Law and Order Toronto: Talking Canadian Style

Many Canadians wait impatiently for each new episode of Law and Order Toronto to drop and the reason I always hear is,"It's so Canadian." While watching it the other day, I wondered what makes it so Canadian and, although many have tried to break it down, I feel they miss the certain je ne sais quoi that makes it Canadian. Since je ne sais quoi literally means something that cannot be adequately described, it made me certain that trying to write about it was useless. Never one to shrug off a challenge, here's my attempt: the part that's so Canadian is that we talk it out.

Law and Order Toronto is a spinoff of the U.S. much loved Law and Order series, Many have pointed out that is has an all-Canadian cast, is set in Toronto, is produced by Canadian crews and the episodes are drawn from Toronto crime headlines and the landmarks of the city are recognizable to all. The executive producer Amy Cameron said, "it's been "liberating" for the crew to be able to portray Toronto as itself, after spending years pretending it's another city on other productions."

Tassie Cameron, the producer and sister of Amy, identifies two other crucial, very Canadian parts of the show: in Canada, you don’t get to have a lawyer present when you’re being questioned and there isn't a lot of gun violence so the show, being realistic, has few guns. I would add that in American shows, people are described as "Black" or "White" etc. I haven't heard this on the show and this is a very Canadian way to speak. 

 The episode I watched was the latest one called XOXO (referring to a clue on a card) and Claire Mathews, newly elected MP, is found dead on a car below her high rise apartment. Did she jump or was she murdered? The two investigating detectives, Graff and Bateman, are a study in contrast with Graff described as a Sherlock character, who knows a little something about everything using deduction skills to solve, whereas Bateman uses great human instincts and empathy to solve crimes, but this is far too simplified.

All of the characters, from the MP's son and husband to her secret lover, are complex and peeled back layer by layer. Graf notices two crucial clues: a bunch of roses and a camera on an apartment across the way attached to a bird feeder. The camera audio proves it was a murder and the roses end up being crucial to solving the case. Graf quickly finds and focuses on her lover who happens to be his father. If this isn't complicated enough, Graf blames his father for murdering his mother even though her death was officially classified as a suicide.

When Bateman points out Graf's conflict of interest and asks him to allow her to work the case alone and 'trust her instincts' Graf attacks her by growling, "What instincts?"

As expected, Graf works the case surreptitiously and Bateman investigates Graf's mother's death surreptitiously.

When Bateman discovers Graf's mother really did commit suicide, she shows enormous empathy and understanding of what he felt like as a young boy who lost his mother and asks him to be be empathetic with that child he once was and then to be the wonderful detective he is when looking at this. When they discover the roses were brought by the son who committed the murder – here the credit goes to Bateman - the questioning of the son is done, on Bateman's insistence, by Graf who gets a confession by using their shared experience of losing a mother.

What is very Canadian is the interactions. Bateman's response to Graf's attack on her - and it's a cutting attack on her entire career - is not to attack in return. Instead she reaches out to and appeals to his empathy for the child he was and appeals to his intelligence and logic until he finally admits his mother committed suicide. Graf reaches out to the son also appealing to his empathy and understanding of his mother to get him to admit to murdering his mother. This optimistic belief – that if people use their empathy and intelligence, understanding and even justice can be attained – is very Canadian. This isn't a theoretical belief but one that is enacted our whole lives as we discuss and debate on issues from politics to raisins or no raisins in butter tarts.

Our interactions always mark a Canadian. I have traveled widely and can recognize a Canadian by the way we talk, discuss and even argue. In fact, Canada was born as a country by talking. One common comment is that Canada was not born from the clashing of swords but from the stroke of a pen but, in fact, the creation of the Dominion of Canada was from talking; talking at the Charlottetown Conference (September 1864), the Quebec Conference (October 1864) and the London Conference (December 1866 to March 1867). We're still talking to fix problems: a police officer, part of the elite crises management team, when asked whether they use the large guns he brought to a writer's talk in hostage situations, he smiled and explained in hostage situations he'd rather talk it out till everyone was bored, hungry and gave up.

Talking built Canada and is still fixing it everyday.

6 Literary Ways That a Tree Can Kill You

A tree mishap can kill somebody, but maybe we don't appreciate the full danger. I was doom-scrolling recently and read about a particularly lethal tree, the pong pong (Cerbera odollam). The poison in its seeds can kill you within hours. It's deadlier than oleander. The piece had doom-links to other articles about other dangerous trees, and soon enough, I'd acquired an unhealthy amount of knowledge. 

This being a crime blog, I've summarized a few literary-ish tree hazards. These might help as story inspiration, the core of an elaborate woodland murder, or basic self-preservation.

