Bow, James
Entry updated 14 April 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1972- ) Canadian author, initially of Young Adult fantasy, who began to publish work of genre interest with "A Stone of the Heart" with Erin Bow, in Missing Pieces (anth 2001) edited by Shaun Lyon and Mark Phippen. His first series, the Unwritten Books sequence beginning with The Unwritten Girl (2006), follows its young protagonists' lives in a Toronto where stories come magically (and dangerously) true (see Cities); as they reach young adulthood, they are Timeslipped into the nineteenth century, which is worse.
In Bow's first work of sf interest, Icarus Down (2016), which is again Young Adult, a colony (see Colonization of Other Worlds) continues a hardscrabble existence after the destruction of the Spaceship that brought them there. The young protagonist uncovers explanatory mysteries. In The Sun Runners (2024) the surviving settlements of Homo sapiens throughout the Solar System cope for decades with the self-destruction of the home planet, which had been long-predicted; a resumption of Communications with Earth is not entirely welcome. Life on Mercury is plausibly conceived, with a moving City designed to keep its inhabitants on the right side of the terminator. [JC]
James Bow
born Toronto, Ontario: 19 April 1972
works
series
The Unwritten Books
- The Unwritten Girl (Toronto, Ontario: Dundurn Press, 2006) [The Unwritten Books: pb/]
- Fathom Five (Toronto, Ontario: Dundurn Press, 2007) [The Unwritten Books: pb/]
- The Young City (Toronto, Ontario: Dundurn Press, 2008) [The Unwritten Books: pb/]
individual titles
- Icarus Down (Toronto, Ontario: Scholastic Canada, 2016) [pb/]
- The Night Girl (no place given: REUTS Publications, 2019) [pb/]
- The Sun Runners (Regina, Saskatchewan: Shadowpaw Press, 2024) [pb/]
works as editor
- Tales from The Silence (Regina, Saskatchewan: Endless Sky/Shadowpaw Press, 2024) [anth: pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry