Tag Archives: S. M. Beiko

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Prix Aurora Awards 2020

Congratulations to all of the winners of the 2020 Prix Aurora Awards.

As many of you know, Speculating Canada was nominated again this year for the Best Fan Related Work Category, and congratulations everyone, we won! Speculating Canada started as a way for me to give back to the Canadian SF community and it has been exciting to see it grow and change. It was meant to be a way of creating community and opening up conversations about Canadian Speculative Fiction, and I have been honoured to be part of so many important conversations with all of you authors, fans, publishers, artists, and academics. I am so lucky that we have been able to have the conversations we have and that we have been able to work together toward social change. Although officially my name is listed on this award, it is an award that should reflect all of you as members of this community and reflect all of the work we do together to ask deep questions about SF. I am honoured to have been able to be on this journey with all of you and to continue that journey as we move forward.

The nominees this year were:

Best Novel

Best YA Novel

Best Short Fiction

  • This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Saga)
  • “Clear as Quartz, Sharp as Flint”, Maria Haskins (Augur 2.1)
  • Alice Payne Rides, Kate Heartfield (Tor.com Publishing)
  • “Little Inn on the Jianghu”, Y.M. Pang (F&SF 9/19)
  • “Modigliani Paints the World”, Hayden Trenholm (Neo-Opsis 30)
  • “Blindside”, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm (Amazing Stories Fall ’19)

Best Graphic Novel

Best Related Work

  • PodCastle, Jen R. Albert & Cherae Clark, eds.
  • Nothing Without Us, Cait Gordon & Talia C. Johnson (Renaissance)
  • Neo-opsis, Karl Johanson, ed.
  • Lackington’s, Ranylt Richildis, ed.
  • “Dave Duncan’s Legacy”, Robert Runté (On Spec 111)
  • Augur, Kerrie Seljak-Byrne, ed.

Best Poem/Song

  • “The Girl Who Loved Birds”, Clara Blackwood (Amazing Stories Spring ’19)
  • “At the Edge of Space and Time”, Swati Chavda (Love at the Speed of Light)
  • “Steampunk Christmas”, David Clink (Star*Line Fall ’19)
  • “The Day the Animals Turned to Sand”, Tyler Hagemann (Amazing Stories Spring ’19)
  • “Totemic Ants”, Francine P. Lewis (Amazing Stories Fall ’19)
  • “Beauty, Sleeping”, Lynne Sargent (Augur Magazine 2.2)
  • “Bursts of Fire”, Sora (theme song for book trailers)

Best Artist

  • Samantha M. Beiko, cover for Bursts of Fire
  • James F. Beveridge, cover for Fata Morgana and cover for On Spec 112
  • Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk, “A Rivet of Robots” in On Spec and cartoons in Amazing Stories
  • Nathan Fréchette, covers for Renaissance Press
  • Dan O’Driscoll, covers for Bundoran Press and cover for On Spec 110

Best Visual Presentation

  • The Umbrella Academy
  • V Wars, Season 1
  • Killjoys, Season 5
  • Murdoch Mysteries, Episodes 10-18 in Season 12 and Episodes 1-9 in Season 13
  • Van Helsing, Season 4

Best Fan Writing and Publications

Best Fan Organizational

  • KT Bryski and Jen R. Albert, ephemera reading series, Toronto
  • Brent Jans, Pure Speculation Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival, Edmonton
  • Derek Künsken and Marie Bilodeau, co-chairs, Can-Con, Ottawa
  • Randy McCharles, chair, When Words Collide, Calgary
  • Sandra Wickham, Creative Ink Festival, Burnaby, BC

Best Fan Related Work

 

The winners this year were: 

Inductees into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame:

  • Heather Dale
  • Cory Doctorow
  • Matthew Hughes

Best Novel:

  • Julie Czerneda for The Gossamer Mage

Best Young Adult Novel:

  • Susan Forest for Bursts of Fire

Best Short Fiction:

  • Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone for This Is How You Lose The Time War

Best Graphic Novel:

  • S.M. Beiko for Krampus is my Boyfriend

Best Poem/Song:

  • Tie between Swati Chavda for At The Edge of Space and Time
  • and Sora for Bursts of Fire

Best Related Work:

  • Diane Walton for On Spec Magazine

Best Visual Presentation:

  • The Umbrella Academia

Best Artist:

  • Dan O’Driscoll for covers for Bundoran Press and cover for On Spec 110

Best Fan Writing and Publications:

  • R. Graeme Cameron

Best Fan Organizational

  • Marie Bilodeau and Derek Kunsken for Can Con

Best Fan Related Work

  • Derek Newman-Stille for Speculating Canada

 

To watch the Prix Aurora Awards ceremonies, hosted this year by When Worlds Collide, click on the link below:

 

In order to check out the award category for Best Fan Related Work, which Speculating Canada won, click on the link below and see my acceptance speech. 

 

Thank you all for your support and for the support of Canadian Speculative Fiction. Thank you to the folks at When Worlds Collide for hosting the Aurora Awards and thank the Prix Aurora Awards organizational committee for their work. Thank you also to Mark Leslie Lefebvre for being an incredible host for the awards.

I also want to thank the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent University for their continuing support and encouragement.