1. Thorns

The acacia tree bristles with daggers for thorns. The trunk of the silk floss tree resembles a medieval barricade. The North American honey locust grows thorns up to eight inches long. Its spikes form vicious clusters near the ground, less like defenses than personal grudges. The thorns evolved to ward off mastodons. Yes, mastodons, so what chance would we have? If the impalement doesn't get you, the bacterial infection might. 

2. Poison

It's not just the pong pong tree. The chinaberry's fruit is a potent neurotoxin. The manchineel is known as the Tree of Death. Every single part of it can kill you--and probably wants the chance. You can't eat any part of the manchineel. You can't touch it or even burn it without exposure. Rain dripping from its leaves can blister your skin or worse. 

The black locust brims with robin, a toxin that can damage cells and even organs in large enough quantities. Its bark, seeds, and leaves are all loaded with the stuff. Intriguingly, the black locust is also the main source of premium acacia honey. Which I have all the time, but it turns out that I can relax. The black locust's nectar stays mostly robin-free. Mostly.

Still, there is the small matter of ...

3. Air Support

Over 70 people die each year in the U.S. from bee, wasp, and hornet stings. A lawn mower whips up a swarm. Someone bumps a car into the wrong tree. Some fool pokes at a hive. None of this is a high-concept story plot, but then again, the everyday is rife with drama.

And speaking of animal drama, trees can harbor...

4. Big Cats

The silent enemy above. Is it likely that a big cat springs down on you? Statistically, the following things claim more lives: vending machines, champagne corks, hot dogs, beach sand collapses, and selfies. But the adventure and romance of big cats is fiction gold. 

Snakes also climb and ambush. A snake hiding in a tree is looking for prey among the branches or small enough to drag up there. We humans are too heavy. Sorry, Hollywood. A snake that drops from a tree is careless, not cunning. Now, snakes being snakes, they will bite you straight up from up in a tree. That's strictly defensive, and the person might've had it coming. In all, any death by a tree-based snake is just terrible luck or maybe a family curse. 

Iguanas dropping from trees are a whole other thing. Someone needs to write that crime story.

5. Falling Fruit and Cones

You know the Gilligan's Island setup: Something shakes a palm tree, and a coconut plonks onto some poor sap's head. This actually happens, of course. On television, it's a headache and laugh track. In real life, it's a critical injury. 

Assume a palm tree that's 65 feet tall. A coconut weighing 4.4 pounds falling that distance can strike anything below at over 40 miles per hour. The coconut would land with just under 400 joules of kinetic force, roughly three times that of a major league fastball. If that coconut hits square on someone's head, a best case might be a serious concussion. Worse case? Brain trauma, severe damage to the spine and internal organs, internal bleeding. Worst case? You're canceled and picked up in heavenly syndication.

Coconuts are tiny compared to the heavy ordnance of fruits and seeds. Consider the cone of the bunya pine. The female cone weighs up to 20 pounds. It's the size of a rugby ball. The coco de mer fruit can reach 100 pounds. Keep a sharp eye upward, Gilligan.

6. Projectiles

Some dangers don't fall from trees. They're launched. Botanical shrapnel. 

The dynamite tree (Hura crepitans) isn't messing around. It is so covered in spikes and spines that it's also known as the monkey no-climb. Its sap is used for poison arrows. Oh, and its fruit explodes when ripe. 

You read that correctly. The fruit explodes, with a crack like a rifle. The disc-like seeds--poisonous seeds--blast indiscriminately for 100 feet or more at over 150 miles per hour. These fruit grenade fragments are about the size and speed of a paintball pellet, but this ammo is rock hard. Anyone at close range had better dive for cover. 

A Thing As Beautiful as a Tree

I share this knowledge not to scare anyone off our friends the trees. They are truly things of wonder. They're also armed and dangerous. Now we know, and we have a doom-scroll to thank.

Awards, Competitions, Prizes and Honors

When my first story for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine appeared in 2018, I'd long been a reader of short mystery fiction, but was only newly a writer of it. Suddenly I was hearing about a panoply of awards with confusing and sometimes similar names:  Edgars, Anthonys, Agathas, Derringers…Macavitys?  Wasn't Macavity one of T.S. Eliot's cats? 

 Barb Goffman also made her EQMM debut in this issue, with Bug Apétit, which earned nominations for the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards!

I got my first taste of glory when a story placed fifth in EQMM's annual Readers Awards - something I'd never paid much attention to. A subscriber for decades, I'd certainly never bothered to vote! Fifth, but okay! That meant somebody had read it, and liked it. Many somebodies! Then a story that is somewhat a departure for me - it could almost be classified as a "cozy," though darker than most of that genre - was suddenly in the running for a variety of prizes, from EQ's Reader Award to the Thriller to the Macavity. Schrödinger, Cat, didn't take any top honors, but I surely enjoyed the banquets and cocktail parties! And when It's Not Even Past was nominated for a Derringer, I was hooked. Derringers are awarded to short fiction writers by short fiction writers (and readers) - a true jury of one's peers!  

