan Empire has revived a way to travel through time; Fletcher Christian IV, descendant of the leader of the mutiny on the Bounty, tries to time-travel but the attempt is disrupted by a French nuclear test that distorts the time warp, and he and others end up jumping radically through time. Green’s most significant works, however, are in his Ashland series. The series began with the short story “Ashland, Kentucky” (1985), about Leo Dakin (later renamed Leo Nolan), whose maternal uncle Jack Radey, feeling abandoned by his family due to deaths and marriages, left Toronto during the 1930s for the United States and later disappeared. After Leo’s mother dies, his father begins receiving letters from Jack dated and postmarked in 1934. When the letters cease to arrive, Leo, determined to find him, travels along Jack’s southward route to his last known residence in Ashland. The hotel has since become a rooming house, and when Leo enters it he also enters the past—and gets to meet his uncle. Green expanded the story into the novel Shadow of Ashland

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(1996), which became the first of a trilogy with A Witness to Life (1999) and St. Patrick’s Bed (2001). By seeking out his uncle, Leo has healed a broken family connection and laid some real and metaphorical “ghosts”—that is, unfinished business—to rest. In these works, Green offers strong and sensitive characterization as he (like Wilson) explores the need to come to terms with and accommodate one’s family past in order to achieve full self hood. In the later novels, Leo’s quest leads to a greater sense of family and even a family of his own. In St. Patrick’s Bed, his stepson Adam plans to go in search of his biological father in Dayton, Ohio, recapitulating Leo’s own quest. Leo’s second wife Leanne, whom he met in Ashland, says to him at one point, “The past doesn’t go away, does it,” and he replies, “No. . . . It goes somewhere else. It stays, but it moves. Like to another city” (53). The spirits of children past (like his stillborn son Aidan) and future, and the ghost of his father, both haunt him and reassure him about life’s continuity. Andrew Weiner (1949–2019), another Toronto-area writer, was the author of three novels and numerous short stories, some of which were collected in Distant Signals and Other Stories (1990) and This Is the Year Zero (1998). His first story, “Empire of the Sun,” was published in Harlan Ellison’s landmark anthology, Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), and others appeared in various professional magazines in the United States and Britain. His stories are often about aliens who visit Earth or with whom we communicate, either verbally or through media like ESP and even music. For example, “Distant Signals” (1984) is about an old, short-lived television program cancelled before it achieves closure. Its broadcast reaches an alien civilization who find more cultural value in it that Earthlings ever did, and a representative arrives to see it wrapped up properly. In “The News from D Street” (1986), residents of a city discover their reality is not quite what it seems; in its questioning of perception and its theme of simulacra, the story reminds one of the works of Philip K. Dick. Station Gehenna (1987) is a murder-mystery novel, based on a 1982 novelette, set in a terraforming station world on a distant planet; an alien entity is involved in what occurs. Two British-born authors arrived earlier but did not gain prominence in science fiction until the late 1970s and early 1980s. J. Brian Clarke has been publishing science fiction since 1969, when two novelettes appeared in Analog, and so he can be considered part of the pulp era. However, his breakthrough came with his series of “Expediter” stories in the same magazine during the 1980s, culminating in the fix-up novel The Expediter in 1990. It is a firstcontact narrative perhaps inf luenced by the quasi-religious visions of his seminamesake, Arthur C. Clarke, whose aliens are often depicted as God-like. During the 1990s he wrote a series that was collected as the novel Alphanauts (2006). Edward Llewellyn-Thomas (1917–1984) moved to Montréal in 1951 to study medicine. As one might expect, biological themes predominate in his fiction, which he began publishing in 1979. His novels—all published by DAW in the United States under the name Edward Llewellyn—are mostly in

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the genre of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic science fiction; either aliens or we ourselves are responsible for the destruction of our civilization. His first novel, The Douglas Convolution (1979), is about Ian Douglas, a scientist whose “convolution” is a set of equations that permit time travel. He travels to the future and discovers that women have been rendered infertile by Impermease, an anti-cancer drug and contraceptive. Impersonating a military officer, he finds himself tasked with fighting the druj, murderous, drug-addled barbarians led by Padron; the government of Sherando, one of the sectors into which the Earth has been divided, also uses a drug, Paxin, to control its population. The novel introduced a series about Douglas made up of two other novels, The Bright Companion (1980) and the series prequel, Prelude to Chaos (1983). In the former novel, David Randolph seeks to escape the Sherando dystopia, while in the latter, the hero is Gavin Knox, bodyguard to the president, who saves the president’s life but is nevertheless imprisoned by one of the leaders of the conspiracy for killing the would-be assassins. Fertile women are the subject of tribal and religious rivalry and sexist exploitation. The series anticipates Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) in that fertile women are made into sex slaves to preserve the species and to assert masculinist domination. At one point in The Bright Companion, David says: This equivalent of the rape of the Sabine women was . . . a sign of returning barbarism. Among barbarians the male is sometimes free; the female never. The liberty of women had been the last layer formed by a maturing civilization and the first shed when it started to die. (25) After completing the series, Llewellyn-Thomas wrote four other novels, the last appearing posthumously. Another post-apocalyptic novel published during the 1980s, with the revival of fears about nuclear war triggered by Ronald Reagan’s policies, is Frederick Biro’s The Perfect Circus (1987). It is a murder mystery set after the “Big Bang”—that is, a nuclear war—and the Long Night, when humans fought for survival against, among other threats, mutant and other, disease-carrying rats. Human mutants known as Simples are used as slaves, including sex slaves. The Perfect Circus is a travelling show in which someone who has no mutations at all displays her pre-war perfection as a human specimen. Agent Sylvester Dremain, accompanied by constable Lorraine, investigates a murder at Northpoint Station, an underground refuge. Also, Heather Spears (1934–) published a post-apocalyptic series, the Moonfall Trilogy: Moonfall (1991), The Children of Atwar (1992), and The Taming (1996). Due to a genetic mutation caused by a nuclear war, most humans are bicephalic, that is, born with two heads. However, Tasman is born with only one, and is therefore the marginalized outsider. The novels reverse our standards of normality to expose them as arbitrary as we

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follow Tasman and her offspring seeking survival and even acceptance, both on Earth and on the Moon. The trilogy was partly inspired by Spears’s interest in conjoined twins and medical efforts to separate them no matter what the physical and emotional cost to children for whom their condition is a fundamental part of their identity. Crawford Kilian (1941–) was born in the United States, moving to British Columbia in 1967 to teach at community colleges there. Like LlewellynThomas, he is interested in such themes as time travel, biology, and genetic research. In The Empire of Time (1978), Jerry Pierce is an agent for Earth’s Agency for Intertemporal Development; he is also a Trainable: someone with a highly developed brain that can be programmed. Scientists have discovered a means of time travel, and people have set up colonies on these other temporal “worlds.” In the novel, Kilian also treats the theme of freedom and free will versus being programmed, as Pierce has to choose to be free, and overcome his conditioning to do what is morally right. Eyas (1982) is a far-future novel set in a radically different, almost fantasy-like Otherworld. Eyas is heir to the throne and is barely saved from being killed by Admiral Thorn of the Suns. Eyas proves to have seemingly magical powers: he can communicate with animals, he far-hears, and he even glows with vengeful energy when he is angry. However, the truth is that he and other creatures are genetically engineered; meanwhile, Earth has been surrounded by a Shield that prevents previous civilizations that have been star-hopping from returning, meaning humanity has been divided between those who left and those who remain. Eyas has an opportunity to reunite our species. Brother Jonathan (1985) bears some similarities to Daniel Keyes’s famous story, “Flowers for Algernon”(1959), in its depiction of a disabled boy who is the subject of an experimental procedure, and exhibits its debt to cyberpunk in a few ways as well. Jonathan is given nanotechnological brain implants by Intel Corporation to improve his mobility and intelligence. The implants are not the only cyberpunk-like element in the novel: the world is now run by multinational corporations, and nations are no longer meaningful except to fanatics known as “nashies.” Also, computers now have “turings”: artificial intelligence interfaces with distinctive personalities, like Jethro, a teenage boy, and Captain Nemo, an old sea captain. The non- and posthumans battle for freedom and survival, and humanity reaches a new, posthuman stage of its evolution. Other works of note by Kilian include the time-travel series The Chronoplane Wars (The Empire of Time [1978], The Fall of the Republic [1987], and Rogue Emperor [1988]). The prolific Dave Duncan published mainly fantasy but also wrote some science fiction. Some texts use the tropes of both genres; for example, Shadow (1987) combines the alien planets of science fiction with the quasi-medieval societies of fantasy. The novel is set on a colony planet and the title refers to the guard who always accompanies the King or Prince and is chief ly responsible for his safety. Sald Harl is surprisingly named the new Shadow to Crown Prince

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Vindax of Rantorra. Those of noble birth own and f ly indigenous f lying creatures they call “eagles”; when the throne is usurped, Sald and the Prince join a rebel movement to regain the throne and change the way the humans treat the eagles, who are intelligent beings, not mere animals. West of January (1989) is an adventure tale set on another colony planet; Duncan is interested here in the effects of the environment on culture. Leslie Gadallah (1939–) wrote a space opera trilogy about feline aliens facing annihilation by an empire of bug-like aliens: Cat’s Pawn (1987), Cat’s Gambit (1990), and Cat’s Game (2018). She has also published stories in On Spec and elsewhere and the stand-alone novel The Loremasters (1988). James Alan Gardner (1955–) published short stories in On Spec, Tesseracts3, and American SF magazines, including the highly regarded “Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large” (1990). His first novel was Expendable (1997), set in his League of Peoples universe. The League is a federation of alien worlds that enforces peace and proper conduct in the galaxy. The novel is about Explorers: those who are tasked with investigating new worlds and whose ugliness or deformities make them “expendable.” Festina Ramos is sent to explore Melaquin, a planet from which no Explorers have yet returned. She discovers that corruption and intrigue, not hostile conditions, are responsible for these disappearances. In Commitment Hour (1998), most humans have left the Earth; the people in the small, devolved community of Tober Cove change sex regularly but at the age of twenty must commit to male, female, or the socially unacceptable neuter. Young musician Fullin faces that choice, and also profound questions about his true nature and background. The novel is a complex examination of gender identity and the responsibilities of those who wield advanced science and technology. The most prolific author of military science fiction is Bunch of Seven member Stephen Michael Stirling (1953–), who writes as S. M. Stirling. His Marching through Georgia (1988) is an alternate history about a Sparta-like, slave-owning society in Africa known as Draka whose military is structured along the lines of ancient Rome’s. Draka’s goal is to dominate the continent and then the world beyond, and to do so fights to kick the Nazis out of Africa. Draka is egalitarian when it comes to gender, but otherwise strictly hierarchical. Much of the novel is devoted to gory battle scenes. It might be noted that in this alternate world Canada is a part of the United States. Apart from writing novels alone, he has also collaborated with other authors of military science fiction like Jerry Pournelle and David Drake, and has written in Pournelle’s Falkenberg’s Legion series. An interesting take on a science fiction classic is Ronald Wright’s (1948–) richly allusive and vividly written A Scientific Romance (1997). In 1999, David Lambert, an archaeologist and museum curator who is ill (like his late ex-lover) with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, discovers a document by H.  G. Wells saying that The Time Machine (1895) was based on an actual device one of his lovers

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had built; in 1899 she sent it one hundred years into the future. David awaits its programmed arrival and uses it to travel five hundred years further, to find a largely depopulated Britain. The novel recounts his efforts to discover what sort of disaster had occurred. Like Wilson, Wright uses time travel as a metaphor, as his character explores his past and its meaning for him, as well as what his future has in store for him and the human race. David finds the one remaining outpost of human life and “civilization” in Britain in a primitive Scottish settlement, one headed by Laird Macbeth, and learns how his own time’s consumerism, material, and ecological irresponsibility have wrecked the planet for future generations. Without doubt, the most important French-Canadian science fiction author to emerge during the period, and perhaps in the history of the genre in Québec, is Élisabeth Vonarburg (1947–); indeed, Jean-Louis Trudel refers to the authors of this period as the “Vonarburg generation” (Petit Guide 85). Born in Paris, she immigrated to the province in 1973. She read widely in both French and American (and Canadian in the person of A. E. van Vogt) science fiction, work that inspired her to begin writing at an early age. Vonarburg was very much a part of the rise of francophone SF magazines. She published early stories in Requiem beginning in 1978 and then became literary editor of the magazine in 1979, when Norbert Spehner made it a more professional magazine and changed its name to Solaris. She organized the first Boréal—French Canada’s main science fiction convention—in her hometown of Chicoutimi in 1979. Like Judith Merril, she also founded writing workshops, and as Trudel tells us, she did all this while studying for her doctorate in creative writing at Laval University in Québec City and thereby maintaining links between the fan and academic communities.7 If there is one striking difference between the developments of English and French fantastic literature in Canada, it is that in French Canada the division between what is considered “literary” and the “popular genres” is much more slight, in keeping with the situation in France. She has maintained strong links with the anglophone world, through translations and participation in English-language science fiction conventions, and thereby gave opportunities for other French-Canadian authors to find audiences in English Canada, the United States, and elsewhere (Trudel, Petit guide 86). Vonarburg published her first book of stories, L’oeil de la nuit [Night Eye] in 1980, and another, Janus, in 1984, with further collections appearing throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Her first novel was La silence de la cité (1981, translated as The Silence of the City in 1988), which was also the first volume of her Maerlande series (1981–1992); other series include Tyranaël (1994–1997), the alternate history fantasy Reine de mémoire [Queen of Memory] (2005–2007), and most recently Les Pierres et les roses [Rocks and Roses] (2018). With both her short fiction and novels, Vonarburg has become one of Canada’s most important authors of feminist science fiction. She has been exploring themes of gender identity since her early short stories. For example, among her common

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characters in the Maerlande series are the posthuman “metames”: genetically created people who are able to shape-shift and thereby become either male or female at will. The Maerlande stories and novels are set in a post-apocalyptic future after nuclear accidents, pollution, overpopulation, and climate change have made the surface of the Earth largely uninhabitable, so people live in underground cities. “Maerlande” is a multifaceted pun in French, including the words mer (sea) and mère (mother). The texts explore themes of emotional and physical love that transcends gender boundaries, language and its gendered nature (particularly in French), and the question of identity as characters learn they may not be who or what they thought they were. In them, Vonarburg exhibits the inf luence (directly or indirectly) of such feminist SF authors as Ursula K. Le Guin, Judith Merril, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr. (pseudonym of Alice Sheldon), Marge Piercy, and Sheri S. Tepper. As she says in her afterword to Femspec’s special issue on her: what interests me is the “nature” of the “feminine” and the “masculine”— of the human in all its forms—and all that derives from the many possible responses that one is tempted to give to these questions, horrors as well as wonders. (117) The main character in The Silent City is a metame named Elisa, whose shapeshifting abilities allow her to cure her illnesses and change sex. Scientists led by Paul are engaged in the Project: experiments to manipulate human being genetically to right the gender balance in the human race, as male births have declined due to a virus and the eco-catastrophe, and to create humans capable of living on the Outside. What Elisa discovers is that the amoral researchers have been kidnapping people living Outside and creating mutants in the labs. Like so many characters in earlier French-Canadian texts—see Suzanne Martel’s and Maurice Gagnon’s novels in the previous chapter—Elisa f lees the oppressive City seeking a morally superior and freer life beyond its confines. She changes into a man named Hanse and becomes involved in the anti-sexist revolution against the Harems, male-dominated dystopias. The novel’s main themes are free will versus determinism and the meaning of love, especially for someone like Elisa who has resisted true communion and connection with others—both male and female. Vonarburg has also written a series of stories about the city of Baïblanca, which Amy J. Ransom has identified as a prequel to the Maerlande saga. Artists engage in “biosculpture”: genetic manipulation to create living works of art usually indistinguishable from “real” people. Do these beings then have rights? Such creations blur the lines between the human and the artificial, and reality and art. In “Dans la fosse” (1983, translated and published in Tesseracts2 in 1987 as “In the Pit”), the narrator, Kali, is certain of his gender identity

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until he meets Bali, a metame who changes from female to male while they have sex and thereby teaches him a lesson about strict gender binaries. Chroniques du pays des mère (1992, translated as The Maerlande Chronicles and In the Mother’s Land) is set generations after The Silent City. It portrays a society now dominated by women who are every bit as intolerant and warlike as their male predecessors: power corrupts regardless of gender. By now, Elisa has been deified as the goddess Elli, having been mythologized through a different kind of metamorphosis. Les Voyageurs malgré eux (1994, translated as Reluctant Voyagers in 1995) is part of a series about innumerable parallel universes to which characters are able to travel using the Bridge, a device that apparently uses quantum mechanics at absolute zero to transport people. Catherine Rhymer is a college teacher in a parallel Montréal in a country with very un-Catholic religious beliefs. The novel follows Catherine’s journey northward as she encounters strange beings and events with seemingly magical causes, although there is a scientific explanation after all involving an alien being. Egon and Talitha reappear throughout the Bridge tales as lovers seeking their “real” mates. As they travel from one universe to another they frequently encounter themselves. The parallel universes depicted in the series represent the f luid nature of the subject—the various “selves” we really are instead of the static identity we imagine we possess. “Le jeu de coquilles de Nautilus” (1986, translated as “Chambered Nautilus” and published in Tesseracts4 in 1992) is about the fact that if we really wish to find the truly alien we must travel deeper into ourselves; as with a nautilus shell, the further outward we believe we move, the further inward we actually go. Ransom’s postcolonial approach is truly apt when she discusses the Tyranaël series that began with Les Rêves de la mer (1996, translated as Dreams of the Sea) (99–117). Tyranaël is an alien planet colonized and renamed Virginia by humans who believe the native race has died off, but visions of them appear to Earthling Timmi. The Ranao are still alive on a parallel world, and communicating with the humans telepathically. The Sea is a mysterious, regularly appearing force that disrupts technology. As we have seen, telepathy is a common theme among feminist science fiction authors, who see it as a form of nonverbal and therefore non-phallogocentric and deeper form of communication. Language plays a large role in the novel as the humans learn to “speak” with the native beings. Simon Rossem has a mutation caused by the old civilization’s technology, one that allows him to live for centuries and gives him telepathy. He changes his identity frequently as he gathers other mutants from among his descendants and others, saving them from persecution and changing the local human community’s genetic and cultural identity. The Maerlande tales and the Tyranaël series are clear examples of Vonarburg’s eco-feminism: that is, seeing the need for ecological awareness as well as gender equality, and associating our exploitation of nature with that of women—or men in a reversed society like the one in The Maerlande Chronicles.

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In her work she examines colonialism as another form of exploitation, and depicts the fight against colonial and racial hierarchies and binaries. Her texts are also self-ref lexive, employing metafictional techniques—note the similarity of some characters’ names to her own, for example—as she explores the meaning and function of art. Esther Rochon (1948–) has written in various fantastic genres and contributed to the founding of imagine. . . . One straightforwardly science fiction story is “Xils” (1985, translated and published in Tesseracts2), in which the title shape-shifting aliens have come to live in Montréal to feed. Once humans develop protective wear they are able to return to the city, but in a limited way. The narrator is a Guardian tasked with maintaining order between the two species: “I am paid to prevent contact. So Xils and people can coexist without knowing each other. How trivial” (115). The humans have arranged for the Xils to feed on corpses instead of the living, and so the two can indeed “coexist,” if at a cost. The story is clearly an allegory of other forms of fraught coexistences: English and French, male and female, self and other, and so forth. Among her most critically acclaimed works is the novel Coquillage (1986, translated as The Shell in 1990). The novel is about a sentient crustaceanlike, shape-shifting “monster” living on an island in an alternate Québec. The novel alludes to Frankenstein in its portrayal of the creature’s hostile treatment by humans and its themes of motherhood and reproduction. Ketterer interprets the being as an embodiment of the subconscious (159), and it certainly seems to represent the things—like passion and bodily functions—that we repress or deny. It is also a symbol of the marginalized and misunderstood. Shape-shifting in Rochon’s work as in Vonarburg’s signifies the f luidity of identity, including gender. A number of other French-Canadian authors began their publishing careers during the 1970s and 1980s, often by first publishing stories in Requiem/Solaris and imagine . . . and then going on to publish novels: Jean-Pierre April (1948–); Alain Lortie (1955–), writing as Daniel Sernine, who has been literary editor of the “Jeunesse-pop” line; Guy Bouchard (1942–); Jean-Francois Somcynsky (1943–2011); Joël Champetier (1957–2015), long-time managing editor at Solaris; and Denis Côté (1954–), whose short story “1534” (1985) is Côté’s (and by extension Québec’s) version of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Many have written for both adults and young adults in both languages like Yves Meynard (1964–) and Jean-Louis Trudel (1967–). Meynard was fiction editor for Solaris from 1994– 2001 and published stories in that magazine as well as imagine . . . and many others; he also co-edited the fanzine Samizdat during the 1980s and Tesseracts5 (with Robert Runté) in 1996. Trudel has published about two dozen novels, numerous short stories, scholarly works (like his Petit guide), and much else, all while earning multiple advanced degrees. Meynard and Trudel have also collaborated on short stories and novels under the pseudonym Laurent McAllister. Francine Pelletier (1959–) has published mainly young adult novels, often in

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the “Jeunesse-Pop” line, as well as adult novels and short stories. This list does not come close to being exhaustive. During the 1980s there were fewer fictional responses to Canada’s political issues, but some did appear, primarily by francophones. For example, Daniel Sernine’s Chronoreg (1992) is set in a parallel Québec that is a separate country at war with Canada, aided, in keeping with the trope described earlier, by foreign powers, notably Denmark and Russia. The Québécois forces are in conf lict not only with Canada but also with fellow indépendantistes who have gone out of control and are under the command of the sadistic “Aguirre” ( Jac Marin). Denis Blackburn, the protagonist, uses the drug chronoreg to go back in time to investigate and prevent acts of sabotage and espionage, but the growing conf lict threatens world war until the intervention of aliens. In Jean-François Somcynsky’s Les visiteurs du pole Nord [Visitors of the North Pole] (1987), various levels of government, provincial, national, and international, seek control over the itineraries of and technological knowledge offered by a group of aliens who have crash-landed at the North Pole. Patline Doyle, in Jean-Louis Trudel’s short story “Remember, the Dead Say” is a Franco-Ontarian Métis in a future North America divided between the Free States of America and what is left of Canada in the west, and an independent Québec working with the Franco-Maghrebi alliance in the east. The Franco-Maghrebi forces are trying to impose Islamic law on their occupied territories in the Maritimes and eastern United States, and Pat is recruited by a resistance fighter to help maintain freedom of speech in the ’Net. Pat’s divided loyalties and uncertain, or rather mixed, identity is symbolized by her disguise as a man, complete with bio-engineered beard.

