Munroe, Jim

• Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask (Econo-Clad Books, 1999). In 1990s Toronto, a University of Toronto undergraduate discovers he has the power to turn into a fly.

Nelson, Frederick

• Toronto in 1928 A.D. (National Business Methods & Publishing Co., 1908). This 48-page "story" has no literary merit, and seems to have been written to sell to attendees of the Canadian National Exhibition (which is, no surprise, still going strong in the year of the story's title). But the "predictions" do have some curiosity value. By 1928, Toronto has expanded north to Newmarket and boasts a population of more than 1.5 million. Except for a slum area from Sherbourne east to the Don River, the city is exceptionally prosperous and its buildings huge. Airships are an important method of transportation. A two-tier bridge (cable railroad below, automobile and pedestrian road above) joins the city to Toronto Island, "whose residential section was a thing of the past.... The island had become the Coney Island of Toronto" (p. 33). There's also a "gigantic" amusement park on the mainland. The author, concerned to reassure his readers about Toronto the Good's reputation in the future, writes that "Toronto had gone pleasure-mad, but her police had learned much from greater cities and now were a terror in the eyes of the wickedly-inclined. Toronto could still say she was a virgin in comparison with the sins of many great American cities" (p. 37).

Nickle, David

• "The Dummy Award," Northern Suns (Tor, 1999), ed. by David Hartwell and Glenn Grant. Horror story about crash-test dummies for car manufacturer General Ford. One of the scenarios the dummies experience in the simulator is a test course on "the Don Valley Parkway's Lawrence Avenue on-ramp" (p. 178).
• "Mrs. Thurston's Instrument of Justice," Northern Horror (Quarry Press, 2000), ed. by Edo van Belkom. The opening scenes are set in Toronto. The Don River, Bloor Viaduct and bus station on Bay Street are mentioned.

Patton, Fiona

• "Lucky Charm," The Bakka Anthology (Salman Nensi, 2002). Contemporary fantasy. A rural family with various psychic powers comes to Toronto to pick up a few things. Yonge Street and the 401 are referred to, as are the strange driving habits of Torontonians: "This place is nuts: one second everyone's driving like idiots, the next they're creepin' about with their thumbs up their butts" (p. 72).

Pedley, Hugh

• Looking Forward: The Strange Experience of the Rev. Fergus McCheyne (Toronto: William Briggs, 1913). Set in a future where the establishment of the United Church of Canada has brought utopia. (Note: the United Church of Canada was established in 1925; utopia did not ensue.) The Rev. Fergus McCheyne, clergyman and scientist, injects himself with a serum that puts him into hibernation in 1902; he doesn't regain consciousness for 25 years. Looking Forward, which is now out of print, was written in response to Edward Bellamy and Walter James Miller's Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (Regent Press, 1898), a utopian novel which takes place in Boston and is still in print.

Pflug, Ursula

• "Bugtown," Northern Suns (Tor, 1999), ed. by David Hartwell and Glenn Grant. Near-future, post-apocalyptic SF set in a rundown Chinatown. "Bugtown" was first published in Transversions and is a sequel to "Version City," from Derryl Murphy's anthology Senary (1992). Says the author, "The ideas in both stories date from a time when I believed the end of the world might be fun, and whichever of the many possible forms it might take would almost certainly come in my lifetime. This might still be the case" (p. 214, Northern Suns' introduction to "Bugtown").
• Green Music (Tesseract Books, 2001; reissued by Red Deer Books, 2003). Magic realism novel partly set in Toronto.

Powell, James

• "Dark Possessions," Crossing the Line: Canadian Mysteries with a Fantastic Twist (Pottersfield Press, 1998), ed. by Robert J. Sawyer and David Skene-Melvin. The ghost of a deceased Toronto detective visits the attic containing his former furniture.

Reeves-Stevens, Garfield

• "The Eddies," Northern Frights 2 (Mosaic Press, 1994), ed. by Don Hutchison. About a ghost in the CN Tower. The story's narrator is frightened so much by his visit to the Tower that at the end of the story he moves to Regina, Saskatchewan, a city where, "when thunderstorms roll by, there's nothing around for hundreds of kilometers tall enough to reach up and streak through whatever's up there, trapped between heaven and earth, trying to find a way back" (p. 56).
• "Tear Down," Northern Frights (Mosaic Press, 1992), ed. by Don Hutchison. A serial killer chooses his next victim because she's building a monster home in his old neighbourhood, a "vast rectangle of Toronto that ran south from the 401, north from York Mills Road, and east and west from Yonge Street through to Leslie" (p. 5).

