Many believe that science fiction originated with Jules Verne, but science fiction as a genre is older than that. With exploration and the spread of humanism, we have the emergence of science fiction in Thomas Moore’s Utopia published 1516, in which a perfect island nation is depicted.  Later, Anton Francesco Doni published a book I Mondi. In 1623, Thomas Campanella wrote The City of The Sun. After the publication of Galieo’s map of the moon, Ben Jonson wrote a masque for the court of James I called Newes For the New World Discovered in The Moone in which there are moon people riding in clouds. In Francis Godwin book in 1638, the antihero Domingo Gonsales visits the moon in a carriage towed by geese using the technology of another world. This was the first time any author used anything like this. In 1648, Samuel Gott’s first novel, Nova Solyma, is set in the future. The author Margaret Cavendish wrote The Blazing World in 1666 in which there is another world attached to one of the earth’s poles.

If you look at the Current Issue page on the website, you will see a beautiful cover by Saskatchewan artist Joel Hustak. Kevin Cockle and Marcelle Dubé  and Suzanne Church make a return to our pages, and we are pleased to present new names to On Spec readers: Meghan Casey, Ashley Mullins, Christine S.R. Jackson, Brent Nichols, and William Squirrell. Poetry by Emeniano Somoza and Michelle Chen, interviews by Roberta Laurie and Cat McDonald, and an editorial by Barb Galler-Smith complete the issue.

Copies are available by mail, or from Variant Edition Comics & Culture and Happy Harbor Comics in Edmonton. We will be at upcoming events such as the Royal Bison Craft Fair in Edmonton (May), Vul-Con in Vulcan, Alberta (July) and the When Words Collide festival in Calgary  (August). Digital versions of many of our issues can be obtained through Weightless Books.

The new issue of On Spec is currently at the printer, so our subscribers should be receiving their copies early in March. We have a beautiful cover by Saskatchewan artist, Joel Hustak, with new fiction from Marcelle Dubé, Meghan Casey, Ashley Mullins, Christine S.R. Jackson, Brent Nichols, William Squirrell, Suzanne Church, and Kevin Cockle. An editorial by Barb Galler-Smith, poetry from Emeniano Souza and Michelle Chen, along with interviews by Roberta Laurie and Cat McDonald.