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Tag Archives: Douglas Smith
November 22, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
The Pedagogical Power of Play – Teaching Canadian SF (okay, and other literature courses too)
The Pedagogical Power of Play
by Derek Newman-Stille
Play is an important way to help students (of any age) learn. When you evoke student emotions, they remember things more effectively since memory acquisition is linked to emotional responses. By using an element of play in your teaching, your students are also more willing to take bigger risks, and do things that seem too stressful in a classroom that takes itself too seriously. When playing, students become more active learners. They know that the rules are somewhat suspended, so they are willing to take greater risks, think further outside the box. Once you are able to get students to think outside the box, they are able to think more critically about what they are doing. Not only will they remember the ideas you are covering, but they will also be more willing to question things, engage deeper with ideas, and be more inspired.
A lot of instructors use questions about the text (memory exercises) as a way to help students learn. They will create activities geared at helping students remember facts, but students remember facts best through using them, and being emotionally attached to them.
The most important thing to do is to let the texts themselves lend different ideas for inspiring students. Applying ideas from outside to various texts ends up feeling unnatural to the students. Look for entertaining ideas that stem from the text itself. For example, when I was teaching Stephen King's Misery to my students, character Paul Sheldon discusses a game that he used to play with his friends where they would tell a story and then vote about whether it was believable or not. I adapted this for an activity for the classroom, having the students share in telling the story of Annie Wilkes (the villain of the story) in pieces and then vote after each segment whether the tale was believable for the Annie Wilkes that King created. By playing at giving Annie a background, students were able to explore narrative potentials and they were able to look deeper and more critically at the character King had created.
A Few Activities:
1. Fan Fiction
Have students search for those narrative gaps in the text, those areas that the author didn't explore and are rich for exploration. Fan fiction allows students to get deeper into the narrative and do an analysis beyond the surface reading. When students write fan fiction, they need to understand the text deeply in order to write a story that feels authentic to them. They tend to mine the text for incredible amounts of detail to support their ideas… which is great preparation for later essays and examinations. When students write fan fiction, they look for narrative gaps, which means they look at the text critically, searching for what is missing, for problems in the text.
Make sure to provide students with a few examples of fan fiction (it is best if it comes from texts outside of the course so that they don't feel like they are too limited)
(Thank you to Kelly McQuire for inspiring this)
2. Title Mash-Ups
Have students chose the titles of two different books from the course and then mash their titles together. Provide them with a few examples (of titles outside of the course). Then ask students to do an "elevator pitch" about what that novel will look like. Let them know that an elevator pitch is the pitch for a new novel that you would give in the few minutes that you have between floors when you are in an elevator with a publisher – make sure that they limit it to about 5 minutes.
This activity will help students to start making connections between the texts and thinking about them comparatively. This allows them to work out some ideas about the conversations between the texts and the overall themes of the course. Once they begin looking at things through a comparative lens, it makes it easier for them to do comparisons between texts later in essays and exams.
Here are a few examples of title mash-ups:
The Twilight Games
(Mash up of The Hunger Games and Twilight)
Vampires from each of the districts of Panem have to enter into an (eternal) life or death match with other vampires. Each of them has to protect a human companion from vampiric attack by their other opponents and battle their own hunger for human blood in order to keep their human alive in a world where everyone else and even the land itself is out to get them.
And some Canadian SF examples:
Blood Expendable
(Mash up of Tanya Huff's Blood Price and James Alan Gardner's Expendable)
After developing Retinitis Pigmentosa, Vicki Nelson, detective for the Technocracy loses her position and is made a member of the Explorer Corps, or, as they call themselves, Expendable Crew Members and sent on all of the dangerous missions that other, able-bodied crew members aren't sent on because the Admiralty knows that people with disabilities aren't mourned as much as able-bodied crew members. When the Admiralty sends her on a mission to a planet that is known to be a place of certain death, a planet where it is rumored that people frequently die of blood loss, she finds out that her only ally on this planet is a vampire. She learns that she can heal her body if she choses to become a vampire, or she can embrace her Retinitis Pigmentosa and try to change a society that rejects its disabled members and views them as expendable.