Utopian and Dystopian Fiction Without doubt, the most important dystopian novel to be published during the 1980s, and indeed in the history of Canadian literature, is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). The novel has received a great deal of critical attention and popular awareness as well, not only with its original publication but also with its adaptation into a television series (2016–). The novel portrays a near-future America in which the northeastern area has become a theocracy known as Gilead. Due to environmental degradation and the resulting genetic damage, few women are fertile. Those who can conceive are enslaved as Handmaids and are subject to ritual rape. The society is dominated by Commanders who give their Handmaids not only quarters in which to live but also their names; thus, the narrator is Offred, or Of-Fred. Because the regime took power only recently, Handmaids like Offred still remember the world as it was, and the novel, which is Offred’s first-person account, contrasts the “freedom” of the old world with the oppression of the new. It should be noted, however, that the Aunts—the female supervisors and educators of the Handmaids—instruct the Handmaids that in our current society, women did

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not have full freedom because they had to worry about being raped, assaulted, and even killed in acts of domestic violence, and other horrors the theocrats have now eliminated, or redefined. The novel had its roots in a number of historical developments already discussed earlier: the rise of the religious right in the United States and, during the Iranian Revolution, in Iran, leading to the right-wing governments of Ronald Reagan in one and Ayatollah Khomeini in the other; some branches of feminism that sought to censor pornography; the anti-feminist backlash in the United States, often led by televangelists (for example, Commander Fred’s wife, Serena Joy, is a satirical portrait of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker); the treatment of women as mere breeders by the totalitarian regime of Nicolai Ceausescu in Romania; and the destruction of the environment through events like the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and the careless disposal of toxic chemicals in places like Love Canal. It has often been misread in various ways. For example, it has been taken to be primarily a feminist attack on patriarchy. It is certainly true that men are the political, economic, and social masters of Gilead. On the other hand, what Atwood has long critiqued is power relations of all sorts: men over women, rich over poor, human beings over nature, and so on. Any relationship based on power distorts true human and human/ nature bonds—a constant theme throughout her poetry and fiction. In Gilead, everybody exercises power over everyone else in some manner: not only the Commanders, but also the Aunts over the Handmaids, and the Handmaids and Wives over each other, and even Offred, who is often seen as nothing but a victim, manipulates others, especially her Commander, through language and her sexuality. Also, some critics have characterized Offred as a hero in daring to speak about her experiences in a society that tries to silence women. In fact, looking at the novel in the context of the dystopian tradition reveals that she is hardly a hero. In the dystopian tradition exemplified by novels like Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, the oppressive regime is not so much imposed from above as sought from below by a complicit populace facing a crisis. Seeking peace, security, and material comfort, people in these novels (and in real life) willingly surrender their freedoms in return for “happiness”: freedom from hardship (in Atwood’s novel, see Aunt Lydia’s speech regarding “freedom to” versus “freedom from” on p. 34). What is most disturbing in these novels is the degree to which the majority of people accept their oppression. The “heroes” of these novels are no different; they are only rebels up to a point, but when the pain that comes with defying authority and having freedom begins, they are only too willing to surrender to the Benefactor, Mustafa Mond, and Big Brother. Offred demonstrates her complicity in her own loss of freedom throughout the novel, even going so far as to scorn her feminist mother for challenging the erosion of women’s rights.8 She even acknowledges how she has become accustomed to what should horrify her

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(283). She celebrates Moira’s rebellious nature and actions but never takes direct action herself. Like her dystopian “hero” predecessors, she is at heart a coward, and at the end of the novel whatever happens to her—it is left deliberately ambiguous—is the result not of her own actions but those of others. The Handmaid’s Tale echoes the other dystopian novels in many of its aspects, and is in some ways a parody of them. In the others, a male protagonist is drawn into the rebellion by an intriguing, frequently sexually alluring female. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the female narrator is lured into Mayday by Nick, more because she finds him attractive than because of a real commitment to the cause. Like D-509 and Winston Smith, she writes a journal; like Bernard Marx, she fears exile. Societies in these dystopias offer rituals to channel strong emotions into directions that preclude revolution; in The Handmaid’s Tale it is the Salvaging and the opportunity to kill convicted rapists through “Particicution.”9 Both the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Gilead are shown at the end of the novels to have been superseded by historical change: one includes an appendix on Newspeak as a phenomenon of the now-defunct society of Big Brother, while the other ends with “Historical Notes” on the now-defunct Gilead. The novel, then, must be viewed in the context of what was happening at the time, Atwood’s thematic preoccupations, and the tradition of dystopian fiction. It is a complex work that at once frightens the reader with its depiction of a suffocating totalitarian regime and a cautionary tale about our tendency to welcome such oppression when the alternative is danger, insecurity, and the burdens of free choice. Far too often, and for far too many people, complicity in one’s own loss and denial of freedom is the easiest route to take, especially when a crisis threatens our comfort. Atwood’s novel can be classified as a feminist dystopia, showing how gender relations could be worse than they are today. A remarkably similar novel appeared the following year, Hélène Holden’s (1935–) After the Fact (1986), although Holden was not inf luenced by Atwood but had been planning her novel for some time. Atwood and Holden explore the theme of the individual in conf lict with an oppressive society, examining the results of the imposition of a strict ideology on the freedom and identity of the self. Like Offred, “Catherine” is a woman living in a near-future oppressive society—in this case, a quasi-Stalinist separate Québec—under a name that is not her own. Both novels are first-person narratives largely in the present tense, thus portraying events with great immediacy and giving claustrophobia-inducing details of their dystopias by having them observed by narrators who struggle with them every day. One major difference is that while The Handmaid’s Tale offers only one perspective, After the Fact has two narrators: Catherine and Marie-Ange, a village resident. They become mirror images of each other—almost doppelgangers—to the point where it becomes difficult at times to distinguish who is speaking. In a way, Québec has become a mirror of its pre–Quiet Revolution self, with a group mentality engendered by Marxist

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rather than Catholic indoctrination. In both novels, the ambiguity about the protagonists’ identities is related to the political themes, in that the women have been emptied by the need to survive in harsh, new societies. Leona Gom’s (1946–) The Y Chromosome (1990) is about a female-dominated post-apocalyptic future in which bombs and the depleted ozone layer have made boys susceptible to a fatal disease known as Sexlinked Immunodysfunction Syndrome, obviously inspired by AIDS. A plan to develop asexual reproduction, which would make males entirely redundant and therefore threatened, leads to riots by men. This reverse-sexist dystopia is founded on what is known as the First Law: “Before the Change was Chaos, and it was Male. Male is Danger and Death. Male must be Hidden” (71). Daniel wishes to do what is forbidden to males (and formerly, in real life, females): attend university—which he manages to do by “passing” as female. The novel raises questions about gendered hierarchies (by portraying a reversed one), the relationship between biological sex and gender, the social construction of sexuality, and whether “male” violence is an essential trait or the product of social pressures and definitions, given the violent behaviour of some of the female characters, like Bluesky. Teresa Plowright’s (1952–) eco-feminist Dreams of an Unseen Planet (1989) is set on the colony planet Gaia, colonized by humans who f led an Earth damaged by pollution and war.10 Only those who develop a psychic “affinity” to Gaia are able to reproduce. The novel features common feminist themes: the need to connect with rather than exploit nature, f luid gender identities and queer sexuality, and telepathic and other forms of non-verbal communication. Candas Jane Dorsey’s Black Wine (1997) deliberately blurs the boundaries between genres and characters. It may be set in a secondary world or, as suggested by its contemporary references, a future and post-apocalyptic Earth. The narrative alternates between mother and daughter Ea and Essa; their names are not the only similar features they possess, as both are on quests seeking their mothers and, through them, their identities. On their journeys, they encounter utopias and dystopias based on class, race, and gender. As noted, contemporary dystopias tend to be anarchic, as governments collapse under the growing power of corporations or nuclear, economic, and other disasters. One somewhat melodramatic example of a Canadian anarchic dystopia is Robert G. Collins’s Tolerable Levels of Violence (1983). Social collapse and international conf lict have led to a world based on Reality Ethics, the basic principle of which is kill or be killed. There are violence reports on the news akin to the weather reports we are familiar with. John Cobbett and his family must cope with brutal Wanderers who kill and rape without conscience.

Fantasy Some of Canada’s most important fantasy authors emerged during the 1980s, including two who have become canonical figures in the field.

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J. R. R. Tolkien’s son Christopher asked Guy Gavriel Kay (1954–) to help edit his father’s thus far unpublished The Silmarillion, and Kay moved to Oxford in 1974 to work on the project. When he returned to Canada he studied law, but, inspired by The Lord of the Rings, he turned to writing instead. He published his own high-fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, which comprises The Summer Tree (1984), The Wandering Fire (1986), and The Darkest Road (1986). Fionavar is the archetypal world, in a sense the fundamental one, of which all others—including our own—are shadows; it is a realm where good and evil are clearly delineated, and its inhabitants are embodiments of basic principles. The settings of other Kay novels are more complex and grounded versions of it. In The Fionavar Tapestry, five contemporary University of Toronto students are summoned by a wizard, Loren Silvercloak, to Fionavar to join the fight against evil, here personified by Rakoth Maugrim the Unraveller (i.e., of the created universe’s Tapestry made by the Weaver, or God the Creator). In the process of fighting this war they fulfill their prophesied, cosmic, and sometimes tragic destinies. They discover that they are themselves realizations or embodiments of mythological and legendary figures; for example, Jennifer is Guinevere, as she realizes when King Arthur joins the battle. Also, Paul is the Christ/Fisher King sacrificial “god,” whose suffering is required for redemption. The Wild Hunt appears as the material, and very dangerous, symbol of chaos. Maugrim rapes Jennifer, leading to the birth of a boy, Darien, who must choose between the good represented by his mother and the evil represented by his father. His decision will determine the outcome of this apocalyptic struggle and the fate of the world. Kay’s later novels exhibit a more distinctive vision. They are quasi-historical fantasies: that is, they are set in alternate worlds that are versions of real places and histories. Kay has often said in interviews that he does not want to write historical fiction because he fears betraying the real people and stories of the past. To avoid violating people’s true historical experiences by fictionalizing and potentially distorting them, he uses regions and periods as inspirations for imaginary settings: Renaissance Italy for Tigana (1990), medieval France and its troubadours in A Song for Arbonne (1992); Moorish Spain for The Lions of AlRassan (1995); medieval China for Under Heaven (2010) and River of Stars (2013); and so on. In these novels, the fantastic element is usually minor, with the focus on character, symbol, and political intrigue. They ref lect Kay’s in-depth historical research, and because these worlds are more “real” than “ideal” or abstract, like Fionavar, moral questions are more complex. Characters struggle with issues of loyalty, duty, and the limitations imposed by social class. In fact, as in the trilogy, one of the main themes throughout Kay’s work is free will and moral choice: the need to choose the right path among the possibilities presented. A number of critics have cited Tigana as his most “Canadian” novel, whether Kay intended it to be a parallel to the country’s situation or not. The peninsula

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known as the Palm is divided between two governing sorcerers: Alberico of Barbadior and Brandin, King of Ygrath. After conquering the land of Tigana, at the cost of his son’s life, Brandin curses its residents so that they would no longer be able to say or hear its former name. Battles ensue as heirs of Alberico and the people of Tigana fight to free themselves from Brandin’s rule. Along the way, Kay enriches his characters with complicated motivations, and the novel’s “villains”—particularly Brandin—prove to be less diabolical than their foes and the reader initially believe. Tigana’s identity crisis and desire to be free of foreign domination has been interpreted as paralleling Canada’s own identity issues. All of Kay’s works resist simple answers to moral and emotional questions, so that, for example, the victory of the “heroes” against the “villains” in The Lions of Al-Rassan leaves the reader with a sense of loss rather than triumph. Canada’s other major fantasy writer is Charles de Lint (1951–). He has published numerous novels for adults and youth, around twenty short story collections, and other books, many of the latter through his own press, Triskell House. His early ambition was to be a singer-songwriter, and he still performs, but he turned to writing as his main vocation in 1983 after being introduced to the world of fantasy small presses by Charles R. Saunders (Toolis and Skeet, “Charles de Lint” 80). He was one of the pioneers of urban fantasy: again, portal or intrusive fantasy that melds contemporary urban settings with fantasy worlds that lie parallel to or invade our own universe. Contemporary characters cross over into the fantasy world or encounter the magical elements in their cities, and through that encounter engage in a quest for self-discovery. In urban fantasy, and indeed in some recent high fantasy (like Kay’s), clear lines between good and evil are often blurred. At first, de Lint wrote conventional high fantasy and his early short stories and novels depict the settings and creatures of that genre. For example, The Riddle of the Rose (1984) is a Tolkienesque quest narrative as Minda Sealy travels through worlds to free the Lord of the Moors, who has been imprisoned by Ildris the Dream-Master. The Harp of the Grey Rose (1985), also set entirely in an Otherworld, features such tropes as magical harps, witches, and dwarves, and a struggle between the forces of good and evil. De Lint’s wife MaryAnn Harris recommended that he try something quite different, and so he wrote Moonheart (1984), which is set in contemporary Ottawa. Furthermore, in his urban fantasy good and evil become more difficult to distinguish over the course of his career, as his protagonists discover that both qualities can coexist in themselves and others. They face spiritual challenges that become part of their rites of passage as they learn who they are and what roles they must play. The urban settings he employs permit de Lint to examine social problems as a way of avoiding the escapist tendencies of the genre; as he said in an interview with Philip Marchand in 1994, “there’s so much in the world that I want people to pay attention to, because I feel if people do pay attention, then we can do something about the problem” (H5). Also, while most fantasy takes its

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mythological details from one culture or another, like the Celtic and Indigenous roots of his early novels and stories, de Lint’s works often portray mixtures of cultural elements through which his characters must navigate and cultures meet (see Laurence Steven’s article on the post-colonial nature of de Lint’s fantasy). Thus, rather than simply choosing sides in an archetypal struggle between moral absolutes, they experience personal growth in a broader cultural context. Music and visual arts are especially important aspects of de Lint’s fiction; indeed, his protagonists are usually artists—musical, literary, or visual—and their art becomes the source of their power and the direction as they take on their quests. De Lint has explained the meaning of art in his world: it is the one remaining source of wonder in our industrialized, materialist, and spiritually empty modern world. His goal is to create a sense of wonder through his fiction, of the sort generated by Tolkien and other early fantasists, but not by creating new worlds so much as exposing the wonder of the everyday, in terms reminiscent of the magic realists. In my interview with him for the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2011, he said: often when I use supernatural or fantastical elements in my books, I am trying to develop that sense of wonder, but I am trying to make it so that people just pay attention to what’s around them and as it is already. You go out in certain landscapes and you get a sense of that awesome feeling, that sense of wonder that you can get from reading a fantasy book. So I like to point out that kind of thing as well. Wonder is most commonly expressed in the world through art, as visual art, literature, and music take us beyond the physical and conventional into the higher realm of the imagination. As Toolis and Skeet say, “music performs an important function in much of his writing, the magic of the music helping to link the reader with the magic beyond the borders. . . . Music in de Lint’s books opens the way to other realities” (82–83). In addition, given the prevalence of male heroes in earlier fantasy, de Lint is noteworthy for writing primarily about female artists. For example, the main character of Moonheart is Sara Kendall, a writer who lacks a sense of purpose both in her life and her writing. She works in an antique store and one day she stumbles upon a cache of artefacts including a ring with Celtic designs and an Indigenous medicine bag. These objects have real magical powers, and Sara is drawn into the Otherworld where she meets spirits of both the Old World and the New; we discover that the supernatural beings of Celtic mythology and the manitous of North America are related beings. Much of the plot involves the siege of Tamson House by the spirit Mal’ek’a and his demonic minions. Mal’ek’a is the principle of evil introduced by European colonizers to the New World: he embodies the Western rationalist and materialist belief system, with its rejection of the spirit, in particular the creative imagination, and of the cultural

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Other. Yet Sara and Mal’ek’a prove to be nearly doubles of each other; what she learns is that she is fighting the evil within herself, a struggle that gives her life and art meaning (423). Writing and music also feature strongly in the magic of The Little Country (1991), whose theme is the power of both storytelling and music. Protagonist Janey defeats her foe’s efforts to control her in much the same way that Sara Tamson resists Mal’ek’a: by calling forth that music. A passage in the parallel story told in the fictional book that plays a key role in the plot is worth quoting: What I want to teach you is that first music. I want you to learn to recognize it in yourself, in others, in your own world. . . . Wake it, and the borders will grow thin once more. . . . It’s the underpinning to the magic that runs rampant in the Barrow World. Where it isn’t remembered is in your world. It must sound in both. (479–80) The magic of music can also be seen in the novels The Harp of the Grey Rose (1985), Jack, the Giant Killer (1987), and Drink Down the Moon (1990). After setting his early fiction in Ottawa, de Lint created a fictional city named Newford. In the Newford novels and stories, visual arts often perform that magical function. His running character is Jilly Coppercorn, a painter who depicts strange creatures in her works because she has actually seen them. Through the course of numerous novels and stories, she and her talented friends encounter both friendly and unfriendly supernatural beings from Celtic and Indigenous mythologies, including bogans, witches, and Indigenous animal spirits. Jilly suffers physical and psychological trauma through the series, but art, love, and faith save her and keep her going. Aiding her and the reader in understanding the denizens of the Otherworld is Christy Riddell, a writer and collector of folk tales, myths, and urban legends, and thus someone who can offer background to the fantastic elements even if he is a skeptic. Svaha (1989) combines fantasy based on Indigenous myths and postapocalyptic cyberpunk science fiction. Indigenous-Canadians have magically created environmentally sound Enclaves while the rest of North America has degenerated into a technology-engendered wasteland. Mulengro: A Romany Tale (1985) is about a Canadian Rom living in the world of the “Gaje“ (non-Romany people) and never entirely at home in either society; he is an outsider like most of de Lint’s characters, relying on his music to give him a sense of purpose. For de Lint, then, good and evil coexist in the best and worst of us, and circumstances sometimes lead us down ethical paths we might otherwise not have taken. Our world is made up of cultural and other differences we must recognize and then learn to accept. The Western rationalist and technological perspective is not the only valid way of seeing the world or dealing with it; we

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must exercise our imagination as well as our reason in understanding it. Art, including fantasy itself, has the power to open our eyes. Dave Duncan’s fantasy protagonists, like those in much modern fantasy, tend to be “ordinary” people who find themselves thrust into dangerous situations and sent on perilous quests. For instance, in his first novel, A Rose-Red City (1987), Jerry Howard is a book printer and librarian who is assigned a difficult task by an Oracle. Along the way, he encounters figures from Greek legend and mythology like Achilles and Ariadne in modern guise. Jerry is given an opportunity to atone for what he thinks of as a failure on his part during the Second World War to protect a fellow airman. The magical events test Jerry and oblige him to engage in a vital fight to restore order and justice in the world. Duncan wrote a number of series, like A Man of His Word (1990–1992), A Handful of Men (1992–1994), The King’s Blades (1998–2000), and most recently, The Enchanter General (2017–2019), not to mention over a dozen stand-alone novels. Most of his work is conventional high fantasy, in the sense that its Otherworld settings and societies are reminiscent of medieval Europe and it portrays wizards, swordsmen, elves, dragons, and other tropes of the genre. However, he complicates his characters by giving them f laws and occasionally making them half-hearted heroes. A good example is the aptly named The Reluctant Swordsman (1988), the first of the The Seventh Sword series, in which the consciousness of the deceased Walter Charles Smith passes into another realm and enters the body of an elite swordsman. As Shonsu, he now possesses a female slave, Jja, but because he is from our world he does not wish to exploit her but instead falls in love with her. The Goddess sends an emissary, a small boy, to send him on a mysterious quest and arm him with the legendary, and envy-provoking, Seventh Sword. Throughout the novel we share Smith’s disorientation as he tries to navigate this very alien society, with its strange mores and culture, and seeks to convince others he is on a Goddess-sent mission. In the first volume of A Man of His Word, Magic Casement (1990), young Rap the stableboy discovers to his dismay that he is a seer, possessing a power inherited from his mother. Duncan’s characters do not wish to be heroes but are thrust into that role by their family heritages or circumstances. Eileen Kernaghan (1939–) published her first novel, Journey to Aprilioth, in 1980, although her first professional sale was a novelette called “Starcult” in Galaxy in 1971. Journey to Aprilioth is a historical fantasy set in ancient Britain; Nhiall is a young priest who must choose which master to be an apprentice to. His wanderlust and a mysterious runestone lead him to travel to Aprilioth, the Sorcerers’ Isle. He goes through a number of adventures, including enslavement and learning to be a sorcerer. The journey is ultimately circular as he finds his true self and his home and, metaphorically speaking, the more physical circle of Stonehenge. The novel was the first of her Grey Isles series, which was followed by Songs from the Drowned Lands (1983) and The Sarcen Witch (1989).

