July 21, 2014

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 12: Alpha Flight

Continuing the comic book theme, this week James Kerr and I discuss Marvel Comics’ Alpha Flight, the superhero team that the American Marvel Comics designed for Canada. James and I talk about some of the positive things that Marvel Comics did with their Canadian superhero team such as including the first gay character (Northstar), indigenous characters (Shaman, Talisman), French Canadians...
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July 14, 2014

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 11: Nelvana of the Northern Lights

For this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio I examine Canada’s first superheroine Nelvana of the Northern Lights. Dressed in Blue and Green with a fur-trimmed skirt and green cape with northern lights dancing around her headband she flew around wielding the powers of the Northern Lights to keep Canada safe from invasion, pollution, and destruction while venturing into...
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July 12, 2014

Upcoming interview with Diane Walton Wednesday July 16th

This Wednesday July 16th I will be doing an interview with Diane Walton, managing editor of OnSpec magazine: speculative author, feminist, fan, and supporter of the Canadian fantastic. Ms. Walton and I discuss the nature of the Canadian fantastic, pushing the envelope in SF, bringing forward characters from diverse backgrounds that are often under-represented in texts, the challenge of creating...
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July 7, 2014

Home is a Place Created in Tales

A review of Amal El-Mohtar’s Mon pays c’est l’hiver (Lackington’s issue one, Winter, 2014 http://lackingtons.com/2014/02/13/mon-pays-cest-lhiver/ ) By Derek Newman-Stille We pretend that home is an easy concept, something that comes easily, but Amal El-Mohtar’s Mon pays c’est l’hiver poetically charts the challenge of home. We hold on to memories of a wintery, beautiful landscape. But our sense of place always...
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July 5, 2014

What Lay Beneath Modernity?

A Review of Kate Heartfield’s Their Dead So Near, Lackington’s issue one, Winter, 2014 (http://lackingtons.com/2014/02/13/their-dead-so-near-by-kate-heartfield/) By Derek Newman-Stille We are distant from our dead. In urban centres, we build over the dead, erasing the history of what came before us in our construction of the new. Kate Heartfield’s Their Dead So Near takes us into Ottawa’s Macdonald Gardens, called by...
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July 1, 2014

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 10: An Interview With Michael Matheson

For this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I had the opportunity to interview SF author Michael Matheson at Ad Astra, a speculative fiction convention, this year in Toronto and discuss with him some of his thoughts about speculative fiction in Canada, and particularly LGBT speculative fiction. Please excuse the background noise. This was an interview conducted on the...
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