Tag: religion

May 4, 2015

An Unnecessary Proving Ground

A review of Alyxandra Harvey’s “The Faith Circus” in Tesseracts Eighteen: Wrestling with Gods (Edge, 2015). By Derek Newman-Stille In “The Faith Circus” by Alyxandra Harvey explores ideas of religious conflict and the development of a multi-faith, multicultural system. When the Raja was young, he had demanded that various priests and magicians heal his family from illness. When none of...

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April 21, 2015

Robo-religion

A review of Derwin Mak’s “Mecha-Jesus” in Tesseracts Eighteen: Wrestling with the Gods (Edge, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille Religion (particularly when represented in fantasy) is generally constructed as something that is bounded, something that has clear boundaries and belongs to one specific group who all believe the same thing. Derwin Mak’s “Mecha Jesus” blends categories, blending religious systems and getting...

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February 1, 2015

Animal Outbreak

A review of Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods (Vertigo, 2010) By Derek Newman-Stille Set in a post-outbreak society where most of the society has died of the plague and the remaining bits of humanity know that they have a countdown on their remaining life, Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods is a tale of loneliness...

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August 5, 2014

Evangelical Science

A review of Suzanne Chuch’s “The Wind and the Sky” in Elements: A Collection of Speculative Fiction (Edge, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille In a future where humanity neared extinction and have become a hunter-gatherer society watched over by androids in space, science has become religion for the artificial life forms above our world. Suzanne Church explores a society where science...

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June 27, 2014

Floating on Myths and Legends

A review of Marie Bilodeau’s The Kevlar Canoe in Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories (Tyche Books Ltd, 2013). By Derek Newman-Stille Marie Bilodeau re-visits Quebecois mythology in her story The Kevlar Canoe, reinventing legend and tying it to a modern legend, a myth for modernity: the superhero story. Taking the story of La Chasse-galerie, often translated into English as The...

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April 19, 2014

The Religion of Blood Medicine.

A review of Rich Larson’s “Maria and the Pilgrim” in Apex Magazine Feb 4, 2014 (available online at http://www.apex-magazine.com/maria-and-the-pilgrim/ ) By Derek Newman-Stille Rich Larson’s “Maria and the Pilgrim” explores a future in which contagion has spread and a small group of people have applied religious meanings to the spread of disease. Seeing themselves as preserved by Jesucristo against a...

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December 21, 2013

Behind the Wallpaper of the World

A review of Michelle Barker’s The Beggar King (Thistledown Press, 2013) By Derek Newman-Stille In The Beggar King, Michelle Barker explores the potential of the fantasy medium for creating a deep coming-of-age story. Jordan is a boy on the cusp of adulthood and in his society youths his age normally receive a talent, a gift that will help them to...

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December 18, 2013

Interview with Michael Rowe

An interview with Michael Rowe by Derek Newman-Stille Michael Rowe is an accomplished journalist and horror author whose work I have enjoyed for many years (ever since the publication of the two volumes of LGBTQ2 horror Queer Fear and Queer Fear 2, which Rowe edited. I was extremely pleased that he was willing to do an interview here on Speculating...

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August 2, 2013

Interview with Lynda Williams

An interview with Lynda Williams By Derek Newman-Stille It is always refreshing and exciting to have the opportunity to talk to a writer who is willing to really interrogate and question the world around them through SF, and I am glad that Lynda Williams is willing to share her insights and observations with readers and help us to step out...

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July 31, 2013

Upcoming Interview with Lynda Williams on August 2, 2013

Lynda Williams and I have been corresponding for a while, each visiting the other’s website and reading about various comments about Canadian SF. I was therefore very excited when Ms. Williams agreed to do an interview here. It is always very exciting to talk with an author who is comfortable deconstructing and analysing her own work, and whose keen observations...

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