Bitten by a Turn of Light
(Mash up of Kelley Armstrong's Bitten and Julie Czerneda's A Turn of Light)
The small valley of Don is an odd pioneer settlement on the outskirts of Toronto where there are elements of magic like house toads, wells that fill up with sweet-tasting water whenever it is desired, fields that suddenly lay down during harvest, and where the woods are populated with strange beings. After being bitten by her friend, a mysterious, invisible entity named Wisp, Elena Nalynn discovers that something has changed in her body. She discovers that she is cursed, stuck between the human world, and the world of her friend. While trying to control her new hungers, her ability to turn invisible, and the impulse to fly, she has to confront whether she wants to try to make a normal, human life for herself in Toronto or venture into the Verge to join Wisp and live with the dragon pack.
3. Monster Mash-Up
In the wake of Mash-Ups like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Mash-Ups have become really popular with readers. A mash-up is a work of fiction that combines a pre-existing literary work with another genre – essentially an injection of a monstrous bite into an existing literary work. In a work like this, students are encouraged to use somewhere between 60-85% of the original text and adapt other parts of it to suggest monstrous figures like zombies, vampires, or werewolves.
This can be a great activity for teaching a course that combines traditional Can Lit with Canadian genre fiction, for example, inviting students to mash up Anne of Green Gables with the monstrous. But, it can also be used to mash up other works of genre fiction, combining aspects of the monstrous with other narratives – for example, taking Canadian SF stories and injecting in a bit of monstrous characteristics.
You can ask students to do a full novel Mash Up, a single chapter, or even just do an elevator pitch about what the Mash Up would look like. If you decide to do an elevator pitch, ask student to think about how monsters would be integrated into the novel's world, what challenges the narrative would face, which characters would be (or become) monstrous, and what elements of the story would shift with the monstrous introduction.
To begin, introduce students to a wide variety of Canadian monster short stories and/or novels.
Some Examples of Great Canadian Zombie Short Stories or Anthologies:
Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
"The Ethical Treatment of Meat" (in Objects of Worship) by Claude Lalumiere
"A Visit to the Optometrist" (in Objects of Worship) by Claude Lalumiere
Some Examples of Great Canadian Zombie Novels:
Husk by Corey Redekop
Zombie Versus Fairy Featuring Albinos by James Marshall
Some Examples of Great Canadian Vampire Short Stories or Anthologies:
Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick
Evolve 2: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick
"Stories With Happy Endings" (in This Strange Way of Dying) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
"Cemetery Man" (in This Strange Way of Dying) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Some Examples of Great Canadian Vampire Novels:
Blood Books (series) by Tanya Huff
Blood and Chrysanthemums by Nancy Baker
A Terrible Beauty by Nancy Baker
The Night Inside by Nancy Baker
The Embrace of Life and Death by Liz Strange
The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel by Drew Hayden Taylor
Enter, Night by Michael Rowe
Some Examples of Great Canadian Werewolf Short Stories or Anthologies:
"Out of the Light" (in Chimerascope) by Douglas Smith
"Spirit Dance" (in Impossibilia) by Douglas Smith
Some Examples of Great Canadian Werewolf Novels:
The Wolf at the End of the World by Douglas Smith
Bitten by Kelley Armstrong
Naked Brunch by Sparkle Hayter
Think about how much fun your students could have writing Anne of Green Pustules!
4. Write a review on GoodReads or another review site
Introduce students to a review website so that they can get a sense of what book reviews look like. Then, ask them to write their own review of one of the books on the course or one of their own books for a later essay. By asking students to check out GoodReads or other review sites, it introduces them to the notion of literary media sites and allows them to begin participating in literature communities. This will allow them to engage with a wider community of literature fans and prepare them for writing their own critiques of the books they are reading. By having them post their reviews on GoodReads or a similar site, students will feel engaged and will also feel the social pressure to write good reviews for others who might be interested in the book. It also allows them to feel more responsible for writing a good review since they will be responsible to a whole group of other readers.
