When we think of the best things to come out of Canada, we all think of maple syrup, moose, health care, Rush, and all the best Ryans (sorry, Seacrest).
But those looking for the best science fiction and fantasy stories now have two options: last year’s Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume One and the new sequel, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume Two (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, Volume Two (and Volume One) editor Stephen Kotowych talks about what went into assembling this new anthology.
For people who didn’t read the first volume, or the interview we did about it, what was the idea behind Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume One?
I happened to be scrolling through a list of “year’s best” volumes one day, and noted that while there were a number published out of the United States (which sometimes included a Canadian or two), and a “year’s best” of Australian fantasy and science fiction, or New Zealand Aotearoa fantasy and science fiction, or the “year’s best” of British sci-fi, there was no comparable Canadian volume.
So that was really where the idea was born: to spotlight the incredible work being done by fantasy and science fiction writers from Canada.
On a per capita basis, Canada has produced more world-class speculative fiction writers than any other country, including the United States (again, on a per capita basis). All you have to do is look at how many Canadians get nominated each year for major awards in the field, like the Nebula, the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, etc. It’s mostly going to be Americans, and you might occasionally get a Brit or an Australian or someone from elsewhere in the world, but you are always going to have at least one or two Canadians on those lists of finalists.
And for a country with a relatively small population, I think it says something about the value of a Canadian perspective in fantastical literature that we are overrepresented like that each year.
So, how were the stories chosen?
For the first volume, because of the short timeline I was working with, I mostly found work through my own reading. As a Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer myself, I always had a pretty good idea of the Canadians working in the field and always kept an eye on what they were doing each year. I also relied on the long list of eligible works for the Aurora Awards, which is Canada’s top sci-fi prize, awarded annually. That helped me find some things that I might otherwise have missed.
I also had a very brief window (a matter of a few weeks) for open submissions that mainly spread by word of mouth. That also helped bring in a number of pieces that I hadn’t come across in my own reading.
As for how they were chosen, well, a number of factors come into play.
First, you have to remember that because all of this is previously published fiction, you’re already seeing stories that work. There really aren’t the kind of pointless clunkers you’ll sometimes get in the slush pile for an anthology of brand-new stories. So, the cream has already risen to the top in this case, and you’re really trying to sort out the best of the best. It gets tricky sometimes.
I took into consideration factors like which stories were winners or finalists for major awards in the field, how many stories an individual author had published that year (my thinking is that if you can sell multiple works to multiple markets in the course of a single year, your work is probably of a pretty high caliber, and you deserve a good look for inclusion), and which works appeared in pro-level magazines internationally or semi-pro markets with really strong reputations, like Canada’s On Specmagazine.
I also wanted to find hidden gems, if I could — stories that might have appeared in small markets or magazines or limited-run anthologies that it could be easy to miss. Some of my favorite stories in both volumes have come from those kinds of markets.
After that, a lot of it comes down to personal editorial preference. All the stories are great, but they also have to grab me or speak to me in some way that makes them stand out from this very long list of accomplished storytelling.
I also have a personal rule that an author can only have one entry in the book, whether prose or poem (chalk it up to my inherent Canadian sense of fairness), so sometimes if I have a couple of pieces by one person, I have to decide which of those I think is the best representation of their work from the previous year, then go with that one.
Also, did the people have to be born, raised, and still living in Canada, or could they be ex-pats living elsewhere or people who moved there during the first Trump administration and now don’t want to leave?
I tend to take a broad definition of what constitutes “Canadian” or connection with Canada. I’m not checking anybody’s passport.
To be eligible, you should be a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, or an ex-pat living abroad. So, you know, if Celine Dion ever publishes any science fiction I hope she’ll send it my way for consideration.
And yes, political exiles would probably be eligible for inclusion, too. That’s how Canada ended up getting William Gibson, and that’s worked out well for everyone.
So when you started working on Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume Two, did you change the selection process or parameters for inclusion?
When I started work on Volume Two, the selection process and the parameters for inclusion were the same, but more.
When I started out, the series had no profile, though it began to build quickly thanks to the Kickstarter and word of mouth through what is a fairly small, well-connected fantasy and science fiction writer community here in Canada. A number of people got in touch to ask if they could submit fiction, only to discover that the book was already at the printer, for example. Those people were keen to know when I’d be working on Volume Two.
So, for Volume Two, not only were people anticipating sending me work for the first time, but I was able to give myself a longer production schedule that included a proper submission period for works published in the previous year. Every January and February, I will be accepting submissions so that I can cast as wide a net as possible.
That’s what I mean by everything just being more. Instead of relying mainly on my own reading, I now had over 300 submissions of work by Canadians to go through, on top of the reading I had been doing over the year.
contributors Pauline Barmby and Eric Choi
How do you think these changes made Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume Two better? Or was it more that it made the editing process easier?
Having the open submission period, and casting that wider net, definitely made the book better. It made it far more representative of the current state of Canadian speculative fiction, even compared to Volume One. And it certainly made the book longer! Volume Two has about 25,000 more words of fiction than Volume One did.
So, far from making the editorial process easier, I probably made it harder on myself, just given the extra workload.