I began to read about all the prizes, honors, and competitions open to mystery writers. There was a lot to learn, and I thought I'd take this opportunity to share some of that info with those who might also be toward the origin end of their learning curve. 

A few notes before we begin: I have not included every prize category of every award here - rather, I've given an overview. If a description intrigues you, check it out - that's why God made websites. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I've tried to include the biggies, especially those that particularly honor mystery and crime fiction. And I've focused on prizes and awards available to writers in the United States, working in English. When a prize or award requires an entry fee, I've so noted. 

Any errors are my own, and I'm sure there are some! I invite you to post any corrections, and to provide additional information, insider notes, gossip, and asides in the comments. 

The Agathas are awarded by Malice Domestic, an annual convention that takes place near Washington, DC. The Agathas celebrate cozy mysteries - those that do not contain explicit sex and minimize gore, violence, and foul language. Members of Malice Domestic nominate, and conference attendees choose the winners. Six categories of prizes include novels, children's, nonfiction and short stories. If you win, you get a fancy teapot and a lifetime claim to fame.  Malice Domestic also sponsors grants, competitions, and anthologies that may be of interest.  

Here's Ashley-Ruth Bernier with the Agatha awarded her short story Six-Armed Robbery from The Malice Domestic Anthology Mystery Most Humorous!

The Anthonys are awarded to  novels, short stories, children's and young adult fiction, and nonfiction. Works are nominated, then voted on, by attendees of the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. This is a highly- coveted award that can provide a nice career boost. Bouchercon moves year–to-year - the next convention will be in  Calgary, Alberta, Canada. 

The Barry Award is conferred annually by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, honoring various categories of book, but not short stories. I was unable to get more information prior to deadline.

The Daggers are awarded by the Crime Writers' Association to books published in the UK.  

The Derringer Award is presented by the Short Mystery Fiction Society, recognizing excellence in short stories of the mystery and crime fiction genres. Categories are differentiated by length - flash to novelette -  and there are also specialty prizes, including The Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer, and the Silver Derringer for Editorial Excellence. In 2025, an award for best anthology was added, although collections are not eligible.  (Anthologies are by multiple authors; collections are by a single author.) Membership in the SMFS is free, and members may submit one or two works, in one category or two. Medals are presented at the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. The Short Mystery Fiction Society is entirely volunteer-run and their daily list-serve provides a wealth of information about writing and publishing - as well as the occasional insidery-tidbit from well-known writers.

Janet Hutchings, legendary editor-in-chief of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1991 to 2024, was awarded The Silver Derringer in 2025. (photo, Laurie Pachter)

In 2020, Josh Pachter became the first person to receive the Golden Derringer and win a competitive Derringer (best flash) in the same year. His story, The Two-Body Problem, appeared in this issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.

 

The Edgars are presented by the Mystery Writers of America annually in New York. The Edgars are awarded in a number of categories, from short stories and book-length works of fiction and non-fiction to theatrical genres. There are also special awards; The Robert L. Fish Memorial Award honors the best first short story of the year, The Lilian Jackson Braun Award highlights a cozy mystery novel, The Sue Grafton Memorial Award is for a series novel featuring a female protagonist, and there are also the Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and the much-coveted Grand Master Award.  MWA confers two separate awards - with nice cash grants - for unpublished and published Black writers, in honor of the late Barbara Neely. Typically, publishers submit stories and books for consideration, but authors may also submit, and there is no limit to the number of entries one may make, nor an entry fee. However, authors in the short story categories must have been paid for their work, and all publishers must be on the MWA-approved list. Winners receive a ceramic bust of Edgar Allen Poe, but bragging rights are the real prize here - the Edgar is the most prestigious award specific to our industry. 

Kate Hohl at the 2024 ceremony, where she won the Fish Memorial Award for The Body in Cell two (EQMM).

The Dashiell Hammett Prize, a bronze statuette by Peter Boiger, is presented annually by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers. The prize, awarded to a traditional novel, nonfiction book, or graphic novel, is announced in the fall of each year. Submission is free, but authors or publishers must snail-mail hard copies of the work to various committee members. Details are given on the IACW/NA site.  

The Dilys Award,  presented by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, is no longer extant. It is included here as you may see it on various resumes and websites.

The Hillerman Prize is also defunct. It is included here as you may see it on various resumes and websites.