I like to introduce GoodReads to students as "It's like Facebook for people who love books".
By having students review Canadian SF material, you are also contributing to Canadian authors by making sure that there are more reviews available for a genre that is traditionally under-reviewed.
(Thank you to Adam Brittain for inspiring this)
5. Now You Go There
Have students think about what it would be like to suddenly be in the world of the novel they are reading. What would their experience be? How would they survive in this world? What challenges would they face?
This activity will help students to deeply explore the role of setting in the novel – the social, political, and environmental context of the novel. This is especially effective for fantasy, science fiction, and some types of horror since students will have to examine the world-building of the author and try to fit themselves into that world. By asking the student to enter metaphorically into a new world, you are helping them to become (quite literally) personally involved and students often remember things better when they somehow relate back to themselves.
I find an effective accompanying text for this (in addition to whatever novel you are teaching) is Gary W. Renshaw's "Vacation" in OnSpec #92 Vol. 25, No. 1 since it explores a sci fi author who ends up crash landing on an alien world (as well as the accompanying issues and frustrations that come from living on that world). You can find a review at https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/sci-fi-author-in-space/
Have your students write a series of emails or letters between various characters at various key points in the narrative. This will help the students to explore character psychology and interaction. They can interrogate the intentions of the characters as well as the way they want to represent themselves to other characters, and how they manage their identity portrayal.
7. Comic Book It!!
Have your students think about how they would adapt the novel they are reading into a comic book. I would suggest limiting their comic books to a 5 comic book run to cover the material from the original novel. Have them think about what they would need to include, what they would have to remove (while still making certain that they text conveys all of the relevant parts of the novel), ask them to think about their audience and in which ways they may have a different audience.
Ask students to do character layouts for each of the characters, considering the personalities, motivations, desires, flaws, strengths, and quirks of each of the characters. Following this, ask them to write out titles for each of the 5 comics and write a short description of each comic, considering the action of the scene, what to highlight, the fundamentals of the dialogue, and which parts of the novel they will cover. Then, ask them to think about the essential dialogue of the text and choose some key quotes that would appear in word bubbles to capture the action of the scenes.
You can introduce students to an adaptation of a Canadian novel into a comic by having them first read Kelley Armstrong's Bitten and then have them explore the comic book adaptation of the novel by Angilram at http://angilram.deviantart.com/gallery/6373443 .
8. Interview the Author
Have students develop questions for the author of the book that they have just read. This will allow them to delve into the narrative gaps, the missing or unexplored parts of the book. In order to help them to prepare, you can introduce them to some interviews that you have found particularly interesting (hopefully, perhaps, like those on Speculating Canada). Consider using interviews that do deeper interrogations rather than ones that just ask the author "how did you sell your first book?"
9. Dating Profiles
This works particularly well for novels that have a romantic component. Ask students to choose three characters from the novel and write a dating profile for each of them. Have them consider the personalities of the characters as they are laid out in the novel and think about what they would write in a dating profile.
Here are some key areas that you can direct them toward:
-Headline:
-Name/ Pseudonym:
-Gender:
-I am Looking For: Marriage/ Dating/ Relationship/ Casual/ Friendship
-Looking for a Person Who is:
-Likes in a Partner:
-Dislikes in a Partner (Deal-Breakers):
-About me:
-Physical Description:
-Interests:
-Hobbies:
You can also have students write a dating questionnaire from the perspective of their characters with questions like:
-Describe any frequent types of barriers or patterns you encounter in your search for relationships:
-Please describe any circumstances or conditions in your life that you are concerned about regarding your relationship search and/or ultimate relationship success:
-What is your greatest achievement?
-What is your greatest disappointment?
-What is your best attribute?
