Left to right: Derwin Mak, Tony Pi, and Eric Choi with the Aurora Award trophies for The Dragon and the Stars.
The Dragon and the
Stars won the Aurora Award for Best Related Work in English. The Aurora
Awards, Canada's
national science fiction awards for science fiction, were handed out at
SFContario 2, which served as this year's Canadian National Science Fiction
Convention, on November 20, 2011. The short-list of nominees and the winners
were decided by voting of Canadian science fiction readers.
This is the probably the first time that a Chinese-theme
anthology of science fiction and fantasy has won a national science fiction
award outside China.
Hopefully, the success of The Dragon and
the Stars will encourage the publishing of more science fiction and fantasy
inspired by the various cultures and traditions of the world.
The editors Derwin Mak and Eric Choi thanked Dr. Wu Yan of Beijing Normal University,
Canadian author Julie Czerneda, John Helfers of Tekno Books, Sheila Gilbert of
DAW Books, and the authors of the anthology. Tony Pi, who wrote the story
"The Character of the Hound", represented the authors at the
ceremony.
Thanks to all the persons who voted in the Aurora Awards.
May science fiction and fantasy flourish in Canada
and the Chinese communities around the world for ten thousand years!
Left to right: Eric Choi, Derwin Mak, and Tony Pi.
Derwin Mak with author J.M. Frey, a presenter at the Aurora
Awards. Publishers' Weekly listed
J.M.'s novel Triptych as one of the
five best science fiction or fantasy novels of 2011.
The Dragon and the Stars is on the ballot for the 2011 Aurora Awards in the category of Best Related Work. Many thanks to our talented authors for their wonderful stories (see the list below). Thanks to all who nominated our anthology for Canada's national science fiction and fantasy award. The Dragon and the Stars is the first collection of science fiction and fantasy stories written by ethnic Chinese living outside of China. It features new fiction from Chinese writers in Canada, the United States, the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong.
If you don't have The Dragon and the Stars, what are you waiting for? Get it now at Amazon.ca and Amazon.com
If you like the stories of The Dragon and the Stars, promote our unique fusion of Canadian and international science fiction and fantasy by voting in the Aurora Awards, which are organized by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association.
You can vote if you're Canadian or living in Canada.
Voting by both online form and mail-in ballot begins in early June and ends on October 15, 2011.
To learn more about the Aurora Awards and to vote, visit:
"Looking to read something a little different in SF and fantasy? The Dragon and the Stars features eighteen (in Chinese lore, a lucky number) new tales written by English-speaking writers of Chinese ancestry...I would be hard-pressed to select the best story from this collection."
"Given the broad mandate of The Dragon and the Stars and the variety of the stories, it is a solid collection that should appeal to a wide range of readers."
Many thanks to these talented authors for their wonderful stories in The Dragon and the Stars:
Introduction by Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling novelist.
"The Character of the Hound" by Tony Pi (Canada) During the war between the Southern Song and the Jin Dynasties, a soldier allows a spirit to possess his body so he can solve a murder.
"The Fortunes of Mrs. Yu" by Charles Tan (Philippines) A Filipino Chinese woman is horrified that each of her fortune cookies has a blank strip of paper inside it.
"Goin Down to Anglotown" by William F. Wu (United States) In an alternate America that is dominated by Asians, three young Asian men go out for a night of intrigue in exotic "Anglotown".
"The Polar Bear Carries the Mail" by Derwin Mak (Canada) Chinese investors and a Chinese Canadian pilot try to start a space tourism business in northern Canada. Unfortunately, they have bad feng shui at their spaceport.
"Lips of Ash" by Emery Huang (United States) During the time of a historical dynasty, a cosmetics artist uses dark magic to help the ambitious mistress of a nobleman.
"The Man on the Moon" by Crystal Gail Shangkuan Koo (Hong Kong) Yue Lao (月老), the Man on the Moon, hosts a beauty pageant to find a bride.
"Across the Sea" by Emily Mah (United States) A Tlingowa Native American woman's aunt tells a legend about mysterious visitors who came to America hundreds of years ago.
"Mortal Clay, Stone Heart" by Eugie Foster (United States) During the reign of the First Emperor, a clay sculptor finds love and tragedy with a soldier.
