The Sum of Us
Tales of the Bonded and Bound
- Publisher
- Laksa Media Groups Inc.
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2017
- Category
- Short Stories
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780993969690
- Publish Date
- Sep 2017
- List Price
- $19.95
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9781988140032
- Publish Date
- Sep 2017
- List Price
- $28.00 USD
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781988140001
- Publish Date
- Sep 2017
- List Price
- $5.99
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Description
The greatest gift to us is caring and sharing, no matter who we are.
What would the world be like without someone to care for or to care with? Would love survive if we don't care? From the world of twenty-three science fiction and fantasy authors comes a world that can be funny, heartwarming, strange, or sad. Or not what we expect.
How can a henchman keep up with a mischievous retired supervillain? Can a dog help a hockey player score again? Will an odd couple with a zany sense of adventure and diminished capabilities survive an earthquake? Where does a stray cat go to find love every night? What secret does a pious monk have with a cargo of sleeping human? Will terrorism in space take out a young apprentice and a blind welder? What does an oracle tell a lover about her final days? Can a "heart of gold" prevent a soldier from crossing the enemy line with the governor's children? These, and many more.
Recommended by Publishers Weekly, Lightspeed, and Tangent
2018 (Canadian SF&F) Aurora Award Winner (anthology/Best Related Work)
2018 Alberta Book Publishing Award Finalist (Speculative Fiction Book of the Year)
One story selected for Best of British Science Fiction 2017 (ed. by Donna Scott)
One story selected for Best Indie Speculative Fiction, Vol. 1 (Bards & Sages Publishing)
Five stories on Tangent Online Recommended Reading List 2017
2018 (Canadian SF&F) Aurora Award Short Fiction Winner
One story--2018 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic Short Fiction Winner
Three stories nominated -- 2018 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic Short Fiction Finalist
Anthologies in this series (Strangers Among Us, The Sum of Us, Where the Stars Rise, Shades Within Us) have been recommended by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Locus, Foreword Reviews, and Quill & Quire.
About the authors
Juliet Marillier's profile page
Colleen Anderson's profile page
Charlotte Ashley's profile page
A.M. Dellamonica's profile page
Claire Humphrey's profile page
Sandra Kasturi is a Red Deer Press author.
Heather Osborne's profile page
Nisi Shawl is an African American writer and editor best known for the first multiple award-winning New Suns anthology and for their 2016 Nebula finalist novel Everfair. In 2019 they received the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished service to the genre. Prior to putting together New Suns, they edited and co-edited WisCon Chronicles 5: Writing and Racial Identity; Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia Butler Scholars; Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler; and Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany. Shawl lives in Seattle, where they take frequent walks with their cat.
Alex Shvartsman's profile page
Kate Story is a writer and theatre artist who was born and raised in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Uncanny occurrences were not unheard-of growing up in the house on the Southside Road built by Kate's great-great grandfather. Having fled to the mainland at sixteen, Kate keeps coming home to see family, do the occasional performance work, and get the occasional fit of the shudders. Kate lives in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, Ontario, where the shudders are fuel for the writing and performance work.
Previous novels include Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore, This Insubstantial Pageant, and the YA fantasy duology Antilia.
Kate's fiction has won the Sunburst Award's honourable mention, been a CBC Literary Award finalist, and has appeared in World Fantasy and Aurora Award-winning collections. Kate is also a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation's K.M. Hunter Artist Award for work as a theatre writer, performer, and creator.
Karina Sumner-Smith is a Canadian author of fantasy, science fiction, and young adult. Her short fiction has appeared in The Living Dead 2, The Best Horror of the Year Volume Three, and Children ofMagic, among others. Among being reprinted in a number of anthologies, her short stories have also been nominated for the Nebula Award and have been translated into Czech and Spanish. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Karina Sumner-Smith's profile page
Amanda Sun was born in Deep River, Ontario, and now lives in Toronto. The Paper Gods series, which includes Ink, Rain, and Storm, was inspired by her time living in Osaka and traveling throughout Japan. She is an avid video gamer and cosplayer. Visit her on the web at www.amandasunbooks.com and on twitter @Amanda_Sun.