Also, how do you think working on Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume One made Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume Two better? Or easier? Or more Canadian?
The experience of working on Volume One, and particularly the universally positive reaction that it has had from both readers and writers in Canada and elsewhere — truth be told, about 75% of the sales of Volume One have been outside Canada — definitely made the experience of Volume Two easier.
I worked in publishing for 15 years as an acquisitions editor, so going into Volume One, I had a good sense of what a project like this would entail. However, doing everything myself was a real learning experience. For Volume Two, I was able to build on that knowledge base and have things go more smoothly.
As I begin to ramp up for work on Volume Three, I know that with each addition, as I iterate, my process and timelines will improve. I was able to get Volume Two out about six weeks earlier on the calendar than Volume One, pulling publication from December into November. My goal for Volume Three is to have it come out about six weeks earlier than Volume Two did, and have books ready for October 2025.
And did you read any short story anthologies since finishing Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume One that, again, made Volume Two better, easier, or more Canadian?
No, but I certainly appreciate anthologies in a different way. I’m better now at understanding how and why the table of contents has been put together and arranged in a specific way than I would have been prior to editing these anthologies.
Pride of place really goes to the beginning story, the middle story, and the final story in an anthology like this. Those are your tent poles. You want a great opening story that’s going to grab the reader and draw them in, and you want a really strong closing story that’s going to leave readers with a lasting impression of the book. In the very middle, you want that central post holding up the structure of the book.
The art and skill really come into play in filling in the spaces between those tent poles and arranging the stories in a way that flows, leads into each other, and complements the stories that come before and after. I’ve actually had a lot of positive feedback about the flow of Volume One, so I feel I did a good job of arranging the stories the way I hoped.
Of course, people can also read the stories in any order they want, so maybe the hard work doesn’t matter as much as the editor thinks it does.
As the title suggests, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume Two included both fantasy and sci-fi short stories. Is there a reason you didn’t also include horror stories? People who assemble these kinds of anthologies together usually don’t for some reason — it’s always The Year’s Best Science Fiction And Fantasy, not The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror — but horror is kind of the third pillar in the holy trinity of genre writing.
Well, I guess it depends on your definition of “horror.” There are definitely stories in Volume One and Volume Two that I would describe as dark fantasy or dark sci-fi, or even as horror. My personal metric, and what I note in the submission guidelines for the anthology, is that I am open to dark stories or horror stories as long as they have some fantastical element. If it’s purely psychological horror, a murder story, or splatterpunk, or something similar, that’s not really what I’m after.
A lot of it comes down to the fact that I am not particularly a reader of real-world horror, just as a matter of personal taste. I’m not the best audience. That’s why I haven’t included “horror” in the title — I just don’t feel that I am best positioned as an editor to put together an anthology that foregrounds that kind of horror. But if a story is eerie, unsettling, or uncanny and includes fantastical elements, then it is absolutely a candidate for consideration.
Contributors Gemma Files, Cory Doctorow,
and Rich Larson
So, what kinds of fantasy and science fiction stories are included in Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume Two?
Again, my goal is to cast a pretty broad net. I’m open to any and all sub genres of fantasy and science fiction. In fact, I want to make sure that there is a sampling of as many different subgenres as I can.
So, Volume Two includes everything from Indigenous mermaid fantasy “Wapnintu’tijig: They Sang Until Dawn” by Tiffany Morris, to takes on classic fairy tales, like Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “The Lover,” to sword and sorcery such as “Revelstoke” by Gemma Files, to cozy fantasy set in our recent historical past, like James Alan Gardner’s “Solitaire For Three.”
There is hard science fiction set on Mars by Eric Choi, or alien contact by Pauline Barmby, who is a professor and astronomer, and near-term science fiction that deals with climate and politics such as Cory Doctorow’s “The Canadian Miracle,” which opens volume, as well as time travel stories by Derek Künsken and P.A. Cornell, to “LOL, Said The Scorpion” by Rich Larson, who uses advanced technology to make some pretty pointed commentary about our current world.
Like I say, I very consciously want to include a mix of subgenres, so hopefully there’s something for everyone.
So, is there anything else you think potential readers might need to know about Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume Two?
Just that they might be surprised to discover how many of their favorite authors are Canadian. I’ve even had some Canadian friends say to me, “Oh, I didn’t know so-and-so was Canadian — cool!”
I think it’s a bit like discovering how many comedians and Hollywood stars who make it big in the U.S. are actually Canadian. Like, isn’t everyone in Hollywood named Ryan actually Canadian?
Finally, if someone enjoys Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume Two, and they’ve already read Volume One, what sci-fi / fantasy short story anthology that you’ve read recently would you suggest they check out while waiting for Volume Three?
There’s a great anthology of original science fiction and fantasy called Last-Ditch, edited by Troy Carrol Bucher and Gerald Brandt. It’s themed around science fiction and fantasy takes on spies and espionage and there are some sensational stories in there. It also (completely accidentally) features a ton of Canadian authors, including Tanya Huff, Edward Willett, Hayden Trenholm, and Chadwick Ginther, amongst others. Definitely worth checking out (and you may get a sneak peek at one or two stories that will make it into Volume Three…)