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‘Twas The Night Before Krampus

‘Twas The Night Before Krampus
A review of Sam Beiko’s Krampus Is My Boyfriend
By Derek Newman-Stille 

As a folklorist, the figure of Krampus has fascinated me for years. Krampus is the devilish companion of St Nicholas and while the saint passes out gifts to good children, Krampus passes out beatings to the bad ones. He’s got a Pan-like look with goat legs and horns and he often is depicted carrying a switch for beating children and a bag or basket for carrying them away. 

Originally a figure from Austria and the Bavarian regions of Germany, Krampus has gained popularity in North America as the “anti-Santa”, and Sam Beiko’s Krampus from her comic “Krampus Is My Boyfriend” is inspired by that image of the creature. In fact, when the German exchange student at St. Gobnait’s Academy first mentions the demon, she is greeted with the response “he’s the anti-Santa Claus, right?” 

Beiko’s use of the graphic format is a powerful part of the narrative since Krampus is a visually stimulating figure. But, more than just the striking image of the demon himself, Beiko evokes the demon’s character through her comic pages, often featuring chains and vines binding one scene to the next and wrapping them all up in her image of Krampus as a pagan deity that pre-dates Christianity. Her motif of the natural world reinforces the pagan origins of Krampus, making him something connected to the forest even though he operates in an urban environment.

Beiko situates “Krampus Is My Boyfriend” in a tale of teen bullying, connecting the demon to ideas of childhood and youth, but also to ideas of punishment for bad behaviour. The demon is summoned by high school student Olga when she is bullied at her prestigious private high school by wealthier students. She is described as a “bursary kid”, denoting her poverty and is mocked for her weight. 

Beiko plays with the notion of importing a custom from Germanic tradition by having a German exchange student first mention the demon, but also plays with the notion of Krampus expressing something intrinsic to all youth by having Olga call out the Krampus ritual as if she knew it. Beiko explores the notion of traditions extending beyond their place of origin and moving to a new location, which mirrors what has occurred with Krampus as a folk entity. Krampus has begun to be a figure celebrated in American holiday traditions with people gathering at celebrations dressed as the demon, and even importing the tradition of the Krampuslauf (Krampus Run). Beiko explores the way that Krampus in North America occupies a strange space of both tradition and newness, being from another country’s traditions, but, also, new to this region. Beiko reinforces this collision of tradition and newness by having mythical creatures use technology to track Krampus while having this tech connected to trees. 

While drawing on the legend of Krampus, Beiko creates her own mythology – one intimately connected with aspects of science fiction – to create a fascinating new take on the Christmas devil.

To discover more about Krampus Is My Boyfriend, go to http://krampusismyboyfriend.com

Consider supporting Sam Beiko on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/smbeiko

Find out more about Sam Beiko and her work at https://www.smbeiko.com

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Mute Ghost in a World of Words

A review of S.M. Beiko’s The Lake and the Library (ECW Press, 2013)
By Derek Newman-Stille

Cover Photo for The Lake and the Library courtesy of ECW press

Cover Photo for The Lake and the Library courtesy of ECW press

S.M. Beiko’s The Lake and the Library is nominally a story about growing up, and the feeling of nostalgia for things lost and things changing. It is about the discovery of a library filled with books that are gateways to fantastic worlds, pages that become birds, clouds, and wings to lift her to new highs of fantasy. The library is a shifting space, becoming other worlds as walls are expanded by the great breadth of adventure and fantasy within the covers of the books it houses, literally shifting to become fantastic spaces from beloved classics. And the library holds a boy, unable to speak aloud, but able to speak volumes in the universal language of fantasy with Ash as his co-creator of worlds of adventure.

The first part of the novel evokes the highs of an escape, new experiences, exiting distortions of reality, and only in the latter half of the novel does it become clear that this is an addict’s tale. Ash begins to experience the dangers and draws of being in a continual state of escape. Reality begins to wear thin for her and she begins to distance herself from anyone who doesn’t enable her habit, anyone who pulls her back to reality. Friends, family, all begin to be sacrificed to her need, her desire to get away from herself, her world, and all that feels too mundane, too real to matter.

The world outside of the library begins to shift, become unstable for Ash, losing its substance as something grows within her, thorns that tear into her skin, holding her, consuming her from the inside and pulling her back to the library. Fantasy begins to eat into reality, making the real a pale and lifeless substitute for the highs of the fantastic. And when reality gets to be too much, a sound like rushing water surges through her, enveloping her in its wash of abstraction, removing her from a world that seems too harsh, too sharp, too real for her to touch. The water cushions her while it draws her deeper, washing away signification and everything that made her who she was.

The library is haunted by memory, nostalgia, the dreams of things lost and forgotten, and yet it has power, a deep hold like thorns in the veins of those who seek to escape, those willing to uproot themselves and lose the ground that feels like it is only holding them in place.

Libraries are beautiful places, deep places, charged with a depth made of the weight of tales, and this depth can both add to one’s story, but can also consume and obscure one’s story. Ash finds herself suspended in a depth of tales that renders her as a drop in a lake, her story washed away by the weight of other worlds more alluring to her than her own life.

To find out more about the work of S.M. Beiko, visit her website at http://www.smbeiko.com/ .

To read more about The Lake and the Library, visit ECW’s website at https://www.ecwpress.com/lake