Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic

Kimberly J. Frail is a librarian in the Science and Technology Library
at the University of Alberta.

Public Services Librarian
University of Alberta Libraries
Bibliothèque Saint-Jean

Lalumiиre assembled this anthology devoted to the “fantastic, the
imaginative and the weird” to fill a void in the Montreal
science-fiction literary scene when his bookstore specializing in the
genre closed its doors. He also wanted to provide English-language
Montreal sci-fi writers with more exposure. Readers with a taste for the
macabre will enjoy this fine collection of 12 stories.

In Shane Simmons’s aptly titled “Carrion Luggage,” a Haitian
traveller attempts to clear security at a Florida airport with a bag
full of human remains. In Christos Tsirbas’s “Brikolakas,” a
creature from Greek mythology is born of the sins of a bitter priest and
his unfaithful wife. Two of the book’s most poignant stories are set
in a technologically advanced future. In the first, Glenn Grant’s
“Burning Day,” the bankruptcy

of a large private company triggers the resurrection of “cryos” who
emerge as devolved life forms, which are adopted and cared for by
well-meaning humans in the same fashion one would adopt a pet from an
animal shelter. In the second, Linda Dydyk’s “The Strange Afterlife
of Henry Wigam,” a human detective and his android partner attempt to
solve a murder against the backdrop of increasing tensions between their
two societies.

Four of the stories—“Carrion Luggage,” Elise Moser’s “Human
Rites,” Dora Knez’s “The Dead Park,” and Martin Last’s
“Carnac”—received honourable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy
and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection. Other stories in the
collection include Maxianne Berger’s “Report on a Museum
Incident,” Yves Meynard’s “In Yerusalom,” Melissa Yuan-Innes’s
“Mrs. Marigold’s House,” Mark Paterson’s “The Ketchup We Were
Born With,” and Mark Shainblum’s “Endogamy Blues.” Despite the
fact that its authors were selected from a particular geographic area,
Island Dreams embodies the essence of good science-fiction writing by
exceeding the boundaries of time, space, and reality.