Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

May 24, 2013

Meme Zombies

A Review of Tony Burgess and Bruce McDonald’s film Pontypool (Maple Pictures, 2009) By Derek Newman-Stille As many of you know, I tend to focus Speculating Canada primarily on literature. This is not meant to ignore other types of texts and media, but has been an area that fascinates me. I have recently been drawn to the film Pontypool through...

Other Reviews Comments: 5

May 23, 2013

Quote – Writers Expose Their Innermost Emotions To The World

“To wear your heart upon your sleeve is to expose your innermost emotions to the world. Writers do that. They expose their most private feelings to total strangers. Not once, not by accident, but deliberately and, to all extents and purposes, permanently.” -Julia Czerneda – Introduction to Douglas Smith’s Chimerascope

Quotes Comments: 0

May 21, 2013

Creating Community in Isolation

A Review of Julie Czerneda’s Riders of the Storm (Daw, 2008) By Derek Newman-Stille Displacement is a factor that is prevalent in the lives of many people who have had to leave home for whatever reason. The finding of “home” is a nebulous, complex, and constantly changeable phenomena. Julie Czerneda explores the search for home in a foreign and confusing...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

May 19, 2013

Quote – Horror in Fact that it is Reality, not Myth

“This is no myth – no minotaur or Pan. This is a reality. And therein lies its horror, its fascination.” -Terence M. Green – The Woman Who Is The Midnight Wind (In Tesseracts)

Quotes Comments: 0

May 18, 2013

An Eldrich Digital Light

A review of Kent Pollard’s A Perfect Circle (in Misseplled edited by Julie Czerneda, Daw 2008) By Derek Newman-Stille Thorn was created to be evil, he was made to be an evil wizard… that’s the way he was designed. But, what happens when a wizard designed for a video game accidentally summons the overseer programme for the game? What happens...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

May 17, 2013

Quote – Creations Take On Lives Of Their Own

“When we create, if we do it well, the things we create take on lives of their own and in so doing, cease to be our creations.” -Kevin Cockle– The Bridge Builder (Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales

Quotes Comments: 0

May 15, 2013

Quote- Humans Programmed For Dangerous Overload

“The pro-survival pleasure stimuli are wired so that a dangerous overload produces the maximum pleasure. On a purely biological level man is programmed to strive hugely for more than he needs, more than he can profitably use.” – Spider Robinson – God is an Iron (Tesseracts)

Quotes Comments: 0

May 12, 2013

Draconic Intersections

A review of Charles de Lint’s Berlin (in Wings of Fire Ed. Jonathan Strahan and marianne S. Jablon, Night Shade Books, 2010) By Derek Newman-Stille Worlds collide in Charles de Lint’s Berlin. De Lint explores the borderland between the human world and Elfland, a place called Bordertown where things mix and mingle and where magic and reality overlap with one...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

May 10, 2013

Quote – Nothing but Defiance Against Reality

“All his actions were nothing more than the petty rebellions of a schoolboy, gestures of defiance to the brutal, relentless authority of reality.” -Nancy Baker – A Terrible Beauty (Penguin Books, 1996)

Quotes Comments: 0

May 9, 2013

An Interview with James Alan Gardner

An Interview with James Alan Gardner By Derek Newman-Stille I have been very lucky to get in touch with James Alan Gardner. As a disability scholar and someone who is interested in portrayals in Science Fiction of people who are Othered, I was extremely pleased that Mr. Gardner agreed to do an interview with me. I hope that readers enjoy...

Interviews Comments: 0