Although the focus of this FSF Guest Author Series has been on AU/NZ authors, to celebrate the release of The Heir of Night into Australia and New Zealand on October 7 (it was released in the USA on September 28), today’s guest, Julie Czerneda, is in fact Canadian. But she is a Canadian with links to the AU/NZ speculative fiction community and was the International Literary Guest Of Honor at ConScription, the NZ Science Fiction-Fantasy Convention in 2009—which is where I met her for the first time. NZ and Canada are just a wee way apart—about 10,000 miles or 14,000 kilometres, I think—but we have stayed in touch nonetheless and I am delighted to welcome Julie to the guest series today, posting on—yup, you’ve guessed it—“Why Fantasy-SciFi Rocks My World.”

F-SF Guest Author Post: Julie Czerneda

I remember the moment.

We’d moved. I’d gone from being an airforce brat, living where I could hear foghorns on the ocean, to being the only new kid in an Ontario suburb. The school systems weren’t the same, so I was in grade 5 instead of 4. We’d moved, and I didn’t fit, not yet.  I remember being happy and making friends, but I remember reading whenever I could. By moonlight, if necessary.

Within a few months, though, I ran out of books. (My parents had a wonderful assortment. Mysteries, thrillers, a great deal of it wartime and British. Read them all.)

I dared venture into the school library, which was very old and small and oddly empty most of the time.

I was overwhelmed with choice. I had to start somewhere, so I picked the N shelf, the easiest one to reach. And I read. Every title, in order.

I wasn’t thrilled by the first few I read, but I was persistent. I remember pulling out a slim brownish grey volume (nothing had a dustjacket, everything was brownish grey). I started reading and couldn’t stop.

That was the moment.

The slim volume was “Star Rangers” by Andre Norton. (Later rereleased as “The Last Planet.”) It was my very first encounter with science fiction and I was instantly in love.

I read every Norton I could find. I made my Dad take me to the public library and found more Nortons and Nourse, (also an N). Best of all, there was an entire wall of science fiction! (Which I had to convince the librarians to let me read, since it was in the adult section and I wasn’t very tall.) I read every one, in alphabetical order so not to miss anyone, discovering Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke, and more.

Whenever I ran out of something new to read, of course, I’d  borrow and reread “Star Rangers.”

My Dad began bringing home a few books for me every payday. C.S. Lewis. The pulps of his teens: Doc Savage. John Carter of Mars.

Then, Tarzan of the Apes. (That was when I went from reading to writing. When I didn’t like what happened to Tarzan in the end, my mother gave me a typewriter instead of the sequel. I wrote my own ending, and haven’t stopped since.)

Why did science fiction matter so very much to me? No one else I knew, except my Dad when he’d been young, read it. I was the only person who signed out most of the science fiction in the local library, or from my school, in those years. I already loved fantasy (still do), but science fiction … it was different.

I can tell you why.

I knew then.

I know now.

Science fiction stories are about more than here and now. They take us over the hills of our understandings and refuse to let us limit ourselves. They blow open walls and lift roofs and tickle those little hairs at the back of the neck. Most of all, science fiction grants power, the power to wonder about anything. To read, to think in science fiction terms, is to take responsibility to use that power — to wonder about everything.

Oh, I remember the moment.

That’s when science fiction set my imagination free, forever.

About Julie Czerneda:

Since 1997, Julie E. Czerneda has turned her love and knowledge of biology into science fiction novels and short stories that have received international acclaim, multiple awards, and best-selling status. A popular speaker on scientific literacy and SF, in 2009 Julie was Guest of Honour for the national conventions of New Zealand and Australia, as well as Master of Ceremonies for Anticipation, the Montreal Worldcon. She’s presently finishing her first fantasy novel, A Turn of Light, to be published by DAW in 2011. Most recently, Julie was a guest lecturer at the National Science Teachers’ convention in Philadelphia and participated in Laurentian’s Social Science & SF conference. As for new projects, Julie is co-editing Tesseracts 15: A Case of Quite Curious Tales with Susan MacGregor and will be a juror for the 2011 Sunburst Awards. (No matter what, she’ll be out canoeing too.) For more about Julie’s work, visit www.czerneda.com

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To see—and read—the other authors who have posted so far in the Guest Series, click here.