Tag: change

March 27, 2016

What Makes Fairy Tales So Brilliant?

What Makes Fairy Tales So Brilliant? By Derek Newman-Stille Fairy tales always exist in multiplicity, in versions. There is never one TRUE version, but rather a fluid polyphonic group with multiple voices sharing different takes on the same tale. Fairy tales possess the magic of changeability. Born in oral narratives, they have the power to shift and change with each...

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March 13, 2016

It Doesn’t Have to be ‘The Way it is’

One of the phrases that frustrates me most is “it is what it is”. As a speculative fiction scholar and fan, when I hear these words, I hear the closing down of opportunities and the reifying of the status quo. “It is what it is” tells me that people are frustrated with the existing state of things, but are unwilling...

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January 21, 2016

Titanic Clashes

Clash   A review of Chadwick Ginther’s Too Far Gone (Ravenstone, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille Too Far Gone, the final book in the Thunder Road Trilogy by Chadwick Ginther brings together the threads of transformation that have been woven throughout the trilogy. Ted Callan, body tattooed by Dwarves and inheriting the powers of several Norse gods, has straddled the border between...

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October 31, 2015

A Spectacle of Beauty and Estrangement

A Spectacle of Beauty and EstrangementA review of Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh Book 3 (S &G Publishing, 2015) The third book of Nigh by Marie Bilodeau brings the reader into the realm of fairy itself, a land hostile to human life but simultaneously an object of desire. Bilodeau’s fairy realm is a land that is changeable between one moment to the next...

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September 25, 2015

Transitional Words

A review of Nalo Hopkinson’s Falling in Love With Hominids (Tachyon Publications, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille Falling in Love with Hominids illustrates Nalo Hopkinson’s playfulness with language, her characteristic exploration of the way that language shapes social interactions and develops plot. Hopkinson illustrates her fascination with ideas of sound and the power of mis-hearings, exploring stories that came from her...

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May 25, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 36: An Interview with James Moran

James Moran recently published his first novel Town and Train, a horror novel that was 20 years in the making. In this show, James discusses the inspiration for Town and Train and how the novel transformed over the years from his first version of it, written as a teenager, to his recent version. James and I discuss the role of...

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April 11, 2015

Gossamer Threads of a Tale

A Review of Dominik Parisien’s “Spider Moves the World” in Lackington’s Issue 6 http://lackingtons.com/2015/04/08/spider-moves-the-world-by-dominik-parisien/  By Derek Newman-Stille Like Dominik Parisien’s poetry, his prose story “Spider Moves the World” captures the beauty in the grotesque. Parisien takes the figure of the spider and reveals the beauty of spidery movements, the wonder of being carried on a spider’s back and the essential...

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April 9, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 34: An Interview with Helen Marshall

At the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, I was able to take a few moments of Helen Marshall’s time to do an interview. In this interview on Speculating Canada, we talk about the relationship between bodies and text, aging, changes, open endings, the power of fiction to open up new ideas and new possibilities, writing as an...

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March 12, 2015

Water and Reflection

A review of Ursula Pflug’s “The Water Man” In Harvesting The Moon and Other Stories (PS Publishing Limited, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille Water: it runs through all of us, binding us together; we need it but too much of it can kill us; it is reflective and we can see ourselves in it, slightly distorted (which sometimes reveals more than...

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March 8, 2015

Not Tinkerbell… Welcome to the Fairypocalypse

A review of Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh (S&G Publishing, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille There has been an incredible interest in apocalyptic scenarios. We are fascinated with the notion of “the end”. Whether zombies, environmental catastrophe, meteors, alien invasion, nuclear war… we are fascinated with the idea of an end of the story of human experience. Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh evokes creatures from...

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