Tag: robots

December 5, 2018

Not Malfunctioning

Not Malfunctioning A review of Fiona Patton’s “I Am Not Broken” in Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins (Exile, 2018) By Derek Newman-Stille In our ableist society, disability is treated as a flaw, as a malfunction. In “I Am Not Broken”, Fiona Patton explores the problematic assumptions about disability by abstracting the image of malfunctioning onto...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comment: 1

July 31, 2017

Valuing Care

A review of Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law’s The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound (Laksa Media Group, 2017) By Derek Newman-Stille As a society, we undervalue care and undervalue care workers. We tend to assume that people who do care work are doing it because they like helping people and we assume that the job...

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July 6, 2017

Exposing the Caregiver within the Human Suit

A review of Sandra Kasturi’s “The Beautiful Gears of Dying” in The Sum of Us (Laksa Media group, 2017, edited by Lucas Law and Susan Forest). By Derek Newman-Stille Using second person, Sandra Kasturi positions the reader as a caregiver AI caring for an ageing woman in her story “The Beautiful Gears of Dying”. Kasturi explores the relationship between human...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comment: 1

March 16, 2017

Mecha-care

A review of Fiona Moore’s “Seal” in Lazarus Risen (Bundoran Press, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille Over the past few years, there has been a rising interest in robotic assistance for Long Term Care homes for aged populations. One of the technologies that has been developed is a robotic seal (called Paro) that emulates life and serves as a companion for...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comment: 1

July 16, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 42: Artificial Intelligence

This episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio explores the idea of Artificial Intelligence. This is a venture into the world of speculation about robots, computers, machines, androids and all of those human mechanical creations. You can listen to this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio at the link below. This audio file was originally broadcast on Trent Radio,...

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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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March 24, 2013

Frankenfoot

A review of Julie Czerneda’s “Left Foot On A Blind Man” (in Silicon Dreams Ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Sergiff, DAW 2001) As a scholar of disability studies, I am always excited to read a work of Canadian SF that really engages with ideas of disability. I have rarely encountered a short story that engages with so many disability...

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December 15, 2012

Speculating Canada ON AIR – Apocalyptic Canadian Literature with Derek Newman-Stille

                  Note: Give the file a few moments to buffer – it is a large file as it is a radio quality recording.

Categories On Air Comments: 2

December 10, 2012

Speculating Canada Goes Live to Air for the Apocalypse!!

On Wednesday December 12th at 11:00 AM, tune in to Trent Radio 92.7 FM (if you are in broadcast range) or visit online at www.trentradio.ca to hear me interviewed by Alissa Paxton of Trent Radio about apocalyptic literature in Canada. Join Alissa Paxton and I, Derek Newman-Stille, as we talk about things like why society is so fascinated with apocalyptic...

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