Monthly Archives: August 2019

The Return of AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review

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AESciFi.ca suffered a major hacker attack in late 2016 that shelved the site and so I have not written for the magazine in three years. However, I did put as much time as I could spare, along with several other old and new friends of AE, to getting the operation up and running again.

The bulk of the time was put in last summer, when I was waiting to begin my master’s program and had time for a passion project. I prepped media materials, did some editing and writing, helped with some simple user-testing of the new site, and co-planned the relaunch with the core team.

Then for a time not a lot seemed to happen. In fact a lot of hard work was going on behind the scenes, from our tech guru setting up the back-end of the site to the slush pile team poring through hundreds and hundreds of story submissions. In late June of this year suddenly we were 99% ready for the return of the magazine and it was time for me to contribute again.

I was wrapping up the academic year at the school I work at, and beginning work on the literature review for my master’s thesis research, since I didn’t have any summer courses to take. Fortunately I had some time and flexibility in my schedule to contribute again. For two or three weeks we were marking off items on the pre-launch checklist and getting ready for liftoff, and then, on July 10, it happened.

I have an essay in the relaunch issue, about sports in science fiction. By all means, feel free to read it. But I’m frankly more proud of the issue itself and, indeed, the the fact we managed to launch it–from editing stories and non-fiction pieces, to sending out press releases and tweets and the email newsletter, and coordinating all of the above. It’s a great magazine, and I’m excited to have it back in operation, but it’s actually pretty special to have been a part of making it happen.

My discretionary time is very limited and will be for the next year or two, but even as I’m stepping back from most writing outside of my academic program, one of the few things I will reserve a bit of time for is the occasional fun essay or book review at AESciFi.

To close off, I was interviewed by a podcast on behalf of the magazine back in the late fall and it has now been published. The total interview is about 20 minutes but has been broken into three bite-sized parts:

Part 1: https://lancerkind.com/podcast/050-introducing-aescifi-magazine/

Part 2: https://lancerkind.com/podcast/051-joel-boyce-aescifi-feature-writer/

Part 3: https://lancerkind.com/podcast/052-ae-canadian-science-fiction-review/

WFP Reviews 2017-2019

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Here are the reviews I’ve written for the Winnipeg Free Press since the last round-up. Fourteen of them! (Actually I’ve written 16, but one hasn’t been published yet and one actually seems to have disappeared into the ether, so I’m going to look into it later.) This time I thought maybe I’d order them from best to worst (in my own subjective opinion).

I generally don’t choose to accept a review assignment if I don’t have some reason to think the book could be good, but I do take risks with new authors and subject matter, which may or may not pay off and yes, there were a few duds, with the bottom three being particularly weak. But let’s focus on the positive and highlight some of the stand-outs.

I’ve become a fan of Cixin Liu, a literary giant in his native China, but new to the English-reading world, and after the success of the Three-Body series on our side of the pond, American publishers are combing through his back-list to keep the momentum going. I’ve reviewed two titles in translation over the last couple of years and both stuck with me, but I rank Ball Lightning (which I read last fall) much higher than Supernova Era (read this spring but not listed below since the review won’t come out until closer to the novel’s publication in October). Both are rather grim, truth be told, but the former turned it to better literary purpose, perhaps because the latter was written in an earlier stage of Liu’s career.

Starlight is Richard Wagamese’s final, technically unfinished novel (though it falls only a chapter short). Wagamese was one of Canada’s Indigenous literary luminaries, and it’s my first time reading this author who was unfortunately taken too soon.

Cory Doctorow is an old favourite of mine, but while I’ve rarely been disappointed, Radicalized surprised me with its impact and with how politically on-point it is, which is particularly difficult with a collection of four novellas rather than a single, cohesive novel. Four urgent stories about our present moment of crisis. Doctorow, as always, is best read fresh, so don’t leave it on your nightstand too long.

Radicalized

Starlight

Ball Lightning

Seventeen

Beyond Incarceration

Lent

Waste Tide

Red Moon

Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose

Head On

Retrograde

Prefecture D

Those Who Walk the Road

Writing and Life in 2019

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Well, it’s time for that bienneial update post that is becoming tradition. In 2017 I noted that I had been busy with graduate studies, new parenthood, and a move from the classroom into school leadership. At the time I had recently finished my academic program, which was at the post-baccalaureate level, but now I am back in the academy, working on my master’s degree.

I have at least crested the steepest part of the learning curve in my role as an educational administrator, so while there will always be novel challenges and new goals to set, some portions of my job have become routine. If I were merely working, I would certainly be able to ramp up the amount of writing that I do, but the lion’s share of my mental and creative energy is devoted to my graduate studies for the time being.

By sheer coincidence, AE, a major outlet for some of the sorts of writing I most enjoy doing, experience an unplanned hiatus in September of 2016, which I will expand on in a separate post. More recently, Care2 has shut down its Causes blogging webzine, so that’s something else off my plate due to outside circumstances.

This happens. Sometimes publications fold or change focus, sometimes it’s the writer whose focus changes, and sometimes it’s both. I used to love writing for The Spectator Tribune, but a particularly hectic period saw me pass on one request after another until I hadn’t taken on a writing assignment for two years. I finally checked in to find the magazine gone defunct. Life is timing.

Likewise now, when a major former client in publishing asked me a few weeks ago if I planned to pick up any future projects or if they should take me out of the payroll system, I elected for the latter. Narrowing my focus is exactly what I need right now. I’m going to make it a purposeful decision rather than dragging it out or leaving anyone hanging.

Oh, I’ll still be writing. Academic papers, school assignments, and my own master’s thesis will make up the bulk of it, and if some of them are published, even if only in some niche research journal, I’ll share. Meanwhile, I expect I can still squeeze in the odd fun pop-culture essay or book review every two or three months, at the WFP or AE.

But if I’m going to get back to pitching to new markets and pushing myself creatively in my writing or simply getting my writing output back up to where it was at or near its peak (and that’s a big if), it will only be after I’ve graduated. It shouldn’t take too long, since I’m putting the necessary time into it.