Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

October 8, 2012

Montreal Superhero Fights for Diversity

A review of Hochelaga and Sons by Claude Lalumiere (in Objects of Worship, Chizine, Toronto, 2009) By Derek Newman-Stille I have always thought that Canada needs more superheroes and Claude Lalumiere answered my wishes with Hochelaga and Sons. Hochelaga is a very typically Canadian hero. He is not interested in fighting the big battles of the world, but is interested...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

October 7, 2012

Quote – Everyone Wants to be the Hero of Their Own Story

“Everyone wants to be the hero of their own story, but there’s not enough room for them all, so they fester from bitter self-righteousness.” -E.L. Chen – Fin-de-siecle (in Tesseracts Nine. Edge, Calgary, 2005)

Quotes Comments: 2

October 6, 2012

Interview with Douglas Smith

An Interview with Douglas Smith By Derek Newman-Stille This week I had a great opportunity to chat with Toronto author Douglas Smith to discuss ideas about genre-crossing in SF, the ability of SF to challenge the status quo and propose new questions and ideas about how we can view our world, and the power of SF as a medium without...

Interviews Comments: 3

October 5, 2012

Quote – Things Exist Because We Believe Them To Exist

“The world as we have it is here mostly because of habit. We’ve all agreed that certain things exist – we’re taught as impressionable infants that this is a table and this is what it looks like, that’s a tree out the window there, a dog looks and sounds just so. At the same time we’re informed that Goon and...

Quotes Comments: 0

October 4, 2012

Upcoming Interview with Douglas Smith on Saturday, October 6, 2012

This week, I had the opportunity to interview Toronto author Douglas Smith. Smith’s work spans the speculative genres from horror to science fiction to fantasy, often blending and recombining speculative elements. You may have seen some of my review of Douglas Smith’s work on Speculating Canada, but if you have not, click on his name in the tags section to...

Interviews Comments: 0

October 3, 2012

Canadian Werewolves

By Derek Newman-Stille Canada is fundamentally a hybridised place, embodying multiple differences in the same country and torn/strengthened by contrasting pulls of culture. This hybridity, and ability to alternate between different forms is best expressed in the werewolf and this is why the werewolf has become such an interesting medium for Canadian duality or multiplicity. We are multiple and ever...

Editorials Comments: 6

October 1, 2012

The Green in the Human

A Review of Dominik Parisien’s In His Eighty-Second Year in Stone Telling issue 7, March 2012 (http://stonetelling.com/issue7-mar2012/parisien-year.html) By Derek Newman-Stille In his poem “In His Eighty-Second Year”, Parisien plays with the senses, constructing each stanza around a sensory experience. He intertwines the human experience with the vegetative, creating the human as a form of scarecrow or green man living in...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

September 30, 2012

Speculative Fiction as “High Culture”

An Editorial By Derek Newman-Stille First, I want to open this editorial with a quick note that I think that the notions of “high culture” and “pop culture” are ridiculous and serve no real purpose. The idea that there is a genuine and openly apparent “high culture” that is obvious to anyone is ludicrous and demeans the individual appreciation and...

Editorials Comments: 0

September 29, 2012

Different Way of Seeing

A review of Just Dance by Erika Holt (in Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales, Edge, 2011) By Derek Newman-Stille Marie-Lunie is a girl who has one eye in one world and one in another. Erika Holt’s teen fiction steam-punky supernatural story Just Dance explores a girl who has discovered that her father has been keeping research secrets....

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

September 28, 2012

Werewolf Wednesdays Throughout October 2012

Werewolf Wednesdays Throughout October For the month of October, in celebration of the upcoming Halloween celebrations, I thought I would create an appropriate theme: Werewolf Wednesdays. For those of you who know me well, you will have heard (probably frequently) about my love of the werewolf. For a few years, my love of lycanthropy (werewolfism) even led me to teach...

News Comments: 3