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She has also published a story collection, Dragon-Rain and Other Stories (2013), and young adult novels. The 1980s saw the publication of an original mythic fantasy by Pauline Gedge: Stargate (1982). In Gedge’s myth, the governing being is the Unmaker, a being who reminds one of Shiva. He has created the universe and now wishes to destroy it by introducing knowledge to it, specifically foresight. The stars are manifestations of sun-lords, and stargates (wormhole-like structures) unite them. As knowledge spreads, threatening all that the Unmaker has made, an opposing being called the Law-maker enlists the aid of four sun-lords to block off the stargates and prevent such knowledge from infecting the entire universe. While the novel seems to present a clear dichotomy between those who would annihilate and those who would preserve, it is really about the “fortunate fall”: the idea that what happened in the Garden of Eden was not an act of evil defiance of divine authority but rather the initiation of life out of a static, deathin-life existence. Geoff Ryman (1951–) has also written some unconventional and complex fantasy dealing with such themes as gender, identity, and the nature and meaning of the genre itself. In The Warrior Who Carried Life (1985), the protagonist is Cal Cara Kerig, who as a young child sees her mother killed by dogs. She is later initiated into her people’s cult, gaining magical knowledge. The antagonist is the evil Galu gro Galo, who attains political leadership and murders her family because they would not pay him tribute. Using her magical abilities, she turns herself into a male for a year, so that she can train at one of the Fighting Schools and exact revenge on Galu. She has a love relationship with the female Stefile, and attracts Galu’s gay son. Later, when Stefile discovers who “Caro” really is, she must wrestle with her contradictory feelings. The novel becomes an archetypal story of life, death, and rebirth, with even Galu, representing the death force, playing his role in the pattern. All of the characters become carriers of life in one way or another. Ryman addresses the nature of fantasy in Was (1992). Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz is a real person, and the novel moves from the realm of the idyllic and nostalgic to the contemporary and corrupt. Ryman again constructs a symbolic tale, as Oz represents home and the past, while the reality is that Dorothy is without a true home and Uncle Henry is sexually abusive. Baum’s sentimental heroes and villains exchange roles in “real” life. Reality and fantasy blend as a gay actor named Jonathan, who is dying of AIDS, has starred in a series of horror movies, and we are given scenes from Judy Garland’s career as seen by her makeup artist. In fact, Baum himself appears as a character. Ryman’s metafictional techniques complicate what would otherwise be a straightforward contemporary retelling of the story. Other prominent works include The Child Garden (1989), and the novella The Unconquered Country (1984), based on his travels to Cambodia, about a land invaded by its neighbours and decimated by its rebels (an allusion to the Khmer

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Rouge). Planes, missiles, bombs, tanks, and napalm take on fantastic guises, like f lying Sharks that burn everything beneath them. Sean Russell (1952–) is known for novel series like The Initiate Brother (The Initiate Brother [1991] and Gatherer of Clouds [1992]) and Moontide and Magic Rise (World without End [1995] and Sea without a Shore [1996] along with prequels published later). He was inspired to write fantasy by reading Tolkien, but his works are quite different from conventional high fantasy. The Initiate Brother is set in an alternate China, while Moontide and Magic Rise is an adventure tale during a period straddling the border between beliefs in magic and science. Tristam Flattery, whom Russell based on Charles Darwin (v), goes on a sea voyage seeking a specific plant that has had an important role in his family’s (particularly his Uncle Erasmus’s) life, and discovers that magic is real. The main themes are national and family loyalty, and immortality and its costs. Tanya Huff (1957–), was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia; she later moved to the Toronto area and became a member of the Bunch of Seven. She has published a number of high fantasy series, such as the Wizard Crystal series (1988–89), the Quarters series (1994–99), Keeper’s Chronicles (1998–2003), and the Smoke books (2004–06). She has also published stand-alone fantasy novels, story collections, and the Valor Confederation series of space operas. Her works are noteworthy for having strong characterization and humour. She has also dealt with feminist themes, portraying active female protagonists and LGBTQ+ characters, and dealing with questions of gender roles and identities. An interesting example is what happens to the two main characters in The Fifth Quarter (1995): Bannon and Vree are a brother-and-sister team of assassins working for the Empire, and a rebellious Duke magically exchanges his mind with Bannon’s before poisoning his own body. Just before dying, Bannon transfers his mind into Vree’s body, now sharing it with his sister, and so male and female are embodied as both two and one. Trevor Ferguson (1947–) has specialized in genre fiction—fantasy and crime fiction above all—to which he lends great literary depth. As for his fantasy, he wrote two highly original and complex novels: Onyx John (1985) and The Kinkajou (1989). The former is richly symbolic, incorporating images and concepts from alchemy like the name of the title character, whose father Hugh Cameron was an alchemist and named his children after stones for their magical properties. Onyx John is on the run from a criminal, Tinordi, who wants the wealth he has been promised, while on a quest to find his father—in physical or spiritual form. Some fantasy texts by more canonical Canadian literature authors of the 1980s are of particular interest. Two take familiar figures and re-envision them, portraying them through the eyes of pets. Leon Rooke’s Shakespeare’s Dog (1983) is a novel narrated by the title animal. Hooker is noteworthy for his perceptive attitude toward the young playwright and the world at large. As the family prepares to f lee both human and canine pursuers, he recounts in

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f lashback Shakespeare’s efforts to gain fame and the hand of Anne Hathaway. Timothy Findley’s mythic fantasy Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984) is a revised feminist and anti-fascist reimagining of the story of Noah’s Ark. Here, the focal character is Mottyl, the blind cat belonging to Noah’s wife, who like all animals before the Flood can speak. The head of the family is Dr. Noyes, whose surname is a multilevel pun; he is a magician, and it is his trick with a penny and a bottle that inspires Yaweh’s idea for a way to destroy the world.11 Other forms of real magic, including beings like unicorns and fairies, exist but are abandoned; that is, humanity will enter a materialist, unmagical, rationalist mode of existence, one based on linear time and a devaluing of the imagination (Ketterer 112). Noyes has always been authoritarian toward his wife and children—an embodiment of patriarchal rule—but when he is tasked by Yaweh with building the Ark, he begins to think of himself as God and becomes a thoroughgoing tyrant. Challenging him, and Yaweh’s depression-fueled destructiveness, is Ham’s new wife Lucy: Lucifer in female guise. The novel thus takes a Romantic approach to God and Satan, with God as an anti-freedom dictator and Satan as a leader of an admirable, if doomed, rebellion. The Ark becomes divided into those who side with Dr. Noyes and those who take part in and support the rebellion, and Dr. Noyes’s own moral failings, despite his self-righteous declarations of virtue, are exposed. While Noah enforces strict binaries, Mrs. Noyes combines opposites, and the novel champions wholeness, tolerance, and nuance over absolutes, whether moral, gender, or political. One fantasy author of the 1990s who eschewed the conventions of the genre was Sean Stewart (1965–). Stewart was born in Texas, and his family moved to Edmonton when he was three. He has since moved back to the United States. He published novels built on philosophical foundations—if only to ask possibly unanswerable questions. They explore the processes by which people make ethical choices in cultural and family contexts, above all the latter as family shapes our identities and destinies. His protagonists are often in search of their families, especially missing fathers, and seek to create new ones or cope with their absence wherever necessary. For example, the premise of Nobody’s Son (1993) is: what happens after the typical fairy tale ending of “They lived happily ever after”? Shielder’s Mark succeeds in his heroic task early on the novel, and then must cope with the challenges raised by winning his princess, particularly learning how to rule and defending his throne and his nation. In an interview I conducted with Stewart in 1994, he said of the novel: “Nobody’s Son is a book that has all the moves of traditional quest fantasy; it’s just that they are all done by the end of chapter 2, and it’s about exploring what happens happily ever after, and so necessarily that demanded a fantasy setting and not a particularly articulated fantasy setting because it’s Every Fantasy Book” (6). The true adventure for Stewart does not lie in dramatic actions but in everyday life. Mark does not know his father, who left just after he was born, and searches for father figures his whole life. Two of Stewart’s most unusual novels are set in his

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home state: Mockingbird (1998) and Galveston (2000). Mockingbird is about a family in an alternate world where magic is common, and whose powers have been passed down for many generations via the doll-like gods who reside in a cabinet and “ride” one’s body. The novel begins on the day Elena Beauchamp dies, and is narrated by her daughter Antoinette (Toni), who does not want to inherit her mother’s abilities to see the future, raise the dead, and so on. However, family heritage will not be denied, and she must learn to accommodate her familial identity and legacy. As Elena’s epitaph says, “There are some gifts which cannot be refused” (8). The title city of Galveston exists in two realms: the real one, and one in a perpetual Mardi Gras and partitioned into Krewes, the competing costumed marchers in Mardi Gras parades. Young friends Sloane Gardner and Josh Cane navigate a dangerous city of competing interests and dark forces where masks actually do change their wearers’ identities. Both must find their rightful places in this Galveston. Other novels include Resurrection Man (1995) about angels with various powers, like protagonist Dante Ratkay’s ability is to resurrect the dead, and Cloud’s End (1996). Other authors have written lengthy series based on other media or others’ worlds. For example, Ed Greenwood (1959–) created the Forgotten Realms world as a child and developed it further as a teenager and young man while playing Dungeons and Dragons. In 1986, he sold the rights to his world to TSR, the role-playing game’s publisher, which has made it into one of the game’s settings. Greenwood has also written numerous stories and novels as well as articles about it, and works in other series. Some authors have written Arthurian fantasy, using the characters from the legends of King Arthur and his knights for their original narratives. Two of the most prolific are Jack Whyte (1940–) and William Antony Swithin Sarjeant (1935–2002), who wrote as Antony Swithin. Whyte’s status as a writer of fantasy is open to debate, since his goal in writing about Arthur has been to demystify him—to write historical fiction that portrays what might be the historical reality behind the legends. Swithin’s series The Perilous Quest for Lyonesse portrays Simon Branthwaite’s search for the land of Tristan’s birth and the place where, in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s version of the legend in “Idylls of the King,” Arthur fought his final battle with Mordred. Robin Skelton, like some of his fellow poets whom we have already looked at, wrote symbolist fantasies. The stories in Telling the Tale (1987) are occasionally surrealist, while Fires of the Kindred (1987) is set in a matriarchal Otherworld whose culture is grounded in a close relationship with nature. The novel is thus informed by eco-feminism, but also a vision of the sources of art reminiscent of Page’s The Sun and the Moon as discussed in Chapter 4. Ursula Pf lug (1958–) is also a poet and storyteller, who often deals with gender themes. Her novel Green Music (2001) is a portal fantasy with mirroring characters in our world and the Otherworld. The main character is Marina, whose best friend Susan paints pictures of the Otherworld and earns fame for them. Through

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dreams, Marina can visit the village named Marina in the otherworld, a realm one has to die to inhabit and where turtles can morph into people and vice versa. The novel, then, is a journey into the self, where things are potentially better, and about the nature of art (painting, photography, and of course writing), among other themes. There were examples of French-Canadian high fantasy as well, mostly for young adults but sometimes for adults as well, with works by Yves Meynard, Joël Champetier, and Annick Perrot-Bishop among them. Again, little has been translated, although Meynard wrote The Book of Knights in English in 1998. Esther Rochon’s works can be read as allegories of Québec’s position in Canada, as Amy J. Ransom has shown; her first novel, the fantasy En hommage aux araignées [In Honour of Spiders] (1974), is about a technologically primitive race known as the Asvens who inhabit an archipelago and are periodically visited by visitors and scholars from more advanced nations. The Asvens are subject to a curse—called down upon them after they offended Hatzlan, the ocean-god—that renders them intellectually and culturally stagnant. Ransom and Ketterer interpret them as metaphors for the Québécois (Ransom 66–81; Ketterer 87).

Dark Fantasy and Horror Tanya Huff gained fame first with her tales of vampires, werewolves, and other “creatures of the night” who in many cases do not wish to harm others, preferring to find means to coexist with “normal” humans. As such, these novels fit the more recent definition of urban fantasy, with such city-inhabiting beings treated sympathetically and as less inherently dangerous or evil. Her Blood series is about former police detective-turned-private investigator Vicki Nelson and her friend and helper, vampire Henry Fitzroy.12 Vicki has left the force because she contracted an eye condition, retinitis pigmentosa, which limits her night vision, making her as marginalized as Henry. The series began with Blood Price in 1991 and reached five novels plus a story collection. In Blood Price, in which Vicki and Henry meet, both are on the trail (although for different reasons) of a creature who is on a rampage. Henry wants to stop what he believes is a fellow member of his breed whose murders threaten to expose and thereby endanger all of his kind, and Vicki seeks to solve the crimes on behalf of a client. They team up as investigators and fighters of demons, which are being summoned by an alienated and bitter university student. In Blood Trail (1992), Henry calls her in when friends of his, a family of werewolves, are being shot. The werewolves’ neighbours are Carl Biehn, a religious fanatic who sees them as creatures of the Devil, and his nephew Mark Williams, who wants to harvest their pelts. Aside from obvious gender studies analysis, a fruitful way scholars have found of approaching Huff ’s work is through the lens of disability studies. Her characters, including Vicki, have conditions

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over which they have no control, are limited in their mobility (as per the lore, the vampires cannot function during the day), and are socially Othered (see Newman-Stille’s article on her work). The “monsters” are judged not as individuals but solely according to long-standing human prejudices fostered by myths and popular culture, and Vicki has difficulty adjusting to her own newly acquired limitations. Also working in the genre is Nancy Baker (1959–), who has written novels and short stories that may be classified either as horror or dark fantasy, depending on the degree to which her characters are intended to frighten or arouse reader sympathy. Her stories appeared in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine and in the first Northern Frights anthology, among other venues, and her first novel, The Night Inside (1993), introduces Ardeth Alexander, a graduate student who is working on a study of strange phenomena, through whom we meet the “monsters,” notably vampire Dimitri Rozokov. Rozokov is being held prisoner by criminals who use him to make snuff films, and Ardeth is kidnapped and given to him to feed upon. They become allies, however, and she asks him to turn her into one of the Undead so that they can escape. In other words, the vampire is treated here as a victim rather than a predator, and the novel deals with the theme of free will versus the requirements of being a vampire. Every being needs to feed (recall W. A. Fraser’s collection, discussed earlier); does that mean a vampire must kill people? Ardeth returns in Blood and Chrysanthemums (1995). Baker has also published short stories in magazines and anthologies, including reprints in volumes of Northern Frights. Garfield ReevesStevens began his career writing horror novels like Bloodshift (1981), which, as the title suggests, is about vampires. He wrote other fantasy, science fiction, and horror novels, including Children of the Shroud (1987), Nighteyes (1989), and Dark Matter (1990). Then he began to collaborate with his wife Judith on other works, and they moved to the United States where they wrote scripts and novels in the Star Trek series, among other works in fiction and media, as well as creating the Primeval: New World television series (2012–2013), a spin-off of a British series. Nancy Kilpatrick (1946–) has written primarily vampire fiction, both long and short, as well as erotic horror, mystery, and some science fiction, with about two dozen novels and novellas and over two hundred short stories to her credit. She has also edited anthologies of horror and dark fantasy stories, and has published under the pseudonyms Amarantha Knight and Desirée Knight.13 Among her novels are Near Death (1994), Child of the Night (1996), and As One Dead (1996; co-written with Don Bassingthwaite). She has also written her own versions of classic horror tales like Dracula (1993), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1995), and The Pit and the Pendulum (1998). Her short stories have been published in various venues, like the Canadian dark fantasy magazine TransVersions, and her collections include The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick (2000).

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It is difficult to categorize the quasi-zombie novel Pontypool Changes Everything (1998) by Tony Burgess (1959–), who wrote the script for the film adaptation Pontypool (2008). People in central Ontario begin to contract a virus dubbed AMPS (Acquired Metastructural Pediculosis—a name that seems to be based on AIDS) that both attacks language and is spread by it. Those aff licted turn into mindless cannibals and begin to move south, provoking a military response from the Canadian government. The novel deals with the question of the linguistic basis of perception and “reality,” and as such is to a large extent metafictional, since the novel is itself a construction of language. In fact, there is textual evidence that the whole narrative is one character’s hallucination. Complicating the matter is the effort by Bewdley’s drama teacher, Les Reardon, to stage a play about Orpheus while his students want to do a play about serial killer Ed Gein. Does their violent creativity contribute to the zombie plague?

Magic Realism and Surrealism Arguably the most important Canadian magic realist text of the period is Shoeless Joe (1982) by W.  P. Kinsella (1935–). The novel grew out of a short story, “Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa” (1979). Its account of Ray Kinsella’s building of a baseball diamond in his cornfield became famous when it was adapted into the film Field of Dreams (1989). Shoeless Joe Jackson was one of the members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team that was involved in a gambling scandal during the 1919 World Series, having been bribed to throw the series. To Ray’s father and many other fans of the team, the scandal was an unforgivable betrayal. Ray wishes to reconnect with his father by building the ballpark in response to a voice in his head saying, “If you build it, he will come” (3). It is a way to give the now-dead players an opportunity to return and win redemption, and for Ray to redeem himself for being an unsuccessful farmer. Jackson is the first of the “Black Sox” to emerge from the cornfields, and then the rest follow, until an entire stadium of players, fans, sounds, and innocent atmosphere develops. Kinsella has written other texts about baseball, both fictional and non-fictional, seeing it as a modern American myth—one that offers a ritual experience, complete with arcane rules and Arcadian setting, for a society that has traded spirituality for materialist and utilitarian pursuits. The Canadian surrealist tradition was maintained by Eric McCormack (1938–), who published two relevant texts. The story collection Inspecting the Vaults (1987) includes many surrealist stories; the title story is a Kaf ka-inspired account of a society in which each homeowner has a vault housing someone who is “mad,” but the story provides ample evidence that it is the inspector himself (and by implication the society as whole) who is really insane. In “Sad Stories in Patagonia,” storytellers seated around a campfire recount a series of violent tall tales portraying sadistic madmen. The story formed the source

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for many of McCormack’s later works. Like Jorge Luis Borges, McCormack sometimes uses the tropes of popular fiction, especially detective stories, but giving the stories bizarre turns, as in “Eckhardt at a Window”; also like Borges, McCormack incorporates self-ref lexive elements: authors appear as main characters, and characters are discovered to be overtly language-based constructs, as in “The Fugue.” In McCormack’s novel The Mysterium (1992; not to be confused with Robert Charles Wilson’s similarly named novel), James Maxwell is a reporter looking into the strange events in the Scottish town of Carrick in a parallel world. Some sort of “disease” has caused people to become very talkative just before they die.14 Murders, poisoned water, and the fact the characters are just that play a role in the complicated plot. McCormack satirizes literary theory through references to Criminal Theory at the Academy, with barely disguised thinkers like de Saussure, Jakobson, Derrida, and feminist scholars making cameo appearances. Mystery and storytelling are also major themes in the highly metafictional The Paradise Motel (1989). Le fantastique, like so much of Canadian fantastic literature, enjoyed a remarkable outburst of activity during the 1990s. Again, it would be impossible to explore the genre adequately here, but some important names require mention. André Berthiaume, Claudette Charbonneau-Tissot (using the pseudonym Aude), Pierre Châtillon (1939–), Paule Doyon (1934–), Daniel Gagnon (1946–), Louis Jolicoeur, Gilles Marcotte (1925–), Bernard Noël (1930–), Stanley Péan (1966–), and Négovan Rajic wrote novels and stories mostly set in cities and featuring the sorts of intrusions of the bizarre in the urban everyday that we associate with magic realism. Often these authors are interested in showing how the imagination can enrich banal daily life in the materialistic and utilitarian modern world.

