Mills, Steven 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959, in Ontario, Canada; partner of Christine Leman. Education: College graduate; attended the Victoria School of Writing and the Kootenay School of the Arts.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. E-mail—steven@stevenmills.com.

CAREER:

Writer and educator. Paramedic Academy, Justice Institute of British Columbia, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, instructor. Has worked as a house painter, park ranger, construction worker, pizza maker, city transit clerk, tow truck dispatcher, Presbyterian Church minister, flagger, farmer, and first-aid attendant.

MEMBER:

SF Canada, Federation of British Columbia Writers.

WRITINGS:

Burning Stones (novel), Cosmos Books (Canton, OH), 2006.

Contributor to anthologies, including Sky Songs II: Spiritual SF. Contributor to periodicals, including Interzone, Event 33, subTerrain, On Spec, Windsor Review, TickleAce, and New Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Canadian author and educator Steven Mills is a writer of science fiction. Mills serves as an instructor of paramedics and first responders at the Justice Institute of British Columbia's Paramedic Academy. A frequent contributor of short stories to science fiction periodicals, Mills has also seen success as a mainstream author when his short story, "The Postmodern Man," earned him a spot as delegate to the British Columbia Festival of the Arts in 2002.

Reviewers have taken note of Mills's short stories. In a review on BestSF.net, critic Mark Watson commented on Mills's short work "Blue Glass Pebbles," published in the July-August, 2006, issue of Interzone. Watson called the tale the "longest and strongest story" in that particular issue of the magazine. Mills posits a future Earth where global warming has made water as precious a commodity as oil is today. Canada has become a major supplier of water to the rest of the world, but constantly faces the possibility of military action by countries without water. The family that provides the main protagonists of the story is headed by a former Canadian prime minister who harbors a lethal plan to inflict a nanovirus on the populace. When her son and his daughter discover the plan, they have to determine what their next move will be, and whether they can defy the family's strong matriarch. "For a newish writer the story bodes well for the future, with strong characterisation, and a no-easy-answers ending," Watson concluded.

Mill's story "Jubilee," published in Sky Songs II, an anthology of spiritual science fiction, contains everything that "makes speculative fiction great," commented Eric Joel Bresin on Tangent Online. When the barriers between our universe and other dimensions start breaking down, a pastor must deal with the reactions of his flock as the dividing lines between normal and abnormal gradually vanish.

Mills is also the author of the novel Burning Stones, in which the residents of a small town near the border of Washington State and British Columbia struggle to deal with the repercussions of a succession of three international disasters. One disaster involves a lethal type of bird flu; another is a virus that turns humans into bestial savages, called "lucies," and the third is the multiple wildfires that erupt when there are few people left to fight them. Protagonist Sage Van Pelt, an ex-librarian, struggles to endure after being incarcerated in a concentration-like camp run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Elsewhere, Alex Gautier, a paramedic, and Ronnie Sapriken, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, work to fight the out-of-control wildfires and a gang that traps lucies and sells them as slaves. A Publishers Weekly critic concluded that "this grim near-future tale showcases the best and worst of humanity" while avoiding the "tyranny of the happy ending."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, July 31, 2006, review of Burning Stones, p. 59.

ONLINE

BestSF.net,http://www.bestsf.net/ (July 23, 2006), Mark Watson, review of Interzone July-August, 2006, issue.

Federation of British Columbia Writers Web site,http://www.bcwriters.com/ (May 2, 2007), biography of Steven Mills.

Steven Mills Home Page,http://www.stevenmills.com (May 2, 2007).

Tangent Online,http://www.tangentonline.com/ (May 8, 2005), Eric Joel Bresin, review of Sky Songs II: Spiritual SF.