-What is your worst attribute?
-If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
-What is your greatest passion?
As a really fun way to finish this activity, you can ask students to engage in a speed dating activity, having them play the part of the character trying to date one of the others. I find it really entertaining to have them speed date random other characters from the novel (other than the one the author intended to be their ideal partner).
You can, of course, use these activities for any literature course (not just for Canadian Speculative Fiction), but I hope they will inspire you to consider proposing a Canadian genre fiction course at your university or high school, or at least to include a few Canadian genre fiction texts on your syllabus.
These activities lend themselves particularly to literature courses, and the activities in the course assist students to develop confidence in creative writing, so can be quite effective for a creative writing course.
Remember, the more skills your students develop, the better your marking experience will be!! Well-written, interesting papers are much MUCH easier to mark. So, when you inspire your students to develop their skills, you also save yourself time, energy, and headaches. Plus, playing when you teach also means that you will look forward to your own classes instead of dreading the boredom that comes from repetitive, replicative teaching.
Posted in Editorials, Teaching
Tagged activities for students, Can Lit, Claude Lalumiere, Comic Books, Corey Redekop, Douglas Smith, Drew Hayden Taylor, Fan Fiction Writing, fantasy, Gary W. Renshaw, horror, James Alan Gardner, James Marshall, Julie Czerneda, Kelley Armstrong, Liz Strange, Mash-Up, Michael Rowe, Nancy Baker, Nancy Kilpatrick, pedagogy, Science Fiction, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Sparkle Hayter, Tanya Huff, teaching, teaching activities, teaching Canadian Speculative Fiction, teaching ideas, teaching SF, teaching tips, vampire, werewolf, zombies
August 16, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
On Air Interview with Douglas Smith
Click below to hear an interview with Douglas Smith on Trent Radio. Douglas Smith is the Aurora Award winning author of Chimerascope and Impossibilia and has a book forthcoming called The Wolf at the End of the World.
Mr. Smith and I had an incredible and enlightening discussion about a variety of subjects including werewolves, myths and legends, disability in SF, ecology, the power of SF to challenge social assumptions, representations of oppressed peoples in SF, writing short fiction, and blurring the boundaries between horror, science fiction, and fantasy.
Explore Trent Radio at http://www.trentradio.ca
I want to thank Mr Smith for this brilliant interview, Alissa Paxton for her tech skills, and John Muir and Kathleen Adamson for finding up a place in the broadcast schedule.
Posted in Interviews, On Air
Tagged audio files, disability, Douglas Smith, ecology, environmentalism, fantasy, horror, interviews, literature for social change, myth, On Air, oppression, podcast, Science Fiction, Short Fiction, Trent Radio, werewolves
Upcoming On Air Interview with Douglas Smith
I recently had an opportunity to talk to Douglas Smith in the Trent Radio Studio about a variety of subjects. Check out his insights in an audio file on Speculating Canada on Friday August 16th and have a chance to hear about Mr. Smith's insights on writing and social justice, werewolves, disability in SF, myths and legends, and blurring the boundaries between horror, science fiction, and fantasy.
Mr. Smith has twice won the Aurora Awards and is the author of the collections Chimerascope and Impossibilia. Check out our interview and download it as a podcast so you can listen to it while you are out.
Douglas Smith and Alissa Paxton in the Trent Radio Studio
Posted in News, On Air
Tagged disability, Douglas Smith, fantasy, horror, interviews, literature for social change, mixed genres, myth, news, On Air, podcast, Science Fiction, Trent Radio, werewolves
August 4, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
Blind Vision Quest
A Review of Douglas Smith's The Wolf at the End of the World (Forthcoming)
Cover photo for The Wolf at the End of the World courtesy of Douglas Smith
The Wolf at the End of the World is a tale that would resonate with the spirit of any environmentalist – the struggle of diverse species to survive, the conflict with human greed and capitalism, the invasiveness of the human presence on animal life, and also the potential for a shift in human consciousness toward a connection with the animal world, an acknowledgement of our dependency on our environment and eco diversity. As he often does, Douglas wields myth as a tool for pedagogy, much like myth-tellers have been doing throughout history. He taps into that vital essence of the story to reveal truths that we ignore in our mundane world and teaches complexity through the poetics of language and potentials of symbols.
