Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

April 28, 2015

Resistant Strain

A review of Kelly Robson’s “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” in Clarkesworld Magazine (February, 2015). Accessible online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/robson_02_15/ By Derek Newman-Stille Jessica’s life had been haunted by the faces of missing and murdered women that dotted the walls of the gas station where she worked, evoking the idea that when one lived on the Highway of Tears, one’s...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

April 26, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 35: A Discussion of the Works of Nancy Baker

Many years ago, I went on a quest to find the works of Nancy Baker since I had heard such wonderful things about her work. I was able to track down some used copies and read them… and they were brilliant, blending the artistic with the dark. Excitingly, ChiZine Publications has re-released Nancy Baker’s works, so I wanted to take...

Fiction Book Reviews/On Air Comments: 0

April 23, 2015

Quote – Stories Have Quests and They Answer Questions

“Story doesn’t mean fiction – it just indicates form. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has tension and struggle and resolution. Stories have quests and they answer questions. They can be historically true, and they can be allegorically true. Stories are easier to share. You can pass on a story to a child…. They leave impressions...

Quotes Comments: 0

April 21, 2015

Robo-religion

A review of Derwin Mak’s “Mecha-Jesus” in Tesseracts Eighteen: Wrestling with the Gods (Edge, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille Religion (particularly when represented in fantasy) is generally constructed as something that is bounded, something that has clear boundaries and belongs to one specific group who all believe the same thing. Derwin Mak’s “Mecha Jesus” blends categories, blending religious systems and getting...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

April 19, 2015

Graphic (Novel) Sex

A Review of Chip Zdarsky and Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick (Image Comics, 2014). By Derek Newman-Stille Premised on the idea that when someone orgasms, time stops for them for the moment, Chip Zdarsky and Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals needed its graphic format to be as effective as it was. As much as sex can be...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 2

April 14, 2015

The Ad Astra Experience: A Reflection on Ad Astra 2015

By Derek Newman-Stille As an educator who engages in fandom, I see fandom as a teaching space, by which I mean it is a space for developing new ways of looking at the world. Ad Astra is nominally a Canadian SF writer’s conference, but there is some magic in the slippages between writer and fan, and in my case between...

Editorials Comments: 5

April 11, 2015

Gossamer Threads of a Tale

A Review of Dominik Parisien’s “Spider Moves the World” in Lackington’s Issue 6 http://lackingtons.com/2015/04/08/spider-moves-the-world-by-dominik-parisien/ By Derek Newman-Stille Like Dominik Parisien’s poetry, his prose story “Spider Moves the World” captures the beauty in the grotesque. Parisien takes the figure of the spider and reveals the beauty of spidery movements, the wonder of being carried on a spider’s back and the essential...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

April 9, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 34: An Interview with Helen Marshall

At the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, I was able to take a few moments of Helen Marshall’s time to do an interview. In this interview on Speculating Canada, we talk about the relationship between bodies and text, aging, changes, open endings, the power of fiction to open up new ideas and new possibilities, writing as an...

Interviews/On Air Comments: 0

April 6, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 33: An Interview with Ursula Pflug

I was finally able to do an on-air interview with the brilliant Peterborough author Ursula Pflug. Ursula and I talk about teaching writing in anticipation of co-teaching a course through Trent’s Continuing Education, the power of creativity, the risk of exposing your inner self when you write, the educational power of writing speculative fiction, the relationship between travel writing, the...

Interviews/On Air Comments: 0

April 3, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 32: The Unsettling Power of Horror

I was recently invited by the Canadian lit magazine Quill and Quire to write an article for them about Canadian horror, so I decided to talk a little bit more about Canadian horror in this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio. Today I discuss the power of horror to unsettle and the pedagogical value of being unsettled, and the...

On Air Comments: 0