Congratulations to Tyler Keevil, winner of 2014 Journey Prize!

On Spec loves it when one of its authors gets this kind of recognition. Tyler Keevil has won the $10,000 Journay Prize for his story, “Sealskin”, published in The New Orphic Review.

Tyler’s story, ‘Canine Court’,was published in Volume 24, #2 of On Spec Summer 2012, and his haunting tale,  ‘Masque of the Red Clown’ was in our Spring 2008 issue. If you are interested in seeing “Canine Court”, you can buy a digital version of the issue at Weightless Books.

https://weightlessbooks.com/format/on-spec-magazine-summer-2012-89-vol-24-no-2/

On Spec at Pure Spec

On Spec is a continuing sponsor of local sci-fi festival Pure Spec. As such, we were part of the festivities this past weekend and I have to say, a good time was had by all. We were especially happy to spend

Author GoH David Gerrold took time out from his Pure Spec duties to visit with Diane at the On Spec booth.
Author GoH David Gerrold took time out from his Pure Spec duties to visit with Diane at the On Spec booth.

time with Author Guest of Honour David Gerrold, who took time out of his tireless panel schedule to stop by the booth to say hello.

We’ll have other Pure Spec highlights soon, but we thought we’d post some tidbits for you now.

Geo Takach and David talk screenwriting at the Pure Spec Festival.
Geo Takach and David talk screenwriting at the Pure Spec Festival.
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Our Constantine at Pure Spec getting ready for his Mythology panels.

 

On Spec Can-Con Readings

If you were at Can-Con this year you might have attended a reading by four of our authors, as they read their On Spec pieces for an adoring crowd. If you didn’t make it to Can-Con or that reading, you’re in luck! Thanks to Rob and Geek TV over at Geek Inked Magazine you can watch each of the authors read their work. You could even grab your copy of On Spec and read along. (Don’t have a copy, you say? Let me help you…)

Thank-you to Agnes Cadieux, Kate Heartfield, Anita Dolman, and Mike Rimar for getting together on this reading and exposing On Spec to an appreciative audience. Thank-you as well to Can-Con for putting us on the program, the support is much appreciated.

Geek TV Episode 46 Part 1 with Agnes Cadieux

Geek TV Episode 46 Part 2 with Kate Heartfield

Geek TV Episode 46 Part 3 with Anita Dolman

Geek TV Episode 46 Part 4 with Mike Rimar

Thank-you for the Aurora Award!

Imagine my surprise and joy to learn that On Spec has won this year’s Aurora Award for Best Related Work! The sheer diversity of the category makes any voter’s decision tough, and we at On Spec are deeply moved by the support we’ve been receiving from our readers, authors and fans.

I mentioned diversity–every work in this category speaks to the amazing array of books, stories, and magazines being produced by our fellow Canadians. How things have changed in the twenty-five years since On Spec started! I am so proud to call many of the nominees my friends and all of them my colleagues.

And I especially thank the hard-working folks on the On Spec team. They are my extended family. Group hug, everyone!

Diane Walton, Managing Editor

All Submissions Now Open!

After a slight delay caused by bad dilithium, all submissions are now open for On Spec. You have your choice of submitting to the ‘Punk’ Issue, making a regular short story submission, or submitting poetry. Deadline for all short story submissions is October 31, 2014; poetry submissions are open year round.

As always, read the Submission Guidelines and follow them wholly.

As a final note: we have a small staff of dedicated volunteers managing our various social media. We can’t be everywhere all the time, and we can easily miss stuff. I feel like we really shouldn’t have to say this, but please do not make business enquiries through the Comments section of this site, or through Twitter and Facebook. If you want to know something about On Spec and our practices, please direct your queries to onspec@onspec.ca. That is the fastest way to get a response, and ensures we don’t have any important questions going astray.

What are you waiting for, get those submissions in!

Calling All Contributors!

As you can see by looking around, we have a new website under construction. We’re in the midst of building frenzy at the moment, always looking for the next thing to add to the site. One of the features we’d love to add is a Contributor’s Gallery, a visual history of the many wonderfully talented writers, poets, and artists On Spec has had the honour to feature over the years.

So this is our call to all past contributors: Send a photo of yourself, holding a copy of On Spec Magazine (preferably the copy or copies you were in), along with about 50-75 words telling us what you’re up to these days (including a link to your current site), to onspec@onspec.ca. Please title the email ‘Contributor Gallery’. With your permission, we’ll post your picture and blurb in the Gallery, so everyone can marvel at the many people who have helped On Spec become one of Canada’s finest SF magazines.

To show you how easy it is, Cory Doctorow sent us this little beauty:

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See how easy it is? No matter when you contributed or what you contributed, we want your photo! Please send it today.

An Anthology 25 Years in the Making

In cooperation with Tyche Books, On Spec Magazine has published Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories: An On Spec 25th Anniversary Retrospective. You can read the official announcement on the Tyche Books site here, along with a commentary on our recent loss of Canada Council funding.

We are very proud of this anthology. We feel it represents some of the very best stories and authors showcased in On Spec over the last twenty-five years. If you’re a fan of On Spec, or just a fan of good science fiction, you should definitely find your way to a copy. Just click on the picture in this post, or in the sidebar, to go to the order page.

If you get a copy, please come back and tell us what you think! We’d love to hear from you.

Preaching Loudly to the Choir (so others might hear the message)

Editorial by Susan MacGregor

As I write this editorial, it’s January 1, 2014. This year, On Spec celebrates its silver anniversary: we’ve been representing and supporting the speculative fiction community in Canada for twenty-five years. I’ve been honoured to be a part of this group. I feel as if I’ve been with it from its earliest beginnings. At about the same time On Spec started up, so did SF Canada, to be followed by other great Canadian SF magazines and publishing houses (Neo-Opsis, ChiZine, Edge and Five Rivers Publications are fine examples). In the greater scheme of things, we are all part of the Canadian writing scene, but we remain a minority. Not everyone appreciates what we do, or sees how we have value.