Smith's work, as always, is full of potent ambiguities, the moral questions that fill us with the potential to interrogate our world and challenge the assumptions that have become part of living our lives. He does this through beautiful prose and an exciting and powerful story. Smith tackles issues of huge importance for our understanding of modernity such as the relationship of the human to our environment, the power of greed, the emptiness that comes from loneliness, the danger of secrecy (particularly government initiated secrets), ideas of ability and disability, the relationship of indigenous people to the state, and the general issue of bodily and identity difference. He recognises that accepting difference is a complex process, even for the person who is fundamentally ostracised and cast socially as different.
The Wolf at the End of the World is a text of loss and hunger, the pining for that which is missing, absent, taken away, or desired, and Smith embodies this in the figure of the Windigo, a being from Indigenous cosmologies that is the embodiment of hunger with a heart of ice, an insatiable appetite. It is the perfect symbol of modernity, with all of our greed, our loneliness, our desire for something we have lost or not yet obtained… it reminds us of our absences. The Windigo, despite being the villain in this novel, becomes a form of teacher, espousing a pedagogy about the dangers of desire, the dangers of creating a heart of ice and always wanting and losing ourselves to greed as a way of trying to fill the spot in ourselves that has become empty (or icy) because of our feeling of loss. The Windigo is a great expression of the modern condition.
In contrast to the Windigo are the Heroka, figures who are shape-shifters, able to speak to and connect on a spiritual level to animals, and a boy, Zach, who is sorting through his difference – as a blind person, as someone who is half Cree and who does not know about his father. His mother, who is Cree, has been running from her heritage, trying to ignore her past, and she fears her son's difference, and also the secrets that she has kept from him about his father's heritage and the potential differences that are inherent in it. But, Zach's differences are his strengths, things that have shaped him and he is put into the position of accepting his differences and becoming even further different from the socially-defined norms or of passing as "normal" and missing something of himself.
Ancient gods reenact mythic roles, renewing and changing the world around them to play out what it means to be human and what it means to be spirit and animal. Trickster spirits play with human lives, challenging them to change, learn, and grow, and to question everything they have been taught and the world that has shaped them. The reader is carried along on this mythic tale, taught the potential of stories to challenge us and make us more aware.
To find out more about Douglas Smith and The Wolf at the End of the World, visit his website at http://www.smithwriter.com/the_wolf_at_the_end_of_the_world . This novel will be coming out soon and you can link through the website above to pre-order a copy.
Posted in Fiction Book Reviews
Tagged animal, Anishinabe, Blindness, capitalism, Cree, CSIS, disability, Douglas Smith, environmentalism, government secrets, greed, identity, indigenous peoples, loneliness, loss, moral questions, myth, outsider, questioning social conventions, reviews, shape-shifter, Trickster, werewolf, Windigo
April 27, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
Spec Can made the short list for a Prix Aurora Award
I have exciting news – Speculating Canada has made the short list for the Prix Aurora Awards. I am excited to see that Speculating Canada has made such an impact and that people are excited about the unique way that Spec Can explores Canadian SF.
I want to thank everyone who has participated in various ways in shaping Speculating Canada into what it is today. Speculating Canada has been very collaborative, growing out of the support, encouragement, and suggestions of readers. I have been very lucky to have very incredible Canadian SF authors and publishers take interest in Spec Can and am fortunate that so many of them have sent me books to review that I would not have otherwise encountered. I also want to thank all of those who I have interviewed for their incredible insights, general brilliance, and for giving me the exciting experience of chatting with them about things that I am really passionate about.
