CZP Prix Aurora Award Nominees

Only three two week ONE DAY  left to vote in the Aurora Awards. This year, we’re delighted to announce that CZP and The Chiaroscuro/ChiZine.com are well-represented.

If you haven’t heard of the Auroras, they are an annual award recognizing the best in Canadian science fiction/fantasy prose, poetry, music, art, fan organizations and more. Winners are determined by voting, which is open to all Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

Our nominees

Best English Related Work: Chimerascope by Douglas Smith. A short story collection of sixteen tales, introduced by Julie Czerneda, who calls them “stories you can't forget.” Bestselling author Robert J. Sawyer names Doug “quite simply, the finest short-story writer Canada has ever produced in the science fiction and fantasy genres.” Chimerascope was also a finalist for the Sunburst Award.

Best Artist (Professional and Amateur): Erik Mohr for his cover art for all CZP books. Keep in mind, this is not a nomination for one item or a collection, but for consistently turning out great covers for a variety of novels and collections. Head over to the Books page on the CZP site and take a look. Click on each book for a larger version of the cover.

Best Fan Organizational: Helen Marshall and Sandra Kasturi, chairs of the first Toronto SpecFic Colloquium. A day-long event, it was the first of its kind (that we know of) to bring together authors, editors and readers in a format to allow lectures, readings and discussions of genre fiction. If you weren’t able to attend the Colloquium, you can still watch the presentations from the event on our YouTube channel.

The second Colloquium will be held October 15th at the Toronto Underground Cinema (tickets are still available). Due to popular demand, the Colloquium has become an annual event.

Other nominees for you to consider

Best English Short Story: CZP’s marketing director Matt Moore has been nominated for “Touch the Sky, They Say”, which you can read for free on AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review.

Best English Poem / Song: We have this category covered.

“Waiting for the Harrowing” by CZP’s managing editor Helen Marshall, which appeared in issue #45 of ChiZine.com.

“Let the Night In,” by Sandra Kasturi, CZP co-publisher and ChiZine.com’s Managing Poetry Editor, appeared alongside other CZP authors, staff & friends in Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead.

“The ABCs of the End of the World” by Carolyn Clink, Poetry Editor at ChiZine.com, from A Verdant Green.

“Of the Corn: Kore’s Innocence” by Colleen Anderson, Poetry Editor at ChiZine.com and an editor/slush reader for CZP, was published in Witches & Pagans #21.

Best English Related Work: Although we’re all rooting for Chimerascope, you might also consider Tesseracts Fourteen, edited by John Robert Colombo and Brett Alexander Savory, CZP Co-Publisher, which contains some great stories and poems by CZP authors, friends and staff.

How Do I Vote?

The Aurora site describes the registration and voting process a lot better than we can here. Just know it is open to Canadian permanent residents and citizens, and there is a $5.50 fee to vote (unless you are going to SFContario, in which case the fee is waved).

As always, thanks for your support of CZP!

Chimerascope on Canadian Science Fiction Review

"Reading Smith’s stories is like taking a series of guided tours through strange places — you don’t expect any bombshells to be dropped on you but you do expect to see something new and memorable. Chimerascope delivers that in spades and is well worth the price of admission." - Helen Michaud, The Canadian Science Fiction Review

Read the review here.

Learn more about Chimerascope here.

CHIMERASCOPE nominated for a Sunburst Award!

We are pleased to announce that Douglas Smith's collection Chimerascope has made the shortlist for the Sunburst Awards. These awards are presented annually to recognize Canadian writers of speculative fiction.
The jury says: "This collection contains a beautifully diverse selection of short tales that runs the full spectrum of the speculative genres. The tales are well-crafted, easily digestible; several of the stories are incredibly moving and stick with the reader long after. The wide range of stylistic approaches works well together."
Good luck, Douglas!

Click here to see the shortlist.

Click here to learn more about Chimerascope.

Interview with Douglas Smith!

Douglas Smith, author of CHIMERASCOPE, talks about Bruce Springsteen, seeing his work adapted into film, and why now is the best and worst time to be a writer.

Read the interview!

Click here for more info on Chimerascope!

CBC Bookies: Vote!

The CBC Bookie nominees are up, and CZP has two books shortlisted for prizes.

A Book of Tongues, by Gemma Files is shortlisted in the Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel category. You can vote for this category and others here.

Chimerascope, by Douglas Smith is shortlisted in the Best Short Story Collection category. You can vote for this category and others here.

Voting ends Feb 13th and 15th respectively!

"In Awe": Review of Chimerascope

"I recommend Chimerascope to fans of the fantastic. Smith’s original takes on familiar genres will give you much to enjoy and much to consider and, if one story does not appeal to you, several others will."

Read the rest of the review.

Buy a copy here!

Doug Smith Interviewed

Doug Smith, author of Chimerascope, is interviewed at PlanetShifter Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Do you understand what some writers and artists are calling "new mythologies"?