Killer Nashville awards a number of prizes at its annual convention, notably The Claymore Prize, celebrating a work in progress, and The Silver Falchion, for published works of fiction and nonfiction, both in a variety of categories. As with most of the awards included in this round-up, there's no cash award, just a handsome medal and a very nice claim to fame. But there is a charge to submit - sixty to $100 bucks, although one free submission is included with conference admission. Killer Nashville also bestows The John Seigenthaler Legends Award upon "an individual who has championed First Amendment Rights and advocated for writers in the publishing industry."

The Macavity Awards are presented annually at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention.  Winners are nominated and voted for by fans, readers, and mystery enthusiasts who belong to Mystery Readers International or who subscribe to Mystery Readers Journal. Categories include  several novel categories, nonfiction, and a short story award.  

 

Janet Rudolph founded Mystery Readers International. The first Macavity was awarded in 1987.

The Reader Awards presented by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine are decided by readers' votes, and the top three honorees are celebrated at an invitation-only cocktail party held in Manhattan shortly before the Edgars ceremony. EQ's sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, does not offer a reader's choice award, but they do co-host The Black Orchid Novella Contest, in partnership with The Wolfe Pack, an international organization of devotees of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. The BONA prize is a thousand dollars and publication in the magazine. 

The Shamus trophy is awarded by The Private Eye Writers of America in categories that include hardcover, paperback original, first novel, short story, and a lifetime achievement award, The Eye. There is no charge to submit a novel or story, but eligibility is tricky: the Shamus is for  works that feature a paid private eye who is not a police officer or in law enforcement. Lawyers and reporters who do their own investigative work qualify, but not amateur sleuths. 

John M. Floyd's Mustang Sally, which appeared in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, won the Shamus for best PI Short Story in 2021.

The Thriller Awards are sponsored by International Thriller Writers (ITW) and are conferred at an annual convention held in May in New York. Prizes are awarded in several categories, including best short story and best novel. Authors who are active members of ITW may submit their work directly, but are asked to check with their publisher first to avoid duplicated submissions. (Membership is free to authors who meet eligibility requirements.) NB: ITW gets so many submissions that they stagger due dates; check their schedule. The prize is a cool trophy (and a nice fluffy feather in your cap!).

 

Here I am  grinning madly before a poster with my name on it at The Thrillers!  Catherine Steadman took the 2023 prize for Stockholm.

The "Best ofs" are not exactly prizes, but being included sure feels like one! Inclusion in Otto Penzler's The Best Mystery Stories of the Year or Steph Cha's The Best American Mystery and Suspense can provide one heck of a career boost. Both Penzler and Cha invite big-name authors to co-edit each year's volume. A new anthology, The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year, edited by Michael Bracken, has just released its first edition.

Billie Livingston says of her BMSY inclusion, "It's overwhelming to find yourself in the company of your literary heroes!" 

Many small literary journals offer prizes that range from a frameable slip of paper to a significant amount of cash. Don't count them out! Yes, many do charge a submission fee, being lovingly put together on a shoestring by volunteers and interns. Professional writers have a variety of opinions about those fees. My personal view is that I don't enter any competitions I don't feel qualified to win. I don't mind a reasonable fee going to create a prize pool or even to cover publication costs. Other reputable writers have very different opinions. Regardless, winning a prize sponsored by a lit journal can lead to much greater exposure than publishing strictly "in-genre." And many lit journal editors are eager to see crime fiction and mysteries, if they are written well.

So what about the really, really big stuff?  Well, the Edgars are pretty significant in our mystery world - in fact all of the prizes I've noted here are -  but what about The Pulitzer, The Nobel, The Booker, et al? Don't laugh! Truman Capote was famously disappointed when In Cold Blood, though nominated, did not win a Pulitzer in 1966. (It did win the Edgar for best "fact-crime novel.") Though usually classified as "literary fiction" or "psychological fiction," Ann Arensberg's Sister Wolf could certainly be considered a mystery. It won The National Book Award for Best First Novel in 1981. Mysteries and thrillers are regularly nominated for the Booker Prize (formerly the Man Booker), but unfortunately only books published in the UK are eligible. Motherless Brooklyn took The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1999 and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 won the fiction award in 2008. Numerous mystery and crime fiction novels have been finalists, including hardboiled noir by Michael Chabon in 2007.

Okay, but surely a mystery writer could never win (gasp) The Nobel Prize, right? Wrong. 2018 Laureate Olga Tokarczuk 's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead centers on a woman investigating murders in a Polish village, and is most definitely a mystery. The Nobel is awarded for a body of work, not a single novel, but Drive Your Plow is a significant part of Tokarczuk's oeuvre. 

And a closing fun fact:  you (or your publisher) can submit your book for Pulitzer consideration for only seventy-five bucks. I know this because Lightscatter Press submitted my poetry collection, Bewildered by All This Broken Sky, in 2021.  (To my tremendous surprise, I did not win.) 