Hayden Trenholm is a native of Nova Scotia who has lived in various areas of Canada. He is best known in Alberta for his playwriting. A Circle of Birds is his first published novel.
Hayden Trenholm's profile page
Liz Westbrook-Trenholm's profile page
EDWARD WILLETT is the author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction for readers of all ages. Marseguro (DAW Books) won the Aurora Award (honouring Canadian science fiction and fantasy) for Best Long-Form Work in English; his young adult fantasy Spirit Singer won a Saskatchewan Book Award. Several other of his books have been shortlisted for those and other awards.
Ed's most recent novel is the far-future humorous outer-space adventure The Tangled Stars (DAW Books). Other recent titles include Star Song, a finalist for both the Aurora Award and Saskatchewan Book Award for Young Adult Literature, published by Shadowpaw Press; Blue Fire (written as E.C. Blake), also from Shadowpaw Press; and the Worldshapers series (Worldshaper, Master of the World, and The Moonlit World) from DAW. His nonfiction runs the gamut from science books to biographies to history. He hosts Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worldshapers podcast (theworldshapers.com), in which he talks to other science fiction and fantasy authors about their creative process, and has Kickstarted several Shapers of Worlds anthologies featuring guests of the podcast.
In addition to being a writer, Ed is a professional actor and singer who has performed in numerous plays, musicals, and operas, and sung in several auditioned choirs, including the Canadian Chamber Choir. He lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with his wife, Margaret Anne Hodges, P. Eng., a past president of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan. They have one daughter, Alice, and a black Siberian cat, Shadowpaw. You can find Ed online at www.edwardwillett.com.
Caroline M. Yoachim's profile page
Dominik Parisien is an editor, poet, and writer. He is the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of The Mythic Dream, Robots vs Fairies, and The Starlit Wood. Together their anthologies have won the Shirley Jackson Award and have been finalists for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Ignyte, and Locus Award. He also won the Hugo, British Fantasy, and Aurora Award for co-editing Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction with Elsa Sjunneson. His debut poetry collection Side Effects May Include Strangers was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Dominik is a disabled, bisexual French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.
Awards
- Winner, (Canadian SF&F) Prix Aurora Award
- Short-listed, Alberta Book Publishing Award
Excerpt: The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound (edited by Susan Forest & Lucas K. Law; by (author) Juliet Marillier, Brenda Cooper, Colleen Anderson, Charlotte Ashley, Ian Creasey, A.M. Dellamonica, Bev Geddes, Claire Humphrey, Sandra Kasturi, Tyler Keevil, Matt Moore, Heather Osborne, Nisi Shawl, Alex Shvartsman, Kate Story, Karina Sumner-Smith, Amanda Sun, Hayden Trenholm, James Van Pelt, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm, Edward Willett, Christie Yant & Caroline M. Yoachim; introduction by Dominik Parisien)
The Dunschemin Retirement Home for Repentant Supervillains by Ian Creasey
Here we go again. Mornings in the Home always began the same way. No matter what time Stafford reached Anarcho’s room, Anarcho was invariably awake, waiting for Stafford to open the chintz curtains. But he never reprimanded Stafford for being late or wasting time. In the old days, Anarcho had been as impatient as all supervillains, ever eager to pursue some cunning scheme. Now there was no rushing and shouting and clanking; no messy experiments left bubbling overnight; no lairs to build or dungeons to dust.
Today’s tasks were more homely. Stafford pulled back the duvet to reveal Anarcho’s shrunken frame, tinged green from over-exposure to tachyons. First came the bathroom routine: toilet, sponge wipe, shave, and so forth. Then the mechanical maintenance: eye lube, claw sharpen and polish, exobrain defrag and reboot. These prosthetics were all obsolete. Anarcho was the Home’s oldest resident, his life convoluted by time travel.