Poetry and Drama Poets specializing in the fantastic came to the fore during the period. Among the top poets to emerge were Carolyn Clink (1958–), wife of Robert J. Sawyer; her brother David Clink (1962–); and Sandra Kasturi (1966–), who has specialized in dark fantasy and horror poetry. Others included Douglas Barbour (1940–), Tom Henighan (1934–), and some of the prose writers we have already encountered, like Eileen Kernaghan. They published their poems in magazines like On Spec and anthology series like Tesseracts. It should be noted that fanzines have long been venues where science fiction and fantasy poets could find homes for their work. Small presses, including some with a special interest in the field, and self-publishing facilitated the printing of poetry chapbooks and collections, and the internet offered another way for poets to reach a public. It appears that more fantastic stage plays were produced during the 1980s and beyond, but further research needs to be done. Radio drama series on the CBC continued to provide opportunities for Canadian playwrights. Original

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work appeared in the science fiction spy series Johnny Chase: Secret Agent of Space (1978–1981), the horror series Nightfall (1980–1983), and the SF series Vanishing Point (1984–1992), which featured such writers as Tim Wynne-Jones, Carol Bolt, Donald Cameron, Don Ferguson, Catherine Girczyc, Frank Moher, Len Peterson, William Lane, Mavor Moore, Steve Petch, and Lawrence Russell. In more recent years, Hugh A.  D. Spencer (1957–) has also had radio plays broadcast.

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction Just as the period saw an unprecedented outburst of creative activity in fantastic literature for adults, so, too, was there a parallel development in children’s and young adult science fiction and fantasy. The numbers of authors and books expanded dramatically, especially when Daniel Sernine became the literary director of “Jeunesse-pop.” Among the most important authors he published Francine Pelletier, Daniel Sernine, Jean-Louis Trudel (sometimes in collaboration with Yves Meynard as Laurent McAllister), Charles Montpetit, Joël Champetier, Michèle Laframboise, and Denis Côté. In English Canada, Geraldine Whelan, writing as O. R. Melling (1952–), has written novels based on Celtic mythology like The Druid’s Tune (1983) and The Singing Stone (1986), and the series The Chronicles of Faerie. Welwyn Wilton Katz (1948–) published novels involving witches, like Witchery Hill (1984) and Sun God, Moon Witch (1986), and a novel about Indigenous cultural practices, False Face (1987). The most prominent English-language authors of science fiction for young adults were Monica Hughes (1925–2003) and Douglas Hill (1935–2007). Hughes began her SF career with Crisis on Conshelf Ten (1975), the first of two adventures set in an undersea colony; she later wrote the Isis Trilogy about colonists on a distant, and un-Earthly, planet. She also published dystopian novels like The Tomorrow City (1978), about a computer-run city, and Invitation to the Game (1990). Hughes frequently deals with environmental themes in her work and the need to accommodate the Other (Ketterer 90). Douglas Hill spent a year as an assistant editor of New Worlds, the New Wave magazine (see Chapter 4), and later wrote young adult science fiction. He wrote five books in the series The Last Legionary about a young warrior seeking revenge, beginning with Galactic Warlord (1979) and including Deathwing over Veynaa (1980), and Planet of the Warlord (1981); a collection of related stories, Young Legionary, appeared in 1982. He also wrote the Huntsman (1982–1984) and Colsec trilogies (1984–1985), followed by fantasy series like Poisoner (1987). Hill also wrote science fiction and fantasy for adult readers. Another author of young adult SF was Martyn Godfrey (1949–2000), with titles like The Vandarian Incident (1981, also published as The Day the Sky Exploded in 1991), Alien Wargames (1984), The Last War (1986), and More than Weird (1987). Nicole Luiken (1971–) has also published both fantasy and science fiction, beginning

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with the fantasies Unlocking the Doors (1988) and The Catalyst (1989), the latter about a teenage psychic.

Notes 1 In fact, the section in CDN SF & F on “Polar Worlds” (19–23) lists not a single work by a Canadian author. 2 While she was writer-in-residence at the Merril Collection she brought together my own writers’ workshop, the Cecil Street Group, in 1987; the group remains active as of this writing. 3 The name was based on the famous Group of Seven, which was a group made up of twentieth-century Canadian artists and, like the Bunch, did not have exactly seven members. 4 While Spencer and I did the work of gathering and editing the essays, the book lists only Andrea Paradis of the National Library as compiler. 5 I have been honoured to supervise a number of graduate students working in the field, like Clare Wall, Cat Ashton, and David Milman. 6 Contestants are required to produce a novel in seventy-two hours. 7 The same can be said for Norbert Spehner, Jean-Marc Gouanvic, and Trudel himself. 8 Her husband patronizingly reassures her that he can handle her money for her, and she does not object. 9 The name of the ritual is a satiric parody of the Canadian government’s program to encourage citizens to exercise more, called “Participaction.” 10 The planet’s name, of course, is based on the idea that the Earth is a living entity. 11 Yaweh is Findley’s spelling of Yahweh, one of the names of God; He is identified as the vengeful warrior God of the ancient Israelites. 12 The series was adapted for television as Blood Ties (2007–08). 13 Authors will often use different pseudonyms for different genres. 14 Burgess’s novel may have been inf luenced by McCormack’s.

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Collins, Robert G. Tolerable Levels of Violence. Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983. Colombo, John Robert, editor. Other Canadas: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979. ———, and Michael Richardson, editors. Not to Be Taken at Night: Thirteen Classic Canadian Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural. Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1981. ———, et al. CDN SF & F: A Bibliography of Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Hounslow Press, 1979. Coney, Michael G. Cat Karina. Ace, 1982. ———. The Celestial Steam Locomotive. Houghton Miff lin, 1983. ———. Fang, the Gnome. New American Library, 1988. ———. Friends Come in Boxes. DAW Books, 1973. ———. Gods of the Greataway. Houghton Miff lin, 1984. ———. The Hero of Downways. DAW Books, 1973. ———. “An Interview with Michael G. Coney.” Interview by Eileen Kernaghan, Quantum, no. 37, Summer 1990, pp. 11–12. ———. The Jaws That Bite, The Claws That Catch. DAW Books, 1975. ———. King of the Sceptr’d Isle. New American Library, 1989. ———. Mirror Image. DAW Books, 1972 ———. Monitor Found in Orbit. DAW Books, 1974. ———. Rax. DAW Books, 1975. ———. “Sparklebugs, Holly and Love.” Colombo, Other Canadas, pp. 198–214. ———. Syzygy. DAW Books, 1973. ———. Winter’s Children. Gollancz, 1974. De Lint, Charles. “Charles de Lint: Contemporary Fantasist.” Interview, Locus, March 1991, pp. 5, 73–74. ———. The Dreaming Place. Ace, 1990. ———. Drink Down the Moon. Ace, 1990. ———. The Harp of the Grey Rose. Avon, 1985. ———. “An Interview with Charles de Lint and MaryAnn Harris.” Interview by Allan Weiss, www.yorku.ca/accsff/DeLint.html. ———. Jack, the Giant Killer. Ace, 1987. ———. The Little Country. Morrow, 1991. ———. Memory and Dream. Tom Doherty Associates, 1994. ———. Moonheart: A Romance. Ace, 1984. ———. Mulengro: A Romany Tale. Ace, 1985. ———. Svaha. Ace, 1989. Dorsey, Candas Jane. Black Wine. Tom Doherty Associates, 1997. ———. “Johnny Appleseed on the New World.” Merril, Tesseracts, pp. 55–61. Drew, Wayland. The Gaian Expedient. Ballantine Books, 1985. ———. The Master of Norriya. Ballantine Books, 1986. ———. The Memoirs of Alcheringia. Ballantine Books, 1984. ———. The Wabeno Feast. House of Anansi Press, 1973. Duncan, Dave. Magic Casement. Ballantine Books, 1990. ———. The Reluctant Swordsman. Ballantine Books, 1988. ———. A Rose-Red City. Ballantine Books, 1987. ———. Shadow. Ballantine Books, 1987. ———. West of January. Ballantine Books, 1989. Émond, Maurice. Anthologie de la nouvelle et du conte fantastiques québéecois au xxe siècle. Fides, 1987.

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Ferguson, Trevor. The Kinkajou. Macmillan, 1989. ———. Onyx John. McClelland and Stewart, 1985. Findley, Timothy. Not Wanted on the Voyage. Viking, 1984. Gadallah, Leslie. Cat’s Gambit. Del Rey, 1990. ———. Cat’s Game. Five Rivers, 2018. ———. Cat’s Pawn. Del Rey, 1987. Gedge, Pauline. Stargate. Dial Press, 1982. Gibson, William. All Tomorrow’s Parties. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999. ———. Count Zero. Ace, 1987. ———. Idoru. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996. ———. Mona Lisa Overdrive. Bantam, 1988. ———. Neuromancer. Ace, 1984. ———. Pattern Recognition. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2003. ———. Spook Country. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2007. ———, and Bruce Sterling. The Difference Engine. Bantam Books, 1991. Godfrey, Martyn. The Last War. Collier-Macmillan, 1986. ———. More than Weird. Collier-Macmillan, 1987. ———. The Vandarian Incident. Scholastic-TAB, 1981. Gom, Leona. The Y Chromosome. Second Story Press, 1990. Gotlieb, Phyllis, and Douglas Barbour, editors. Tesseracts2. Press Porcépic, 1987. Gould, Lorne, editor. New Bodies: Nine Science Fiction Short Stories. Emanation Press, 1981. Green, Terence M. Barking Dogs. St. Martin’s Press, 1988. ———. Blue Limbo. Tom Doherty Associates, 1997. ———. Children of the Rainbow. McClelland and Stewart, 1992. ———. Shadow of Ashland. Tom Doherty Associates, 1996. ———. St. Patrick’s Bed. Tom Doherty Associates, 2001. ———. A Witness to Life. Tom Doherty Associates, 1999. ———. The Woman Who Is the Midnight Wind. Pottersfield Press, 1987. Hancock, Geoff, editor. Invisible Fictions: Contemporary Stories from Québec. House of Anansi Press, 1987. ———. Magic Realism. Aya Press, 1980. Hartwell, David, and Glenn Grant, editors. Northern Stars: The Anthology of Canadian Science Fiction. Tom Doherty Associates, 1994. ———. Northern Suns. Tom Doherty Associates, 1999. Hill, Douglas. Deathwing over Veynaa. Gollancz, 1980. ———. Galactic Warlord. Gollancz, 1979. ———. Planet of the Warlord. Gollancz, 1981. Holden, Hélène. After the Fact. Oberon Press, 1986. Huff, Tanya. Blood Price. DAW Books, 1991. ———. Blood Trail. DAW Books, 1992. ———. Fifth Quarter. DAW Books, 1995. Hughes, Monica. Crisis on Conshelf Ten. Copp Clark, 1975. ———. Invitation to the Game. HarperCollins, 1990. ———. The Tomorrow City. Hamish Hamilton, 1978. Katz, Welwyn Wilton. False Face. Douglas & McIntyre, 1987. ———. Sun God, Moon Witch. Douglas & McIntyre, 1986. ———. Witchery Hill. Douglas & McIntyre, 1984. Kay, Guy Gavriel. The Darkest Road. Arbor House, 1986.

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———. The Lions of Al-Rassan. Viking, 1995. ———. River of Stars. Viking, 2013. ———. A Song for Arbonne. Viking, 1992. ———. The Summer Tree. McClelland and Stewart, 1984. ———. Tigana. Viking, 1990. ———. Under Heaven. Viking, 2010. ———. The Wandering Fire. Arbor House, 1986. Kernaghan, Eileen. Dragon-Rain and Other Stories. Flying Monkey Press, 2013. ———. Journey to Aprilioth. Ace, 1980. ———. The Sarcen Witch. Ace, 1989. ———. Songs from the Drowned Lands. Ace, 1983. Kilian, Crawford. Brother Jonathan. Ace, 1985. ———. The Empire of Time. Ballantine Books, 1978. ———. Eyas. Bantam Books, 1982. ———. The Fall of the Republic. Ballantine Books, 1987. ———. Rogue Emperor. Ballantine Books, 1988. Kilpatrick, Nancy. Child of the Night. Robinson Publishing, 1996. ———. Near Death. Pocket Books, 1994. ———. The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick. Mosaic Press, 2000. ———, and Don Bassingthwaite. As One Dead. White Wolf Publishing, 1996. Kinsella, W. P. Shoeless Joe. Houghton Miff lin, 1982. Llewellyn-Thomas, Edward. The Bright Companion. DAW Books, 1980. ———. The Douglas Convolution. DAW Books, 1979. ———. Prelude to Chaos. DAW Books, 1983. Lord, Michel, editor. Anthologie de la science-fiction québécoise contemporaine. Fides, 1988. Lortie, Alain (Daniel Sernine). Chronoreg. Éditions Québec/Amérique, 1992. Luiken, Nicole. The Catalyst. Tree Frog Press, 1989. ———. Unlocking the Doors. Scholastic, 1988. McCormack, Eric. Inspecting the Vaults. Penguin, 1987. ———. The Mysterium. Viking, 1992. ———. The Paradise Motel. Penguin, 1989. Melling, O. R. (see Whelan, Geraldine). Merril, Judith, editor. Tesseracts. Press Porcépic, 1985. Meynard, Yves. The Book of Knights. Tom Doherty Associates, 1998. Plowright, Teresa. Dreams of an Unseen Planet. Revised edition, Press Porcépic, 1989. Reeves-Stevens, Garfield. Bloodshift. Virgo Press, 1981. ———. Dark Matter. Bantam, 1990. ———. Children of the Shroud. Fawcett, 1987. ———. Nighteyes. Doubleday, 1989. Rochon, Esther. En hommage aux araignées. L’Actuelle, 1974. ———. The Shell. Translated by David Lobdell, Oberon Press, 1990. ———. “Xils.” Gotlieb and Barbour, pp. 113–17. Rooke, Leon. Shakespeare’s Dog. Stoddart, 1983. Russell, Sean. Gatherer of Clouds. DAW Books, 1992. ———. The Initiate Brother. DAW Books, 1991. ———. Moontide and Magic Rise: World without End; Sea without a Shore. DAW Books, 2018. Ryman, Geoff. The Child Garden, or, A Low Comedy. Unwin Hyman, 1989. ———. The Unconquered Country. Unwin, 1986.

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———. The Warrior Who Carried Life. Unwin Hyman, 1985. ———. Was. Penguin, 1992. Sawyer, Robert J. Calculating God. Tom Doherty Associates, 2000. ———. Factoring Humanity. Tom Doherty Associates, 1998. ———. Far-Seer. Berkley, 1992. ———. Foreigner. Berkley, 1994. ———. Fossil Hunter. Berkley, 1993. ———. Golden Fleece. Warner Books, 1990. ———. The Terminal Experiment. Harper, 1995. Sernine, Daniel (see Lortie, Alain). Skelton, Robin. Fires of the Kindred. Press Porcépic, 1987. ———. Telling the Tale. Porcupine’s Quill, 1987. Spears, Heather. The Children of Atwar. Beach Holme, 1992. ———. Moonfall. Beach Holme, 1991. ———. The Taming. Books Collective, 1996. Stewart, Sean. Cloud’s End. Berkley, 1996. ———. Galveston. Berkley, 2000. ———. “An Interview with Sean Stewart.” By Allan Weiss, SOL Rising, no. 13, May 1995, pp. 6–7; no.14, Sept. 1995, pp. 9, 11. ———. Mockingbird. Berkley, 1998. ———. Nobody’s Son. Maxwell Macmillan, 1993. ———. Resurrection Man. Berkley, 1995. Stirling, S. M. Marching through Georgia. Baen, 1988. Toolis, Lorna, and Michael Skeet, editors. Tesseracts4. Beach Holme, 1992. Trudel, Jean-Louis. “Remember, the Dead Say.” Toolis and Skeet, pp. 368–87. Vonarburg, Élisabeth. “Afterword.” Translated by Amy J. Ransom, Femspec, vol. 11, no. 2, 2011, pp. 116–18. ———. Dreams of the Sea. Translated by Howard Scott and Élisabeth Vonarburg, Books Collective, 2003. ———. A Game of Perfection. Translated by Élisabeth Vonarburg and Howard Scott. Edge, 2005. ———. In the Pit. Translated by Jane Brierley, Gotlieb and Barbour, pp. 25–43. ———. Janus. Denoël, 1984. ———. L’oeil de la nuit. Le Préambule, 1980. ———. The Maerlande Chronicles. Translated by Jane Brierley, Beach Holme, 1992. ———. Reluctant Voyagers. Translated by Jane Brierley, Bantam Books, 1995. ———. The Silent City. Translated by Jane Brierley, Press Porcépic, 1988. Weiner, Andrew. Distant Signals and Other Stories. Press Porcépic, 1990. ———. “The News from D Street.” Distant Signals, pp. 9–38. ———. Station Gehenna. Congdon & Weed, 1987. ———. This Is the Year Zero. Pottersfield Press, 1998. Whelan, Geraldine (O. R. Melling). The Druid’s Tune. Penguin, 1983. ———. The Singing Stone. Viking, 1986. Wilson, Robert Charles. Bios. Tom Doherty Associates, 1999. ———. Blind Lake. Tom Doherty Associates, 2003. ———. A Bridge of Years. Hodder and Stoughton, 1994. ———. The Chronoliths. Tom Doherty Associates, 2001. ———. Darwinia. Tom Doherty Associates, 1998. ———. The Divide. Orbit Books, 1991.

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———. Gypsies. Doubleday, 1989. ———. The Harvest. Bantam, 1994. ———. Memory Wire. Bantam, 1987. ———. Mysterium. Bantam, 1995. ———. “Robert Charles Wilson: Alternating Worlds.” Interview, Locus, Apr. 2003, pp. 84–86. ———. “SFC Interview: Robert Charles Wilson.” Interview by Allan Weiss, Science Fiction Chronicle, vol. 20, Feb.–Mar. 1999, pp. 8, 38–42. ———. Spin. Tom Doherty Associates, 2005. ———. Vortex. Tom Doherty Associates, 2011. Wright, Ronald. A Scientific Romance. Vintage, 1997.

6 THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Historical Context If the first decade of the twenty-first century was shaped by any single event, it was the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, still known as “9/11” and still traumatic for Americans. Islamist terrorists belonging to the group Al Qaeda and led by Osama bin Laden f lew two planes into New York City’s tallest structure, the twin-towered World Trade Center, and also hijacked two other planes, one of which they used to try to destroy the Pentagon. Republican George W. Bush had become president in 2000 in a disputed and still controversial election, and he used the attacks as grounds to invade Afghanistan and as a pretext (along with unfounded claims its leader, Saddam Hussein, had “weapons of mass destruction”) to invade Iraq. The Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security and brought in the so-called Patriot Act that was seen by many as a violation of civil rights and the creation of a “surveillance state” in which the government spied on its own citizens.1 Deposing Hussein created a power vacuum filled to some extent by an even more radical and deadly group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),2 which for a time governed parts of both countries and implemented a bloody purge and genocide against those who did not follow its principles. The pro-democracy Arab Spring erupted in 2011: oppressive governments in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt were overthrown, while an attempt to do the same in Syria, against Bashar al-Assad, failed and led to a civil war that continues to rage involving various factions and powers, including Russia and Turkey. Bush governed until 2008, when Democrat Barack Obama became the first African-American president, serving two terms. The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression began in 2008 with the collapse of the stock market due to rampant speculation in real estate and

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inadequate regulation, as American governments had weakened or eliminated protections brought in after the Great Depression. The Great Recession, as the crisis became known, led to lost businesses and jobs and ongoing fiscal and economic problems for many countries. Meanwhile, free trade sped the decline of American and Canadian manufacturing as large corporations moved production to Latin America and Asia in order to benefit from lower wages. Elsewhere, Vladimir Putin took power in Russia in 1999 and has ruled as president and prime minister ever since, and North Korea built up its nuclear arsenal. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, benefiting from working-class disaffection with the industrial decline of the United States and other grievances, some of them racist. In Canada, at the federal level, the Liberal Party was deposed in 2006 with the election of the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper. He brought in the usual right-wing policies of tax cuts and simultaneous spending and regulation cuts. He led minority governments until 2011, when he won a majority in Parliament. Then he was replaced in 2015, when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals took power, although they were reduced to a minority in 2019.

