Tag Archives: unicorn

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Who Said Unicorns Were Majestic?

Who Said Unicorns Were Majestic?

A review of Katie Shanahan and Steven Shanahan’s Silly Kingdom: A New Steed Indeed (www.sillykingdom.com , 2105)

People frequently portray unicorns as majestic, gentle, caring creatures… but not the Shanahans. In their comic Silly Kingdom: A New Steed Indeed, The Prince becomes obsessed with the fact that a neighbouring prince, Peatrid, manages to have a pet unicorn where The Prince only has the traditional steed of his kingdom… the llama. Obsessed with beating his rival, The Prince heads out with Markus The Kingdom Jester in search of a rare Nocturnal Black Unicorn.

He quickly discovers that his prey is far less gentle than he had assumed… and far more of a trickster herself. In a set of Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner-like attempts to catch the unicorn, The Prince and Markus end up realizing that the unicorn they are searching for has a wicked sense of humour and a lot of attitude.

Like their first Silly Kingdom comic, Katie and Steven Shanahan combine the magical with the hilarious, bringing the reader on a ridiculous adventure into a world of mishaps and magic. In this second comic, the Shanahans focus even more on the visual than they had in their first comic, stepping away from the conversion from radio play to graphic medium and instead getting into the storytelling power of images. They allow the images on the page to tell their own stories, relying on the power of expressive faces to reveal their own internal narrative and set the tone for dialogue that is used.

To find out more about Silly Kingdom: A New Steed Indeed and the work of Katie and Steven Shanahan, visit http://sillykingdom.tumblr.com/about

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The Horror of the Sense of Wonder

A review of A.C. Wise’s “The Lion and the Unicorn” in Lackington’s, 2015 (https://lackingtons.com/2015/02/12/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-by-a-c-wise/)

By Derek Newman-Stille

 

Wonder is something that shapes much of speculative fiction, propelling us to imagine new possibilities and new ways of interacting with the world. But, a sense of wonder can also contribute to a constant desire for the new, the unique, the special, and the never-before-seen. A.C. Wise’s “The Lion and the Unicorn” examines the horror of that sense of wonder, that desire for the strange. Wise introduces us to a unicorn boy who is kept as a sexual slave in confinement. The unicorn boy is regularly visited by people who sexually assault him out of their desire to experience something new. They have a compelling need for him and objectify him as a sexual toy to be played with. In their ardour for the new and unique, they have sought out other wonders, disempowering them – chaining them, removing teeth, and otherwise rendering them defenseless – so that they can be used as objects of gratification, figures of desire. Their monstrous desire makes them seek out the figures that myth defies as monsters.

 

Wise tells a sexual assault tale that reverses the narrative that we have been trained to expect within a patriarchal society. Instead of presenting a woman as the object of desire, Wise presents a boy who is sexually assaulted by women. The unicorn boy was born out of a sexual assault by his mother on his father and he, similarly, has led a life of repeated sexual assaults. Wise extends the question of sex and disempowerment by including a new vulnerable figure and one who is subject to horror because of his beauty. As he says in the tale “Beauty can be terrible, too”.

 

“The Lion and the Unicorn” takes us into the realm of wonder and reminds us that wonder has historically been used as exploitation – it has been used as justification for colonialism, scientific experimentation, freak shows, and the control of those with wondrous bodies.

 

To discover more about the work of A.C. Wise, visit her website at http://www.acwise.net/

 

To read this story on Lackington’s visit https://lackingtons.com/2015/02/12/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-by-a-c-wise/

 

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Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 15: An Author Reading With Kate Story and Suzanne Church

Magic Dwelling on the Edges: An Author Reading by Kate Story and Suzanne Church
Hosted by Derek Newman-Stille

Tune in to “Magic Dwelling on the Edges: An Author Reading by Kate Story and Suzanne Church” broadcast on Trent Radio and preserved here as an audio file.

Edges are interesting places. They define boundaries and barriers. They occupy the fringes, those unventured places that stretch our ideas of the familiar. They are places of adventure, mystery, and secrets to be discovered… but they are also places of abjection, rejection, places that we ignore and pretend don’t exist.