What a thrill to be interviewed by the literary powerhouse Adriana Trigiani, a great lover of poetry!

  c. 2026 Anna Scotti all rights reserved

Anna Scotti is a mystery writer, young adult author, poet, and writing instructor living in Southern California. She has been the recipient of a number of awards and honors (some noted above). She has two short stories collections coming in 2027. Find her at annakscotti.com.  

Stories I Live For

Yes, dear reader, I love weird tales, especially if they're TRUE.  For example:

Moby Dick was based on a real whale named Mocha Dick.

In 1839 Jeremiah N. Reynolds, an American newspaper editor, lecturer, explorer, and writer, published a curious tale of a famously fierce bull whale. The article, published in The Knickerbocker; or, New-York Monthly Magazine, claimed this cetacean had foiled the murderous attacks of many whalers over the years and was notable not only for his size and pugnacity but also for his coloration: “He was white as wool!”

Herman Melville read the account and the rest is literary history...

Also, rope: "Each of a whaleship’s whaleboats carried upward of two thousand feet of rope in one or more tubs. And since each ship carried three to five whaleboats, the amount of rope needed just to conduct whaling operations on one whaleship was as much as ten thousand feet." (That's about 2 tons in the hold, BTW.) And those are whaling ships; the Royal Navy, everyone's navies, required miles and miles and miles of rope. (LINK)  

"The Deadliest Fireworks Accident in the World Happened at Marie Antoinette's Wedding"

All was going well, when suddenly a gust of wind blew down among the crowd some rockets only partially exploded. Fireworks, like so many inventions of Italian origin, were still, to the mass of the French public, a comparative novelty; and this, together with the positive inconvenience and even danger of a fall of blazing missiles in the midst of thousands of excited and closely-packed spectators, was quite enough to account for the terrible confusion, resulting in many hundreds of fatal accidents, which now ensued."

"As panic descended upon the crowd, there was a rush towards the Rue Royale, and many were trampled as the crowd forced its way down the narrow street. Sutherland notes that the official government death toll was listed as 133, but many citizens felt that total massively underestimated the true number of casualties." 

(LINK)

No wonder the Parisians were never thrilled by their new Queen.  In fact, they're still not thrilled by Marie Antoinette…

The Earth's Largest Waterfall is in the Ocean

Specifically, it's beneath the Denmark Strait:

(LINK)

Cats helped the Persians win a battle against Egypt

"Even the most dedicated ailurophile will admit that felines can be vicious when tested, but cats didn’t help the Persians win an ancient battle because of their sharp claws. Rather, the Persians emerged victorious against Egypt in the 525 BCE Battle of Pelusium by using cats, ibises, and other animals the Egyptians considered sacred as hostages. According to the Greek historian Polyaenus, the Egyptians dared not fire their arrows when their Persian opponents held cats aloft in front of them, allowing the latter to take the city of Pelusium with relative ease. This decisive victory led the First Persian Empire (also known as the Achaemenid Empire) to take the pharaoh’s throne for Cambyses II, beginning the 27th Dynasty of Egypt under Achaemenid rule."

From Cats to Cowboys:

Read more at the link about why cowboys preferred bowler hats (not stetsons), the Great Molasses Flood in Boston, 1919, and the "Sacred Cod" that hangs in the Massachusetts State House.

Butch Cassidy, in a Bowler

(LINK)

And Back to the Middle Ages:

"Skeletal remains of Queen Elisenda, one of the most powerful rulers in medieval Europe, unearthed in Barcelona — along with several others who bore unexplained stab wounds."

And, being always in love with a good line, instantly thought of "The Lion in Winter".  Eleanor of Aquitaine:  "Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians!" 

The sarcophagus of Queen Elisenda

in the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria Pedralbes.

(Image credit: Culture Institute of Barcelona)

Anyway, Queen Elisenda (who died in 1364 CE) wasn't stabbed, but apparently Sobirana Olzet, the monastery's first abbess, was stabbed in the face, either before or after her death.

And then in the (supposed) tomb of Francesca Saportella, the second abbess of Pedralbes and the queen's niece, researchers found the bones of at least nine people who were placed in the tomb in different time periods, including four male skulls - all stabbed - and the mummified torso of a woman with the remains of a 20- to 23-week fetus in the birth canal.  (LINK)

Well, s*** happens. If you want a really lurid tale of conventual life, read about Littlemore Priory, England, on Wikipedia.

The sole remaining monastic building of Littlemore Priory, now a Pub

Well, Prioress Katherine would appreciate this.

I wonder if her ghost is occasionally having a pint on the house...

