Tag Archives: space opera

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Alien Found Family

A review of Julie Czerneda’s Changing Vision (Penguin Random House, 2016)

By Derek Newman-Stille

Julie Czerneda’s Changing Vision is a tale of found families across space. Esen is the past of her species, the final member of her Web. This could leave her isolated and alone in a massive universe, but, instead, she finds a human companion, Paul, who bridges the species divide and proves that friendships can be incredibly powerful.

Czerneda focuses her space opera on the ability of people to create family even out of the completely alien and challenges ideas of family that are limited to biological or legal relations. This is a friendship that not only survives the species divide, but survives war, intrigue, lies, and torture.

Changing Vision is a tale of diplomacy in the face of warring species that deny the sentience of each other, espionage, xenophobia, and space battle, but it’s quintessence is the power of cross-species friendships as ways to create family and a sense of home for an alien shapeshifter who at times feels like she has neither as the last member of her species.

To find out more about Changing Vision, go to https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/332604/changing-vision-by-julie-e-czerneda/9780756411954

To discover more about Julie Czerneda, go to https://www.czerneda.com

Review by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD (They/Them)

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Galactic Anthropology

A review of Julie Czerneda’s “Beholder’s Eye” (Penguin Random House, 2016)

By Derek Newman-Stille

In Beholder’s Eye, Julie Czerneda explores the possibilities of consciousness in varying shapes and forms. From pig-like creatures who communicate by clicking their hooves and by emoting smells to canid-like beings, to large cat-like beings, to a puddle of goo, Czerneda explores the diversity of bodily possibilities and envisions their impact on consciousness and culture. She examines the impact of herd mentalities on sentient life forms, and the pull of herd instinct along with conscious thought, and envisions possibilities for sensory differences and the intellectual possibilities that come from sensory diversity. As always, communication is key to Czerneda’s narratives and she explores cross-species interactions and cross-pollination of ideas within different environments.

Beholder’s Eye focusses on the narrative of Esen-alit-Quar, a member of an extremely rare shape-shifting species in a universe that doesn’t believe that there are shape-shifters. Esen can take on the form of any sentient being and Czerneda uses this ability of her character to bring the audience into multiple different possibilities for consciousness and it’s relationship to the body. Czerneda often has a fascination with ecosystems and the diversity of life, so a creature that shifts into multiple shapes allows for her to take the reader through an examination of what consciousness could mean as well as allowing us to imagine the way that different bodily forms and ecosystems could produce different cultures.

Esen-alit-Quar is not only the perfect figure for examining the relationship between body and culture because of her ability to shape-shift, but also because of her species imperative to preserve the memories of sentient beings and sample their cultures. She is the ultimate anthropologist, able to not just study a culture from the outside, but shift her body to examine it as an insider.

With Beholder’s Eye, Czerneda not only creates a fun galaxy-spanning science fiction story, she creates speculative anthropology, bringing her readers into an exploration of cultures, bodies, and potentialities.

To discover more about Beholder’s Eye, visit https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/332164/beholders-eye-by-julie-e-czerneda/

To find out more about Julie Czerneda, visit https://www.czerneda.com

Reviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD (They/Them)

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Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 59: An Interview with Edward Willett

This year Edward Willett was the Guest of Honour for Can Con and I was invited to interview him about his work. In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I talk to Willett about writing ideas of heroism, revolution, government power, resistance, individualism, and writing space operas.

You can listen to this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio at the link below.

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This audio file was originally broadcast on Trent Radio, and I would like to thank Trent Radio for their continued support. I would also like to thank Dwayne Collins for his consistent tech support and help with the intricacies of creating audio files.

Make sure to allow a few minutes for the file to buffer since it may take a moment before it begins to play.

 

To discover more about Edward Willett, visit his website at http://edwardwillett.com/