Here is the Short List for the Prix Aurora Awards:
http://www.prixaurorawards.ca/2013-aurora-award-ballot/
I am excited to say that a few of the authors on the short list are people that I consider to be friends and that there are several works that Speculating Canada has reviewed this year that have made the short list. Here are a few links to reviews of items on the Prix Aurora Awards short list:
Karen Dudley's Food For The Gods
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/xena-meets-iron-chef/
Chadwick Ginther's Thunder Road
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/true-norse-strong-and-free/
Leah Bobet's Above
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/empowering-the-freak/
Douglas Smith's The Walker of the Shifting Borderland
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-speculative/
Sandra Kasturi and Halli Villegas' Imaginarium 2012
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/imagining-canadian-speculative-fiction/
Helen Marhsall's Hair Side, Flesh Side
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/textual-bodies/
On Spec
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/transformative-art/
Thank you all for your continued support. I am so pleased that Speculating Canada has allowed me to connect with so many amazing and brilliant people.
Derek Newman-Stille
Posted in Editorials
Tagged Aurora Awards, Chadwick Ginther, community, Douglas Smith, Editorials, Halli Villegas, Helen Marshall, Karen Dudley, Leah Bobet, OnSpec, Sandra Kasturi
March 22, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
Science and Speculative Fiction
An editorial on Science and Speculative Fiction By Derek Newman-Stille
Although as a society, we often create an impenetrable barrier between the arts and sciences, seeing each as separate and distinct from one another, these barriers are historically created and are social inventions. The origin of science is through philosophy, remember. Science Fiction (or more widely, Speculative Fiction) is one of the arenas where there are still obvious bridges between the arts and sciences – being a production of artistic endeavor, but also dealing with ideas coming out of technology and sciences.
Several Canadian SF authors including Julie Czerneda, Scott Fotheringham, and Nina Munteanu have operated in the field of science, noticing the opportunity that SF provides to explore critical questions around science. Czerneda has even used science fiction as a mechanism for teaching students about science, allowing them to play out scientific ideas in a science fictional setting.
SF allows authors to explore the social implications of science, the social contexts and ideological underpinnings that accompany scientific endeavors. SF explores the social ramifications of scientific ideas and developments, exploring what could happen, where things could go, what social issues could develop in correspondence with technological invention, seeing the sociocultural aspect of science rather than viewing scientific ideology as separate from the social sphere and divorced from its ideological implications. SF can provide a critical lens to scientific pursuits, providing writers and readers the opportunity to insert the deeper questions into scientific explorations: asking "Why?", "What happens if…?", and "What could come from this?".
So often, scientists are wrapped up in the act of invention, in the process of discovery, that they ignore what the implications of their research could be, how it could be used (and for whom), and how it could be made to serve purposes for which it was not intended. The research for research's sake mentality sometimes cultivates an ideology that ignores social implications. SF can provide social warnings about where things could go, bringing ideas back into the world and seeing how they could play out within a political, societal sphere.
SF often displays scientific ideas magnified, extremified, exaggerated to illustrate possible implications, highlighting the dangers as well as the potentialities that could be embodied in the process of discovery, and the hazardous places that society could take scientific invention to. SF can be a place to explore moral issues in relation to technology – what are the implications of invention? How will inventions shift our consciousness and the way we view the world? Will we still capture what is fundamentally human if we switch our basic behaviours, our patterns of thought, or even our bodies themselves?
Writers can use SF as a medium for exploring whether the social or the technological will be a greater mechanism of change. Scott Fotheringham's The Rest is Silence explores whether social change or technological change will be the thing that will deter the destruction of our natural environment and deal with the development of pollutants. Will we be able to shift our way of thinking about the world to be more ecologically safe, or will we once again try to rely on a technological invention to solve our problems?
