The Claus Effect is a continuation of "The Toy Mill", the 1993 Aurora-Award-winning story about a malevolent, post-industrial-revolution Santa Claus and Emily, the little girl whose wish to be a Christmas Elf nearly destroys the world. The Claus Effect takes up eights years later, when events propel teen-aged Emily and West Point cadet Neil Nyman on a breakneck journey through suburban shopping malls, Ontario cottage country, and the frigid northern wastes of the former Soviet Union - battling displaced Cossacks, blue-blooded cottagers and homicidal, down-sized elves along the way. Finally, they must face down the terrifying truth: about Christmas, the New World Order - and the Claus Effect.

David Nickle is a Toronto-based author and journalist whose fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies like Cemetery Dance, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, the Northern Frights series and the Queer Fear series. Some of it has been collected in his book of stories, Monstrous Affections. His first solo novel, Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, led the National Post to call him “a worthy heir to the mantle of Stephen king.

David Nickle's profile page

Karl Schroeder was born to a in Brandon Manitoba. His family is part of a Mennonite community that has lived in southern Manitoba for over one hundred years. Karl moved to Toronto to pursue a writing career. His novel Permanence won the 2003 Aurora Award for best Canadian SF novel. Karl is married with a daughter and he divides his time between writing fiction and consulting - chiefly in the area of Foresight Studies and technology.

Karl Schroeder's profile page