Tag: home

June 21, 2013

Transformation, Secrets, and a World in Flux

A review of Julie Czerneda’s A Turn of Light (Daw, 2013). By Derek Newman-Stille Julie Czerneda’s A Turn of Light is a transformative text on multiple levels. It is about Jenn Nalynn, a girl on the cusp of womanhood who is confronted with her own changing nature and the need to understand her own place and what has shaped her...

Categories Fiction Book 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,...

Categories Editorials Comments: 0

January 28, 2013

Dragonville

A review of Charles de Lint’s The Painted Boy (Viking, 2010) By Derek Newman-Stille Charles de Lint often takes his readers into the hidden parts of the world and brings attention to the things that people ignore in the world around them, whether that be the fantastic side of the world and the potential for a magical viewpoint or attention...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

January 16, 2013

Interview with Silvia Moreno-Garcia

An interview with Silvia Moreno-Garcia by Derek Newman-Stille I am really excited to have been able to interview Silvia Moreno-Garcia. She espouses a lot of the themes that I talk about in my own work around the ability for SF to include those who are traditionally pushed to the fringes, so I was really pleased that she was willing to...

Categories Interviews Comment: 1

January 7, 2013

Abandoned

A Review of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “A Handful of Earth” in Expanded Horizons: Speculative Fiction for the Rest of Us (Nov, 2012) By Derek Newman-Stille Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “A Handful of Earth” available for free online by Expanded Horizons: Speculative Fiction for the Rest of Us ( http://expandedhorizons.net/magazine/?page_id=2442 ) narrates the Dracula story from the perspective of Dracula’s “brides”, the three “sisters”...

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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...

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December 19, 2012

Quote – Everyone Wants To Go Home

“Everyone wants to go home. That’s what home is. Home is the place you want to be coming to, even when you wish you were leaving it. The world is only so big and a man can only travel so far before he finds himself curving back to where he started from.” -Helen Marshall Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine, 2012)...

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November 21, 2012

Displacement

A Review of On Spec #89 Vol 24, No. 2 (Summer 2012 issue) By Derek Newman-Stille I have been a fan of On Spec for some time. I enjoy the quality of their stories, the diversity of their authors, and their ability to play with diverse characteristics of the speculative medium. I enjoy the fact that On Spec combines short...

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November 10, 2012

Monster Worlds and Mental Illness

A Review of D D Barant’s Dying Bites (St Martin’s, 2009) By Derek Newman-Stille Jace Valchek is an FBI officer and a forensic scientist. She is used to things following understandable rules and used to having a strict moral code: no grey areas. When she is tossed into a world where the population is made up of 37% vampires, 43%...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 2

October 20, 2012

Patient Zero and the Post-Human

A review of Nina Munteanu’s Darwin’s Paradox (Dragon Moon Press, 2007) By Derek Newman-Stille In Darwin’s Paradox Nina Munteanu displays her awareness of scientific discourse: focussing on areas like chaos theory, biological theories of co-evolution, symbiosis and virology, and ecological theories. Her protagonist, Julie, is patient zero in a spreading epidemic that has infected most of modern civilisation. Munteanu creates...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 2