Scientific and Technological Context Undoubtedly, the expanding role of the internet and social media became the key technological development of the period, with the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and numerous other platforms. The ubiquity of cell phones meant that people were both constantly connected and more alienated at the same time. The ability to take photos and videos at a moment’s notice led to instant recording of instances of police brutality, for example. On the other hand, phones and social media produced challenges to privacy that are still being confronted and debated. Also, social media platforms have facilitated the spread of fake news, mis- and disinformation, and politically motivated manipulation of the truth. Other technological and scientific projects have also produced controversy, for example, genetic manipulation of foodstuffs—that is, the creation of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs—although it should be noted that humans have been breeding crops and animals for greater yield and other desired qualities for centuries. Overuse of antibiotics has led to resistance in some diseases that were previously easy to treat. The greatest scientific issue for the current generation, however, is climate change. Scientists have known for a long time about the greenhouse effect, or the rising concentration of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun’s heat and warm the planet. Various organizations have called for decades for the adoption of alternative energy sources, like wind and solar; nevertheless, concentrations have risen and storms (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.), fires, and f loods have increased in frequency and intensity, and species are going extinct.

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Science fiction authors have paid close attention to the environmental decay for some time, but especially during the past two decades.

Cultural Context During the twenty-first century, postmodernism was both extended and challenged. It was extended to include more postcolonial literature that refused to accept grand narratives of history, Eurocentric truth claims, and the meaning of culture, especially in the wake of globalization. It was also challenged by authors who rejected its dehistoricizing tendencies: that is, its denial of material reality in favour of a radical epistemological relativism. For authors from oppressed communities, their oppression was a historical reality, not just a function of language. The past two decades have seen an increasing diversification of the media in all areas, from literature to television to film. Black, Indigenous, female, LBGTQ+, and disabled artists have demanded to be and have been heard in far greater numbers. In fantastic fiction, post-cyberpunk authors like Neal Stephenson continued to produce, while hard science fiction and the New Space Opera enjoyed an ongoing renaissance. Most significantly, the cultural diversification of literature generally has occurred in fantastic fiction, too. For example, there have been African-American science fiction authors for many years, like Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler, but they were a small minority until quite recently. During the twenty-first century, far more authors of colour have emerged, winning popularity and major awards, among them N. K. Jemison, Nnedi Okorafor, and Ted Chiang. An important cultural movement has been Afrofuturism among members of the African diaspora, involving the use of the tropes of science fiction to explore postcolonial themes: imperialism, oppression, discrimination, and language and its variations. Mark Dery coined the term “Afrofuturism” in a 1993 article—in which he interviewed Delany, one of its earliest practitioners—defining it as “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentiethcentury technoculture—and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future” (180). He argues a point that we will return to: people in the African diaspora have experienced and continue to experience the tropes of science fiction in a literal way: African Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies. (180)

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Africans also endured an apocalypse, and those in the diaspora can be said to live in what is, for them, a post-apocalyptic world. What is said here applies to all those in the African diaspora, including those living in Canada and Caribbean countries. Afrofuturist fiction portrays Black characters and Afrocentrist settings (utopias and dystopias, techno-futures, other planets, etc.), and as Ytasha Womack argues, it opens a space for women writers and characters, and feminist themes (see Chapter 6 of her book). More recently, Afrofuturism 2.0 has arisen to incorporate newer digital technologies. Ecological and eco-feminist science fiction grew, and a new genre of environmental science fiction arose: climate change fiction, or cli-fi. Also, the dystopian potential of the internet, either through its control or lack of it, has formed the subject of some science fiction. Apart from political themes, writers have exhibited the inf luence of cyberpunk through an increasing interest in posthumanism, both technological and biological; that is, authors have speculated on how bodily modification through cybernetics and genetic engineering will change who, indeed what, human beings might become (see the work of Donna J. Haraway and Scott Bukatman in particular). More and more, writers have come to question what the mind is, and how much it is shaped or even determined by the body and external material forces. Thus, cognitive science has become for many writers what evolution, psychology, nuclear physics, and cybernetics were to earlier generations of science fiction authors. The New Space Opera, military science fiction, utopian/dystopian fiction, science fiction of varying levels of “hard”ness, and other subgenres have all continued. As for fantasy, multi-part epics continued to be published in a field dominated by George R. R. Martin and his A Song of Ice and Fire series beginning with The Game of Thrones (1996). Authors from non-European and/or minority backgrounds have written fantasy based on the myths of other lands, following in the forgotten footsteps of Charles R. Saunders and a few others. The New Weird inaugurated (to some extent) by China Miéville and dark fantasy in the Anne Rice/Twilight series vein remained active forms. More women writers, LGBTQ+, and non-binary authors have made their mark in the fantastic. As for Canadian fiction, numerous genres and styles have become available. Historical fiction continued to be popular among both authors and readers, with works by Michael Crummey, Wayne Johnston, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Annabel Lyon. Exploring feminist and gender themes are Dionne Brand, Sheila Heti, and many more. Postmodernism reached the East Coast in works by Lynn Coady, Mark Anthony Jarman, Lisa Moore, and Michael Winter. Canadian literature was already being enriched by new or ignored voices since the 1970s, but the trend became even more pronounced during the twenty-first century. Among the Black writers who came to prominence are Andre Alexis, Lawrence Hill, Esi Edugyan, Olive Senior, and Wayne Grady. Asian-Canadian, Arab-Canadian, and other minority-community authors told their stories in greater numbers, and

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won prestigious awards for doing so, among them M. G. Vassanji, Rawi Hage. Shauna Singh Baldwin, Shyam Selvadurai, Madeleine Thien, and Kim Thúy. For many years, Indigenous literature was rarely available outside Indigenous communities, for a variety of reasons. First, that literature was predominantly oral, leading to obvious practical and language barriers to its dissemination; in addition, some stories were not intended for audiences outside the communities that created them. Furthermore, non-Indigenous publishers had little interest in works that were considered to have limited commercial appeal. Another problem was “appropriation of voice,” a term that has not been well understood. It means that members of minority cultures had difficulty getting their own voices heard when members of the majority culture were telling their stories instead. As we have seen, for all their good intentions Howard O’Hagan and Sheila Watson became the leading Canadian portrayers of Indigenous mythological figures like Coyote in The Double Hook, and fantasy writers used Indigenous material to Canadianize their works.3 When non-Indigenous authors speak for First Nations people, they deprive Indigenous authors of the publishing opportunities and audience to tell their own stories. That has changed with the emergence of Indigenous publishers like Theytus Books and a greater willingness on the part of other publishers to print the works of Indigenous authors. Those who have spoken in recent years for First Nations include Joseph Boyden (although his status as Indigenous was challenged), Drew Hayden Taylor, Eden Robinson, and Richard Wagamese.

Book and Magazine Publishing The number of Canadian presses specializing in, or being willing to publish, fantastic fiction increased remarkably during the twenty-first century. Hayden and Liz Trenholme started Bundoran Press in 2006. Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi, editors of ChiZine, founded ChiZine Publications (CZP) in 2008, which specialized in dark fantasy, horror, and literary science fiction; it collapsed in 2019. Lorina Stephens founded Five Rivers to self-publish her work beginning in 2008, then expanded it into a publisher of others’ fiction with Robert Runté as her fiction editor; the press closed in 2020. Meanwhile, established literary presses like Exile Editions, ECW Press, and Guernica Editions began publishing theme anthologies of new stories— devoted to such genres and themes as steampunk, dark fantasy, female scientists, and even lost toys—as well as novels and story collections. New magazines appeared, too. D. F. McCourt created AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review in 2010; the title is in honour of A. E. van Vogt. Pulp Literature in Richmond, BC, published its first issue in 2014, and R. Graeme Cameron started Polar Borealis in 2016.

Science Fiction The number of Canadian science fiction writers has grown to the point where it is simply impossible to do justice to their contributions. It will be necessary to pick out only a few representative figures and new works by already established

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authors, while cautioning that many more could have been included had space permitted. With a doctorate in marine biology from the University of British Columbia, Peter Watts (1958–) writes out of a profound knowledge about biology that lends credence to his speculations. His first publication was “A Niche” in Tesseracts3, which formed the basis for his novel, Starfish (1999), the first of his Rifters series; the others are Maelstrom (2001) and the two-volume βehemoth (2004): βehemoth: β-Max and βehemoth: Seppuku. Power utility Grid Authority seeks to build geothermal generators at the bottom of the sea, and has physically and psychologically manipulated employees to work in the deepest parts of the ocean, including protagonist Lenie Clarke, who has been modified with an artificial lung and eye implants. As it turns out, the crew are the subjects of experiments in psychological conditioning, even to the point of having traumatic memories implanted in them. While at the Channer Vent (the “Throat” or “Rift” of the series), she unwittingly unleashes an organism that has followed an entirely different evolutionary path from that of the rest of the Earth—one that is toxic to us. The βehemoth wipes out most of humanity, and Lenie must cope with her own guilt in the apocalypse, as well as confront others involved in creating who she has become, above all Grid officials and scientists like Patricia Rowan and Yves Scanlon. Meanwhile, the line between biological and digital life begins to blur as the corporation develops “smart gel”: cultured brain cells designed to attack computer viruses. Rowan gives the gel the choice of which biological entity, biosphere or βehemoth, most deserves to win out, and it makes a perfectly logical choice: the simpler and more efficient βehemoth. Watts’s key theme is posthumanism as he portrays what we might become in the next stage of our evolution. The subsequent novels trace Lenie’s quest for answers and revenge—and redemption—and also her achievement of digital immortality as she becomes an internet meme—a “virus” of a different sort—in the ’Net. Watts’s other major novel is Blindsight (2006), which is about an expedition led by a vampire, Jukka Sarasti—vampires are another divergent evolutionary bypath—to an alien structure discovered near Neptune and nicknamed Big Ben. Is it hostile or friendly, or simply too alien to comprehend? A varied crew deal with their psychological and medical issues, including one whose emotions have been surgically dampened and another who has multiple personalities. To add to their distress, Big Ben proves able to manipulate their minds. Once again, Watts explores the themes of the truly alien, evolution and life as a competitive struggle to survive, technological and biological posthumanism, and the limitations of knowledge. Watts has become particularly interested in cognitive science: how do we know what we (think we) know, and to what extent do we have free will or are subject to inf luences over which we finally have no control? Blindsight’s sequel is Echopraxia (2014). Posthumanism is also the theme of authors who had emerged during the f lowering discussed in the previous chapter. In Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin

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series—Spin (2005), Axis (2007), and Vortex (2011)—we follow the experiences of various characters as a mysterious barrier, created by alien machines, cuts the Earth off from the rest of the universe and transports it far into the future. The Hypotheticals, as they are called, exist, and therefore “wish,” if that is an appropriate term for it, only to absorb data, including biological beings. The trilogy depicts the full melding of mind and machine as characters transform into digitized Others. The premise of Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW Trilogy is that sentience arises when the self becomes aware of an other. In Wake (2008–2009), the Chinese impose a firewall on the internet to prevent outsiders (and their own people) from learning about their slaughter of ten thousand people to prevent the spread of a new, deadly virus. A Chinese hacker, however, opens up a hole in the “Great Firewall of China” and that is how the internet becomes both divided and joined. The result is that a sentient entity arises in the internet, Webmind. Meanwhile, a blind teenage girl named Caitlin Decter receives an implant to help her gain sight, and it also allows her to communicate with the growing Webmind. The other novels, Watch (2010), and Wonder (2011), trace Webmind’s growth and Caitlin’s efforts, with the help of friendly scientists, to prevent government agencies from shutting down Webmind as a threat to humanity. One of the leading Canadian figures in hard science fiction and the New Space Opera is Karl Schroeder (1962–). He began publishing short stories in Canadian venues like On Spec and the Tesseracts volumes, as well as American magazines and anthologies, during the 1990s, collecting many of the stories in The Engine of Recall (2005). Most of the stories are hard science fiction tales, but he also collaborated with horror and dark fantasy author David P. Nickle on “The Toy Mill” (1992), a satirical portrait of Santa Claus as the boss of a Dickensian toy factory employing elves whom the protagonist, a little girl named Emily, seeks to unionize; the story became the core of a novella called The Claus Effect (1997). Schroeder then started his Ventus series, beginning with Ventus (2000) and continuing in Lady of Mazes (2005). The novels examine the concept of “thalience”: a word coined by Schroeder that refers to the degree to which something is a subject or object, that is, has sentience and a degree of agency. Ventus is a colony planet that has been terraformed using nanotechnology guided by artificial intelligences known as Winds (thus the planet’s name). Between the planet’s modification and the colonists’ arrival, however, the Winds have become autonomous, having lost any memory of their creators, and they even attack any form of human technology as an alien invader in a kind of planetary immune response. Many years later, the humans who have managed to create a home on Ventus have intellectually and philosophically devolved, and see the Winds as gods and technology as magic, in line with Arthur C. Clarke’s famous line that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (from the 1973 version of his essay “Hazards of Prophecy”). Meanwhile, in the region of space where most humans live, two

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AIs are at war: the Archipelago and 3340, another quasi-biological entity that spreads its cybernetic “seeds” throughout the galaxy, including one that lands on Ventus. That seed becomes the “villain” of this novel and its sequel: the AI Armiger. Protagonists Jordan Mason and Calandria May—an agent sent from the Archipelago—strive to discover and destroy Armiger. Schroeder’s future, like that of cyberpunk, raises questions about where the biological ends and the technological begins; also, like Watts, he is intrigued by discoveries in cognitive science, and speculates on what is mind and what is the object of others’ minds. His lengthy Virga series began with Sun of Suns (2006) and is about a vast artificially enclosed region of space containing numerous artificial suns and their planets; wooden spaceships ply the distances between worlds inside a fullerene sphere: a giant air-filled balloon. In the centre of the sphere, and around which all the other objects orbit, is Candesce, the “Sun of Suns” of the first novel’s title. A far-future, three-dimensional version of ocean travel during the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, this realm has its own pirates, treasure, adventurers, and empires. The novels portray the conf licts between worlds and factions on the various planets and ships. Other volumes in the series include Queen of Candesce (2007) and Pirate Sun (2008). Schroeder published other novels as well, notably Permanence (2002), which portrays the “rights economy”: a system built on nanotech tags present in all objects that makes information about those objects an exchangeable commodity—in effect, a kind of patent system for knowledge. Other Canadian authors wrote far-future and/or space-set fiction as well, like Robert Boyczuk (1956–), Derek Künksen (1971–), Nina Munteanu (1954–) with her Splintered Universe Trilogy, and John Park (1948–), among many others. The dangers of biotechnology, corporate domination, and climate change are depicted in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy, which began with Oryx and Crake in 2003 and ended with MaddAddam in 2013. In the trilogy’s near-future dystopia, the elite live in corporate compounds—whose rules are enforced by their private CorpSeCorps—while the rest live in the “pleeblands.” Those in biotechnology work on such profitable things as genetically created foods like “chickinobs” and hybrid animals like “pigoons” (pigs and raccoons) and “rakunks” (raccoons and skunks) used to grow transplantable organs and even skin, as the genetic line between human and non-human is almost entirely erased. The focal character is Jimmy, nicknamed Snowman, who believes he is the last “true” human on Earth. Jimmy thinks back on his childhood in the OrganInc and then HelthWyzer corporate enclaves, and meeting Glenn, whose online name is Crake when they play such games as the self-explanatory Extinctathon. While Jimmy reluctantly ends up in advertising, Glenn is a genetic engineering prodigy who gets a job at RejoovenEsense manufacturing drugs. Disgusted with humanity’s environmentally damaging behaviour, and seeing our species as the ultimate disease infecting our planet, Glenn produces

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a pharmaceutical, BlyssPluss, that increases libido but also causes sterility and carries a deadly virus. Through his manufactured pandemic, Crake kills off the vast majority of humanity while creating a race of vegetarian, ecologically benign, and innocent creatures who become known as the Crakers. The Crakers are posthumans who seem destined to replace us on Earth. Oryx is the “star” of child-pornography videos whom both young men fall in love with; her exploitation symbolizes all the corporate and human domination of the poor, the technologically deprived, nature, and other oppressed beings. The Year of the Flood deals mainly with an environmentalist (and somewhat self-righteous and cult-like) group, God’s Gardeners. For them, the “Flood”— Crake’s pandemic—is the prophesied end of humanity. MaddAddam brings together the characters from the two previous novels. The Crakers consider Crake their God, understandably enough, and Jimmy as a kind of Christ-like mediator between them and their Creator. As it turns out, and in keeping with a theme we have seen in other fantastic literature by women, the Crakers have psychic abilities, being able to read minds and thereby transcend the limitations of language. They are prelapsarian beings in tune with nature and humans at a fundamental level. Throughout the series, Atwood employs multilevel puns, neologisms, and allusions to texts like Alice in Wonderland, the Bible, and other works of science fiction, as she explores her favourite themes of power relations and binary oppositions that need to be reconciled, above all between the human and natural worlds—a union embodied by the Crakers. A more conventional bio-apocalypse occurs in Station Eleven (2014) by Emily St. John Mandel (1979–). Here, a virus known as the Georgia Flu breaks out and is spread around the world through air travel—a “technological vector” of sorts that has been the cause of both real and fictional global pandemics for decades.4 Most of the novel is set some years later as the Travelling Symphony, a troupe of itinerant entertainers in a North America largely depopulated by the virus, seek refuge from a group of religious fanatics led by the Prophet. “Station Eleven” is a graphic novel written during better times, and comes to represent technology, escapism, and that rare commodity in a world of bare survival, art. The novel’s themes include the value of art and the unappreciated richness of modern life—things we too easily lose sight of in harsh conditions. Another post-apocalyptic novel is Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach (2018) by Kelly Robson (1967–), who has published short stories and novellas in various fantastic genres in American pulp and online magazines. In the twenty-third century, the environment has been wrecked, and humans live underground or in protected cities on the surface. People are divided into two types: plague babies and fat babies, depending on where they live and how fully natural their bodies are. The plague babies have prostheses, and one of them, protagonist Minh, has six artificial legs. She and her team travel back in time to get data on the primeval, and ecologically healthier, condition of ancient Mesopotamia, the goal being to gain data that will assist the ecological remediation of

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the planet. To the locals, however, led by King Shulgi, these posthumans are monsters who must be destroyed, especially if he is to retain his power. It is a novel of exploration not only of the past but also of what it means to be human. Canadian authors have thus explored the major scientific and technical issues of the twenty-first century, notably environmental destruction and specifically climate change. That concern is well illustrated by the publication of an entire anthology devoted to cli-fi: Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change (2017), edited by scholar, fiction author, and poet Bruce Meyer (1957–). It should be noted that a number of apocalyptic French-Canadian novels and stories of the period have also been on this theme (see Trudel 140–43). One of the most significant authors of this generation is Cory Doctorow (1971–), who writes primarily near-future, cyberpunk-inspired science fiction about young hackers or brilliant navigators of cyber-worlds seeking to undermine efforts to limit free access to knowledge. He published his signature story, “Craphound,” in 1998; it was reprinted in 2003 in his first collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More. The story is about an alien who visits Earth and befriends the narrator, Jerry, who makes money by visiting garage sales, f lea markets, and so on seeking valuable but underpriced keepsakes he can then resell. Jerry nicknames the alien Craphound because he shares Jerry’s interest in these artefacts, although for a very different reason. While being a “craphound” is a purely commercial matter for Jerry, for Craphound the old items have cultural, not economic, value. Jerry has lost sight of how much these objects can mean, particularly for someone from another world trying to understand, and even connect with, ours. Doctorow has long been interested in the way we have created new mythologies out of popular culture, like Disney World—a tightly controlled, even dystopian space with its tight security and choreographed role as a “magic kingdom.” In Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003), Doctorow examines the dark side of not just Disney World but also a Disneyfied world in which the simulacrum substitutes for the real. Disney World has been taken over by “ad-hocs”: groups who live in and maintain it—for some, like the narrator, that means preserving its original authenticity. Doctorow has been an activist fighting efforts to corporatize and limit free speech on the internet. In Little Brother (2008), a young-adult take on Nineteen Eighty-Four, the role of Big Brother is played by the Department of Homeland Security. Rebellious high school student and hacker Marcus Yarrow and his fellow online gamers are suspected of involvement in a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. They are kidnapped and later spied on by DHS agents. In response to these violations of his rights, Marcus and the others initiate a movement against the surveillance state. In a reference to current events, during a second arrest, Marcus is tortured using methods that the military and CIA employed during the American “war on terror,” like waterboarding. It takes an investigative reporter and the California Highway Patrol to bring down the DHS’s oppressive state within a state. In this novel, to a much greater

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extent than in cyberpunk, the hackers are true heroes as they subvert efforts to control the population and distort the truth. Doctorow’s interest in intellectual property rights (copyrights, patents, etc.) figures prominently in Eastern Standard Tribe (2004) and Pirate Cinema (2012). Margaret Atwood also published other dystopian texts. The Heart Goes Last (2015) was inspired by the Great Recession of 2009; it is set after an economic collapse resulting in high unemployment, unaffordable housing, and anarchy. The protagonists are married couple Stan and Charmaine. The prisons have been privatized and constitute a major part of the remaining economy. Entrepreneurs create the Positron Project: people will live half the year in houses in the planned community of Consilience and half in Positron Prison, sharing their residences with Alternates. They are guaranteed employment, working for the prison. In true dystopian fashion, there is constant surveillance, an underground resistance, and characters—like Charmaine—willing to do anything to conform. In Atwood’s short story “Torching the Dusties” (2014), young people blame their economic problems and lack of opportunities on seniors, who are non-productive and expensive to maintain, and rampage against them. Most recently, she published a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments (2019), which is narrated by three characters, one of whom is Aunt Lydia from the earlier novel. Candas Jane Dorsey’s A Paradigm of Earth (2001) is about aliens who come to Earth to learn about us by growing up with humans in different countries during their formative years. The protagonist, Morgan, is a bisexual woman who agrees to host Canada’s alien, whose hosts name him Blue for his colour. The novel is set in a future in which the government is led by social conservatives who are turning the clock back on gay rights. For the humans, the ambiguously sexed Blue is a mirror: male to some, female to others, and of course neither and both to Morgan. Morgan brings Blue into her old family house, which she turns into a rooming house filled with artists: a dancer, a painter, and video creators. Not all are whom they seem, however. It is when Morgan recognizes herself in and the Otherness of Blue that she learns to love. The novel is a feminist exploration of gender and human identity, with Blue as the catalyst for the characters’ self-understanding. Julie Czerneda (1955–) began publishing a series of trilogies called the Clan Chronicles in 1997: the first was the Trade Pact Trilogy, beginning with A Thousand Words for Stranger (1997), followed by a prequel to the Trade Pact Trilogy, the Stratification Trilogy, and then the Reunification series. She has written other series as well, both science fiction and fantasy, and is noted for her humour and careful characterization. Also, she has been a very active editor of anthologies, as she has endeavoured to encourage younger authors, especially women who might otherwise have difficulty breaking into a traditionally male-dominated field. Among her anthologies are Fantastic Companions (2005), and Mythspring: From the Lyrics and Legends of Canada (2006), co-edited with Genevieve Kierans.