“Attention all residents,” the intercom blared. “Please report for roll call in the lounge. This is not a drill; the perimeter alarm has sounded. Urgent roll call!”
“Sounds like mischief,” Stafford said. “I presume it’s not yours.”
He didn’t expect an answer. For form’s sake, he checked the control panel on Anarcho’s wheelchair but saw nothing. It had been years since Anarcho’s last caper.
Stafford couldn’t decide whether he missed the old days. Back then, life had felt too frenetic, with a never-ending list of chores; every new plot always needed its own elaborate control room, destruct mechanism, and escape tunnel. Yet he’d enjoyed the craftsmanship of building vast laboratories and sinister machines. Now the chores were mundane: the new enemy was incontinence. Had all those intrigues been for naught?
“Let’s get you down there,” he said.
He settled Anarcho into the motorized wheelchair and draped a tartan blanket over his knees. The blanket lacked even the most basic hidden enhancements: no blast-proof shielding, no explosive tassels, not even a hypnotic fractal pattern on the reverse. It was merely 100% wool, soft and warm.
The Home bustled with activity as the residents and their carers converged on the lounge. Stafford ducked aside as Madame Mayhem and Miss Rule zoomed past on their hoverchairs, racing each other along the corridors. Proceeding more sedately, Stafford and Anarcho were the last to arrive.
“Hurry up!” roared Betty Beast. “I’m missing breakfast for this.”
“Oh, I’ll get us some breakfast,” said Doctor Havoc. With a well-practiced dramatic gesture, he conjured puffs of blue smoke from his hand. The clouds of nanites drifted through the kitchen doorway, returning with toast and mushrooms. One blue globule collided with a hoverchair and tried to drag it back, to Madame Mayhem’s furious protests. She retaliated by stealing slices of toast before the smoke took them to Doctor Havoc. In the tussle, stray mushrooms fell to the floor, where three of Legion’s tiny scuttling avatars scooped them up.
“Hush!” cried Matron. “Stop playing with your food.”
A tall, spindly woman dressed in an old-style black-and-white nurse’s uniform, Matron seemed to glare at everyone simultaneously. “Please answer the roll call, and I’d better not hear any cackling. Phipps will physically check that everyone’s here. No decoy holograms!”
Stafford said, “What do you reckon, Anarcho—is it an escape or a kidnap?” Some supervillains couldn’t bear retirement and returned to the metropolis like grizzled rock stars craving one last comeback.
Matron called out, “Narinder Atwal.” “Here,” said Doctor Havoc. “And hungry!”
Phipps, Matron’s diminutive assistant, touched Doctor Havoc’s shoulder to verify his existence. Coincidentally—or not—a blue puff of smoke swirled into Phipps’ face and made him sneeze.
“Sophie Béranger.” Matron only ever used civilian names; she insisted that every retired supervillain must abandon their alias along with their antics. While no-one openly defied her, many surreptitiously clung onto their monikers and misbehaviour.
“Here,” replied Madame Mayhem, her fingers idly stroking a memorial necklace of fangs from Fidosaurus, her deceased pet dinosaur.
The roll call continued until it reached, “Russell Fletcher.” Stafford waited a few seconds, then pinged Anarcho’s exobrain.
“I’m here, wherever this is,” Anarcho said, his voice low and hoarse. “It ain’t heaven, that’s for sure,” said Doctor Havoc.
“Come sit on my hoverchair, and I’ll show you heaven,” Madame Mayhem purred.
The supervillains dissolved into giggles until Matron raised her voice to resume the roll call, which ended with no absentees—or none detected.
“That’s reassuring,” said Matron, addressing the group. “But what set off the alarm? I’ve checked the video, and most of the outside cameras are obscured. It’s remarkable how fast the ivy grows in our grounds. Quite remarkable indeed.” She stared at the motley reprobates. “If anyone knows anything, please enlighten us.”