Robinson, Spider

[Entry written by John Macdonald]

• "Satan's Children," in the short-story collection Antinomy (Dell, 1980). When Zack and Jill are testing a new drug called The Whole Truth, they do it during a concert tour that touches down in many places, including Toronto.
• Stardance (Baen, 1978), reprinted in The Star Dancers (Dial, 1979), co-authored by Jeanne Robinson. SF novel that takes place mostly in space, but three of the principal characters start out in Toronto with the Toronto Dance Theatre before they move to space.
• Deathkiller (Baen, 1996). Bear and Mimi are old friends who come back to visit Norman in Halifax after they move to Toronto.
• Lifehouse (Baen, 1997). When Wally and Moira are tricked by a "time-traveller" into believing a huge earthquake will combine with a fault to drop the west coast of North America into the Pacific, they run to Toronto.

Sawyer, Robert

[For an in-depth discussion of Sawyer's use of Toronto in his fiction, see "The Speculative Torontos of Robert Charles Wilson and Robert J. Sawyer" on this site.]

• Calculating God (Tor, 2000).
• Factoring Humanity (Tor, 1998).
• Flashforward (Tor, 1999). Chapters 23 and 32 take place in Toronto.
• Frameshift (Tor, 1997). Chapter 2, at minimum, is set in Toronto.
• The Neanderthal Parallax series: Hominids (Tor, 2002), Humans (Tor, 2003) and Hybrids (Tor, 2003).
• Iterations (Quarry Press, 2002). Collection of stories. The ones with a Toronto setting, all or in part, are "Iterations": "If I'm Here, Imagine Where They Sent My Luggage"; "Where the Heart Is"; "Lost in the Mail"; "The Abdication of Pope Mary III"; and "Ours to Discover."

Schroeder, Karl

• "Dawn," Tesseracts⁷ (Tesseract Books, 1998), ed. by Paula Johanson and Jean-Louis Trudel. Vampires hunt in present-day Toronto. There are references to the subway, High Park, Bay Street and Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Skeet, Michael

• "Tin House," Northern Frights 4 (Mosaic Press, 1997), ed. by Don Hutchison. Horror story set in a house in Chinatown. The tale's introduction states that the story was inspired by a real building in a central Toronto neighbourhood.

Spencer, Hugh A.D.

• "The Triage Conference," On Spec (Summer 1993). The conference of the title is held in Toronto.
• "Why I Hunt Flying Saucers," On Spec: The First Five Years (Tesseract Books, 1995), ed. by the On Spec Editorial Collective. Set in the present day. A man believes he has been repeatedly abducted by aliens. In one scene, he goes to do research at his local library. "I arrive at the Reference Section with no sign of alien activity. Perhaps invaders from another solar system hesitate to interfere with the operation of the Toronto Public Library System" (p. 220).

Starrett, Vincent

• "The Tattooed Man," Friendly Aliens: Thirteen Stories of the Fantastic Set in Canada by Foreign Authors (Hounslow Press, 1981), ed. by John Robert Colombo. Horror story set in 1904 and narrated by a doctor who lives in the then-village of Parkdale, before it was absorbed into Toronto.

Such, Peter

• "The Dalai Lama's Pyjamas," Tesseracts⁵ (Tesseract Books, 1996), ed. by Robert Runté and Yves Meynard. Fantasy about Tibetan monks coming to Toronto. There are references to Toronto Island and the rickety houses of the stubborn Island community, the ferry, the "desperately polluted harbour," and Simcoe Hall (University of Toronto).

Trudel, Jean-Louis

• "The Falafel Is Better in Ottawa," Ark of Ice: Canadian Futurefiction (Pottersfield Press, 1992), ed. by Lesley Choyce. SF about a "hunter" (secret agent/hired killer) temporarily living in a close-packed area of Toronto. The hunter gives himself the moniker "Spadina" when he makes a call. A quote from p. 93: "You could eat cheap falafel in the Spadina eateries of Toronto, but the falafel was definitely better in Ottawa."
• "The Paradigm Machine," Tesseracts⁵ (Tesseract Books, 1996), ed. by Robert Runté and Yves Meynard. SF with virtual reality "Virtuality" and aircars; some scenes are set in smelly, overpopulated Toronto, part of "the Toronto-Kingston strip city."

