Last week Toronto was called one of North America's top "Cities of the Future". Before we get too excited, we should stop and think about how today's extrapolation becomes tomorrow's paleo-futurism. These statements usually say much more about the time they were made than the time they predict.

"Where's My Jetpack" by Daniel H. Wilson, Ph.D, is "a guide to the amazing science fiction future that never arrived." In it we learn about some of the inventions that were promised but never appeared or those that appeared but you might not know much about. Everything from jetpacks to robotic pets to food pills is covered. It's a book for everyone who watches "The Jetsons" and feels profoundly ripped off. Like something went very wrong between the early 1960s and the year 2000.

Every so often I like to pick up a book that isn't the sort of thing I usually bother with. Sometimes it's a waste of my money and other times it's worth it. "Carnival" and "Alteration" by Toronto artist Stef Lenk are two such graphic shorts.

Looking at them, I had the feeling that I'm not the intended audience. (This makes reviewing them a bit difficult.) Thinking that these were intended for crafty, sensitive women, I procured the opinion of the emo girl I work with. She described Stef Lenk's work as "weird and ominous" and the sort of thing that she would draw, if she could draw, which she can't.

Robert J. Sawyer is one of only seven authors to win every major science fiction award for best novel and the only Canadian to do so. He is considered one of the finest science fiction writers in the world, often put on par with Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov and Bradbury, not just for his imagination but also for his interest in the human condition.

His new novel, "Rollback", is already receiving great reviews and looks sure to be another bestseller. It's being launched this Saturday -- 3:00 PM at Bakka Books on Queen West. The event is open to the public and everyone is invited.

I spoke with him about Toronto, technology, science fiction and the future of cities. You can read the interview after the jump.

"Sailing Time's Oceans" by Terrence M. Green is a story about people displaced by catastrophe, helpless to do anything about it and struggling to adapt. It takes place in vastly different eras and places, moving easily between the Norfolk Prison Colony of 1835, a Greenpeace ship in 1972 and Central America in 2072. But this isn't your typical time travel story about paradoxes, killing your own granddad or stalking Adolph Hitler. Instead, it focuses upon the characters and their alienation.

It reminded me of "Gulliver's Travels" and "Stranger in a Strange Land". Setting it apart from these two novels is the depth and sensitivity of Green's characterization. While Swift and Heinlein were primarily interested in examining society, Green always puts his realistic and believable people first. "Sailing Time's Oceans" is a philosophical book but it is the reasoning of the human heart that most concerns Green.

Space Opera has the reputation -not entirely undeserved-- as being the power fantasies of maladjusted teenage boys. But, for over fifty years, Toronto author Phyllis Gotlieb has proven that this subgenre can be complex, intelligent and even feminist. Her new novel, "Birthstones", is no exception.

It takes place on a dark and polluted planet, which is plundered by alien business interests and home to a species that involuntarily teleports when frightened. Genetic mutation has rendered these creatures only rarely able to produce females. Women have become a political tool, viewed as little more than wombs. Their restoration is the subject of this novel.

Gotlieb rarely pauses to dump information upon the reader. Instead, she reveals much of the society and its problems through glimpses that finally add up to a cohesive whole. As the story unfolded, so did my understanding of the world. But I always knew enough. It is this deftness, as well as Gotlieb's sensitivity to character, that earned her a Governor General's Award Nomination.

Barbara Gowdy's most recent book, "Helpless", is a fearless, gripping and terrifying novel. It tells the story of a kidnapped child and examines love from a variety of angles; the mother's love of her kid, the kid's love of her mother and the pedophile's love of the little girl. It is this final aspect that is the most interesting and the most disturbing.

Gowdy's greatest strength is her ability to humanize and to expand what we think of as love. She does not judge and she does not pontificate. She merely takes you into her characters' heads, allowing you to see their humanity and make your own decisions. This book plays to those strengths.

The kidnapper is both heroic and pathetic. He is not glamorized. The horror of what he is doing remains obvious throughout the novel. But you can see why he's doing it. You don't need to accept it but you're allowed to look.