Tag: place and identity

April 6, 2014

Blurring the Boundaries

A review of Greg Bechtel’s Boundary Problems (Freehand Books, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille We tend to think of boundaries as stable, fixed, unchangeable, but boundaries are inherently permeable, and any boundary that is created is created because someone or something is able to slip trough it. Greg Bechtel writes on these borderlands whether they be of genre (realism, science fiction,...

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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 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,...

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March 19, 2013

Between Pages of Experience

A review of Jo Walton’s Among Others By Derek Newman-Stille SF has a pedagogical value – it teaches, it shares experiences, and it opens the mind to new horizons. Outsiders and social outcasts are often drawn to SF as a means to explore a world that seems strange and alienating to them – reading the alien as a way of...

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March 12, 2013

Travel Guide to Fairy

A Review of O.R. Melling’s The Hunter’s Moon (In The Chronicles of Faerie, Penguin Canada, 2000) By Derek Newman-Stille O.R. Melling’s The Hunter’s Moon explores the idea of place and landscape saturated with the mythic and the historical, the overlapping realms of reality that are facilitated by time and story-telling. Two cousins – Findabhair and Gwen – linked by family,...

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February 21, 2013

Empowering the Freak

A Review of Leah Bobet’s Above (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2012) By Derek Newman-Stille Leah Bobet’s novel Above focusses on a group of people who have taken up residence in the sewers. Chased from society above the ground and called “Freak”, “Monster”, “Sick”, and “Cursed”, they retreated beneath the city to create their own society, free of discrimination. Their most...

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February 15, 2013

Interview with David Nickle

An interview with David Nickle by Derek Newman-Stille I was pleased that David Nickle was willing to do an interview here on Speculating Canada and particularly that he shows such a strong interest in the ability of Speculative Fiction to open social questions, challenge taken-for-granted notions, and encourage readers to think for themselves.  Spec Can: To begin our interview, could...

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February 10, 2013

Upcoming Interview with David Nickle on Friday February 15th

In our upcoming interview, David Nickle discusses coming of age as a writer of Canadian Speculative Fiction, particularly non-violent, anti-individualist storylines and a general sense of outsider identity that permeates the lives of many Canadian Spec Fic authors. He wants readers to question themselves and their reality, challenge their preconceptions, and experience those moments of “scary transcendence” that are embodied...

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February 9, 2013

Characters in Books Become Real in the Otherworld

A Review of Charles de Lint’s Spirits in the Wires By Derek Newman-Stille In his Spirits in the Wires, Charles de Lint expresses something that I have wished to be true since I was a child: that the characters that we read in books become real through our collective imagination. De Lint’s Otherworld and the In-Between, standing between our world...

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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...

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