Tag: Magic

October 15, 2013

Cripping the Light Fantastic: Disability and Speculative Fiction

A Brief Exploration of Disability in Speculative Fiction By Derek Newman-Stille This post will explore some of the notions we examined in my panel at Can Con on Disability in Canadian SF. The panel went extremely well, and I hope to be able to share some insights with Speculating Canada readers who were unable to make it to Can Con....

Categories Editorials/Teaching Comments: 3

October 4, 2013

SF Versus Oppression

A Review of OnSpec #92 Vol. 25, No. 1 By Derek Newman-Stille Speculative fiction is a genre of possibilities, potentialities, and change. It is therefore surprising that most SF tends to replicate patterns that support hegemonies – heterosexism, sexism, ableism, ageism, racism. When one sees how much bias can be replicated in SF, it is exciting when a volume like...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

September 8, 2013

Instead of Let’s Pretend, Let’s Become

A review of Claire Humphrey’s “Nightfall in the Scent Garden” in Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (ChiZine Publications, 2013) By Derek Newman-Stille Every day children create worlds, dream up and invent universes separate and different from our own… but what happens when those worlds are invested with so much power that they become real? Claire Humphrey’s “Nightfall in...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

August 26, 2013

Ch-ch-ch-changes

A review of Randy McCharles’ “The Awakening of Master March” in The Puzzle Box (Edge, 2013). By Derek Newman-Stille Warlock wants to be a musician. He has been a roadie for 5 years and he feels like he should step up his game and start his own band… the problem is – he has never learned to play music. Warlock...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

July 29, 2013

Penning the Subtle Murmur of Death and Splash of Blood

A review of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s This Strange Way of Dying (Forthcoming 2013, Exile Editions) By Derek Newman-Stille Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s This Strange Way of Dying is just one step abstracted from reality, with one foot in The Weird. Populated with monsters, magic, and folklore, her work is fundamentally about the human outsider experience, the deeper engagement with the world that comes...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

July 1, 2013

Poetry Reading from Sandra Kasturi – reading “Lark”

As a Canada Day gift from Sandra Kasturi, hear her reading of her beautiful poem “Lark” from her poetry collection Come Late to the Love of Birds (Tightrope Books, 2012).   Thank you to Sandra Kasturi for doing this reading and to Trent Radio and Alissa Paxton in particular for facilitating this reading in the Trent Radio studio

Categories Author Readings/On Air Comments: 0

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...

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June 14, 2013

Voudoun Visions of Toronto

A Review of Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in The Ring (Grand Central Publishing, 1998) By Derek Newman-Stille In Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson blends urban fantasy and near-future science fiction together in a Toronto environment. She creates a Toronto that has been cut off from the rest of Canada, ghettoised and locked off from the rest of the...

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June 7, 2013

The Absurd Undercurrent to Rationality.

A review of Cory Doctorow’s Shannon’s Law (in Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands Ed. Holly Black and Ellen Kushner, Random House, 2011) By Derek Newman-Stille Borderland is a place that exists between the Elfland and mundane reality. It is a strange blend of the fantastic and the urban, a city that is invested and embodied...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

June 4, 2013

Fantasy Fridays Throughout June!!

Fantasy Fridays Throughout June Fantastic realms provide us with new ways of looking at the world. Creating new worlds gives us a chance to look at our own world in a new light, questioning our preconceptions, and allowing us to see our own world as unusual, fantastic, and as much of a creation as those that are created by fiction...

Categories Editorials/News Comments: 0