Speaking of the Middle Ages, an 800 year old notebook, in a leather case, was discovered in a medieval German latrine.  Now a few facts that we know, even without knowing who the owner is:  they could read and write, and they used old silk for toilet paper.  In other words, they had money, honey.  (LINK)

And Now On to the Future!

Don't race to the Teleporter!  "Human teleportation through quantum principles raises questions about identity:  Through quantum entanglement, particles have been "teleported" by measuring their state in one location and effectively transferring that state to a new location.  Doing so for the particles that make up humans would destroy the state of the original particles, killing the person, and effectively creating a clone."  (LINK)

Gee, science fiction writers figured this out years ago:  the 1960 novella "Rogue Moon" by Algis Budrys, included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two, edited by Ben Bova, wrote about this - a mercenary, hired to clone and die his way over and over through an alien artifact.  I read it when I was about 12 or so, as I did all the stories in both Volume One and Two.

BTW, in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, there's a story by Cyril Kornbluth called The Marching Morons, available here on Gutenberg, that I think may have inspired Douglas Adams' Golgafrichans...  And it has two of my all-time favorites, Vintage Season, by "Lawrence O'Donnell," (Catherine L. Moore and Henry Kuttner) and The Ballad of Lost C'Mell by Cordwainer Smith.  

Zombies of the Pleistocene!

700,000 years ago, these Zombies of the Pleistocene fed on "mammoths, bison, horse and other megafauna, as well as rodents, bats and birds; invertebrates, including parasitic worms; and plants such as grasses and sedges, and North American cheetah (Miracinonyx trumani)... or pumas (Puma concolor)."  And what were these savagely hungry zombies?  (LINK)

Ground squirrels.

And they still live among us.  

Going into torpor for up to 8 months at a time.  

Coming out with an insatiable appetite for flesh...  

Coming soon to a theatre near you, 

"The Night of the Zombie Squirrels!  Be afraid!  Be very afraid!"

Whatever Happened to Ötzi?

More proof that, like all scientists, nerds, and history buffs, archaeologists are different:

 the Iceman, reconstructed

"Ötzi the Iceman's body is covered in ancient yeast — and scientists just used it to make a sourdough, and 'It was very very good'":

A new study cultivated four strains of cold-adapted yeasts that had colonized Ötzi's body shortly after his death 5,300 years ago in the Alps. "It worked," study first author Mohamed Sarhan, a microbiologist at the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies in Italy, told Live Science. "As a dough, it was very very good."
These yeasts could be cultivated by fermentation industries in the future, such as for making bread or beer, he added.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in for the information, but I am NOT interested in drinking the beer...  Ötzi Pale Ale...  No.  No.  No.   (LINK)  

Have a great rest of the week, keep reading, and make sure you don't teleport anywhere!  And check the yeast source of your beer...

Continuum

  

I’ve been watching the Canadian SF series Continuum, which is time travel/alternate history.  The Expanse it’s not.  I can’t quite explain my enthusiasm.  If you were to watch it, your immediate reaction might very well be, What in the name of God does he see in this?  It’s just too stupid. 

Here’s the premise.  A cop from 2077 is blown back in time fifty years, to the present day.  She’s trapped by a temporal vortex that’s also captured a gang of terrorists and sent them back.  The hook is that the time travelers know the future; the terrorists plan to change it, the cop is the only one who can stop them.  But the cop can’t explain any of this to the cops or the military in the present – they’d throw her in the booby hatch – so she’s on her own.  (Except for some convenient plot holes.) 

Now, first off, the cop from the future is adorably cute, so you forgive a lot.  And then, the dude cop she partners up with in the present is beyond hunk-a-licious, so equal time.  They even contrive a bit where he strips down and gets in the shower, and then the Ninja assassin sneaks into his apartment.  Naked fight scene, but a reversal of the convention where it’s the actress, usually, in her birthday suit.  It’s intentionally mischievous.

Now, it’s more than faintly ridiculous that nobody seriously questions the heroine’s bona fides, once she’s hacked their databases and given herself a fake ID; the police work is rudimentary and lazy; nor is there any real attempt to make the science particularly convincing.  The time paradoxes are handled without fuss, though.  You’re not brought up short by crippling doubts, everything is pretty brisk.  (The short version of a time paradox is this, that you can’t go back in time and murder your grandfather, because then you’d never be born, and you therefore wouldn’t exist to travel back in time and murder your grandfather, etc.)  The biggest dramatic irony is that the heroine wants to get back to her own time, but that time is brutally dystopian, the future ruled by corporate oligarchs, and the cop herself more thought police than criminal investigator – the crimes themselves political – and the “terrorists” an underground devoted to overthrowing that hegemony.  Why would you want such a future?  Your sympathy should be with the insurrection, if it weren’t for Liber8’s sociopathic violence, which toxifies them.

