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A chat with editor Robert Runté, Ph.D., about the last two novels by the late, great Dave Duncan’s, The Traitor’s Son and Corridor to Nightmare, which he edited and which were just released by Shadowpaw Press.
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@dr.robert.runte
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@drrunte
Dave Duncan’s Amazon Page
Amazon Links for The Traitor’s Son
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Amazon links for Corridor to Nightmare
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About The Traitor’s Son
“They know the world is dying, but they hope not in their lifetimes. Meanwhile, they’re top dogs and will do anything to stay that way.”
Doig Gray is fifteen when his father is killed in a mining accident, which Doig comes to realizes was no accident. Torn from his mother and sister, Doig is sent off to college, his every movement monitored in case he has inherited his dissident father’s unacceptable attitudes . . . or passwords. Doig has nothing but his own sense that there’s something desperately wrong with the world—and a last name that evokes the assumption that he’s destined to be the next traitor-hero.
The Traitor’s Son is a science fiction novel about a colony world where everything that could go wrong already has. Stuck on the wrong world at the wrong site, with the wrong leaders, the colony is doomed to extinction unless immediate steps are taken to correct—everything. But 500 years of hiding from the reality of their situation has created an unchallengeable status quo—and the Accident Squad, determined to ensure it remains that way.
The Traitor’s Son is a fast-paced SF adventure in the best tradition of Duncan’s Hero, West of January, and Eocene Station.
About Corridor to Nightmare
The never-before-published final novel by the late Dave Duncan, one of Canada’s most beloved authors of fantasy and science fiction
When one life ends, another begins.
After forty years as the village school teacher in the idyllic valley of Greenbottom, Agatha is looking forward to a quiet retirement. Instead, an enigmatic stranger arrives to drag her through a long-closed portal to another world.
Confronted with a completely foreign culture steeped in magic and violence, Agatha finds herself a crucial pawn being played between rival factions. The only way forward through the rigid traditions and convoluted politics of the Archons of Otopia is to remain true to herself and her Greenbottom ideals.
But will it be enough to save, not only herself, but the man to whom she is now magically bound in love?
Praise for Dave Duncan
“Dave Duncan writes rollicking adventure novels filled with subtle characterization and made bitter-sweet by an underlying darkness. Without striving for grand effects or momentous meetings between genres, he has produced one excellent book after another.” – Locus Magazine
“Duncan is an exceedingly finished stylist and a master of world building and characterization.” – Booklist
“Dave Duncan has long been one of the great unsung figures of Canadian fantasy and science fiction, graced with a fertile imagination, a prolific output, and keen writerly skills.” – Quill & Quire
“When you’re looking for a good adventure, Dave Duncan is a sure thing . . . [with] his sly and fast-paced plotting, his ability to construct intriguingly different worlds, and his knack for quick and entertaining characterization and dialogue.” – Eclectic Ruckus
About Dr. Robert Runté
Robert Runté, Ph.D., is Senior Academic Editor with EssentialEdits.ca and freelances at SFeditor.ca. He was, for nearly a decade, senior editor at Five Rivers Publishing, where he acquired and edited more than thirty books, primarily speculative fiction.
A retired professor, he has won three Aurora Awards (Canadian SF&F) for his literary criticism, wrote the Canadian speculative fiction entry for the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, published the NCF Guide to Canadian SF, and has given more than a hundred presentations and workshops at writers’ conferences. He currently reviews for the Ottawa Review of Books .
As a writer, he has published more than sixty short stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies, six of which were reprinted in “best of” collections, and one of which was short-listed for an Aurora Award.
About Dave Duncan
Born and raised in Scotland, Dave Duncan moved to Calgary, Alberta, after graduating from university to take up his thirty-year career as a geologist. As the oil boom faltered in the 1980s, he sold his first novel and switched careers to become one of the most prolific and popular Canadian authors of science fiction and fantasy, with more than sixty-five traditionally published novels. Early in his career, he was producing books so fast his publisher could not keep up, so he wrote a fantasy trilogy under the name Ken Hood for a different house and a historical novel about the fall of Troy as Sarah B. Franklin.
Duncan won the Aurora Award for Best Novel in 1990 and again in 2007, and was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in 2015. Duncan had just finished Corridor to Nightmare and was awaiting final edits on The Traitor’s Son when he died, on October 29, 2018.
Robert Runtés memorial speech outlining Dave Duncan’s contribution to Canadian SF can be watched here.