"Dancers with Red Shoes" by Melissa Yuan-Innes (Canada) In Montréal, magical red shoes dance by themselves.
"Intelligent Truth" by Shelly Li (United States) A young Chinese American woman discovers truths about herself and her mother’s intelligent robotic servant.
"Bargains" by Gabriela Lee (Singapore) A young woman meets a strange shopkeeper in Chinatown. The shopkeeper sells success as a writer – but with a terrible price.
"Threes" by E.L. Chen (Canada) A Canadian man thinks his dead wife has become a Chinese dragon in Lake Ontario.
"The Son of Heaven" by Eric Choi (Canada) The Chinese rocket scientist Tsien Hsue-shen (钱学森) is persecuted during the Red Scare in America in the 1950s.
"Shadow City" by Susan Ee (United States) In a fantasy universe, a gatekeeper must stop people from leaving an evil place called Shadow City.
"The Water Weapon" by Brenda W. Clough (United States) The British police are suspicious of a talking Chinese dragon and a Chinese princess who appear at the Great Exposition of 1851 in London.
"The Right to Eat Decent Food" by Urania Fung (United States) Two American English teachers in China will do anything to get decent food during the SARS epidemic.
"Papa and Mama" by Wen Y Phua (Singapore) A Chinese daughter struggles to remain dutiful to her late parents, who are inconveniently reincarnated as a fish and a bird.
"Běidŏu" by Ken Liu (United States) In the Ming war against Japan, an ingenious Chinese army officer invents new weapons to defeat the Japanese.
This was the best news that I could receive for New Year's Eve. The Dragon and the Stars had not only gotten into the Top 10 but had also ranked 5th in the mass market book sales of 2010 at Bakka-Phoenix Books, Toronto's famous science fiction bookstore. See the Bakka-Phoenix announcement here:
The Top 10 bestselling mass market books at Bakka-Phoenix in 2010 were:
Mass Market
1. Wake, Robert J. Sawyer
2. Sandman Slim, Richard Kadrey
3. Lord of the Changing Winds, Rachel Neumeier
4. Julian Comstock, Robert Charles Wilson
5. Dragon and the Stars, Derwin Mak & Eric Choi, eds.
6. Gaslight Dogs, Karin Lowachee
7. Enchantment Emporium, Tanya Huff
8. Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
9. On the Edge, Ilona Andrews
10. Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett
I owe many thanks to my co-editor Eric Choi and to all the authors for creating such a wonderful anthology: Tess Gerritsen, Tony Pi, Charles Tan, William F. Wu, Emergy Huang, Crystal Gail Shankuan Koo, Emily Mah, Eugie Foster, Melissa Yuan-Innes, Shelly Li, Gabriela Lee, E.L. Chen, Susan Ee, Brenda W. Clough, Urania Fung, Wen Y Phua, and Ken Liu.
Getting ready to talk about fox demons, Anglotown, and spaceship engineers (photo by Donna Mak).
The editors of The Dragon and the Stars (photo by Donna Mak)
Eric Choi and I attended "Homeland, History, and Representation," an International Symposium on Chinese Canadian and Chinese American Literature in English, held by Renison University College at the University of Waterloo and sponsored by the Confucius Institute.
Professors, scholars, and authors from across North America and China attended this conference, where they presented papers on the literature of Chinese North American authors such as Judy Fong Bates, Amy Tan, Wayson Choy, Yan Li, and Fred Wah.
Imagine our surprise when a professor told us that a colleague of hers has been researching and cataloging stories by Chinese Canadians, including Eric's and my stories. She phoned her colleague, and he came running from across the university to see us.
We gave a presentation about The Dragon and the Stars and its authors, describing the stories they had written for our anthology as well as other stories they have written. The audience received our presentation very well, and professors from places as diverse as New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., and Inner Mongolia asked questions about our stories and Chinese Canadian and American science fiction and fantasy writers.
Ka Nin Chan, the composer of the opera Iron Road, asked me about the Chinese characters in Star Trek. My reply: "What Chinese characters?" Eric added that there has never been a Chinese character in Star Trek, but there was a Chinese actor (Garrett Wang) who played a Korean character who was the only officer never promoted throughout all the seasons of Star Trek Voyager.