Fascinating things happen at those tucked away little corners, those shadowy hidden places.

Kate Story and Suzanne Church write from and about those places, people, and ideas on the edge. They cast searchlights into the murky areas that we have made murky because we want the comfort of being away from the edge, at the centre of things. They seek what we deny. Perhaps this is why their fiction often encompasses the queer, the fringe, the abject, the marginalised, the ignored.

Their characters are richly complex, their genres difficult to attach a singular ontology to, and their settings beyond, within, above, other than, beneath, adjacent to, and out of this world. And yet, they speak to this world, offer insights, ask questions of it, and challenge it.

This is edgy fiction, powerful in its ability to break down boundaries and glimpse something beyond the mainstream, something that challenges our preconceptions, our entrenched ideas about the world, and maybe even our comforts.

Edges are interesting places, places on the boundaries of the world where things can be hidden or revealed. So, let’s set aside the normal, disrupt the normative, question what we believe is true, and let ourselves touch the edge.

From Shakespeare’s The Tempest re-written into space and the cosmos to a bestiary about Unicorns to addictive music, to love between a human and a storm deity, to a closet filled with amber tears, this reading bridges the genre boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and horror… and between hilarity and sorrow. Click below to listen to Kate Story and Suzanne Church share stories from the edges of imagination.

Explore Trent Radio at www.trentradio.ca

Explore Trent Radio at http://www.trentradio.ca

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.

Poster from the Author reading "Magic Dwelling on the Edges: An Author Reading by Kate Story and Suzanne Church"

Poster from the Author reading “Magic Dwelling on the Edges: An Author Reading by Kate Story and Suzanne Church”

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Frankengoats and Unicorns

A review of Amanda Sun’s Fragile Things (In Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales. Edge, 2011). By Derek Newman-Stille

In Fragile Things, Amanda Sun explores the role of a teen-aged boy, Alex,  who is taking care of a unicorn, or, as he calls it, a Frankengoat. The unicorn is a hybridised animal that was born accidentally on his father’s farm and has been used to generate funds for the farm. Neither Alex nor his father believe in the unicorn, but are constantly surrounded by a media presence that is fascinated with the creature as well as new age groups that are expecting miracles.

When Alex endangers a girl who is suffering from an undiagnosed illness that the medical community cannot seem to treat by exposing her to the unicorn, he has to come to terms with his own capacity to understand the miraculous and his conception of animal rights and defects.

Sun does a great job of challenging the concept of bodily ‘defect’ by situating a medical oddity (the unicorn) beside another medical oddity (a girl suffering from a disease that the medical community cannot identify or treat). She uses her narrative to question the taken-for-granted notion that the scientific (and specifically medical) community has an answer for everything and that every answer can be located in simple biology. She asks her reader to look beneath the surface of any situation and explore its depths.

You can explore Edge’s website at http://www.edgewebsite.com/ and see this and other Tesseracts volumes.

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The Timeless Power of Legends

A Review of The Monkey King & Other Stories Edited by Griffin Ondaatje (Harper Collins, 1995).
By Derek Newman-Stille

Griffin Ondaatje compiled The Monkey King & Other Stories as a celebration of the 40th anniversary of World Literacy of Canada. The stories within represent Canadian and Sri Lankan adaptations and re-tellings of Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim tales, bringing the timeless wisdom of these tales to an English-reading audience. Written by a variety of authors and including such powerful voices from canonised Can Lit as P. K. Page, Timothy Findley, Michael Ondaatje, and M.G. Vassanji, this volume represents a multitude of voices telling tales that have transformed and changed throughout history, illustrating the timeless quality of their narrative as well as the multiplicity of their voice and ability to transcend a single person’s narrative.

Each of the tales in this volume focuses on raising questions and imparting some form of wisdom, and although they are largely tales borrowed from religious texts, I have included them on Speculating Canada because of their speculative quality (asking timeless questions) – this is not to suggest that the religious texts contained in this volume are speculative fiction themselves, since they hold a religio-mythic realism, but their speculative quality is evoked in the re-telling of these stories to a diverse audience and the focus of the volume on rendering these religious tales into stories for consumption outside of a religious setting.

