Tag: alien

April 5, 2021

Ennui in Space

A review of James Alan Gardner’s Ascending (Open Road Media) By Derek Newman-Stille Ascending is James Alan Gardner’s discourse on boredom wrapped up in science fiction. Gardner’s narrator Oar is from a genetically modified species that at the age of 50 literally just becomes bored with the world and lays down to sleep for eternity…. and Oar has just reached...

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March 16, 2021

Alien Found Family

A review of Julie Czerneda’s Changing Vision (Penguin Random House, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille Julie Czerneda’s Changing Vision is a tale of found families across space. Esen is the past of her species, the final member of her Web. This could leave her isolated and alone in a massive universe, but, instead, she finds a human companion, Paul, who bridges...

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March 11, 2019

Colonialism

Colonialism A review of Drew Hayden Taylor’s “A Culturally Inappropriate Armageddon Part II: Old Men and Old Sayings ” in Take Us to Your Chief And Other Stories (Douglas & McIntyre, 20160. By Derek Newman-Stille Indigenous people have been accustomed to alien invasions and the decimation of land and culture and Drew Hayden Taylor adapts the history of colonialism to...

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June 22, 2018

Coming of Age With Super Powers

Coming of Age With Super Powers A review of Mariko Tamaki’s Supergirl: Being Super (DC Comics, 2018). By Derek Newman-Stille Canadian comic writer and artist Mariko Tamaki has frequently explored coming of age and that fascinating experience of being between childhood and adulthood in comics like Skim and This One Summer. She shows an incredible ability to draw her readers...

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April 18, 2018

O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!

O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! A review of Kate Story’s This Insubstantial Pageant (ChiZine Publications, 2017) By Derek Newman-Stille A fan of both Shakespeare and science fiction, Kate Story remaps the Bard’s play The Tempest onto the stars, exploring the otherworldly potential of the tale by placing it on another planet in a distant future. Frequently,...

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February 3, 2018

Confusion

Confusion A review of Karin Lowachee’s “Invasio”in Shades Within Us: Tales of Migration and Fractured Borders Edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law (Laksa Media Groups Inc., 2018) By Derek Newman-Stille Telling a tale of mass migration after an apocalyptic invasion, Karin Lowachee’s “Invasio” explores the confusion associated with diaspora and the search for a new home. Although her...

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July 8, 2017

Insectile Intimacies

A review of Edward Willett’s “The Mother’s Keeper” in The Sum of Us by Susan Forest and Lucas Law (Laksa Media Group, 2017) By Derek Newman-Stille Edward Willett takes a different perspective than many of the authors in the collection “The Sum of Us”, a collection about caregiving, and, instead LITERALLY dehumanizes caregiving. Instead of focusing on caregiving among humans,...

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July 21, 2015

Weaving Tales in Word and Image

A Review of Hope Nicholson’s (ed) “Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection” (AH Comics Inc, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille The comic book industry has generally had an exploitative relationship with indigenous peoples. Generally indigenous peoples have been portrayed in comics as villains or sidekicks and their character development limited to cultural stereotypes and one-dimensionality. In superhero comics, generally even the superpowers...

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June 15, 2015

(Hu)Man’s Best Friend

A review of Janet K. Nicolson’s “Chance Encounters” in OnSpec Vol 26, No. 3 By Derek Newman-Stille In “Chance Encounters“, Janet K. Nicolson puts the reader in the position of a cattle dog, exploring the difference in language and sensory perception inherent in that switch in existence. The dog, as “man’s best friend” is both familiar to us and strange,...

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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...

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