Generally speaking, the concept is better than the execution.  So we’re back to the first question, what’s holding my interest?  I think it’s notional.  I’m attracted to the framework.  I like the way they work out the difficulties.  The most obvious precursor is Terminator, but there are quite a few SF/alternate history models.  The Man in the High Castle, still startlingly original, China Miéville’s The City & the City, Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union, and, of course, Fatherland.  These last three, also, are police procedurals.  This makes for an interesting sub-genre.  Using the ordinary detail, not the alien, but the commonplace.  Gorky Park, and Martin Cruz Smith’s other Arkady Renko novels, use the same method, the accretion of specifics, the forensics, and the lab work, pounding the pavement, looking at surveillance video, the institutional rivalries and the office politics: this is what makes it credible, when the environment is itself foreign, and speaks a different language.  This is very much evident in The City & the City, which presents a deeply imagined but enormously slippery idea as settled reality, shape-shifting as a metaphor, but all too complete in its physicality, and our psychological  accommodation.

Science fiction, as my pal John Crowley points out, is usually at right angles to the present, shown on the oblique.  It’s no secret that Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry were using Twilight Zone and Star Trek to bring social commentary to a mass audience.  A novel like The City & the City, or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, are clearly speaking to violence, and authority, and the coping mechanisms we adapt, individually and as herd protection.

It’s interesting to me, too, that the books have more room to breathe than their movie or TV versions.  This isn’t about the literary vs. mass market, I don’t mean the movies or the TV series are dumbed down, that’s a contrived distinction, and it’s condescending.  My point here is that film or video, as a medium, is very literal: you see something in front of you, even if it’s hallucinatory.  But it’s hard to convey possibility, or adaptive psychological structures.  You can show the fact, for example, of Fascist authority; the inner effect, the self-policing, is out of visual reach.  The Lives of Others comes close.  I think also De Sica’s Garden of the Finzi-Continis.  In both cases, the claustrophobic framing squeezes perspective, and smothers you with a sense of airlessness. 

In the novels, The Man in the High Castle a good example, your POV expands and contracts.  But in the recent TV adaption, for all its strengths, you can only see what you’re shown, you don’t have a sense (or at least I didn’t) of a world outside the frame of the camera.  In this context, the specificity narrows your engagement.  The material surfaces are hard, and cold, and reflective.  They have no depth.  Metaphorically, we bounce off. 

I’m probably reading more into Continuum than it plausibly merits, but then again, it was the catalyst that sent me off along this line of inquiry.  I think it’s entertaining, although I don’t think it’s terribly deep, but I think that’s in the eye of the beholder.  I think the people who put the show together take it seriously, which is in itself a good thing.  Credit where credit is due.

Wish Upon a Crime

On June 2, Level Short released Wish Upon a Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by Fairy Tales, an anthology I edited with Stacy Woodson. Though it’s the second published of the three anthologies we’ve co-edited, it was the first we delivered to a publisher. The path from concept to publication was a long and torturous road, but that’s a story for another day.

Stacy and I have collaborated on various projects over the years—a Derringer-nominated short story, classes and presentations for Outliers Writing University and The Back Room, ShortCon, and more—so adding an anthology or three to the list wasn’t much of a stretch.

The anthology’s concept was Stacy’s, I helped her turn concept into submission guidelines, we made a list of writers to invite, and we worked together to edit the resulting stories.

MY CONTRIBUTION

The stories range from light-hearted to deadly serious. My contribution—“Three Billy Goats Gruff”—leans toward the lighter side.

The three Gruff brothers run a marijuana dispensary, and their cannabis crop is infected with Hop Latent Viroid, which doesn’t kill the plants but does cause dudding—the plants are shorter, have smaller leaves, and have tighter node spacing—and the Gruff brothers are losing customers to the Trolls.

The cannabis plants at Troll Bridge Farm, located in a small valley accessible only via a single one-lane bridge, seem immune to the disease, and the Gruff brothers want access to the higher-quality product.

Well, if you’re familiar with the fairy tale, you know all three brothers have a go at crossing that bridge.

I don’t write much that would be considered light or humorous, so it was fun to explore the lighter side, to bury Easter eggs throughout, and to model human characters after goats.

THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

• “Hansel and Gretel” by Joseph S. Walker
• “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” by John M. Floyd
• “Rapunzel” by Adam Meyer
• “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Laura Oles
• “Three Billy Goats Gruff” by Michael Bracken
• “Beauty and the Beast” by James A. Hearn
• “The Bremen Musicians” by Debra H. Goldstein
• “Jack and the Beanstalk” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins
• “Cinderella” by Donna Andrews
• “The Frog Prince” by Josh Pachter
• “Little Red Riding Hood” by Barb Goffman
• “The Briar Patch” by Tom Milani
• “King o’ the Cats” by David Dean
• “The Gingerbread Man” by Stacy Woodson

These probably aren’t bedtime stories for your children, but you’ll enjoy them all. So, go Wish Upon a Crime.