“I know why galaxies collide,” said AlphaMega, his bass voice augmented with infrasonic rumble.
“Yeah, your huge ego turned into a black hole and sucked them in,” retorted Madame Mayhem.
“If you can’t be helpful, be quiet,” Matron said. “I’ve warned the authorities about the perimeter breach. If anything happens outside and it’s traced back here, there’ll be consequences.”
Excerpted from The Sum of Us, copyright © 2017
The Gatekeeper by Juliet Marillier
He stalks up the long hall, each step a small poem of feline grace. An early morning hush lies over Autumn Gardens. Outside, the first birds are calling. Inside, there’s a distant rattle of crockery. He passes the doors, many doors, each slightly ajar. The residents lie still under their quilts, wrapped in memories that will vanish when they wake.
Ah! Feet in slippers, here by the wall. A woman makes a shuffling progress, clutching the rail. He slips away, shadow-quick. Her ending will come soon enough; it is not for him to trip those faltering feet. His task is not to deliver death. Only to witness. Only to guide.
Good smells ahead. The kitchen is at the far end of this hall—he is not allowed to enter. But he eats well. His man feeds him in their safe place, every morning after they wake, every night before they sleep.
There was a time before: starving, snatching, devouring whatever scrap might come his way. Beetles, worms, smears of stuff in sharp discarded cans. It was a time of fear, of fighting, of running, always running. A big tom tore his ear. A hurled stone bruised him. But he got away. Over and over he got away.
A baying dog chased him. He caught his foot in a fence, hauled himself free, ripped flesh from his leg. There was blood. He hid under bushes. Licked and licked, but could not make it better.
A man came with cheese and meat and a trap, and he was caught. He fought the box that shut him in. He bit the hands that touched him; terror made him strong. But they were gentle hands, lifting him out, tending to his wound. He knew, for the first time, the feeling of a full belly.
That was then. This is now. The man—his man—brought him here, made him his own safe place. A warm bed, sweet water, good food. He has a friend now, and a home. He has a solemn calling.
***
Autumn Gardens Eldercare Staff Meeting: March 2, 2010
Agenda
1. Action items from last meeting
2. April visit by Minister for Seniors: planning
3. Staffing issues
4. Therapy cat for Dementia Ward – protocols
5. Any other business
***
The morning rounds bring him to the sunny room where the residents of Ward D now sit in their chairs. Some stare at the television, a flickering parade of images, a buzz of sounds. Some nod in half-sleep. It is nearly time for the wheeled trolley to bring tea and biscuits. He knows who will feed him crumbs and who will look through him, not seeing.
“There you are, Piff.” Kind hands, these, reaching down to stroke him gently behind the ears. The touch contents him. He has many names at Autumn Gardens: Stripey, Honey, Thistle, and Orlando. To his man, he is Hamza. Those names are unimportant. He is Cat, servant of Bast.
Here is the old woman who smells of flowers. He remembers a garden where he hid once, a place all tangled foliage and deep hollows; the same smell was there. He stations himself by the woman’s feet, waiting. The trolley creaks in; there’s a tinkle of crockery up above.
“I’m going home this afternoon,” the flower woman says. “Kalgoorlie. My son’s coming to pick me up.”
“That’s nice, dear.” The trolley moves on.
A generous supply of crumbs descends. They are the kind he likes best. Rattle of cups on saucers; muted voices. More crumbs here and there. He wanders, grazing.
The trolley creaks out again. He settles, comfortably full, to drowse the morning away on a sunny window seat. His senses tell him there will be no further work until night falls and it is time to warm his man’s feet. But soon, very soon, the call will come.
Excerpted from The Sum of Us, copyright © 2017
Editorial Reviews
“A strong collection . . . make it worth reading.” –Publishers Weekly
“. . . definitely consider buying a copy, if not for yourself, then for someone who is serving as a caretaker. At the very least, it should make us all appreciate caretakers for all they do.” –Lightspeed Magazine
“Thought provoking page-turners.” –Tangent
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