About the Author/Bios

Chasing New Suns – Description

Praise for the Stories

Blurbs and Pitches

Upcoming Events

Q&A

Past Media Appearances

About the Author

Short Bio

Lance Robinson’s short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Analog, Riverside Quarterly, Tales of the Unanticipated, and Chaos Theory: Tales Askew. He also won first place in the prestigious Writers of the Future contest, and his short story “Five Days Until Sunset” appears in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 40. Environmental themes and musings about human beings’ economic, cultural and spiritual relationships with nature are often woven into his fiction. Lance was born and raised in Saskatchewan in Canada, but has lived in Colombia, Ghana, Israel, Kenya, and one or two other places that would have him. Currently, he makes his home in the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Long Bio

Lance Robinson has been writing speculative fiction for as long as he can remember. In grade six, he submitted a story that he wrote to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s after-school television program Pencil Box. The folks at Pencil Box selected it to be one the stories that they dramatized on national television. He considers that to be his first “publication”.

Lance continued to write, and in his twenties, his stories of his began to appear in science fiction magazines. Since then, His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Analog, Riverside Quarterly, Tales of the Unanticipated, and Chaos Theory: Tales Askew. He also won first place in the prestigious Writers of the Future contest, and his short story “Five Days Until Sunset” appears in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 40.

In his other career, he is an environmental social scientist who researches the human dimensions of natural resource management. Environmental themes and musings about human beings’ economic, cultural and spiritual relationships with nature are often woven into his fiction. Lance was born and raised in Saskatchewan in Canada, but has lived in Colombia, Ghana, the Gambia, Israel, and Kenya. Currently, he makes his home in the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario. He is a father of two teenagers who provide him inspiration just by being who they are.Chasing New Suns is Lance Robinson’s first published short story collection.

www.lancerobinsonwriter.com

Chasing New Suns – Description

Chasing New Suns is a new short story collection from award winning science fiction author Lance Robinson. With seven tales of mind, heart, and spirit, he takes readers on a journey from Apartheid era South Africa to humanity’s first foray beyond the solar system, from precarious ecosystems in northern Alberta to the shiny glam of time-adept neocolonialists between the stars. These are stories of possibility.

This thought-provoking collection includes: the Writers of the Future Award first place winning story “Five Days Until Sunset”; “Communion”, a haunting story of guilt, empathy, and human connection; “Money, Wealth, and Soil”, which explores the relationship between greed and nobler human motivations as a collective humanity attempts to incentivize restoration of the world’s ecosystems; “Problem Solving”, a witty satire on neocolonialism and post-modern blahs; “The Thursday Plan”, a story of an alternate history in which Apartheid never ended in South Africa; “The Gig of the Magi”, a satirical take on finding love while grinding it out day to day in a world where the gig economy has run amok; and “Chasing the Sun”, which continues the spiritual quest begun in “Five Days Until Sunset”.

Chasing New Suns is science fiction with heart.
This thought-provoking collection includes:

• The Writers of the Future Award first place winning story “Five Days Until Sunset”
• “Communion”, a haunting story of guilt, empathy, and human connection
• “Money, Wealth, and Soil”, which explores the relationship between greed and nobler human motivations, as a collective humanity attempts to incentivize the restoration of the world’s ecosystems
• “Problem Solving”, a witty satire on neocolonialism and post-modern blahs
• “The Thursday Plan”, a story of an alternate history in which Apartheid never ended in South Africa
• “The Gig of the Magi”, a satirical take on finding love while grinding it out day to day in the gig economy
• “Chasing the Sun”, which continues the spiritual quest begun in “Five Days Until Sunset”.

Chasing New Suns is science fiction with heart.

Blurbs and Pitches

Seven tales of mind, heart, and spirit from award winning science fiction author Lance Robinson.

From Apartheid era South Africa to humanity’s first foray beyond the solar system, from precarious ecosystems in northern Alberta to the shiny glam of time-adept neocolonialists between the stars, these are stories of possibility.

Upcoming Events

29 August 2024    Appearing on the livestream podcast, The Instant Story Hour

26 September 2024    Author reading and book signing at Entershine Bookshop, Thunder Bay

Chasing News Suns – Q & A

All of the stories in this collection are science fiction. Yet, they’re all very different from each other, and range from hard sci-fi to near-future sociological speculative fiction to alternate history. Is there a common thread that runs through the whole book?

I’m intrigued by questions related to human interconnectedness, shared understandings and identities, and unity. So the characters in my stories are usually struggling with some aspect of what it means to set aside estrangement, separation, conflict, and hatred, and achieve a kind of unity that embraces our differences and diversity. In some stories that’s a struggle playing out at an interpersonal level, one-to-one, and in others it’s at a collective level with characters learning what it means that we’re all one single human race. If there’s a common thread, I think it’s that these are all stories about characters either coming to understand unity and interconnectedness or wrestling with what their own role in achieving it should be.

What attracts you to writing science fiction?

Speculative fiction generally—including science fiction, fantasy, and horror—have the ability to explore issues and the challenges of being human in ways that mainstream, naturalistic fiction can’t do. At the heart of any good speculative fiction story is a speculative premise—a What If… For the best speculative fiction writers, that What If is a literary tool that they can wield alongside plot, character, dialogue, and all the other tools that writers use.

In science fiction specifically, the speculation—the What If scenario—is based on science, whether that science is astronomy, space travel, paleontology, neurology, or something else. But in the best science fiction, the story isn’t typically about those things. In the best science fiction, those kinds of speculations are a tool the writer uses to tell a story that is actually about very human characters facing very human problems.

That being said, I am fascinated by the latest scientific discoveries in a wide range of disciplines and how those discoveries remind me of how complex, weird, and beautiful the universe is. As a reader, I enjoy the unique way that science fiction is able to explore the human condition, but I also enjoy geeking out on cool, mind-boggling science woven into a story. Basically, reading science fiction supercharges my sense of awe at the universe, and I try to do the same in my writing.

Why short stories rather than a novel?

As a reader, I enjoy both short stories and novels. There are times when I want to immerse myself in a story for days or weeks, but there are other times when I want a bite-sized experience that I can enjoy in one sitting. It’s similar as a writer. I’m actually working on a novel right now, but I also appreciate the short story as an art form. Crafting a piece of fiction that I can figuratively hold in my hands and see the whole piece all at once is very satisfying as a writer.

Where can readers find Chasing New Suns: Collected Stories?

It’s available in several online bookstores. My web site has links: www.lancerobinsonwriter.com.

Lance Robinson – Examples of Previous Media Coverage

TBay Newswatch, October 2023: https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/thunder-bay-mans-entry-selected-in-international-writers-contest-7721420.

Shooting it Raw podcast, April 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLqVF7iXEpo.

Authority Magazine, May 2024: https://medium.com/authority-magazine/lance-robinson-on-how-to-create-compelling-science-fiction-and-fantasy-stories-fe8e8b216d36.

Bayview Magazine, Summer 2024: http://www.bayviewmagazine.com/article/2024/06/write-what-you-care-about

Download the full media kit including the book cover image, mockups, and author pictures, here.