Copper Cylinder Award Will Take 2019 Off

There will be no Copper Cylinder Award in 2019 per this announcement on the official website:

Please note that, for the time being, the members of the Sunburst Award Society have suspended honouring distinguished works with the Copper Cylinder Award. Inquiries can be sent to [email protected] 

Diane Walton, Chair of the Sunburst Award Committee, says, “We are taking a year off to re-evaluate the award.”

The Copper Cylinder is an annual members’ choice award for Canadian literature of the fantastic.

Its name is derived from what is considered the first Canadian scientific romance, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, by James De Mille (1833-1880). All winners of the Copper Cylinder receive a unique, handcrafted copper cylinder trophy.

Copper Cylinder Award

2018 Copper Cylinder Awards

Copper Cylinder Award

Copper Cylinder Award. Design created by Peter Halasz and Rebecca Simkin.

The winners of the seventh annual Copper Cylinder Awards have been announced by the Sunburst Award Society. The Copper Cylinder is an annual members’ choice award for Canadian literature of the fantastic.

The Copper Cylinder Award derives its name from what is considered the first Canadian scientific romance, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, by James De Mille (1833-1880). All winners of the Copper Cylinder receive a unique, handcrafted copper cylinder trophy.

Adult Award

The winner of the 2018 Copper Cylinder Adult Award is Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson [Penguin Random House Canada].

From the publisher:
Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who’s often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he’s also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can’t rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer (he calls her Baby)–and now she’s dead.

Jared can’t count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can’t rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family’s life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat…and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he’s the son of a trickster, that he isn’t human. Mind you, ravens speak to him–even when he’s not stoned.

You think you know Jared, but you don’t.

EDEN ROBINSON is the author of Traplines, a collection of short stories, which won the Winifred Holtby Prize in the UK. Her two previous novels, Monkey Beach and Blood Sports, were written before she discovered she was gluten-intolerant and tend to be quite grim, the latter being especially gruesome because half-way through writing the manuscript, Robinson gave up a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit and the more she suffered, the more her characters suffered. Monkey Beach won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Son of a Trickster, the first instalment of her Trickster trilogy, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In 2017, she won the Writers’ Trust of Canada Fellowship. Eden Robinson lives in Kitimat, BC.

Young Adult Award

The 2018 Copper Cylinder Young Adult Award is shared by two works, Scion of the Fox by S.M. Beiko [ECW Press], and Weave A Circle Round by Kari Maaren [Tor Books].

From the publisher of Scion of the Fox:

Roan Harken considers herself a typical high school student — dead parents, an infected eyeball, and living in the house of her estranged, currently comatose grandmother (well, maybe not so typical) — but she’s uncovering the depth of the secrets her family left behind. Saved from the grasp of Death itself by a powerful fox spirit named Sil, Roan must harness mysterious ancient power . . . and quickly. A snake-monster called Zabor lies in wait in the bed of the frozen Assiniboine River, hungry for the sacrifice of spirit-blood in exchange for keeping the flood waters at bay. Thrust onto an ancient battlefield, Roan soon realizes that to maintain the balance of the world, she will have to sacrifice more than her life in order to take her place as Scion of the Fox.

S.M. BEIKO currently works in the Canadian publishing industry as a freelance editor, graphic designer, and consultant. Her first novel, The Lake and the Library, was nominated for the Manitoba Book Award for Best First Book, as well as the 2014 Aurora Award. Scion of the Fox is the first book in her Realms of the Ancient series.

From the publisher of Weave a Circle Round:

Freddy doesn’t want people to think she’s weird. Her family makes that difficult though: her deaf stepbrother Roland’s a major geek, and her genius little sister Mel’s training to be the next Sherlock Holmes. All Freddy wants is to survive high school. Then two extremely odd neighbours move in next door.

Cuerva Lachance and Josiah definitely aren’t normal. Neither is their house, which defies the laws of Physics. Neither is Freddy’s situation, when she suddenly finds herself stuck thousands of years in the past with her very, very weird neighbours. And that’s only the beginning.

KARI MAAREN is a Toronto-based writer, cartoonist, musician and university instructor who likes writing stuff about monsters, and who gets unreasonably upset when her students abuse the common apostrophe. Weave a Circle Round is her first book. The Sunburst Award Society also confers the annual juried Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Both awards celebrate the best in Canadian fantastic literature published during the previous calendar year.

