diaspora – Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

October 20, 2025

An Interview with Su Sokol

I had the wonderful opportunity to finally sit down and talk to Su J Sokol, activist and Spec Fic writer. As an activist myself, I knew that Xe would be an interesting person to talk to about social justice. Su J Sokol is a social rights activist and a writer of speculative and interstitial fiction. Cycling to Asylum, xyr debut novel, was long-listed...

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August 20, 2024

An Interview With Rabbi Dr. Andrea (A.D.) Lobel

By Derek Newman-Stille Spec Can: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Andrea: Certainly! I’m a rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement, a progressive Jewish group. I used to work full-time as an advertising copywriter, but decided to go back to school in 2002 to begin a career in religion, so I earned my M.A. and Ph.D., as well...

Interviews Comment: 1

April 30, 2016

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 62: Afrofuturism

In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I explore Afrofuturism and particularly focus my examination on the work of Canadian author Nalo Hopkinson. Even though I am not a black person myself, I felt that it was important to examine Afrofuturism as an important contribution to imagining black futurity and to science fiction in general. In this episode...

On Air Comments: 0

September 9, 2014

Definitely Not A Chameleon.

A Review of Jason Loo’s The Pitiful Human-Lizard Issue 1 (May, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille Few superheroes call themselves “pitiful”. Most tend to hypermasculinize themselves to try to make themselves seem beyond the human, more powerful, further beyond moral critique, but Jason Loo’s The Pitiful Human-Lizard plays with the superhero genre and opens it to critique, question, and, yes, pity....

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

May 11, 2014

Slippery Landscapes

A review of Kate Storey’s Blasted (Killick Press, 2008). By Derek Newman-Stille Steeped in the rich fairy lore of Newfoundland and a sense of longing for home, Kate Story’s Blasted is a novel about dislocation. Story’s stream of consciousness style of writing beautifully enhances the sense of temporal and special dislocation represented by movement through and slippage into fairy realms....

Fiction Book Reviews Comment: 1

January 19, 2014

Graphic Noir

A review of Drew Hayden Taylor, Alison Kooistra, and Michael Wyatt’s The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel (Annick Press, 2013, Toronto) By Derek Newman-Stille I have been finding comics unsatisfying in recent years because too many of them have been cutting down on dialogue. I tend to like a lot of dialogue and narrative movement in a graphic novel, so...

Other Reviews Comments: 0

June 1, 2013

Abstract – Speculating Diversity: Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl In The Ring and the Use of Speculative Fiction to Disrupt Singular Interpretations of Place

A few readers have expressed some interest in my academic work researching Canadian Speculative Fiction. I have sent out versions of my abstracts for upcoming conferences to people directly, but I thought it may be worthwhile for me to post them on Speculating Canada so that people can see them. For those of you who are not from academic backgrounds,...

Editorials Comments: 0

April 9, 2013

April Aliens – Wednesdays throughout April

Throughout the month of April, Speculating Canada will be bringing you discussions of aliens every Wednesday. Aliens in Canadian SF can be used to explore Canadian multiculturalism, the feeling of alienation, diaspora (being without a home), ethnicity, the clash of cultures, and the extents and limits of the human. Aliens are often created as a foil, an opposite, an other...

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January 3, 2013

Avatars of Reality

A review of Ven Begamudre’s Vishnu Dreams (Gaspereau Press, 2008) By Derek Newman-Stille The Hindu god Vishnu sleeps and dreams the lives of mortals in Ven Begamudre’s Vishnu Dreams, allowing for the intersection of Hindu cosmology and the physical reality of everyday existence. Tales of the Hindu gods are interspersed amongst a seemingly magic-less narrative. Stories and sacred tales become...