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She has frequently acted as a mentor to younger writers in workshops and other venues, and has published textbooks on teaching through science fiction. In fact, she has edited a series of anthologies, Tales from the Wonder Zone, specifically designed for classroom use. Matthew (Matt) Hughes (1949–) was born in England and moved to Canada as a child. His science fiction stories have appeared in American SF magazines like The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction. He is best known for his Archonate series of stories and novels; the premise underlying the series is that the basic principle of the universe alternates between science and magic, and the texts are set in the far future around the time of the changeover, in the world’s penultimate age.5 The texts are in different series about each of a set of running characters, like Guth Bandar, a historian who explores what is called the noösphere or Commons: the realm of archetypes and shared knowledge (i.e., Carl Jung’s “collective unconscious”) that some are capable of entering through psychic sensitivity and education. In “A Little Learning” (2004), Bandar is still a noönaut in training; in Black Brillion (2004), he becomes Archonate agent Baro Harkness’s mentor in navigating the noösphere. Baro’s partner in his investigation of the activities of some suspicious individuals is criminal and conman Luff Imbry, another running character in the series. Since those works set after the transition involve magic, they can be classified as fantasy, but for Hughes the universe has just replaced one paradigm for another. Among the most prolific recent authors is Edward Willett (1959–), with novels for adults and young adults as well as short stories and plays. Among his works are Marseguro (2008) and Terra Insegura (2009), which make up his The Helix War series, and The Worldshapers portal fantasy series. He writes space operas, adventure fantasies, and dystopian fiction, to name a few of the genres in which he works. Taking a satirical approach to science fiction is Hugh A. D. Spencer. He aims his ironic stories at the pulp era, television science fiction, and urban legends. That is certainly the case of the title story of Why I Hunt Flying Saucers (2016). From a Mormon background himself, he frequently satirizes that church, too, as in “Mormonism and the Saskatoon Space Programme” and his novel Extreme Dentistry (2014). His fiction is also characterized by nostalgia for pulp fiction’s moral certainties and optimism, and an anti-industrial view reminiscent of one of his favourite authors, Ray Bradbury. A science fiction author who began her career in the 2010s is Madeline Ashby (1983–). Her major work is the Machine Dynasties series, beginning with vN: The First Machine Dynasty (2012) and continuing with iD: The Second Machine Dynasty (2013) as well as shorter pieces; the novels and stories are about von Neumann machines, which are self-replicating machines, building other machines and thereby reproducing themselves in a quasi-biological sense. The main character of vN is Amy, daughter of a human male and an android female.

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When her machine grandmother tries to take her away, Amy eats her, and must then endure having her grandmother’s AI competing with her own mind inside her. Ashby’s Company Town (2016) is about intrigue in the f loating city of New Arcadia, built on an old oil rig in the Atlantic. Among the characters are artificial intelligences/posthumans who have crossed the Singularity and can move through time, giving them the power of foretelling. In French Canada, the 1990s and twenty-first century have seen a revival of political science fiction, including works by Daniel Sernine—already discussed—and younger writers speculating on how a separate Québec might be created and evolve. Postcolonial themes continue to dominate, then, and that is especially evident in one of the major recent works, Sylvie Bérard’s Terre des autres (2004, translated as Of Wind and Sand in 2008). Like Vonarburg in the Tyranaël series, Bérard has one planet given different names and identities by humans and the world’s original inhabitants. The novel depicts the tragic relationships between human colonists on what they call Mars II—Siexlth to the natives—and the indigenous, chameleon-like dartzls. Neither species understands the other fully, and each judges the other according to its own preconceptions and standards. The unfortunate inevitable results are mistrust, hatred, and war.

Marginalized Communities and New Voices Arguably the most important development in Canadian fantastic fiction during the past two decades has been its growing diversity, as members of racialized and gendered minority groups have contributed their voices to the field. Black, Indo-Caribbean, Asian-Canadian, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ authors have emerged in greater numbers and have used, subverted, and modified the conventions and tropes of science fiction and fantasy to treat themes of race, nationality, ethnicity, capitalism, and traditional gender binaries and relations. These authors have dealt not only with relationships among people and peoples but also between humanity and the natural world, often through the depiction of posthuman subjects whose position is both liminal and f luid, and feminist and eco-feminist ideas have gained a new prominence. Writers from minority ethnic communities commonly use material from their cultural backgrounds—including mythological and legendary figures and religious and social rituals—as sources. That is, Eurocentric, classical, and Judaeo-Christian myths and Celtic magical beings are no longer the only sources for contemporary fantastic literature. Also, authors from marginalized communities have sometimes challenged the boundaries between the fantastic genres themselves, blurring conventional lines between science fiction and fantasy, and between the fantastic and the realist. For many of these authors, the spiritual or supernatural is not separate from the natural, meaning that it would be misguided to distinguish their texts according to Western genre divisions like science fiction and fantasy,

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so it would be best to discuss their works together rather than under these different genre headings. The leading Canadian Afrofuturist author—and indeed one of the most important Canadian writers of science fiction, fantasy, and postcolonial literature—is Nalo Hopkinson (1960–). She was born in Jamaica and moved with her family to Canada in 1977. Her father was a poet and playwright and while young, thanks to his friendships with other writers, Hopkinson had the opportunity to meet such authors as Derek Walcott. She read classical works, English literature, and science fiction and fantasy early on, including the fantasy of Charles R. Saunders. Throughout her career, she has sought to incorporate African, Afro-Caribbean, and Caribbean mythology and folklore, expanding the cultural roots of the fantastic. For example, she has used Anansi, the African spider trickster figure, and the soucouyant, a Caribbean folklore being who is a vampire in the form of an old woman who sheds her skin at night to f ly to her victims and feed. Hopkinson has also written from a feminist and queer perspective, as she explores themes of gender identity and sexuality, offering a truly intersectional point of view. Her first short story publication was “A Habit of Waste” (1996) in the feminist literary magazine Fireweed; the story was reprinted three years later in Northern Suns. Other stories appeared in anthologies (e.g., Tesseracts 6 and Northern Frights 5) and magazines, and she collected many of them in Skin Folk (2001). Other collections include Report from Planet Midnight (2012) and Falling in Love with Hominids (2015). She has also edited anthologies of Caribbean-based stories and Afrofuturism, like Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction (2000) and So Long Been Dreaming (2004, with Uppinder Mehan). Her career took off with the publication of her first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring 6 (1998), about a post-apocalyptic Toronto and a young girl who—like other characters we have seen—resists her family’s legacy of psychic abilities. The city’s downtown has become a poverty-stricken and violent slum due to an economic collapse, to the point that it has been physically isolated from the suburbs where the middle- and upper-classes have f led. Money and race have condemned the residents to a precarious existence. The main conf lict is between Ti-Jeanne and Rudy, a gang boss, who is trying to steal her grandmother’s heart for the province’s premier. However, it is also a struggle within Ti-Jeanne herself: between her denial of the spirits in whom her grandmother, Gro-Jeanne, believes, and her need to accept them—and, by extension, her own powers, her family heritage—to summon their aid. In her next novel, Midnight Robber (2000), the narrator is the AI Granny Nanny,7 and the Midnight Robber is a legendary (and male) figure in the Caribbean, based on a real person who resisted slavery and became a Robin Hood–like lower-class hero, depicted in a costume during Carnival. The protagonist is the girl Tan-Tan, who lives with her mother and mayor father Antonio on a Caribbean colony planet named Toussaint (after the leader of the

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Haitian slave revolt; see Chapter 3). Nanny Granny is the colony’s ostensibly benign caretaker, but she proves to be a violent colonizer who has slaughtered the planet’s indigenous life forms to make room for the colonists. When Antonio murders his romantic rival in a fight, he and Tan-Tan f lee to the prison planet New Half-Way Tree, which is an alternate-universe version of Toussaint where the f lora and fauna that Granny Nanny had destroyed still exist, including the sentient Douen.8 The humans treat the Douen as lower animals: that is, the way their own ancestors had once been treated by whites. Indeed, as one of the natives, Chichibud, tells Tan-Tan, “Oonah tallpeople quick to name what is people and what is beast” (92). Hopkinson’s point is that imperialism itself, not the race that does the colonizing, is the problem. Tan-Tan escapes her abusive father to live with the Douen, who inhabit a giant (and, to them, sacred) tree that provides them with both their physical and spiritual needs. Tan-Tan learns not only how to live among them but also to identify with them, and to accommodate her various cultural identities. When the Douen exile her, too, for revealing their home to the humans, she leaves and becomes the Midnight Robber, entering into legend herself with Granny Nanny’s storytelling. The Salt Roads (2003) presents the stories of three women who live centuries apart but share a single spirit and voice, Lasirén, an African goddess: Mer (French for “sea”), a slave in eighteenth-century San Domingo (later named Haiti); Jeanne Duval (also known as Lemer), a Haitian, who lives in the nineteenth century and is a lover of the poet Charles Baudelaire; and Thais (also known as Meritet), a fourth-century prostitute and later saint. The “salt road” refers to the Middle Passage, the route by which slaves were brought from Africa to the New World, with the “salt” referring not just to the ocean but also the tears they shed, and while it is a means by which the Africans were displaced from their home, it is also their link to it. All three women are united by the spirit realm represented by Lasirén, their bisexuality, and the power of water, salt, life, childbirth, healing, and memory. Children, or grown-up children, are also the protagonists of other novels; they must come to terms with their pasts and transcend their childhood selves. For example, Chastity/Calamity Lambkin of In the New Moon’s Arms (2007) seems like a little girl at first but turns out to be a middle-aged woman with a daughter, Ifeoma. Throughout the novel, elements from Calamity’s past magically reappear, like her father’s chestnut orchard. The tale concerns Calamity’s need to return to her childhood and deal with her past before she can move on. She is a “finder” like her maternal ancestors: someone with the power to find lost objects. Ecological themes can be seen in the fate of the marine beings who are being poisoned by a nearby salt refinery; Calamity rescues and brief ly adopts a sea-boy who washes up on shore. In Sister Mine (2013), Makeda and Abby Joli are formerly conjoined twins who have been living together and constantly bicker, but must learn to accept that they are two in one. The twins, we learn, are the children of a demigod and a human woman who has been

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turned into a lake monster they seek and finally get to meet. They are thus part of a family of “celestials.” Like other novels we have seen, Sister Mine is about young people who must accept their family legacy and therefore who and what they are. Hopkinson is not the only author to have used Caribbean mythology in her fiction; David Chariandy featured the soucouyant in his first novel. Soucouyant (2007) is narrated by a young man who f lees his mother Adele’s house when he is seventeen because of her dementia. When he returns two years later, he finds a girl living there he assumes is a nurse but who is actually a street kid trying to redeem herself for having teased Adele for her mental illness. Adele’s own mother was a prostitute on a United States Army base in Trinidad whom Adele set on fire in shame, leaving her with horrible scars all over her body, like the wrinkles on the crone in the legend. Adele is certain that she saw a soucouyant when she was a child; her memories combine a plane crash she saw during training and the fire she herself ignited. The figure here is both real and symbolic, as all of the characters are in effect vampires possessed by demons from their pasts, while the past itself is a soucouyant draining their lives from them. Yet it also represents cultural memory and the need, and ability, to preserve it among diasporic peoples. Scholars have argued that the figure should not be dismissed as purely a pathological phenomenon, a projection of Adele’s trauma, but as embodying a different epistemology, one that accepts the existence of beings Western rationalism and science would explain away in psychological terms. The 2010s saw a f lourishing of Afrofuturist fiction from various authors throughout the African diaspora, including Canadians like Tonya Liburd, Chinelo Onwualu, and Kelvin Nyeusi Mawazo, a comics author and artist. The Black Speculative Arts Movement began in New York in 2015 and Canadian chapters have been founded in Toronto, Montréal, Halifax, Ottawa, and Edmonton. Karin Lowachee (1973–) is a Guyanese-Canadian author whose novel Warchild (2002) is a space opera about Jos(lyn) Aaron Musley, a boy on a spaceship that is attacked by pirates led by the violent and sexually abusive Falcone. Jos’s parents are killed, and he is taken to be sold into prostitution. He manages to escape in the confusion when the station Chaos is attacked by the alien striviirc-na, with whom the Earth is at war. Jos ends up on the aliens’ home world where he gains sympathy for them and trains to be a warrior to exact revenge on Falcone. Jos is no superhero; he exhibits the effects of his traumas through his second-person narration during much of the early part of the novel and his inability to make strong emotional attachments. Moral and emotional choice is the novel’s main theme, as Jos is confronted with competing demands for his allegiance as those who initially seem to be good or evil often turn out to be otherwise. The novel is the first of a series, with other titles being Burndive (2003) and Cagebird (2005).

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As we saw earlier, white writers during the Pulp Era had portrayed the Middle East and Asia through the lens of Orientalism; now, diasporic writers from those regions, especially Asia, began to speak for themselves. One of the most significant Asian-Canadian voices in the fantastic is Larissa Lai (1967–), who was born in the United States and moved to Canada while still a child. As a lesbian, she writes about gender themes, her novels treating intersectionality as she explores race, class, and gender and ethnic identity, as well as abuses of biological and other forms of technology. She frequently uses female figures from Chinese myths and legends to enrich her narratives and challenge gender and other binaries. Scholars have positioned her in the context of diasporic writing, more specifically Chinese writing, and see her as offering alternatives to Western, rationalist, and heteronormative beliefs and practices. Her first novel was When Fox Is a Thousand (1995, revised 2004), in which the Chinese trickster figure Fox is one of the narrators. The central characters are lovers and friends Mercy (Ming) Lee, Artemis Wong, and Diane Wong. The novel moves between two temporal and geographical settings: Fox’s medieval China and contemporary Vancouver. In both, gender identities are f luid; as lovers experience traumas and break-ups, everything is overseen by Fox, the creative spirit (literally and figuratively) behind the events, lending a degree of self-ref lexivity to the novel. Lai sees Fox as a creature of darkness, death, germination and sexuality. The fox has the power to travel both above the earth and below it. In order to work her mischief she needs human form . . . her power over men (and perhaps women too?) is the power of seduction. I find these stories very rich and very visceral. They are also politically compelling for a number of reasons. The first is contemporary feminism’s struggle with questions of sexual representation. What does it mean for a feminist to embrace the power of seduction. And am I a feminist, or is that also a colonized space? The second is the question of how to deal with sexual representations of Asians in the West where we have been so much exoticized and/or desexualized in a society which insists on pathlogizing the sexuality of the other. I was compelled to find out what kind of warrior the fox could be in that battle. The third is the possibility of employing the fox as a new trope of lesbian representation, or, if that term and its history reeks too much of its western origins, then as a trope of Asian women’s community and power. (151) The protagonist of future-set Salt Fish Girl (2002) is Miranda Ching, who lives in Serendipity, one of several corporate-run walled cities, this one on the west coast of North America. The novel’s advanced technology includes human cloning and virtual reality, the latter providing experiences of the ironically named “Real World.” One scientist, Dr. Flowers, has been cloning

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people—including a friend of Miranda’s, Evie, who also has fish DNA—to work in corporate factories for very little money. Throughout the novel, a figure from Chinese mythology, the immortal Nu Wa, appears in a parallel story symbolizing and becoming involved in Miranda’s own. In this dystopian world, Miranda offers hope through the birth of a baby girl. For Lai, the cyborg is both a worrisome violation of nature and yet a figure representing liberation from strict physical, cultural, gender, and other dichotomies. As Lai says in her essay about reclaiming the past and an identity: Animals at last. The myth and the tall tale. The secret and the subterranean. The dark, the feminine, the yin. All allies in this task. For, if diasporic cultures in the West are to be living breathing things they must change. We must have the power of construction, as long, of course, as we behave as responsibly as we know how in the act of construction. (150) Other Chinese-Canadian authors include Eric Choi, Tony Pi, and Derwin Mak. They have all published short stories in American and Canadian magazines, and have edited or co-edited anthologies of works by members of the Asian diaspora in Canada and elsewhere. For example, Mak and Choi edited The Dragon and the Stars (2010) devoted to stories by authors in the Chinese diaspora, including the three authors listed above and Canadians Elaine L. Chen and Melissa Yuan-Innes. Choi is an aerospace engineer and specializes in hard science fiction; Mak has done military studies, a focus evident in his work; Pi writes in various fantastic genres; Chen uses Chinese myths and legends in her work; Yuan-Innes is a doctor. All have been widely published in Canadian and non-Canadian genre magazines and anthologies, and Mak published his first novel, The Moon under Her Feet, in 2007. Another key Asian-Canadian author is Hiromi Goto, who grounds her fiction in Japanese myths and legends and writes about gender themes. In 2001, she published The Kappa Child, in which the narrator sees herself and her sisters as grotesques. Their father is physically abusive, while their mother Okasan distances herself from reality. The kappa in Japanese lore is an aquatic imp and a trickster figure capable of carrying water in a dish-like indentation on its head. When the father moves the family from British Columbia to Alberta to start a rice farm in hot and dry conditions, a kappa appears bringing rain. The narrator later meets the Stranger (a human kappa) with whom she seems to become pregnant. The child in her is actually her own true self, the Kappa Child, and she must reconcile herself to the people in her life, both family and friends. The title of Half World (2009) refers to one of the three realms: Life, Half World, and the world of the Spirits. A person is supposed to move in sequence from one to the other, then return and begin the cycle again. However, there was a disruption in the universe, breaking up the Realms, and now everything is decaying because of the loss of balance. A prophecy says that

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when a new baby is born in Half World the balance will be restored, and we follow the parents and then growth of that child. Aided by magical objects and beasts, Melanie sets out to rescue her mother in Half World, while Mr. Glueman represents the death without which rebirth cannot occur. Goto has also published the story collection Hopeful Monsters (2004). Derwin Mak co-edited Where the Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy with Lucas K. Law in 2017. The anthology brings together stories by authors in the larger Asian diaspora, representing not just East Asian but also South Asian communities. Among the authors are Tony Pi, Melissa Yuan-Innes, and an important new voice, Indo-Canadian Rati Mehrotra, whose first novel Markswoman came out in 2018, followed by the sequel Mahimata the following year. She bases her fiction on Hindu sources, notably Kali: as she explains on her website, “Kali is the Mother Goddess, slayer of demons and the epitome of feminine power” (www.ratiwrites.com). As we have seen, Indigenous literature has exploded in quantity and critical recognition and study. Key features of their texts is a blending of traditional and Western cultures, and, as in work by Black authors, the use of fantastic conventions and tropes to express postcolonial positions and themes.9 For example, like Afrofuturist authors, Indigenous writers have said—in interviews and through their fiction—that their peoples have gone through in real life what has often been depicted in science fiction: they experienced an apocalypse and live in a post-apocalyptic society; alien abduction and invasion; and they know firsthand what a devastating pandemic can do. Humour is also an important element in Indigenous literature, acting as a subversive but also an illuminating force through ironic juxtapositions. Among the first Indigenous-Canadian writers to gain fame and scholarly attention was Thomas King (1943–). His Green Grass, Running Water (1993) could be described as magic realist, if such Western genre labels can be legitimately applied to Indigenous literature, given the presence of Coyote as a major character. As already discussed, Indigenous authors have incorporated mythical figures like tricksters and the cannibalistic Windigo because these beings are part of their cultural heritage and belong to a different epistemology. In the novel, the boundary between the real and the mythical disappears as figures from both Indigenous and European myths and legends appear and blend into each other. For example, Adam from the Judaeo-Christian creation myth becomes the parodic and punning Ahdamn; Coyote shares the narrative stage with his/her Western-hero counterpart the Lone Ranger; and Christ is given the Indigenous-sounding name Young Man Walking on Water. Time and gender are f luid: in that way, King subverts the linear and strictly binary cultural narratives that dominate white society. Thus, the characters exist simultaneously in a timeless spirit realm, in history, and in contemporary society. Coyote shifts from male to female, and there are female counterparts to the four male characters, the androgyny representing a very different world-view from that of Canada’s colonizers (see Lamont-Stewart’s article for details). The figure also

