EDGE and Tesseract are imprints of Hades Publications, Inc.

Tesseracts Eleven

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edited by Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips

Biographies ISBN-10: 1-894063-03-1 ISBN-13: 978-1-894063-03-6 5.5" X 8.5" Trade Paperback $19.95 US (Free Shipping in North America) 320 Pages Cory Doctorow Holly Phillips AMAZON.COM AMAZON.CA

Tesseracts Eleven edited by Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips Introduction by Cory Doctorow Does the world need "Canadian" science fiction? When I lived in Canada -- as I did until I was 29 -- the answer to this question was entirely self-evident. Of course the world needed Canadian science fiction. Our Canadian-ness (nearly always defined in ways that we were no like Americans), was so much more Canadian than the Americans' Canadianness or even the Brits' Canadianness, who else would supply it if we didn't? Last summer, I was co-Guest of Honor at ConJure, the Australian national sf convention, held that year in Brisbane. I attended the launch of a new collection of Australian science fiction, and had a little conversation with my co-GoH, Bruce Sterling. Sterling, a Texan raised in India, now residing in Belgrade, seemed a little skeptical about the whole business. Sterling, in his curmudgeonly way, opined that no one outside of Australia was crying out for more Australian science fiction. No one, apart from an Australian, felt any lack of Australianness in their sf diet. I had to admit he had a point. * * * And yet. I grew up on the Tesseracts anthologies. I was 14 when Judy Merril's first edition of this series shipped, in 1985. I remember reading it, curled into myself on a TTC bus, heading home on a cold winter night, nothing visible outside the windows except the lightsPaolo of snowed-in houses streaking past as we shushed through the awful, grey snow. In that volume, I found stories that were not quite like anything I ever read before. Of course, I'd read "Canadian" authors all my life -- I was already a Spider Robinson fan, I'd always liked AE Van Vogt, and I had really enjoyed Phillis Gotleib's Sunburst. But I'd never read a collection of works whose unifying theme was that they were written by Canadians. It was a heady experience. It's not that Canadians write quiet, introspective stories while Americans write stories about kicking ass. It's not even that Canadian stories are particularly incisive on the subject of what it means to be Canadian. But there's one thing that Canadian stories get right more than American stories -- and it's the same thing that defines Aussie sf (Aussies being a sort of antipodean Canadian with a higher propensity for skin cancer): we're good at looking at figuring out what makes other cultures tick. * * * I bought that Australian sf anthology. Bruce was right: I didn't really care about "Australian sf" as a category distinct from "good sf." But it looked like a good book (and I was the Guest of Honor) (for the record: it was a good book). What I discovered, in that Aussie book, was the same thing that had caught me about that first volume of Tesseracts: these authors wrote science fiction with a keen appreciation of what it was like to be eclipsed by something bigger than themselves. Some of the funniest Americans in the world are Canadians. We're good at making 'em laugh -- because we know more about them than they do, themselves. We pass among them, unnoticed and invisible, eavesdropping on their TV, books, conversation. We're like the class nerd -- at the edge of the other social groups, keenly attuned to their social outcomes. The beta never knows when an alpha will lose a dominance struggle and take it out on the beta. Best to watch very closely then, so you can get out of the way when the moment comes. This is a robust position from which to write science fiction. Tesseracts Eleven: Basic Information Page. Tesseracts Eleven: Introduction. Tesseracts Eleven: Author Biographies. Tesseracts Series: About the Series.

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