Those who aren’t a part of our unique community often question what the point of speculative fiction is. We encounter this bias fairly often, but it begs the question—why, as an SF community, are we important? Further, what do On Spec and other publications like it contribute to the arts and to society, in general? Isn’t SF just pulp fiction? Cheap action space opera? Rockets in space, monsters and magic? Why should SF be as worthy of notice and support as, say, more important literary work?

Of course, anyone who defines speculative fiction as cheap pulp fiction doesn’t understand the breadth or depth of the genre. Instead of restricting ourselves to what is ‘everyday’ and ‘real’, we tend to reflect reality in ways that stretch the limits of the imagination. As a group, we are bright, creative, and passionate people. Not so unlike other bright, creative, and passionate people elsewhere, except we are a little different. We tend to exhibit:

• a talent for invention and a drive to explore where we are going and where we have been (through science fiction)
• a need to acknowledge and contribute to the beauty and magic that we see in the world (through fantasy and science fiction)
• brutal honesty and acknowledgement of our own demons (through dark fantasy and horror)
• an understanding that our world is not always ordinary, nor is it always as it appears (through magic realism).

My point here isn’t so much as to congratulate ourselves on who we are, but to point out that we bring these same predispositions to our everyday lives, outside of our writing and reading speculative fiction. We are scientists, artists, doctors, educators, business, and trades people. We may write science fiction, but we are also vocal and conscientious about how our society develops—we warn where it may go, what it could become. We may write about flights of fancy, but we also celebrate what is awe-inspiring and unique about our environment. If we pen dark fantasy or horror, we are quick to see where our society fails and where governments go wrong, where people are victimized, and where wrongful situations need to be addressed. We see beyond appearances, we don’t easily accept the status quo, nor are we willing to ‘look away’. When society supports writers of speculative fiction, it reinforces those inclinations to invent, celebrate, correct, and protect. It isn’t about supporting ‘cheap pulp’. It’s about recognizing that this kind of literature reflects a certain kind of thinker and doer—a person who is dedicated to making positive changes in the world.

Question two: genre aside, what does On Spec contribute to the arts, specifically?

Like any minority group, SF writers and readers deserve a voice and a place. On Spec provides a forum for that. Many fiction writers make their first attempts with the short story before attempting larger work. On Spec has been a ‘cradle’ for many writers who have had their first professional sale with us and then have gone on to become successful novelists in Canada and beyond. Unlike many markets, it is part of On Spec’s mandate to offer constructive critique on the majority of manuscripts we receive and reject. Our suggestions have helped writers hone their craft and attain higher levels of proficiency. As a fiction editor, I also contribute to this effort through my blog, Suzenyms (suzenyms.blogspot.ca) which I treat as a promotional arm of the magazine (I also use the blog to promote Canadian SF novelists through guest interviews, as well as my own work).

Under the subject heading of The ABC’s of How ‘Not’ to Write Speculative Fiction, I post writing tips that cover many common errors On Spec encounters in the slush pile. These tips are applicable to all types of fiction, speculative or otherwise. For more seasoned writers, I also offer my ‘Letters to the Slush Pile’ which are based on manuscripts that are technically good but fall short in places, making them not quite up to standard. I never mention names or titles, but address the more difficult or subtle errors I see, then offer advice on how they might be corrected. Since I re-started Suzenyms last April, its popularity has risen at a surprising and exponential rate. The posts that receive the most attention are my ‘ABC’s’, ‘Letters to the Slush Pile’ and other subjects I devote to the magazine. I could not do this, if not for my involvement with On Spec. All of our fiction editors also contribute to the Canadian writing scene—Barb Galler-Smith and Ann Marston mentor writers through writing groups, and Diane Walton and I offer workshops, visit libraries and universities, and offer talks.

In 2014, On Spec will be engaging in some new initiatives. To celebrate our silver anniversary, Tyche Books is publishing a 25th Anniversary Anthology that showcases twenty-five stories selected by the editors. The launch will be in summer of 2014. We’ve recently switched to Submittable, a submissions handling software that will keep writers better informed as to the status of their work. We editors expect it will also make our handling of manuscripts easier. As I write this, our six-week submissions window is currently open; we will close it at midnight on January 5th, 2014. On Spec has never received so many manuscripts during a submissions window—to date, nearly five hundred, a new record. I’m not sure to what this increase is attributable, although possibly, it may be because of the popularity of our I Read On Spec Facebook group and Suzenyms. With so many manuscripts to choose from, the magazine will have an outstanding year’s offerings. Very recently and further afield, we are encouraging writers to represent On Spec at conventions and other events in other provinces. To date, we have one representative in Saskatchewan, and hopefully we will have more. Here in Alberta, editors Barb Galler-Smith and Ann Marston will soon be presenting a teacher’s kit to the upcoming Edmonton Teacher’s Convention that Barb and Robin Carson created using “Space Monkeys”, a short story the magazine recently published. They hope to encourage teachers to include it in their high school curriculums as a thoughtful, poignant, and excellent example of speculative writing.

Why is On Spec important? As for my own reasons, I’ve been with the magazine two years short of its inception, since 1991. Diane Walton, our Managing Editor, is the only remaining founding member. For her dedication, I thank her and everyone else who has contributed to On Spec over the years, whether they are writers, editors, assistants, volunteers, readers, friends, fans, or those who have supported the magazine financially. As 2014 begins, I am grateful for the twenty-three years I have served as a fiction editor. Because of On Spec, I’ve become the editor and novelist that I am today.

The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic

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