Many of the tales in this volume caution against ignorance, against the belief that there is something in this world that people don’t need to know about. They teach the importance of an open mind that is prepared for receiving new wisdom and new ideas. The thing that is most critiqued in these stories is arrogance and the limiting quality of arrogance as well as its impact on the world around it. Closely allied with this is a critique of the misuse of power and misunderstanding of the relationship between the common people and those in power.

Many of the tales in The Monkey King & Other Stories give voice to the animals surrounding humanity, allowing the largely ignored fauna of the world to gain a presence in human consciousness. These stories critique the misuse of animals by human beings and critique human power over animals (or the perception of power over them) while making the reader consider the way that humanity systematically de-voices the animal world, robbing the other creatures of the planet of agency. Buddhist tales in this volume, which contain the potential through ideas of reincarnation to make literal the humanity of animals, teach that it is essential to look at the wisdom of animals. After all, the Buddha did take the form of animals in the past, and therefore there is an essential transcendent quality of animal existence. The tale “Brighter Still” (retold by Graeme MacQueen), about the Buddha in the form of a deer teaches that animals serve a pedagogical value for humanity, imparting ideas of self-sacrifice, protection of one’s people, and the cruelty of over-hunting. “The Deer, The Tortoise, and the Kaerala Bird” (retold by J.B. Disanayaka) uses a discussion of the diversity of animal bodies and the ability of diverse animal bodies to each serve a different purpose to remind readers of the essential importance of  diversity and that our system of “normalising” certain bodies or ideas is limiting.

The narratives in this volume focus on the importance of sharing resources, both material and intellectual and looking for a fair distribution of goods and ideas. Stories like “The Monkey King” (retold by Shyam Selvadurai) teach the importance of self-sacrifice as an essential part of leadership, as well as cautioning about the power of fear to override justice. “The Chola King” (retold by Tim Wynne-Jones) reminds leaders that they are ultimately responsible to the people they represent. “Two Friends by the Villu” (retold by Ranjini Obeyesekere) reminds the reader that friendships and alliances are often strained when there is a deficit of resources, while “The Dog Who Drank From Socks” (retold by Griffin Ondaatje) teaches that occasionally shared thirst can teach compassion for others who are suffering. “Power Misused” (retold by S. Samarasinghe) warns that the power to destroy often facilitates the desire to destroy. “The Cycle of Revenge” (retold by M.G. Vassanji) warns about the ability of revenge to escalate violence and trap the participants in a permanent and self-destructive battle that damages them and those around them. “Kundalini” (retold by Chitra Fernando) teaches compassion for difference and the importance of being inclusive and creating a welcoming society for diversity. The narratives in this volume are pedagogical and illustrate the important role of telling stories to help people transcend their limited viewpoints and gain further, diverse wisdom as well as questioning taken-for-granted ideas about the way the world is or “should be”.

Griffin Ondaatje’s retelling of “The Resting Hill” teaches the importance of place in creating stories and illustrates that stories often come from the land itself and an explanation of the features of the landscape. Land embodies memory of the events that have taken place on it as well as being filled with the myths of the people who have lived on it. We live with a diverse history of myths around us as well as within us, shaping who and where we are. He reminds us that the telling of stories is essential and important to our existence. Timothy Findley, in “The Unicorn and the Grapevine” reminds readers that magic exists in the world through the ability of words from stories to transcend the teller, to survive the ages and the distance and that telling stories is itself a form of magic that pervades our world and prevents the destruction of mythical creatures like the unicorn. Telling stories keeps magic in the world

The tales in this volume are those of gods, monsters, common people, animals, and transcendent sages and each evokes a sense of wonder and a desire to learn more about the world around us. Ondaatje’s ability to collect tales that evoke questions and challenge preconceptions makes this volume accessible as well as evocative.

You can explore more about Griffin Ondaatje at http://harpercollins.co.in/author.asp?Author_Code=1296 . You can find out more about World Literacy of Canada at http://www.worldlit.ca/ .