For additional information about the Copper Cylinder Awards, Sunburst Award Society membership, and the voting process, please visit the website at http://coppercylinderaward.ca.

[Based on a press release.]

2017 Copper Cylinder Awards

Copper Cylinder Award

Copper Cylinder Award. Design created by Peter Halasz and Rebecca Simkin.

The winners of the sixth annual Copper Cylinder Awards have been announced by the Sunburst Award Society. The Copper Cylinder is an annual members’ choice award for Canadian literature of the fantastic.

Adult Award

  • Company Town by Madeline Ashby [Tor Books]

Young Adult Award

  • The Skids by Ian Donald Keeling. [ChiTeen]

Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer and a strategic foresight consultant. Her debut series about killer robots included vN and the sequel, iD. Her essays and criticism have appeared at BoingBoing, io9.com, WorldChanging, Creators Project, Arcfinity, and Tor.com. Since late 2014, she has been a regular columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.

Ian Donald Keeling is an author and actor. His short fiction and poetry have previously appeared in Realms of Fantasy, On Spec, and Grain. He is also on the faculty for sketch and improv at Second City in Toronto.

[Via SF Site News.]

2016 Copper Cylinder Awards

Copper Cylinder Award

Copper Cylinder Award. Design created by Peter Halasz and Rebecca Simkin.

The winners of the fifth annual Copper Cylinder Awards have been announced by the Sunburst Award Society. The Copper Cylinder is an annual members’ choice award for Canadian literature of the fantastic.

Adult Award

  • Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris).

Young Adult Award

  • An Inheritance of Ashes by Leah Bobet (Scholastic Canada).

Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination, Silvia Moreno-Garcia lives in British Columbia with her family and two cats. Her speculative fiction has been collected in This Strange Way of Dying. Signal to Noise is her debut novel.

Leah Bobet grew up in Vaughan, ON, and currently resides in Toronto. Bobet is the author of multiple short stories and poems that have appeared in magazines, anthologies, and school readers around the world. An Inheritance of Ashes has been shortlisted for the 2016 Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award.

2015 Copper Cylinder Award

Copper Cylinder Award

Copper Cylinder Award. Design created by Peter Halasz and Rebecca Simkin.

The winners of the fourth annual Copper Cylinder Awards have been announced by the Sunburst Award Society. The Copper Cylinder is an annual members’ choice award for Canadian literature of the fantastic.

Adult Award

  • The Back of the Turtle by Thomas King (HarperCollins Publishers, 2014).

Young Adult Award

  • The Door in the Mountain by Caitlin Sweet (ChiZine Publications, 2014).

Thomas King is an award-winning writer and photographer of Cherokee and Greek descent. His fiction includes Medicine River; Truth and Bright Water; One Good Story, That One; Green Grass, Running Water; and A Short History of Indians in Canada. A member of the Order of Canada and the recipient of an award from the National Aboriginal Foundation, Thomas King is a professor of English at the University of Guelph, Ontario.

Caitlin Sweet works for the Ontario government and the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She is the author of A Telling of Stars (Penguin, 2003) and its prequel, The Silences of Home (Penguin, 2005.) Her third novel, The Pattern Scars (ChiZine, 2011) was short-listed for the 2012 Sunburst Award, and won the 2012 CBC Bookie for Speculative Fiction.

2014 Copper Cylinder Awards

Copper Cylinder Award

Copper Cylinder Award

Members of the Sunburst Award Society have selected the 2014 winners of its Copper Cylinder Awards.

Best Adult Novel
River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay

Best Young Adult Novel
Homeland by Cory Doctorow

This is a popularly voted award. The award’s name is a homage to the first Canadian scientific romance, “A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder,” by James De Mille (1833-1880).

The winners receive a handcrafted copper cylinder trophy designed by Peter Halasz & Rebecca Simkin.

The Sunburst Society also gives the juried Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Both awards celebrate Canadian fantastic literature published during the previous calendar year.

2013 Copper Cylinder Awards

copper_cylinder_award_1Members of the Sunburst Award Society have selected the 2013 winners of the Copper Cylinder Awards.

Adult Award
The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson

Young Adult Award
Starling by Lesley Livingston.

This is a popularly voted award. The Society also gives the juried Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Both awards celebrate Canadian fantastic literature published during the previous calendar year.

The award’s name is a homage to the first Canadian scientific romance, “A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder,” by James De Mille (1833-1880). The winners receive — you guessed it — a handcrafted copper cylinder trophy.