Go Ahead: Suspend My Disbelief

Winter 2009/2010 Issue

According to the entry in Wikipedia: Suspension of disbelief or “willing suspension of disbelief” is a formula devised by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge to justify the use of fantastic or non-realistic elements in literature. Coleridge suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative.

Here at On Spec, we're in the business of suspending disbelief. Over the past 20 years, just what sorts of stories have managed to suspend the disbelief of the On Spec editors (along with countless readers), and why? Let's take a look. Following is a short list of some of my personal favourites. If you are new to On Spec, you might want to order the issues they are in, and have a look for yourself. We think they stand the test of time:

• Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large by James Allan Gardner (Spring 1990): Apparently, the world is coming to an end. But according to precocious Muffin, this is a Good Thing.
• Handicapped Help by Jena Snyder (Winter 1991): Need an extra pair of hands for those pesky household chores? Hire zombies!
• Kissing Hitler by Eric Jon Spigel (Spring 1993): Ditzy teenage time traveler thinks the Third Reich and Woodstock happened at the same time. And she wants to be there.
• The Power of Faith by Jason Kapalka (Fall 1993): Con artists selling fake religious relics discover that one of their fakes is the real thing.
• Gone to Earth and Ashes by William Southey (Winter 1994): Cloned offspring of an ancient hunter found frozen in the glacier makes his bid for freedom from the lab where he was raised.
• Casserole Diplomacy by Fiona Heath (Spring 1997): Aliens visit a remote outpost, and get a taste of Newfie hospitality. Plus casserole.
• The Reality War by Robert Boyczuk (Winter 1997): The King’s engineers are building a highway, but a stubborn witch's castle lies right in their path. Who will win?
• Foster Child by Catherine MacLeod (Spring 2001): Lonely woman becomes unwitting foster mother to an alien baby.
• Puce Boy by Michael Libling (Winter 2001): Teenaged boy forced to live under the roof of his new stepfather, meets a girl with strange and useful powers.
• Pisces by Carl Sieber (Winter 2001): The children of Earth have been lured away by an alien "Pied Piper", and now they return, bent on destruction.
• Piece Corps by Cat Ashton (Summer 2003): Woman finds life with a bunch of pixels to be rather interesting.
• The Black Man by A. Merry Arruin (Winter 2003): Politically correct folks in a gated community decide they need racial diversity, so they advertise for a "black man". They get what they wish for.
• A Surfeit of Rabbits by Pauline Clift (Fall 2004): Woman is afflicted with an odd malady. She vomits rabbits without warning.
• Mourning Sickness by Robert Weston (Fall 2005): What happens when there is obvious physical evidence of the amount of grief you really feel after losing a friend, colleague or spouse?
• Trickster by Steve Stanton (Spring 2008): Future "taggers" plan the biggest graffiti job ever.

Do you see a pattern here? Can you guess what makes a "typical" On Spec story? Probably not, and yet perhaps there is a pattern. All of these stories are stories possessing a strong element of the "fantastic", be it Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror or Magic Realism. Some are dramatic, some witty and funny and some even have a touch of mayhem. The important part of the equation, is that all these tales compelled us to make the giant leap of faith from "Get serious! You can't possibly expect me to believe that!" to "Hey, I wonder what happens next!". And that's the crux of it. When I start reading a manuscript, that particular author's skill must compel me to keep turning those pages. Nothing in that story should make me stumble, or lose interest. And nothing in the story should give me cause to disbelieve. That's why we do this. Because we believe.

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Our Winter 2009/10 issue has something new to share with our readers. We're friends with the nice folks who edit and publish the Quebec SF magazine, Solaris. Last year, we finally did something we'd been talking about for years: we selected a story from On Spec, originally published in English, that they could translate to French and publish in Solaris. In turn, they selected a Solaris story that we could translate to English and publish in On Spec.

Tyler Keevil's The Masque of the Red Clown (en francais, Le Masque du clown rouge) appeared in On Spec's Spring 2008 issue. Translated into French, the story was recently published in the Fall 2009 issue of Solaris. In our current issue of On Spec, we're pleased to present you with award-winning author Esther Rochon's story, The Deer's Thorn. This tale, originally titled l'Epine du cerf, appeared in Solaris Summer 2008, the special theme issue dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City.

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On Spec editors are multi-faceted, and our own Barbara Galler-Smith has just launched her first historical fantasy-adventure novel. Druids, co-written with Josh Langston, her writing partner of many years, is available through Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing of Calgary. Visit their website at www.edgewebsite.com.