On Saturday evening, we had dinner at Lucinda House, a 150-year-old house owned and restored by Wilfred Laurier University. After dinner, arts reporters from the Chinese newspaper Guong Ming interviewed me about Chinese Canadian and Chinese American science fiction writers and genre fiction in North America.
Jim Wong-Chu, poet (Ghosts of Chinatown), past editor of Ricepaper magazine, and founder of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, made my day when he said that Eric and I were "pioneers" and that we had to continue encouraging Chinese Canadians to write science fiction and fantasy.
We met some interesting people at this conference. Petra Fachinger, a German languages professor researching Chinese literature at Queen's University, told us that some Germans have recently developed a fascination with Chinese culture. Farah Moosa, a Ph.D. student studying Chinese Canadian literature at McMaster University, knew what Wiscon is (It's a feminist-oriented science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin.). And Professor Patricia Chu from George Washington University told us about her daughters' love of fantasy stories such as Harry Potter.
Many thanks to Professors Yan Li (University of Waterloo) and Eleanor Ty (Wilfred Laurier University) and Jun Liu (University of Waterloo) for organizing and inviting us to this conference. Thanks to Sue Anne Tu for interpreting between English and Mandarin for my interview with the Guong Ming reporters.
The Dragon and the Stars presentation (photo by Donna Mak)
Professor Zhongming Chen, from the Foreign Languages College, Inner Mongolia University, speaks on the writings of Larissa Lai, Sky Lee, and Yan Li. Interestingly, there is a Canadian Studies Centre at Inner Mongolia University.
Jim Wong-Chu, poet (Ghosts of Chinatown), past editor of Ricepaper magazine, and founder of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, reads some of his poems.
Professor Eleanor Ty (Wilfred Laurier University) speaks on old and new diaspora subjectivities in Judy Fong Bates' Midnight at the Dragon Cafe.
Professor Yan Li (University of Waterloo), novelist (Lily in the Snow), and organizer of this conference.
In the centre: Romulan Ale at the Renison University College cafeteria?
Lunch on Saturday. Eric is drinking the Romulan Ale.
Eric gets an autograph from Denise Chong, author of The Concubine's Children, The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phuc Story, and Egg on Mao.
Photo: The Dragon and the Stars, World's Biggest Bookstore, Toronto. The Dragon and the Stars, edited by me and Eric Choi, is in bookstores now! It's in major bookstores like Chapters, Indigo, and Borders. Look for it in the section for science fiction and fantasy anthologies.
From the back cover of The Dragon and the Stars: This unique anthology of science fiction and fantasy tales includes stories by authors of Chinese ancestry, who make their homes in places as varied as the United States, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. The talented authors included here have drawn upon China's rich and venerable heritage as well as the traditions and cultures of their current homelands to create imaginative and fascinating stories. From the tale of a murder that can only be solved by spirit possession to a fortune cookie that offers an uncertain future...from a man who believes his wife has become a Chinese dragon to an inventive army officer in the Ming conflict with Japan...from a young woman's fateful encounter with a Chinatown shopkeeper to a Chinese rocket scientist caught in the perils of 1950s America -- here are eighteen science fiction and fantasy visions that showcase the diversity of the Chinese experience around the world.
Introduction by New York Times bestseller author Tess Gerritsen. Stories by Tony Pi, Charles Tan, William F. Wu, Derwin Mak, Emery Huang, Crystal Gail Shangkuan Koo, Emily Mah, Eugie Foster, Melissa Yuan-Innes, Shelly Li, Gabriela Lee, E.L. Chen, Eric Choi, Susan Ee, Brenda W. Clough, Urania Fung, Wen Y Phua, Ken Liu.
Two Chinese Canadian Writers and Overseas Compatriots Together in Chinese Science Fiction Book
By Wendy Yang
Published in Ming Pao Daily News, Toronto edition, February 8, 2010, p. A2
Overseas Chinese writers are numerous, but those writing science fiction are few. Two Chinese Canadian science fiction writers, with overseas Chinese writers in different countries, have created a book of 18 science fiction and fantasy short stories, to be released on May 11. This will be North America's first all-overseas-Chinese anthology of science fiction and fantasy.
The anthology, called The Dragon and the Stars, will be published by well-known American science fiction publisher DAW Books. It contains 18 short stories from Canada, the United States, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Singapore. The 18 Chinese authors wrote their stories in English over six months. Five of the authors are from Canada, and they are strong in Canadian sci-fi circles.
Tony Pi was born in Taipei, immigrated to Canada when he was 8 years old, and grew up in Toronto. He earned his Ph.D. in linguistics at Montreal's McGillUniversity and has worked at several universities in Canada. At present, he is administering the graduate program in Cinema Studies at University of Toronto.
For the new book, he wrote the fantasy story "The Character of the Hound". The story centers on a war between the Southern Song and Jin. The ghost of a soldier adopts the word "Dog" as a tattoo on his body and acquires super powers to solve a murder in the army.
Tony Pi likes science fiction, in particular, Japanese manga (comics). "I like to use imagination to explore the present and the past and things that do not exist in the world. I like to create." In 2006, he wrote his first story, "The Stone Cipher", which won second place in the first quarter of the Writers of the Future contest, an international competition that finds cutting-edge science fiction writers. So far he has published 20 short stories, each of about 4,000 words.
Derwin Mak is another Chinese science fiction writer. He was born in Peterborough, Ontario. His father is from Hong Kong, and his mother is Malaysian Chinese. He is a chartered accountant, a member of Royal Canadian Military Institute, and a lecturer at the Institute.
He wrote "The Polar Bear Carries the Mail", about a Chinese company that joins with Inuit in northern Canada to build a spaceport but are opposed by environmentalists. The main character is a Chinese astronaut, and the story involves feng shui problems.
Derwin Mak began writing science fiction in 2001. His 2005 story "Transubstantiation" won the Prix Aurora Award, Canada's national science fiction award, equivalent to the United States' Hugo Award.
He said the new book is significant in correcting the past image of Chinese people and their culture in science fiction, which has been often negative. "The stories in The Dragon and the Stars all have Chinese themes, and many have ethnic Chinese main characters. Chinese culture is 5,000 years old, there are four great inventions of China, and Chinese history is full of scientific and technological development. This is a rich basis for science fiction and should be reflected in current stories."
There are another three Chinese Canadian science fiction writers: Eric Choi, Melissa J. Yuan-Innes, and Elaine Chen. Eric Choi's first story, "Dedication", was published in 1994, making him the first Chinese Canadian science fiction writer.
Derwin Mak says that overseas Chinese are now writing science fiction because North American tastes are changing. First, North Americans are more accepting of Asian culture, such as Japanese manga (comics) and Chinese martial arts movies. Secondly, North American society has become more diverse and inclusive of ethnic minorities in popular culture and creative fields, resulting in the emergence of Canadian Chinese science fiction writers.
Addendum to the English translation:
Eric Choi is co-editor of The Dragon and the Stars. His story "Dedication" won the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing (now called the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing).
The original Chinese text refers to The Dragon and the Stars as a science fiction anthology, but it also contains fantasy stories.
Ming Pao Daily News, a major Chinese newspaper, published this article about The Dragon and the Stars in its Toronto edition, February 8, 2010. The reporter Wendy Yang interviewed me and Tony Pi.
作 品集名為《The Dragon and the Stars)》(龍與群星)﹐5月1日將由美國著名科幻出版商DAW Books出版。它收錄的18個短篇科幻小說﹐是由加拿大、美國、香港、菲律賓、新加坡等國家的18位華裔作家﹐在過去半年內用英文創作。其中加拿大有5 位﹐他們是加拿大科幻圈中頗具實力的華裔作家。
他此次為新書創作的奇幻作品為《The Character of the Hound》(犬的特點)。故事以南宋和金國之間的戰爭為背景﹐講述一個鬼魂通過士兵身上的「犬」字圖騰進入其身體﹐使士兵具有超能力﹐解決發生在軍隊內的謀殺案。
畢 家怡從小就喜歡科幻作品﹐尤其喜歡看日本漫畫﹐「我很喜歡用想象來探索現在和過去都不存在的世界﹐我喜歡進行創造。」2006年他創作了第一篇科幻小說 《The Stone Cipher》(寶石密碼)﹐為他贏得了當年第一季度未來作家競賽二等獎﹐這是一項旨在發現新銳科幻作家的國際性賽事。至今他已出版了20篇、每篇大約 4000字的短篇科幻小說。
