Ghost Stories Film Festival of Fright

Mirvish Productions, which is staging the British hit play Ghost Stories, starting April 1 at the Pansonic Theatre in downtown Toronto, will be running a small festival of horror films at the Carlton Cinema at 20 Carlton Street (Yonge and Carlton Streets), from March 25-27, 2011. I'll be introducing the following films:

Friday, March 25, 9:30 p.m.: Psycho (1960), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh

Sunday, March 27, 9:30 p.m.: The Shining (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Jack Nicholson

There will be a trivia contest before each film, with prizes being tickets to Ghost Stories.

More information about Ghost Stories and the Ghost Stories Film Festival of Fright is here.

Prix Aurora Awards Nominations are Open: Nominate My Stories and Books!

Calling all Canadians, at home and abroad, and landed immigrants in Canada: our national science fiction awards, the Prix Aurora Awards, are now open for nominations. This year, I have three short stories, one novel, and one anthology eligible to be nominated in the following categories:

Eligible for Best Short Fiction:

"Cloned to Kill", Infinite Space, Infinite God II, Twilight Times Books

"The Polar Bear Carries the Mail", The Dragon and the Stars, DAW Books

"Family Tradition", Night to Dawn, issue 17, April 2010

Eligible for Best Novel:

The Shrine of the Siren Stone, Orchard House Press.

Eligible for Best Related Work:

The Dragon and the Stars by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, Editors, DAW Books

To learn more about the Prix Aurora Awards and to nominate stories and editors, visit:

http://www.prixaurorawards.ca/wordpress/

There is no fee or cost to nominate stories.

To nominate stories, go to the above website and register for a free membership in the in the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. Receive your Society number by email, then go back to the Aurora Awards website and submit your nominations. You can submit nominations online (due April 30, 2011) or with the mail-in paper ballot (due April 22, 2011).

You can view my short stories and excerpts from The Shrine of the Siren Stone for free during the nomination period at:

http://www.derwinmaksf.com/Auroras.html

Infinite Space, Infinite God II has its Canadian book launch at Futurecon on New Year's Eve 2010-2011

Photo: Liana K., Futurecon's chairperson (and host of the TV series This Movie Sucks! and Ed and Red's Night Party) and I hold a copy of Infinite Space, Infinite God II. I'm not wearing a costume; that's my St. John Ambulance mess dress uniform.

Infinite Space, Infinite God II, an anthology of Roman Catholic-theme science fiction stories, edited by Karina and Robert Fabian, had its Canadian book launch at Futurecon, a science fiction convention and New Year's Eve party held in Richmond Hill, Ontario. The launch occurred during the cocktail hour that preceded the banquet.

Infinite Space, Infinite God II includes my story "Cloned to Kill", which is about a teenage clone girl who rebels against her creator with the help of a former army chaplain. Editor Karina Fabian says, "'Cloned to Kill' goes beyond the ethics of cloning to explore the nature of free will, forgiveness and belonging to community. As such, it's a story not so much about clones as about us." She also said that the main character, Lorraine, reminded her of Cameron from the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Futurecon was the best New Year's Eve ever! It was a unprecedented idea: a posh party for science fiction fans, with an upscale dress code (semi-formal or formal or SF-fantasy-anime costumes), hors d'ouevres served with plates and forks, and a code of conduct somewhat based on Russian Empress Catherine the Great's Rules for the Behaviour of Those Entering These Doors. We had none of the ragged clothes and people eating junk food with their bare hands that one sees at most science fiction convention room parties! The live entertainment was splendid, and I felt like I was in one of those parties in War and Peace or Brideshead Revisited combined with SF-fantasy-anime cosplay.

Many thanks to the convention committee: Liana K., Phil Gotfried, Emily Schooley, Steven Kerzner, David Ross, Tina Olah, Lori Dawn Antaya, Marcus Antaya, and Declan Dennehy.

Buy Infinite Space, Infinite God II at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, and remember, "Cloned to Kill" is eligible to be nominated for a 2011 Prix Aurora Award in the category of Best Short Fiction.

www.derwinmaksf.com/ISIG_II_main.html

The Dragon and the Stars: 5th bestselling mass market book in 2010 at Bakka-Phoenix Science Fiction Bookstore

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:

http://www.bakkaphoenixbooks.com/2010/12/30/2010-bestsellers/

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.

Infinite Space, Infinite God II, with my story "Cloned to Kill", now available

This is the second anthology of Roman Catholic-theme science fiction edited by Karina and Robert Fabian. It includes my story "Cloned to Kill", about a teenaged girl clone who has been created as a military killer, but she rebels against her programming and clone master with the help of a priest.

Editor Karina Fabian says, "'Cloned to Kill' goes beyond the ethics of cloning to explore the nature of free will, forgiveness and belonging to community. As such, it's a story not so much about clones as about us."

"Cloned to Kill" is eligible to be nominated for a 2011 Prix Aurora Award for Best Short-Form Work in English.

Available at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

Kindle version also available at Amazon.com.

Eric Choi's story "Dedication" translated and published in Japanese by Hayakawa SF

Congratulations to my Dragon and the Stars co-editor Eric Choi. His story "Dedication" has been translated and published in Japanese in the anthology The Astronaut From Wyoming and Other Stories edited by Toru Nakamaru, from Hayakawa Publishing, Japan's largest publisher of science fiction.

"Dedication" is the story that won the first Isaac Asimov Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Science Fiction, awarded by Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and Dell Magazines, in 1994. It's about a team of astronauts who struggle to survive on Mars after their rover is damaged by a meteorite shower.

To my Japanese friends: "Dedication" is eligible to be nominated for a Seiun Award in the Best Foreign Language Short Story category.

International Symposium on Chinese Canadian and Chinese American Literature in English, Waterloo, Ontario, Oct. 15-17, 2010

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.