Actually, no. But the ancient myths were the way that humans tried to explain the unexplainable, and writers and artists are still trying to explain the universe and our place in it. Our myths simply change as we learn more. Science replaces myth, but each answer leads to another area of which we know nothing. Myths rush in to fill the void. We are story tellers and will always be story tellers.

"Collection Succeeds so Powerfully"

Ideomancer has this to say about Chimerascope:

"Smith’s greatest talent lies in creating and then exploring worlds fashioned by posing a deceptively simple question. If a man awoke each morning and died each night, each time waking in someone else’s body, as in “A Taste Sweet and Salty,” would he be able to escape? What if, as in the book’s opening story, “Scream Angel,” an alien species secreted a chemical substance that warped humans’ emotional responses—changing extreme lows into torrid, wonderful highs? His aliens are fully-fleshed, complicated beings with tangible challenges."

Read the rest of the review here!

Get your own copy!

By Her Hand, She Draws You Down

A trailer for the short film based on the short story of the same name by Douglas Smith, published in Chimerascope.

You can also watch it through Facebook, here.

Review of Chimerascope

Review of Chimerascope by Douglas Smith, taken from Ideomancer.

There are few misses in Chimerascope, a superb collection of Douglas Smith’s previously published speculative fiction, stuffed with Aurora nominees (and one winner) and Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror honorable mentions. Spanning a wide spectrum of classic sci-fi, stories inspired by mythology, and post-apocalyptic fiction, this is an collection you’ll want to own and re-read.

Smith’s greatest talent lies in creating and then exploring worlds fashioned by posing a deceptively simple question. If a man awoke each morning and died each night, each time waking in someone else’s body, as in “A Taste Sweet and Salty,” would he be able to escape? What if, as in the book’s opening story, “Scream Angel,” an alien species secreted a chemical substance that warped humans’ emotional responses—changing extreme lows into torrid, wonderful highs?

His aliens are fully-fleshed, complicated beings with tangible challenges. They are occasionally horrific (as in the dark “By Her Hand, She Draws You Down,” populated by an entity that absorbs the life force of humans by drawing their portrait on paper). But more often, like his humans, they must make terrible decisions without the promise of a happy resolution. “Memories of a Dead Man,” for example, presents the titular character at a crossroads where he could choose to abandon his quest for vengeance, or wallow in it.

Few of Smith’s stories end on a feel-good note. In his introduction, he writes, “[M]y preferred ending is bittersweet, because that’s how I see life.” And nowhere is that more true than in “Going Harvey in the Big House,” narrated by a man who is—and eventually chooses to be—no more than a cog in the world’s wheel. Given the opportunity to cast down the machine, Big G walks down the easier road with no regrets. Flawed characters are the hardest to write because they are the most realistic: like us, they are plagued by doubts, insecurities, and are woefully void of foresight. Smith manages to capture the sympathy inherent in Big G’s decision; he is, after all, only human.

Another standout is the masterful “State of Disorder,” which contemplates the flexibility and fluidity of time. A number of events occur during a single, three-course dinner: the fortunes of two men are swapped, retrospectively, in time; a child’s life is erased permanently from the timeline; and finally, all three participants finish the meal with the knowledge of what has occurred, and how—one is triumphant, another despairing, and the third seeks revenge. In the hands of a less skillful writer, it would have been chaos.

An introduction to the book by editor and sci-fi novelist Julie Czerneda adds little, as this collection stands handily on its own legs. However, the author’s notes Smith provides before (and sometimes after, to avoid spoilers) the stories are tremendously interesting; each augments the tales with how the story came to be, and why it was written. Smith refers twice to Roger Zelazny, and once each to Poe, Jack London, and Bogey, all as sources of inspiration. It’s a complex mix: one of the many reasons this collection succeeds so powerfully.

Click here to buy Chimerascope from ChiZine Publications!

Broken Pencil Reviews Chimerascope

Broken Pencil reviews Chimerascope by Douglas Smith. One thing to note is that Chimerascope is a collection of short stories, and not a novel.


"Douglas Smith takes some of his (for the most part award-winning) stories and presents them to us in the form of the novel Chimerascope. Before or after each story, Smith gives personal commentary on his inspiration or what he was trying to achieve and although interesting, it is sometimes nice to be able to deduce for yourself the hidden significance in a story. That said, Smith is obviously a gifted writer in the genre of science-fiction. From the ancient deities and their centaur and nymph friends hanging out at a bar on Toronto island and mingling with the locals, to an autistic child finding solace on an alien world where colours in the sky speak to him in a way that no human can, to a massive house that holds the remnants of humanity -- Smith paints his worlds so well that you are transported within a paragraph or two and remain in transit until the short story ends -- a challenging feat to be sure... "

Read the rest here.

Buy the book here.