Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: One of Night Beats‘ own, Rachel A. Rosen, has a story in the anthology The Dance. After all, we love an alternative perspective on timelines! Today we’re talking to the editor of the anthology, Ira Nayman, about his story in the book and the work as a whole. Ira, can you tell us about the theme?

Ira: Life is the dance between choice and chance. The Dance contains 17 speculative fiction short stories exploring how the world into which we are born, random events out of our control and the choices we make within the options available to us shape our lives. Oh, and it’s fun.

Zilla: The anthology is themed around alternative universes coming together. Sometimes a story shows a multiverse of realities caused by varying decisions, sometimes it’s an alternative history of Canada, and sometimes it’s anything and everything in between. What drew you to all these stories for this multiverse anthology?

Ira: The original call was for stories similar to Multiverse triptychs which I had been writing: stories with three distinct parts set in three different universes that comment on each other in a “sum of the parts is greater than the whole” kind of way. As stories came in, I saw that other writers have their own ways of structuring stories across multiple universes; since I get bored easily, I loved the variations and decided to run with them.

Zilla: You have a background as a comedy writer. Where did the impetus to collect science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories come from?

Ira: I’ve been combining humour with speculative fiction for around 15 years. Partially, I grew up with both and love both. Partially, many of the tropes of speculative fiction are both useful for allegorical purposes and lend themselves well to humour.

Zilla: In your story, some of the funniest moments come from bureaucracy gone into overdrive (and I certainly caught the digs at Ottawa!) Did you draw these from personal experience?

Ira: Not in the sense that I have had any career in politics (although I have been a legal observer at protest actions for around five years). However, I have been writing satire for decades. In fact, one of my other projects, Les Pages aux Folles, is a web site of political and social satire. I have updated it weekly for over 20 years (which makes it ancient in internet terms!). So, satire is a large part of what I write, and I try to sneak it into my narrative fiction whenever it is appropriate.

Zilla: Speaking of comedy, in your story, a robot writes a thousand-page analysis of humour. If you can manage it in maybe less than 1000 pages, what’s your theory of humour?

Ira: I had a high school teacher who used to say that all humour is based on “juxtaposition of the absurd,” putting two or more things together that you don’t usually see together and wouldn’t think belong. This accounts for a large amount of humour, but, since we laugh at a wide variety of things, it doesn’t explain all humour. I have a lot of ideas about humour, but if I had to boil it down to something basic, I would say that it involves a surprise that, if we think about it, has its own internal logic.

Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Ira: They can get The Dance here. They can find me on Facebook or Bluesky, and they can read Les Pages aux Folles here.