Named after the first novel by Phyllis Gotlieb (1926–2009), one of the first published authors of contemporary Canadian science fiction, the awards consist of a cash award of Cdn$1,000 and a medallion which incorporates a specially designed "Sunburst" logo. The winners receive their awards in the fall of every year.
Here are nominees for 2013:
Finton Moon (M)by
Gerard Collins
The Sunburst Award jury says: Growing up in the 1970s
in the outport town of Darwin, Newfoundland—a place connected to, but
remote from, the rest of the province—Finton Moon realizes from an early
age that he is different. He seems to have the ability to heal the
wounds of himself, and others; an ability which sets him even further
apart from his community, and the people around him, even as he
desperately wants to belong. The author grounds Finton Moon
in warts-and-all reality, his lyrical storytelling creating a vivid and
realistic world full of all-too-human characters, where poverty and
violence exist alongside friendship and love, and where Finton must
learn to find his way. It is a magical and compelling novel, like a
long-form version of a Maritime ballad.
Westlake Soul (M)by
Rio Youers
The Sunburst Award jury says: In the midst of life,
Westlake Soul is as good as dead. A surfing accident has left him
trapped in a vegetative state inside his now useless body, but as
compensation he has been given extraordinary mental powers, as well as a
bitter enemy: Dr. Quietus, an embodiment of death itself. Westlake
copes with his tragedy and the grief of his loved ones through soaring
acts of imagination—but are they really all in his head? Youers’
masterful storytelling leaves us wondering just what Westlake is
capable of doing, once he sets his formidable brain to work on the
problem. Westlake Soul is poignant, funny, and
extraordinarily moving as we share Westlake’s thoughts, hopes, and
dreams, and watch as he—and those around him—struggle to cope with the
changed reality of their lives.
The Blondes (M)by
Emily Schultz
The Sunburst Award jury says: Alone in New York, Hazel
Hayes is desperately trying to get her life together. Her thesis isn’t
going well, she’s running low on cash, and she’s just discovered she’s
pregnant after an affair with her married tutor. To complicate matters
even further, random acts of violence and savagery are breaking out
everywhere, acts perpetrated exclusively by light-haired women, and no
one can explain why—or knows how to stop it. At once a gripping
page-turner and a wryly satirical takedown of the omnipresent
apocalypse-meme, The Blondes is a perceptive look at a
world where certain women are to be feared and controlled—with
brutality, if necessary—and where beauty is not only skin deep, but can
kill you.
Over the Darkened Landscape (M)by
Derryl Murphy
The Sunburst Award jury says: In this wonderful collection, Derryl Murphy
ranges over the whole territory of speculative fiction, from hard SF to
magical realism and back again. He is particularly adept at mining
history in stories that twist and tweak reality, turning it into the
thought-provoking “what if?” of great speculative fiction. Whether he is
writing of a society where government cutbacks have created an
interesting way for private citizens to make money, a legendary artist’s
battle with an equally legendary creature of myth, a town where growing
old is the exception rather than the rule, or a poignant phone call
between a husband and wife separated by a distance that can never be
crossed, Murphy’s stories mix fantasy and horror, the extraordinary and the everyday, to stunning effect.
Maleficium (M)by
Martine Desjardins; translated by
Fred A. Reed and
David Homel
The Sunburst Award jury says: Rumour and speculation have it that there is hidden,
somewhere in the archives of the Archdiocese of Montreal, a book so
dangerous that the Church denies its existence. A copy has been found
amongst papers of the author’s family, however, and its interlocking
stories—originally told under the seal of confession—are here presented.
Gorgeous and multilayered, Maleficium is a complex,
devious, and vivid novel, in which all the senses, and most of the
deadly sins, are invoked to exquisite and diabolical effect. Situated
where Maria Monk meets the Arabian Nights, it weaves
together elements at a thousand knots per square inch, its darkness of
frame and intricacy of structure combining to subvert the pattern by the
final chapter.
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