Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic [Paperback]

Claude Lalumiere (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004

Twelve all-new stories of the fantastic, the imaginative, and the weird are collected in this book of daring and imaginative tales of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and surrealism. Montreal’s established authors and new voices alike serve up gruesomely disturbing tales, bizarre love stories, gender-bending police investigations, and alien cities literally dropped in the middle of an American desert. The authors include Yves Meynard, author of The Book of Knights; Glenn Grant, coeditor of Northern Stars and Northern Suns; Mark Shainblum, cocreator of Angloman and Northguard; Melissa Yuan-Innes, a Writers of the Future contest winner; Mark Paterson, a leading voice in the Montreal spoken-word scene; Maxianne Berger, author of How We Negotiate; Martin Last, cofounder of New York’s legendary Science Fiction Shop; Shane Simmons, creator of Longshot Comics; and Dora Knez, author of Five Forbidden Things. Other contributors include Linda Dydyk, Elise Moser, and Christos Tsirbas.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Claude Lalumière founded Nebula, a Montreal bookshop devoted to fantasy and science fiction. He writes a weekly “Fantastic Fiction” column for Montreal's The Gazette. He is the author of Open Space, Telling Stories, and Witpunk. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction In 1989, I returned to my hometown — beloved Montreal — after being away for a few years, and I opened Nebula, a bookshop devoted to "the fantastic, the imaginative, and the weird." In the ten years that I managed Nebula, the shop became a nexus for aficionados of the fantastic from Montreal and beyond.

Sadly, Nebula no longer exists. Five years later, I still run into former customers who ask me when I’ll return to book retailing. I doubt I’ll ever be taking up that gauntlet again, but I do hope that someone fills the void, and soon. Culturally vibrant Montreal needs a bookstore to cater to the tastes of the many readers who enjoy more than a dash of the outré in their fiction.

What I am offering, however, is this anthology, Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic. Within these pages, you'll meet twelve of this city’s most imaginative authors, some native-born, some Montrealers by choice: twelve writers representative of the unflinching daring, dark wit, multicultural zeitgeist, and effervescent energy that characterize Montreal.

Several of these stories use Montreal itself as a setting — Elise Moser’s gruesomely disturbing "Human Rites," Dora Knez’s bizarre love story "The Dead Park," Maxianne Berger’s short weird tale "Report on a Museum Incident," and Mark Shainblum’s science-fiction adventure "Endogamy Blues" — but, true to Montreal's cosmopolitan spirit, several Island Dreams writers venture farther afield.

In "Burning Day," Glenn Grant envisions a future Toronto and takes us on a genderbending police investigation. Yves Meynard’s "In Yerusalom" describes an alien city literally dropped in the middle of an American desert. Martin Last, in "Carnac," brings us along on a mysterious vacation to France. Melissa Yuan-Innes’s "Mrs. Marigold’s House" is located in the fictional small town of Edelson, Ontario. Shane Simmons’s "Carrion Luggage" travels from Haiti to Florida. And Christos Tsirbas’s "Brikolakas" roams through twentieth-century Greece.

Less geographically specific, Linda Dydyk subverts the generic future depicted in 1950s American SF in "The Strange Afterlife of Henry Wigam" and Mark Paterson's peculiar farce "The Ketchup We Were Born With" has global consequences.

Montreal's English-language SF scene — a metaphoric linguistic island on the Island of Montreal — often gets overlooked. Outsiders tend to confuse multilingual Montreal with the francophone Province of Québec. The result: we hear about the French-language Québécois scene or about English SF writers from other provinces. As different as Québec is from the rest of Canada, Montreal is even more different from the rest of Québec. And its writers who work in English — including those whose careers span more than one language — do so from a perspective unlike any other.

So, without further ado, here are twelve all-new, all-different stories of "the fantastic, the imaginative, and the weird."

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vehicule Press (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1550651714
• ISBN-13: 978-1550651713
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,571,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Claude Lalumière writes weird fiction, edits anthologies, and has published hundreds of nonfiction articles. He lives in Montreal, Canada, where he was raised in French, but somehow ended up living, reading, writing, working, and dreaming in English. With Rupert Bottenberg, Claude is the co-creator of lostmyths.net.