Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

November 11, 2013

Post-Apocalyptic Green

A review of Alyxandra Harvey’s “Green Jack” in Urban Green Man (Edge, 2013) By Derek Newman-Stille Alyxandra Harvey reveals our uncertainty about the future of vegetation and food in her post-apocalyptic story “Green Jack”. After crops begin to fail on a regular basis and the weather becomes unstable, a city tries to survive by perpetuating the same behaviours that endangered...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

November 8, 2013

Hunger

A review of Tyler Keevil’s “The Herd” in Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction (Exile Editions, 2013). By Derek Newman-Stille Tyler Keevil’s “The Herd” reverses the hunter/hunted dynamic in zombie fiction. Zombies, often characterised by their herd mentality in fiction are treated like a herd of prey and hunted by a man who has acquired a taste for human flesh. Keevil...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

November 6, 2013

Tweets in the Woods that Aren’t from Birds

A review of Michael Healy’s “Cottage on the Bluff” in Urban Green Man (Edge, 2013) By Derek Newman-Stille In Michael Healy’s “Cottage on the Bluff”, a figure reminiscent of Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford intrudes into the woods with his cottage, blighting the landscape with his building and his rage-filled presence. The local Green Man is bombarded with communication signals from...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

November 3, 2013

Rabbi Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Excessive Greenery

A review of Kim Goldberg’s “Neither Slumber Nor Sleep” in Urban Green Man (Edge, 2013) By Derek Newman-Stille A rabbi loses his position at the Beth Shalom Congregation when he becomes interested in a new supernatural phenomenon that appears in Nanaimo. Called in to investigate a series of strange events regarding the sighting of a huge Green Goddess figure and...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 2

October 31, 2013

Quote – Blank Page With No Boundaries to Transgress

“Those who haven’t been here, and seen it, simply cannot imagine the endless expanse of white. It is stark and harsh as a blank page, or a map with no borders, no boundaries. No sense of right or wrong. In this blighted snowscape, anything is possible. Here you are free to cross over, to transgress. It is a map of...

Quotes Comments: 0

October 29, 2013

Interview with Ursula Pflug

An interview with Ursula Pflug by Derek Newman-Stille I am very excited that Ursula Pflug was willing to do an interview here on Speculating Canada…. and not just because she complements me several times in this interview (thank you Ursula, I am honoured). I have wanted to interview Ms. Pflug since I read her bio and found out that she...

Interviews Comments: 3

October 27, 2013

The Power of Horror to Teach

This week I wrote a guest post for Susan MacGregor’s Suzenyms over at http://suzenyms.blogspot.ca/2013/10/teaching-little-monsters-guest-post-by.html about the power of horror to teach us. Here are a couple of teasers to get you excited to check it out. “Horror can be a way of illustrating social exclusions – showing who is left out when we think of ideas of ‘the normal’. Outsiders become monsters…and...

Editorials Comments: 0

October 25, 2013

Upcoming Interview with Ursula Pflug on Tuesday, October 29th

It is great to have a chance to interview another local Peterborough area author, and this time, one of Science Fiction. I have admired Ursula Pflug’s use of poetic language in her SF for some time and marveled at her brilliant way with words. I was very excited that she could take time to do this interview so close to...

Interviews/News Comments: 0

October 23, 2013

Some Canadian Must-Reads for Halloween

Several people have suggested a brilliant new idea for Halloween: Give a scary book this Halloween. You don’t have to give a book to every trick-or-treater, but maybe get a few books for the special people in your life… or maybe those who just need a good venture into the dark. Don’t forget about used book stores as a potential...

Editorials Comments: 9

October 21, 2013

Quote – Loneliness into Perverse Pride

“My loneliness turned itself inside out and I grew myself a kind of perverse pride.” -Phyllis Gotlieb – Tauf Aleph (In Tesseracts)

Quotes Comments: 0