Sara Paretsky and Me

I met Sara at either the first Edgars Awards Banquet I attended, in New York City or maybe it was the first Bouchercon I attended in San Diego. Anyway, it was way back in the 1900s sometime. I'd read her first two or three V.I. Warshawski books and since I was trying to write a female private eye novel I was thrilled to meet Sara in person. I probably said something like "I'm so thrilled to meet you, will you autograph my copy of your book?" Except it most likely sounded like "gluoompargoondetoosly."

I am a very out-going person, easily speaking to a stranger or standing up to speak to a crowd, full of known or unknowns but as an aspiring writer with a couple of barely published short stories to my name, I was suddenly tongue-tied. Yet, somehow she forgave me. Perhaps I did manage to say I owned a mystery bookstore in Austin, Texas, so maybe the gobbety-goop,the oh so flustered me, had blurted out, was normal when I mentioned the store.

Sara's V.I.Warshawski was the kind of female PI, that I was trying to write. Smart, tough but with a touch of smartassery and maybe a bit of the romantic thrown in.

I also admired Sara for helping to push women mystery writers forward in the world by founding Sisters In Crime. The first organization to call out the genre's lack of reviews of women's mysteries in major magazines & newspapers. Helping show publishers that women wrote strong best selling, enjoyable books, most as good, if not better than some males. And pushing for women to get paid in line with male mystery writing contemporaries. This was in the 1990s, you understand.

I've learned through the years of our friendship of her wonderful 48 years of marriage to Courtenay Wright. He was a  Canadian born man with an intriguing life as a physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. The two personalities meshed into one special couple (united as only true love can be.)

Sara came from hardy Jewish ancestors who barely got out Europe ahead of Hitler. Her family eventually landed in Kansas in farm country although her father was a scientist, not a farmer, and her mother was a librarian.  She was the only girl with four brothers and learned quickly that women's voices or opinions didn't count

Sara's first V.I. Warshawski novel, INDEMNITY ONLY, was published in 1982. V.I. always manages to be involved in current social issues which endears her to many female readers who might not otherwise read mysteries.

I always loved that V.I. would fight anyone, male or female in order to save herself or her downstairs neighbor Mr Contreras or the two golden retrievers Mitch and Peppy, who live with her or stay wih Mr. Contreras when she's on a job. Definitely for someone who's hired her services because she's one tough woman Private Eye.

She's also has a funny bone which shows up in each book without fail. However a posting on FB in 2020  really cracked me up.

Sara posted this:

 A few days ago, Alafair Burke raised a question on Twitter about whether knowing a writer has lied on her (his? their?) bio should affect your view of their work. I don't know the answer to that - there are writers whose horrible personality flaws affect my view of their work and maybe that's not fair.

However, as I thought over Alafair's question, I suddenly remembered my mother's obituary. Three weeks before she died in 1998, she asked me to write it for her. She had a funny bone, and also dreams of glory, so I wrote one for her that celebrated her role as an advisor to General de Gaulle during WWII. I said she had worn not only the Order of the Garter but also the Order of the Garter Snake, that she had the Nobel Peace Prize - I can't remember the rest of it now.

One of my brothers had moved in to care for her in her last difficult months (I flew in once a month from Chicago). I typed it on his computer. When she died and he called the funeral home and they asked for an obituary, he saw the file labeled "Mother's Obituary" and sent it to them without reading it. They in turn sent it to all the newspapers in eastern Kansas (1998 - still a lot of local newspapers). The Topeka and Lawrence papers printed it as was, without any questions.

My mother came from a small town in downstate Illinois, and their local paper picked it up from the wires, since I mentioned the town - Roodhouse - by name - it was where she spent the war while my dad was overseas, and it was there that (allegedly) General de Gaulle had visited her. For months after her death, old friends from her childhood wrote, saying, "We always knew Mary Ellen was special, but we never knew how very special she was." When I got the first letter, I wrote back, trying to explain, but after that, I thought - it's making people happy to think they grew up with an unsung heroine, so I let it lie. Hmm - I don't know if that counts as lying about my bio - after all, how many people have ever had a mother who was entitled to wear the Order of the Garter Snake? Only me and my four brothers.

My friend, Sara Paretsky, has a new book coming out, titled BAD COMPANY, due on November 10th starring a new character, an ex CIA agent named Lily. An older or what may truly be called a senior lady.  Wanna bet she has a bit of the smartassery in this one? You can preorder BAD COMPANY now.

— respectfully submitted by Jan Grape