SF can illustrate the limits of science to repair our social problems. We tend, as a society, to put a lot of faith in the idea that science will solve our problems, whether they be environmental (as illustrated by our trend to introduce new species into ecosystems as an attempt to control those ecosystems) or medical (believing that the medical profession can solve our bodily ills).We often take science as a given solution, as an ideology founded in concepts of "Truth", rather than a set of theories that is open to challenge and is historically contingent (formed from a specific line of thought that has developed over time). SF provides a space to question the unquestioned authority of science and our social belief that science can solve our world's ills.
One of the fora of scientific exploration that SF has been doing a great job of critiquing is the field of medicine, and, particularly, the ideologies that are created from viewing the body mechanically (as something that can be fixed through forced normalisation). One of the areas that is most affected by the medicalised 'normalcy' forced on bodies is the area of diverse bodies, and people with disabilities, who are often subjected to painful procedures in an attempt to normalise their bodies rather than shifting social ideologies to allow for more diversity and more accessible spaces for diverse bodies. Leah Bobet does a great job of critiquing the medicalised body in her YA novel Above, where she presents readers with a group of individuals who are mutated or bodily different in certain ways (either with crab arms, the ability to transform into a bee, lion feet, or the ability to speak to ghosts) who have escaped from medical facilities that broke their feet, cut off their arms, and subjected them to harsh medical drugs in order to force their bodies to resemble the human 'norms'. These people created a community called "Safe", a place of safety away from the "Whitecoats" (doctors, scientists, psychiatrists, and other medical practitioners). The ideas of healing used by the Whitecoats were shaped by the idea that only certain bodies are normal, and any others are threatening and would be changed (even in painful and destructive ways) to represent that norm.
Camille Alexa, in her short story "All Them Pretty Babies" (from OnSpec Vol 24, No 3) takes this idea even further, presenting a future in which the population is limited, and yet, the society that is fighting for its own survival is still willing to cast out those who are bodily different, those mutations that threaten ideas of the normal. Scientists cast bodies out into areas of intense radiation while they try to preserve their ideas of what is and should be human, allowing anyone who deviates from that idea of humanity to rot in radioactive woods.
In Sparkle Hayter's naked brunch, a doctor tries to medicalise the werewolf. Rather than accepting it as a figure of legend, he ascribes a disease to this different body: "Lycanthropoic Metamorphic Disorder". He treats these medically diverse bodies as threatening, trying to force the werewolves to pass as human, subjecting them to harsh treatments that lead to chemical addictions and often death in an attempt to have them be more like 'normal', 'regular' human beings. He and his society deny the possibility that diverse bodies are useful and even necessary in a social system, that this diversity can be healthy.
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake illustrates the extremes of danger that could be involved in the economicisation of medical technology. Her future is one in which pharmaceutical companies have solved all of the medical problems, but periodically release viral epidemics to spur the social need to buy more advanced cures and spend more money on medical advances to fuel the pharmaceutical industry. She shadows the issues we see in our society now where a great deal is medically possible, but the access to that medical technology is often restricted by wealth, and where often research is focussed on treatment (which is a greater long term investment) than on cures.
Canadian SF can also point out our reliance on technology. Joseph Macchiusi's The Betelgeuse Oracle shows a world after the release of a massive EM pulse and the challenges of a world without technology. Urban spaces become deserts cut off from the modes of production, and characters have to adapt to a world that is different from the one that suffused their existence since birth. One character is so dependent on his connection to technology and particularly to communications technology and the need to be connected that he carries his dead cell phone everywhere with him and spends precious moments alternating batteries to try to re-activate it. Scott Fotheringham's The Rest is Silence illustrates the world's reliance on plastic and the social breakdowns that occur when plastic is removed from our society.
One of the issues with science is that it often limits things into easy (and uncritical) categories (such as binary notions of gender), and good Canadian SF complicates these theories, disrupts this boundaries and categories and shows the complexity of the issues involved. It questions the foundations of categorization altogether.
