Solaris is a Canadian francophone Science-fiction and Fantasy magazine founded in 1974 in Longueuil (Quebec, Canada) by Norbert Spehner.
Norbert Spehner (born October 21, 1943 in Sarreguemines, Moselle, France) is a French-Canadian genre literature specialist including science fiction and fantasy, crime fiction and westerns. Norbert Spehner is also a critic, columnist, essayist, bibliographer, writer. He lives in Longueuil (Quebec, Canada) since September 1968. He is considered “le père de la science-fiction québécoise” (the Father of the Quebecois Science Fiction).
Solaris is one of the oldest French language science-fiction and fantasy magazine in the world and it’s probably the fifth longest-running fiction-publishing SF magazine in the world, after Astounding Stories/Analog (1930), the Magazine of Science-fiction and Fantasy (1949), Italy’s Urania (1952) and Japan’s SF Magazine (1959).
Courtesy of Noosfere.com
Founded as Requiem in September 1974, the magazine changed it’s name into Solaris in August 1979 (no.28).
In order to celebrate it’s 40th anniversary, Solars will launch an anthology comprising 40 texts by 40 authors.
The authors are Norbert Spehner, Richard Tremblay, Daniel Sernine, Michel Bélil, Élisabeth Vonarburg, Joël Champetier, Esther Rochon, Francine Pelletier, Michel Lamontagne, Jean Pettigrew, Alain Bergeron, Jean Louis Trudel, Yves Meynard, Claude Bolduc, Natasha Beaulieu, Hugues Morin, Laurine Spehner, Frédérick Durand, Sylvie Bérard, Julie Martel, Éric Gauthier, David Dorais, Michèle Laframboise, Christian Sauvé, Pierre-Luc Lafrance, Mario Tessier, Michel J. Lévesque, Brian Eaglenor, Alain Ducharme, Alexandre Babeanu, Jonathan Reynolds, Philippe-Aubert Côté, Ariane Gélinas, Pascale Raud, Luc Dagenais. Guillaume Voisine, Dave Côté, Geneviève Blouin, Josée Lepire and Sébastien Chartrand.
We congratulate Solaris and it’s team for this celebration and we’re wishing this remarkable SF&F magazine, “Many happy returns !”.
Solaris deals in all forms of science-fiction and fantasy, including horror and “weird” fiction. It publishes original material (short stories and illustrations) as well as related information, criticism, interviews and articles. Solaris not only publishes established authors, but fosters the development of young francophone creators through a strong editorial direction. Mostly published and distributed in Quebec, Solaris is also known in the anglophone Canada, the United States and in Europe, where it is considered to be one of the most significant francophone magazine of its field, a truly European magazine.
Solaris sponsors an annual literary contest, the Prix (Award) Solaris, intended to encourage new authors. The Solaris Award is open only to Canadian authors.
Solaris aims to account for the existing richness of SF&F as well as to confront all emerging tendencies and new approaches Whereas the growing popularity of the SF&F field is mostly spurred by its audio-visual representations, Solaris continues to support literary creation and reflection.
The team responsible for the continued success of Solaris includes such internationally-renowned authors such as Joël Champetier (The Dragon’s Eye), Yves Meynard (The Books of Knights) and Élisabeth Vonarburg (In the Mother’s Land, Reluctant Voyagers, The Silent City).
After forty years of activity, Solaris has published nearly all significant French-Canadian SF&F writers. Stories that have originally appeared within the pages of the magazine have gone on to win nearly a dozen Aurora Awards (in addition of the eleven Auroras won by the magazine itself), almost as many Prix Boréal and a significant proportion of Grand Prix de la Science-Fiction et du Fantastique Québécois. Several of these stories can be read in the English-language anthology Tesseracts^Q, published by Tesseracts Books.
Through the years, Solaris has been edited by Élisabeth Vonarburg, Luc Pomerleau and Hugues Morin. Joël Champetier is the current managing editor. Editorial team members : Jean Pettigrew, Daniel Sernine, Élisabeth Vonarburg, columnists : Yves Meynard, Hugues Morin, Mario Tessier.
From 1981 to 2000, Solaris also published many graphic novels short stories (bandes dessinées), but abandoned the publication of those in 2000 because of the shrinking of its format from magazine size to book size. Many of Québec’s comic book creators were published in its pages : André-Philippe Côté, Benoît Joly, Mario Giguère, Julien Poitras, Marc Pageau, Robert Julien, Laurine Spehner, Christian Vadeboncoeur, Éric Lacasse and others.
Illustrators contributing to the covers and the interior of the magazine include Bernard Duchesne, Mario Giguère, Pierre D. Lacroix, Guy England, Jean-Pierre Normand, Marc Pageau, Paul Roux, Laurine Spehner, among others.
Solaris receives subsidies from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Revue Solaris : http://www.revue-solaris.com/
Solaris’ collection on Noosfere : http://www.noosfere.com/icarus/livres/collection.asp?numcollection=1975550529