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embodies the uncontrollable forces of nature. King shows us European myths and colonial history from an Indigenous angle, often humorously, undermining the stories and making his non-Indigenous readers see themselves anew. Indeed, King becomes a trickster himself through his mocking mimicry of European narrative (see Horne’s article). King’s collection One Good Story, That One (1993) is dominated by stories in which the spiritual and the natural are equally real; in fact, the distinction is meaningless. Coyote is the narrator and a character in the title story and tells his version of the Genesis myth, with Ah-Damn (as his name is spelled in the story) and Evening; in “Totem,” a totem pole appears at the Southwest Alberta Art Gallery and Prairie Museum and refuses to go away, then begins to sing. Alien coyotes arrive to take away the frozen dead bodies of “our” Indigenous people in “How Corporal Colin Sterling Saved Blossom, Alberta, and Most of the Rest of the World as Well”; “A Seat in the Garden” is a parody of Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe. Another significant Indigenous text that straddles the line between realism and fantasy is Monkey Beach (2000) by Eden Robinson (1968–). The title location is where Sasquatches have reportedly been sighted—and they may be real here. The narrator is teenage Lisamarie, whose brother has gone missing and is presumed drowned after a confrontation with Josh, a friend of her Uncle Mick’s. Like so many of the child and young adult characters we have seen, Lisamarie possesses a connection to the spirit world she does not want. Whenever something bad is about to happen to a member of her family, a strange creature, the Little Man, appears to warn her. She also sees ghosts, including that of her brother, who saves her when she feels suicidal after learning terrible truths about what happened to him and his girlfriend. Lisamarie learns the workings of the spirit world from her grandmother, whose traditional knowledge makes her far more accepting and understanding of her “gift.” Robinson deals with common themes in Indigenous-Canadian fiction like poverty on the reserve, suicide, addiction, and the residential schools where Indigenous children were physically and sexually abused. Here, the tragic truths are depicted through a contemporary rather than purely traditional form of Indigenous culture, one that combines ancient beliefs and knowledge with soap operas and rock music. One of the most important texts is Take Us to Your Chief and Other Stories (2016), a collection of science fiction stories by Drew Hayden Taylor (1962–). The collection treats science fiction’s tropes seriously in some stories and ironically in others. In “A Culturally Inappropriate Armageddon,” Emily Porter manages C-Res, an Indigenous radio station. Programming manager Tracey Greene convinces Emily to broadcast old songs that had been recorded by anthropologists. What they do not know is that “The Calling Song” was created as a signal to aliens to invade and thereby gain revenge on whites; that is, the aliens do to the Earth what colonizers did to the Indigenous peoples. In “Lost in Space,” Mitchell must find a way to mourn his grandfather in a way that conforms to his cultural heritage while far from the Earth. The problem

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of suicide on the reserve is treated in “Mr. Gizmo,” about a toy robot that comes to life and saves a boy from following the fatal path of so many of his friends. The petroglyphs in “Petropaths” turn out to be a time portal, but travelling to earlier days of Indigenous history proves to be dangerous. “Superdisappointed” is a parodic story about a gay Indigenous superhero whose life is anything but triumphant. The most striking parody, however, is the title story, in which aliens arrive and encounter three men, Tarzan, Cheemo, and Teddy, who are sitting on a couch drinking beer. Thanks to their new friends, the men are transported to what is, to them, an extraterrestrial paradise. A recent novel is more straightforwardly science fictional, albeit with mythological touches: Waubgeshig Rice’s (1979–) Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018). A major power failure strikes North America, and a northern Ontario reserve must cope with the consequences, including a breakdown in communication as cell phones and the internet cease working. The protagonist is Evan Whitesky, and the apocalyptic event is dramatized by what happens to him and his family, and of course his neighbours. The Indigenous are obliged to revive old survival skills. Some in the community begin to starve and freeze, and their bodies are stacked up in the council office—perhaps an allusion to King’s story summarized above. A white man, Justin Scott, arrives from the south and claims he wants to fit in, but proves to be a Windigo figure. Celu Amberstone has published numerous short stories, including “Refugees” (2004) in which Indigenous people have been transported by alien “Benefactors” to another planet to save and take care of them, but also to patronize them the way whites had done. Her young adult novel The Dreamer’s Legacy (2011) is of particular interest as it portrays an alternate Earth peopled by imagined counterparts to Indigenous peoples and whites. The narrator is Tasimu, who must find his true quakaiva or spirit and therefore his true spiritual family; it turns out to be the Lake Seal, one of whom is his father. The “white” miners—whom they call Chamuqwani—near his village are prospectors for gold who succeed in pushing Tasimu’s people off their land and into the hellish, and ironically named, Fort Protection. Tasimu, however, is able to call down the power of the Northern Lights on his enemies, although it is a power he must learn to hide and control. The people suffer starvation and illness even before their move. The whites are mostly cold-blooded imperialists; the only sympathetic member of the armed force they send to move the tribe is Black. At the fort, Tasimu learns how to wield his power from Chumco, a shaman. Alternate institutions portrayed include a version of the Catholic Church, led here by Celibress Vonica, a very prejudiced “mother superior.” From the fort the community is transported further to a reserve, and must travel in bad weather with insufficient food and warm clothing. Tasimu adopts the role of his people’s saviour, vowing to use his powers to protect them. Similarly, Daniel Heath Justice’s The Way of Thorn and Thunder (2011) is an epic allegory of European colonization in which an Otherworld representing

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the Americas is invaded by Men led by Lojar Vald, Dreydmaster of the city of Eromar. Indigenous peoples are represented by nature-based beings like the Tree-Born Kyn and the Beast-Clan. The novel is a rich example of worldbuilding and symbolism as cultures and spiritual beliefs clash, and characters suffer as connections to the created world are severed. Cherie Dimaline has emerged recently as a very important Indigenous writer of adult and young adult fantasy. The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy (2013) is about specialness and marginalization. When Ruby Bloom is seven and a half years old, her grandfather gives her a bicycle; she immediately rides it too far, gets lost, and finally returns to discover he has had a heart attack. Convinced she was responsible, she spends much of the novel coping with her guilt, which manifests itself as planets orbiting her head named Guilt, Anxiety, OCD, Agoraphobia, and other self-tortures. As she grows, and realizes no one else can see the planets—or believes she is guilty—she is able to overcome her self-inf licted burdens and the planets fade. Her Aunt Harriet takes her to a shaman who helps her see her Indigenous self and her magical abilities, above all her link to water. Dimaline achieved national and international recognition with The Marrow Thieves (2017), a dystopian novel in which Indigenous people, who are now the only ones capable of dreaming, have their bone marrow (the source of dreams) forcibly harvested. The “schools” in the novel are clearly allegories for the residential schools so many Indigenous children endured, with the Recruiters as representative of priests. The protagonist is Francis/Frenchy, who eventually joins those resisting the system, including his brother Mitch, and the novel recounts the group’s adventures. It is very clearly a postcolonial novel about exploitation and power dynamics. Dimaline’s Empire of Wild was published in 2019. Jewish science fiction and fantasy authors had long played a major role in the pulp era and beyond, including writers like Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison, and Avram Davidson, but they produced few works that came out of their cultural tradition. Phyllis Gotlieb was a notable exception, blazing the trail for Jewish as well as Canadian authors by incorporating Jewish themes and figures in her science fiction. During the twentyfirst century, Jewish writers have written more overtly—and in some cases, indirectly—Jewish works. Gary Barwin’s Yiddish for Pirates (2016), for example, is about an alternate world with Jewish pirates, and the novel is narrated by a Yiddish-speaking parrot. Moishe faces persecution and competition as he pursues his quest, and the Kabbalah plays a role in the novel’s narrative and structure. Ira Nayman writes satirical science fiction often with Jewish space-farers. Early in my own career, I created an old Jewish wizard with arthritis and a telepathic horse, Eliezer ben-Avraham, thinking it would be a funny twist on the heroic, sword and sorcery fantasy I was reading. In 2016, I published a book of stories about him called Making the Rounds. Su Sokol’s Cycling to Asylum (2014) is a dystopian novel—one that portrays a post-9/11 United States that has descended

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into fascism—that does not feature Jewish characters or symbols, but in an email Sokol has acknowledged that her Jewish roots inf luenced the social-activist vision she expresses in it. A sequel, Run J Run, appeared in 2019. Women writers have gained an unprecedented prominence in Canadian science fiction and fantasy, often writing about feminist and gender themes, and sometimes moving back and forth between adult and young adult fiction. It is possible to list only a few: Colleen Anderson, Krista D. Ball, Marie Bilodeau (1978–), Marcelle Dubé, Susan Forest, J. M. Frey, Paula Johanson (1961–), Susan MacGregor (1953–), Sally McBride (1950–), Silvia Moreno-Garcia (1981–), Alison Sinclair (1959–), Lorina Stephens, and Jo Walton (1964–).

Fantasy Both new and established authors published numerous works of high fantasy during the last two decades. Many of the texts were parts of series, which has become a common feature in fantasy; in fact, stand-alone works appear to be in a distinct minority. As we have seen, writers like Guy Gavriel Kay, Charles de Lint, Tanya Huff, and Dave Duncan continued to publish novels, and occasionally short fiction, into the twenty-first century. There is space here to discuss only a few of the authors who began to publish and gain a devoted audience during the past two decades. For example, Caitlin Sweet (1970–) began a series with A Telling of Stars (2003) about Jaele, who lives with her parents on the coast of an ocean in an otherworld. Sea Raiders attack her village and murder her family; she takes a magical knife her parents had owned and goes on a quest seeking revenge. One thing that is noteworthy about this society is that it is very much a matriarchal one, ref lecting feminism’s inf luence on recent fantastic literature. Eco-feminism can also be seen in the nature spirits she meets and sometimes enlists in her struggle. It is also a tale of personal and sexual awakening for Jaele. The Silences of Home (2005) is a prequel; Sweet has also published The Pattern Scars (2011). A prominent recent example of mythopoeic fantasy is Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005), a feminist retelling of The Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view. She has been subject to control and even threat by men her whole life, something the myths about her never properly address. In the original, her maids, like Penelope, are only pretending to betray Odysseus, yet the latter slaughters them for their supposed disloyalty, and in Atwood’s novel Penelope cannot forgive him for his sexist violence. The novel is a challenge to the malewritten, male-visioned myths, and even raises questions about how much of the stories about Odysseus are “true.” Leah Bobet’s Above (2012) is a young adult urban fantasy about a world in which “Freaks”—those with magical abilities—are mistreated and find refuge in the underground world of Safe, which is accessible only to those in the know through sewers and old subway tunnels. The narrator, Matthew, is the Teller,

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whose job it is to tell the others’ stories. The young people living there are survivors of Lakeshore Psychiatric, which represents the unwillingness of the society to accommodate the radically different. Characters confront their own prejudices and capacities for cruelty. A. M. Dellamonica has written a series of young adult fantasies about characters who cross over into another world—or is it our future?—beginning with Child of a Hidden Sea (2014). Sophie Hansa is seeking her birth parents, and finds her father in the alternate realm, Stormwrack. The novel depicts her adventures with pirates and nations in conf lict. Again, she is obliged to take on a family role she resists: her legacy is to be a courier of important documents, a role that eventually becomes meaningful to her. She must also protect her brother Bram, who soon joins her there. The later novels in the series are A Daughter of No Nation (2015) and The Nature of a Pirate (2016). Élisabeth Vonarburg wrote a five-volume fantasy series, Reine de mémoire (Queen of Memory), from 2005–2007, dealing with many of the same themes of power imbalances, in this case treating the issue of colonization more than gender relations and identity. Trudel argues that the encounter with the Other, however that may be personified, is a central motif in Vonarburg’s work, including her fantasy (90). Claude Lalumière (1966–) has published science fiction and dark and surrealist fantasy. His collections include Objects of Worship (2009) and Venera Dreams (2017), the latter a collection or story cycle about the fictional city-state Venera, which lies on an archipelago off the coast of Italy. It trades in a hallucinogen called vermilion, which transports people physically as well as mentally to Venera and erotic and magical places. The collection is heavily inf luenced by the work of J. G. Ballard, above all his Vermilion Sands (1971). Lalumière has also edited anthologies of fiction by Montréal-based authors and about superheroes, and has co-edited Tesseracts volumes 12 and 19. Mention should also be made of the very prolific Steven Erikson (pseudonym of Steve Rune Lundin, 1959–). In horror, Gemma Files (1968–) has made a name for herself as a prose stylist, perhaps inf luenced by the cyberpunks, who has explored LGBTQ+ themes in her work. Her early stories appeared in dark fantasy and horror magazines like Grue, Palace Corbie, and TransVersions and were collected in Kissing Carrion (2003) and The Worm in Every Heart (2004). Her major series is the Hexslinger novels about wizards—hexes or hexslingers—and summoners of demons in the Old West. A Book of Tongues (2010) introduces us to Chess Parteger, the gay son of a prostitute who is bitter about his deprived upbringing. The ancient Mayan gods seek to return and reinstate the old ways, including human sacrifices. Chess’s partner in sex and adventures is Reverend Asher Elijah Rook, who is a hex, too. In pursuit of them is Professor Joachim Asbury, who warns the Pinkertons that if hexes ever learn to work together rather than drain each other’s power, humanity is in grave danger. Witches and religious fanatics complicate the plot. She also published the stand-alone novel Experimental Film (2015) about the world of cinema and the literally haunting inf luence of art.

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David P. Nickle (1964–) has published horror stories and novels, notably “The Sloan Men” (1994) that inspired the cover image on his first collection, Monstrous Affections (2009). His first novel was the satirical, but still Gothic, collaboration with Karl Schroeder, The Claus Effect (1997; see earlier). He published stories in the Northern Frights and Tesseracts series, beginning with “Manifestations” in the first Northern Frights volume (1992), and magazines like On Spec, and TransVersions, some of which were reprinted in anthologies including The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His texts are often about non- or barely human Others, who are occasionally the products of genetic engineering or marginalized mutant families. His novels like Eutopia and Volk, about the grotesque effects of eugenics in an alternate world peopled by those with appalling “utopian” ambitions, slide into other genres like science fiction and alternate history. Other horror writers have also become widely recognized. Helen Marshall (1983–) published the collection Hair Side, Flesh Side (2012), made up of stories of body horror and disturbing encounters with Others. David Demchuk’s The Bone Mother (2017) is about a group of dark-magical beings on the run from the Night Police. Kelley Armstrong (1968–) is perhaps the most prolific Canadian author of dark fantasy, or paranormal romance, best known for her Women of the Otherworld series of short stories and novels. She has published more than thirty novels as well as short stories and chapbooks. Mention might be made of two leading Canadian authors of graphic novels in Canada. Chester Brown (1960–) wrote the dark fantasy Ed the Happy Clown (2004–2006) and Seth (1962–) created the surrealist Clyde Fans (2000–2019) that lies on the border between realism and fantasy. It remains a challenge to find and list poetry and drama. Jason Taniguchi published a chapbook called Very Sensible Stories and Poems for Grown Persons (2001) and other chapbooks appeared, while poems continued to find publication in magazines and anthologies. Mathieu Gosselin wrote a dystopian play, Province, that was staged in Montréal in 2015, to name one example.

Young Adult Fiction One of the leading authors of fantastic fiction for children and young adults is Kenneth Oppel (1967–). He is mainly known for his animal fantasy Silverwing series of four YA novels, beginning with Silverwing (1997) and ending with the prequel Darkwing (2007), and his steampunk Airborn series that speculates on what might have happened had the airplane never been invented. Apart from Above, Leah Bobet has written the young adult novel An Inheritance of Ashes (2015). Jane Ann McLachlin has published space adventures for young adults. Far too many authors of science fiction and fantasy for young readers have emerged recently to list here; it should be noted, however, that they are not only more numerous but more diverse than ever before in the field.

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Notes 1 In the aftermath of 9/11, a number science fiction novels and anthologies were published on the theme of the ramifications and cultural meaning of the attacks. 2 Also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Daesh. 3 For years, in Canadian literature courses the Indigenous experience was represented by the play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1967) by Ukrainian-Canadian playwright George Ryga. 4 Examples in fictional plague apocalypses date back to Jack London’s “The Scarlet Plague” (1912). 5 In this, he exhibits the inf luence of the “Dying Earth” world of Jack Vance’s science fiction. 6 The title is the name of a Jamaican children’s game. 7 Her name is based on a Jamaican freedom fighter. 8 In Caribbean mythology, douen are the lost souls of children who died before being baptized. 9 On the other hand, Thomas King has argued that Indigenous literature is not postcolonial but must be read as “interfusional” in its blending of Indigenous and English language and culture.

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———. The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy. Theytus Books, 2013. ———. The Marrow Thieves. Dancing Cat Books, 2017. Doctorow, Cory. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Tom Doherty Associates, 2003. ———. Eastern Standard Tribe. Tom Doherty Associates, 2004. ———. Little Brother. Tom Doherty Associates, 2008. ———. Pirate Cinema. Tom Doherty Associates, 2012. ———. A Place So Foreign and Eight More. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003. Dorsey, Candas Jane. A Paradigm of Earth. Tom Doherty Associates, 2001. Files, Gemma. A Book of Tongues. ChiZine Publications, 2010. ———. Experimental Film. ChiZine Publications, 2015. ———. Kissing Carrion. ChiZine Publications, 2015. ———. The Worm in Every Heart. ChiZine Publications, 2015. Goto, Hiromi. Half World. Penguin, 2009. ———. Hopeful Monsters. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004. ———. The Kappa Child. Red Deer Press, 2001. Hopkinson, Nalo. Brown Girl in the Ring. Warner Books, 1998. ———. Falling in Love with Hominids. Tachyon, 2015. ———. In the New Moon’s Arms. Warner Books, 2007. ———. Midnight Robber. Warner Books, 2000. ———. Report from Planet Midnight. PM Press, 2012. ———. The Salt Roads. Warner Books, 2003. ———. Sister Mine. Grand Central Publishing, 2013. ———. Skin Folk. Warner Books, 2001. ———, editor. Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction. Invisible Cities Press, 2000. ———, and Uppinder Mehan, editors. So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy. 2004. Hughes, Matt. Black Brillion. Tom Doherty Associates, 2004. ———. “A Little Learning.” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 2004, pp. 5–31. Justice, Daniel Heath. The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles. U of New Mexico P, 2011. King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. HarperCollins, 1993. ———. One Good Story, That One. HarperPerennial, 1993. Lai, Larissa. “Political Animals and the Body of History.” Canadian Literature, no. 163, Winter 1999, pp. 145–54. ———. Salt Fish Girl. Thomas Allen, 2002. ———. When Fox Is a Thousand. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004. Lalumière, Claude. Objects of Worship. ChiZine Publications, 2009. ———. Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment. Guernica Editions, 2017. ———, editor. Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic. Véhicule Press, 2003. Lowachee, Karin. Burndive. Warner, 2003. ———. Cagebird. Warner, 2005. ———. Warchild. Warner, 2002. Mak, Derwin. The Moon under Her Feet. Windstorm Creative, 2007. ———, and Lucas K. Law, editors. Where the Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Laksa Media Groups, 2017. Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven. Harper, 2014. Marshall, Helen. Hair Side, Flesh Side. ChiZine Publications, 2012.