Turtledove, Harry

• The Great War: Breakthroughs (Del Rey, 2000). Alternate-history novel set in 1917. As part of a wide-ranging global war, Canada has been invaded by the United States. Stubbornly-defended Toronto is eventually forced to surrender. The provincial Parliament Buildings (Queen's Park) are in smoking ruins from bombing runs.

van Belkom, Edo

• "The Cold," Northern Frights 2 (Mosaic Press, 1994), ed. by Don Hutchison; and Death Drives a Semi (Quarry Press, 1998), story collection by the author. "The Cold" is set in the shopping district of Spadina Avenue south of College. The author says that "the furrier in the story is loosely based on Paul Magder," who gained notoriety during the 1980s and early 1990s for keeping his fur shop open in defiance of no-shopping-on-Sunday laws. Sunday shopping was eventually legalized.
• "Rat Food" (with David Nickle), On Spec (Spring 1997) and Death Drives a Semi (Quarry Press, 1998). There is a mention of Sparroway Street, a fictitious street in North York, northern Toronto.
• "The Piano Player Has No Fingers," Palace Corbie #7, ed. by Wayne Edwards and John Marshall (Merrimack Books, 1997); Death Drives a Semi (Quarry Press, 1998); and Goddess of the Bay #7 (Summer 1999). There's a mention of the El Mocambo nightclub on Bathurst Street. The Elmo closed in in 2002, to the great distress of city clubbers. The space subsequently reopened as a dance studio.
• "Hockey's Night in Canada," Arrowdreams (Nuage Editions, 1998), ed. by Mark Shainblum and John Dupuis; Ice: New Writings on Hockey (Spotted Cow Press, 1999), ed. by Dale Jacobs; Storyteller Magazine (Spring 2001); and Going for the Top Shelf: An Anthology of Hockey Prose (Key Porter Books, Fall 2003), ed. by Michael Kennedy. The player in the story is trying out for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
• "Heart," Canadian Fiction Magazine (July 2000 issue) and Northern Horror anthology (Quarry Press, 2000), both ed. by Edo van Belkom. The ghost of a Toronto Maple Leafs player kills a current player in the Air Canada Centre.

von Kampen, Bettina

• "For Each a Space Among the Stars," Descant 122 (Speculative Literature theme issue, Fall 2003). A physics professor tries to come to terms with the death of his son, who was seriously injured when a stranger pushed him off the subway platform at Broadview station into the path of a TTC train.

Weiner, Andrew

• "The Map," Crossing the Line: Canadian Mysteries with a Fantastic Twist (Pottersfield Press, 1998), ed. by Robert J. Sawyer and David Skene-Melvin. Murder-mystery in Toronto with an alternate-universe twist.
• Distant Signals and Other Stories (Porcépic Press, 1990). In the title story, "Distinct Signals," an SF tale that also appeared in Tesseracts² (Porcépic Books, 1987), ed. by Phyllis Gotlieb and Doug Barbour, only the first scene is set in Toronto. "Going Native," an SF story set in the 1980s, is about an alien inhabiting a man in an unnamed big city. Internal clues that the city is probably Toronto: it's in the east of Canada; it's English-speaking; there's a subway and a reference library. Toronto's Metro Reference Library (now called the Toronto Reference Library), designed by Raymond Moriyama, was a big deal when it was built.

Weiss, Allan

• "The Solomon Cheats," Tesseracts⁷ (Edmonton: Tesseract Books, 1998), ed. by Paula Johanson and Jean-Louis Trudel. SF story set in early-21st-century Toronto, where there are many desperate, unhappy people. "Solomons" are professional life-counsellors with enhanced brains and the ability to heal body and mind quickly using nanotechnology. The story's hero, Don Solomon, derives consolation from his pleasant neighbourhood, "a short walk from the edge of the Don Valley, where he could enjoy the simple pleasures of seeing the fall colours, the rushing cars, and the downtown towers now webbed with aerial walkways" (p. 168).

Wilson, Robert Charles

[For an in-depth discussion of Wilson's use of Toronto in his fiction, see "The Speculative Torontos of Robert Charles Wilson and Robert J. Sawyer" on this site.]

• The Divide (Doubleday, 1990).
• The Perseids and Other Stories (Tor, 2000).

Wynne-Jones, Tim

• Fastyngange (Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1988). Reprinted as Voices (Hodder & Stoughton, 1990). Literary fantasy novel about a woman who finds (or thinks she finds) a haunted castle with a talking well. Chapters 28 to the end are set in Toronto.
• The Knot (McClelland & Stewart, 1982). Mystery with fantasy elements, set in Toronto. The descriptions of localities such as the Cabbagetown neighbourhood, Toronto City Hall, a stockyard in the Don Valley, and the Bayview Extension area are very strong.

Also on this site are interviews with four of the authors in the bibliography:

• Guy Gavriel Kay in 2001
• Robert Charles Wilson in 2001
• Robert J. Sawyer in 2002
• Edo van Belkom in 2003

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