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Mehrotra, Rati. Mahimata. Harper, 2019. ———. Markswoman. Harper, 2018. Meyer, Bruce, editor. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Exile Editions, 2017. Nickle, David P. Eutopia. ChiZine Publications, 2011. ———. Monstrous Affections. ChiZine Publications, 2009. ———. Volk. ChiZine Publications, 2017. ———, and Karl Schroeder. The Claus Effect. Books Collective, 1997. Oppel, Kenneth. Airborn. HarperCollins, 2004. ———. Darkwing. HarperCollins, 2007. ———. Silverwing. HarperCollins, 1997. Rice, Waubgeshig. Moon of the Crusted Snow. ECW Press, 2018. Robinson, Eden. Monkey Beach. Vintage, 2000. Sawyer, Robert J. Wake. Viking, 2009. ———. Watch. Viking, 2010. ———. Wonder. Viking, 2011. Schroeder, Karl. The Engine of Recall. Red Deer Press, 2005. ———. Lady of Mazes. Tom Doherty Associates, 2005. ———. Permanence. Tom Doherty Associates, 2002. ———. Pirate Sun. Tom Doherty Associates, 2008. ———. Queen of Candesce. Tom Doherty Associates, 2007. ———. Sun of Suns. Tom Doherty Associates, 2006. ———. Ventus. Tom Doherty Associates, 2000. Sokol, Su. Cycling to Asylum. Deux Voiliers Publishing, 2014. ———. Run J Run. Renaissance, 2019. Spencer, Hugh A. D. Extreme Dentistry. Brain Lag, 2014. ———. Why I Hunt Flying Saucers and Other Fantasticals: A Science Fiction Short Story Retrospective. Brain Lag, 2016. Sweet, Caitlin. The Pattern Scars. ChiZine Publications, 2011. ———. The Silences of Home. Penguin, 2005. ———. A Telling of Stars. Penguin, 2003. Taniguchi, Jason. Very Sensible Stories and Poems for Grown Persons. Kelp Queen Press, 2001. Taylor, Drew Hayden. Take Us to Your Chief and Other Stories. Douglas & McIntyre, 2016. Watts, Peter. βehemoth: β-Max. Tom Doherty Associates, 2004. ———. βehemoth: Seppuku. Tom Doherty Associates, 2005. ———. Blindsight. Tom Doherty Associates, 2006. ———. Echopraxia. Tom Doherty Associates, 2014. ———. Maelstrom. Tom Doherty Associates, 2001. ———. Starfish. Tom Doherty Associates, 1999. Weiss, Allan. Making the Rounds. Edge, 2016. Willett, Ed. Marseguro. DAW Books, 2008. ———. Terra Insegura. DAW Books, 2009.

CONCLUSION

Canadian fantastic literature has thus had a long and dynamic history. At Canadian “science fiction” conventions, at least up until recently, it has been common to hold panel discussions on whether Canadian fantastic fiction is somehow distinctive, and if so, how. At one time, that question was far easier to answer than it is now. Whereas American and British science fiction has long focused on advanced technology and its effects on individuals and/or society, for example, Canadian science fiction has tended to deal more with political themes. In his talk at the 2013 Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy, which was reprinted in The Canadian Fantastic in Focus, Robert Runté listed a number of features he found characteristic of Canadian science fiction, including its “softer” approach and less heroic “heroes.” He may be right that Canadian science fiction offers more “nice guy” protagonists and confrontations with nature than the genre does in other countries (“Why I Read” 22–26). Nevertheless, it has become far more difficult in recent years to make generalizations about Canadian fantastic literature overall due to its increasing size and diversity. It was once possible to read all of the works in the field, but that has become simply impossible. Furthermore, Canadian science fiction runs the gamut from the hard SF of Peter Watts to the social speculations of Candas Jane Dorsey; Canadian fantasy includes some of the best-known practitioners of heroic fantasy like Guy Gavriel Kay, urban fantasy like Charles de Lint, and paranormal romance like Kelley Armstrong, to name only a few. Surrealist, magic realist, and other “liminal” forms remain vibrant. Above all, authors from previously silenced racialized and gendered communities have joined their voices to the chorus, making it even harder to offer blanket declarations about the field. We can only speculate (so to speak) where Canadian fantastic literature might go from here.

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INDEX

Adams, Ian 109 African-Canadian fantastic fiction see Afrofuturism; Black fantastic fiction Afrofuturism 180–1, 191–3, 196; see also Black fantastic fiction aliens 28, 69, 71, 95– 6, 100–1, 144– 6, 152– 4, 183; contact 103, 110, 122, 142, 146, 187– 8, 198; invasion 109, 184, 193, 196– 8; in space opera 15, 130, 149; technology 143, 183– 4; trope 3, 11, 14–15, 19, 109, 142 alternate history 9, 12, 16–17, 55, 149–50, 202 Amberstone, Celu 198 animal fantasy 58, 76, 121–2 , 202 apocalyptic science fiction see science fiction, apocalyptic artificial intelligence 89, 95, 99–100, 105, 128, 190 Ashby, Madeline 189–90 Asian-Canadian fantastic fiction 194– 6 Aspler, Tony 107 atomic bomb 16, 62, 89, 96; allegorical portrayal 96– 8 Atwood, Margaret 92, 132, 156, 188, 200; The Handmaid’s Tale 147, 154– 6; MaddAddam Trilogy 185– 6; mythopoetic works 92, 120; on speculative vs. science fiction 5 –9, 14 Aubin, Napoléon 32–3 Baker, Nancy 168 Ballem, John 108–9

Barr, Robert 50–1, 57– 8 Barthe, Ulric 55– 6 Barwin, Gary 199 Barzman, Ben 99 Beck, Lily Adams 81–2 Bedford-Jones, Henry 82–3 Benoit, Jacques 108 Bérard, Sylvie 190 Bersianik, Louky see Durand, Lucille biology: mutations 147, 151–2 , 157, 202; theme of 69–70, 93, 102, 108, 146– 8; see also evolution biotechnology see technology Biro, Frederick 147 Black fantastic fiction 115, 128, 180–1, 191–2; see also Afrofuturism Blais, Marie-Claire 116 Blanchard, H. Percy 39, 44 Bobet, Leah 200–2 Brossard, Jacques 106, 137 Brown, Chester 202 Buell, John 116 Bugnet, Georges 73 Bullock, Michael 117–18, 121 Burgess, Tony 169 Burnford, Sheila 121 Bush, Thomas 59 Campbell, Jr., John W. 65, 69–70, 90 Campbell, William Wilfred 59 Carman, Bliss 59 Carleton, Cousin May see Fleming, May Agnes

214

Index

Centennius, Ralph 34–6, 43, 51–3 Chariandy, David 193 children’s fantastic fiction 60, 121–2 , 171–2; see also young adult fiction Choi, Eric 195 Choyce, Lesley 119, 133– 4, 136, 138 Clark, Catherine Anthony 122 Clarke, J. Brian 138, 146 climate change fiction (cli-fi) 2 , 16, 128, 179– 81, 185–7 Clink, Carolyn 170 Clink, David 170 cloning see genetic engineering Cocke, Emmanuel 117 Cohen, Matt 111 Collins, Robert G. 157 Colombo, John Robert 85, 132– 4, 139 computers 99–100, 110, 128; see also artificial intelligence Coney, Michael G. 100–2 , 120, 133– 4 Corriveau, Monique 106 Côté, Denis 153 Crothers, Tom 120 Croutch, Leslie A. 85 cyberpunk see science fiction, cyberpunk cyborgs see posthumanism; science fiction, posthuman Czerneda, Julie 139, 188–9 dark fantasy see fantasy, dark Darwinism 26–7, 63; degeneration anxieties 27, 35, 63, 67, 78; inf luence on Canadian fantastic 31, 34–5, 43; in science fiction 45, 47, 49, 66 Dellamonica, A. M. 201 De Mille, James 39– 41, 76, 110; A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder 17, 39– 41 Desrosiers, Emmanuel 72 Dickson, Gordon R. 71 Dimaline, Cherie 199 disaster f iction 16, 29, 87, 92, 96– 9, 157; biological 183; ecological 98– 9 ; see also science f iction, apocalyptic Dix, Maurice B. 83– 4 Doctorow, Cory 138, 187– 8 Dorsey, Candas Jane 134, 136– 8, 141–2 , 157, 188, 206 Drew, Wayland 98 Ducornet, Rikki 118, 121, 135 Duncan, Dave 138, 148–9, 162, 200

Durand, Lucille 110–11 dystopian fiction 15, 30, 33, 76– 80, 104, 109, 185–7; features 63; feminist 16, 109, 155–7 dystopias see dystopian fiction ecofeminism see science fiction, eco-feminist ecological fiction 98, 150, 152, 185–7, 192; see also climate change fiction (cli-fi) Elf landsson, Galad 114, 121, 135, 137 evolution 44–9; genetics 89; in science fiction 26, 49, 69–71; see also biology fandom 8, 85, 121, 131–2 , 142; fan magazines (fanzines) 65, 84–5, 121, 132 fan magazines (fanzines) see fandom fantastic drama 59– 60, 84, 120, 170–1 fantastic literature: Arthurian 91, 102, 122, 166; Canadian emergence 30; Canadian publications 135– 40; contrast to realist fiction 9 –10; in culture 100, 131, 134; diversity 180–2; early concerns 27– 8; feminist 141, 191, 200; genre conventions 8 –10, 206; genre growth 131–5; Jewish 199–200; postcolonial 190–9; women 200 fantastic poetry 59, 84, 119–20, 134, 170 fantastique, le 119, 170 fantasy: dark 19, 116, 167–9; definition 12, 18–19; early 56–9; FrenchCanadian 33, 167; as genre 8; high 18, 91, 114–15, 130, 159, 164, 167, 200; historical 57; origins 18; tropes 18; urban 19, 130, 159, 167, 200, 206; see also horror fiction fantasy magazines 64, 131–2; see also pulp magazines feminist science fiction see science fiction, feminist Fergus, Dyjan see Ferguson, Ida May Ferguson, Ida May 49–50 Ferguson, Trevor 164 Ferron, Jacques 112 Files, Gemma 201–2 Findley, Timothy 14, 132, 165 Fleming, May Agnes 56–7 Franklin, Stephen 109–10 Fraser, W. A. 58 free will, theme of 148, 151, 158, 168, 183 French-Canadian fantastic fiction: liberation, theme of 105– 6, 108; and

Index

nationalism 22, 24, 56, 62–3, 79– 80, 87–9; see also individual authors future-war fiction 51– 6, 63 Gagnon, Maurice 97– 8, 122, 132, 151 Galbraith, John 37 Gardner, James Alan 149 Gaspé, Jr., Philippe-Aubert de 32 Gedge, Pauline 138, 163 gender 16, 23, 150, 157, 163, 191, 194, 198, 201; gender identity 141, 149–52; gender roles 49 genetic engineering 13, 89, 94–5, 101, 104, 109, 128, 148, 151, 185; animals 94, 101–2 , 130, 148; diseases 109, 186; food 179, 185; humans 130, 181, 185, 202 genre conventions 8; definitions 13–20; distinctions 5 –7; general overview 1–3 Gibbon, John Murray 84 Gibson, William 15, 129, 140–1; see also science fiction, cyberpunk Glynn-Ward, Hilda see Howard, Hilda Godfrey, Martyn 171 Gom, Leona 157 Gothic fiction 18, 91, 115–17; FrenchCanadian 116–17; see also horror fiction Gotlieb, Phyllis 92– 6, 119–21, 133– 4, 138, 199; “The Military Hospital” 95; O Master Caliban 94; Starcats series 94–5; Sunburst 93; “Tauf Aleph” 95– 6 Goto, Hiromi 195– 6 Green, Robert 110, 120 Green, Terence M. 134, 145– 6 Greenwood, Ed 138, 166 Grenier, Armand 79– 80 Grove, Frederick Philip 75– 6 Gurik, Robert 120 Hargreaves, H. A. 104–5, 109, 120, 133 Harvey, Jean-Charles 80 Heaps, Leo 107 Hébert, Anne 116 Heine, William C. 98 Hill, Douglas 171 Hodgins, Jack 118 Holden, Hélène 156–7 Hood, Hugh 96 Hopkinson, Nalo 138, 191–3; see also Afrofuturism; Black fantastic fiction horror fiction 19, 114–17, 167–9, 201–2; see also Gothic fiction

215

Howard, Hilda 66 Huff, Tanya 138–9, 144, 164, 200; Blood series 167– 8; see also fantasy, dark; fantasy, high Hughes, Matt 189 Hughes, Monica 171 Huot, Alexandre 73 identity, theme of 90, 98, 99–100, 156, 188, 195, 201 imperialism 20, 28, 88, 180, 192 Indigenous fantastic fiction 112, 196– 8 Indigenous lore and myths, appropriation of 111–12, 161–2 , 182 invasion narratives 51– 6, 109 Jacot, Michael 120 Jakober, Marie 98–9 Justice, Daniel Heath 198–9 Katz, Welwyn Wilton 171 Kay, Guy Gavriel 158–9, 200, 206 Kelly, Thomas P. 83– 4 Kernaghan, Eileen 162–3, 170 Kilian, Crawford 148 Kilpatrick, Nancy 168 King, Thomas 196–7 Kingsbury, Donald 104 Kinsella, W. P. 169 Lai, Larissa 194–5; see also AsianCanadian fantastic fiction; LGBTQ+ authors Lampman, Archibald 59 Laurence, Margaret 96, 122 Laurin, Florent see Grenier, Armand Lawrence, W. H. C. 52–5 Leacock, Stephen 73–5, 110; see also utopian fiction, satirical Lescarbot, Marc 59 LGBTQ+ authors 194, 201 Lint, Charles de 121, 130, 135, 138, 159– 62; Moonheart 159– 61; Newford series 161 Llewellyn-Thomas, Edward 146–7 Lortie, Alain 132, 153– 4, 171, 190 lost race fiction 29, 82–3 Lowachee, Karin 193 Luiken, Nicole 171–2 MacDonald Denison, Flora 44–7 MacEwen, Gwendolyn 92, 112–14, 120 MacLennan, Hugh 97

216

Index

MacMechan, Archibald 57 MacMillan, Cyrus 60 Madden, John 120 mad scientist, trope of 67–9 magazines see pulp magazines magic realist fiction 90, 92, 117–19, 135, 169–70; definition of 20; French (see fantastique, le) Mak, Derwin 195 Mandel, Emily St. John 186 Manning, Laurence 71, 76–9; The Man Who Awoke 76–9 Mantley, John 96 Marshall, Helen 202 Martel, Suzanne 97, 106, 122, 132, 135, 161; Quatre Montréalais en l’an 3000 97, 122, 135 McCormack, Eric 169–70 McLachlin, Jane Ann 202 Mehrotra, Rati 196 Meier, Shirley 139 Melling, O. R. see Whelan, Geraldine Merril, Judith 13, 65, 138–9, 151, 199; community contributions 102–3, 134, 136; definition of speculative fiction 7; Shadow on the Hearth 102; “That Only a Mother” 96, 102 Meynard, Yves 153, 167 mode 3, 7, 81, 90, 139 Moore, Brian 115 mythopoeic fiction 92, 111–14, 119, 200 Nayman, Ira 199 Nelson, Frederick 36–7, 43– 4 New Wave see science fiction Nichols, Ruth 122 Nickle, David P. 202 nuclear war 62, 92, 126; paranoia 87, 128, 147; in science fiction 92, 96– 8, 102, 147 O’Hagan, Howard 111–12, 182 O’Neil, Jean 108 Oppel, Kenneth 202 Orientalism 29–30, 57, 80– 4, 194 Page, P. K. 114 Pape, Gordon 107 Paquin, Ubald 72–3 Pedley, Hugh 38, 42, 73, 80; Looking Forward 38, 73; see also utopian fiction Percy, H. R. 115 Pf lug, Ursula 136 Pi, Tony 195

Plour, Guy René de see Grenier, Armand Plowright, Teresa 157 post-apocalyptic fiction see science fiction, post-apocalyptic postcolonial science fiction see fantastic literature, postcolonial; science fiction, postcolonial posthumanism 128–30, 141, 148, 151, 181, 183– 4, 186–7, 190; see also science fiction, posthuman Powe, Bruce Allen 107 Pratt, E. J. 84 psychic abilities 13, 44–7, 64, 69–71, 93, 152 publishing 8, 84, 90–2 , 120–1, 132– 40, 182; see also fan magazines (fanzines); pulp magazines pulp era 69–73, 82–3 pulp magazines 7– 8, 64–5, 90–1 Québec see French-Canadian fantastic fiction race and racism 27, 33– 6, 38, 49, 64, 66– 8, 82– 4, 153 radiation, trope of 89, 93, 96, 102 Ransom, Amy J. 4, 167 Reeves-Stevens, Garfield 131, 168 Rice, Waubgeshig 198 Roberts, Charles G. D. 31, 48, 58– 60, 133; In the Morning of Time 47–9, 66, 89 Roberts, Theodore Goodridge 60 Robinson, Eden 182, 197; see also Indigenous fantastic fiction Robinson, Spider 103– 4, 120, 133– 4 robot, trope of 75, 94–9, 105, 122, 189, 198 Robson, Kelly 186 Rochon, Esther 153, 167 Rohmer, Richard 107, 109 Rooke, Leon 164–5 Ross, Alexander 107 Ruddy, John 116 Runté, Robert 131–3, 138– 40, 153, 182, 206 Russell, Sean 164 Ryan, Thomas J. 99–100 Ryman, Geoff 163– 4 Sarjeant, William Antony Swithin 166 satire 17, 27– 8, 40–1; feminist 110–11; in science fiction 32–3, 104–5, 108; see also utopian fiction, satirical

Index

Sawyer, Robert J. 131, 136, 138, 144–5, 184; Quintaglio Ascension trilogy 144–5; WWW Trilogy 184 Saunders, Charles R. 115, 135, 159, 181, 191 Schroeder, Andreas 118, 135 Schroeder, Karl 130, 136, 138–9, 184–5 science fiction: apocalyptic 16, 29, 39, 72, 96–9, 126, 147, 185– 6, 196; cyberpunk 15, 129–30, 140–2 , 148, 180–1, 187– 8, 201; definitions of 5 –9, 13–16; early 32; ecological 19–21; eco-feminist 152, 157, 181, 190, 166, 200; feminist 49, 141, 151; FrenchCanadian 32, 72–3, 97– 8, 105– 6, 108, 150– 4, 190; Golden Age (pulp-era) 65–73, 71; hard 14, 91, 183– 4; military 2 , 71, 149, 181; New Wave 91, 102, 129, 171; political 106–9; post-apocalyptic 98–9, 129, 147, 151, 157, 181, 186, 191, 196; postcolonial 16, 191–9; posthuman 130, 141, 151, 187, 190; soft 15; space opera 15, 71, 130, 149, 164, 180–1, 184, 189; tropes 13–14, 142; see also climate change fiction (cli-fi); dystopian fiction; utopian literature science fiction magazines 65, 131–2; see also pulp magazines Scribble, Sam 59 secondary world 10, 12, 19, 30 separatism, theme of 42, 73, 106–9, 154, 156 Sernine, Daniel see Lortie, Alain Service, Robert W. 68 Seth 202 Shuster, Joe 122 Simard, Jean 97 Skeet, Michael 137–9 Skelton, Robin 166–7 slavery, theme of 82, 95, 98, 101, 104, 149, 154, 162, 191–2 Sokol, Su 199 Somain, Jean-François see Somcynsky, Jean-François Somcynsky, Jean-François 110 space opera see science fiction, space opera Spears, Heather 147– 8 speculative fiction: definitions 5 –9, 12; see also science fiction, definitions Spencer, Hugh A. D. 120, 139– 40, 171, 189 spiritualism 26, 57– 8, 80–1 Stead, Robert J. C. 65, 68–9

217

Stewart, Sean 165– 6 Stirling, Stephen Michael (S. M.) 149 Sullivan, Alan 66–7 superman, theme of 69–71 surrealist fiction 20, 117–21, 135, 139, 169–70, 201–2 , 206; definitions 117 Sweet, Caitlin 200 Swithin, Antony see Sarjeant, William Antony Swithin Tardivel, Jules-Paul 42, 73, 80 Taylor, Drew Hayden 182, 197– 8; see also Indigenous fantastic fiction technology: biotechnology 185; in the body 129–30; as threat to humanity 63, 78–9, 99–100, 110; transportation 27, 36–7, 43– 4 Tench, Charles Victor (C. V.) 71 Tétreau, Jean 99 Thériault, Yves 97, 112, 122, 132 time travel, theme of 74, 142, 144–5, 147– 8, 150, 186–7 Tremblay, Michel 119, 137 Trudel, Jean-Louis 4, 153– 4, 171 utopian fiction 33– 4; early Canadian 34– 42; feminist 25, 109; FrenchCanadian 41–2 , 79– 80; parody 73– 4; religious 37–9, 41–2; satirical 33, 41, 73– 6, 110–11 utopian literature 17, 30, 73– 80, 109–11; conventions 40; dystopias (see dystopian fiction); utopias (see utopian fiction) Vogt, A. E. van 69–71, 82, 85, 138, 150; non-Aristotelian logic (Null-A) 70–1; Slan 69–70, 93 Vonarburg, Élisabeth 132, 135– 8, 150–3, 201, 190; see also science fiction, French-Canadian Walker, David H. 98 Watson, Patrick 99 Watson, Robert 67 Watson, Sheila 112, 182, 196 Watts, Peter 6, 136, 183, 206 Weiner, Andrew 137– 8, 146 Weintraub, William 108 Weiss, Allan 199 Whelan, Geraldine 171 Whyte, Jack 166 Willer, Jim 99–100 Willett, Edward 189

218

Index

Wilson, Robert Charles 131, 142 – 4, 170, 170, 183 – 4 Wright, Ronald 149 –50 Wyl, Jean-Michel 107

Yates, J. Michael 117–18, 135 Young, Phyllis Brett 115 young adult fiction 121–2 , 171–2 , 198 –202