SF doesn't just critique scientific endeavours, SF also provides the opportunity for creative thought. So often people become limited in their outlook, navel-gazing within their own field and looking only at what is currently possible instead of what is impossible. Often it is in the sphere of the impossible where new ideas are found, new visions of things, and new ways of considering things outside of what is 'normal'. Reading and writing SF allows for the development of insights into the impossible, the places of new innovation and new ways of thinking about the world.
SF explores the "what ifs" that are the foundation of scientific hypothesis building.
Science and SF can provide a powerful conversation with each other, changing, questioning, and challenging each other.
Here are some points that SF authors have raised about Science in their Interviews on Speculating Canada:
SCOTT FOTHERINGHAM
(https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/interview-with-scott-fotheringham/ )
Scott Fotheringham: I wanted to use what I had learned of biology to perform a thought experiment: What would happen if plastic began to disappear? Because
Author photo courtesy of Scott Fotheringham
that probably won't happen because we choose to make it happen, I wondered if organisms could digest plastic.
Scott Fotheringham: "much of science is goal-driven or product-driven. Scientists create things that are worth a lot of money but have little social value or actually harm us."
Scott Fothertingham: "The questions I'd like to see asked – particularly by the scientists themselves – are, What value does the work I'm doing have to society? How will this be used and, if it has potential for harm, should we pursue the research at all? So often scientists shrug their shoulders and say it's not up to them how their inventions and discoveries are employed. This is a grievous abdication of their responsibility."
Scott Fotheringham: "Right now our intention is to use technology to make money. Only if that changes will we able to work to heal what we've wrought."
Scott Fotheringham: "Reading gives us insight into how other people view the world. If all I had was my experience, and that didn't include reading, my view of how the world works would be narrower than it is."
JULIE CZERNEDA
(https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/interview-with-julie-czerneda/ )
Julie Czerneda: "From the beginning, to me, biology and science fiction differed in degree, not substance. Biology filled me with wonder and curiosity. All science
Photo of Julie Czerneda by Roger Czerneda
does. The universe does. Reading science fiction did that. Writing it? Ah, there was the legal, moral, and fun way to answer my own questions."
Julie Czerneda: "what I write, the stories I tell, come from what interests me. So there are cool real bits of biology everywhere in my stuff. I couldn't make up the weirdness of real life."
Julie Czerneda: "Because nothing lives in isolation, an ecological approach gives a writer the opportunity to fit the puzzle together. To have alternative points of view and unintended consequences. All the intricate and messy ways things happen."
Julie Czerneda: "The more the merrier! Or, in the case of living things, the more stable and resilient the community. It's interactions that interest me. The interface between any two or more creatures is full of change and adaptation and lovely icky bits. In storytelling — and real life — I'd rather toss a problem at a group of people (or whatever I have in mind at the moment) who'll each have a different approach to a solution, if they see it as a problem at all."
Julie Czerneda: "I believe, passionately, that science fictional thinking is a crucial survival skill. We all need to ask questions, to speculate about possible consequences in an imaginative, yet as close to real fashion as possible, and to become able to assess incoming information in a critical, not cynical manner. Imagination is of immense use, too often undervalued. We who live and breath SF rarely appreciate what a strong and active muscle our minds have developed. I'd like everyone to have the same advantage. To ride society's changes, rather than be swept away. To decide where and how technology best fits our needs, before it's in our homes."
Julie Czerneda: "I've had success using science fiction with students to get them "talking science." SF provides useful vocabulary, presented in context. Story dialogue gives examples of conversations centred about science as something immediately important to the characters."
Julie Czerneda: "I've also worked with a professor who, for many years now, has used science fiction as an integral part of his first year astronomy course. Students take what they've learned about the science and apply it to alien world-building as an SF writer would do it. I'm proud to say this class has been using Beholder's Eye (my second novel) as part of this process."
Julie Czerneda: "We need people who can bring science to life, who can clearly express complex ideas in meaningful ways to a varied audience. SF? Does it all the time."
Julie Czerneda: "What we can't imagine, we can't create, so there's one. What we can't imagine, we can't prepare against or for, so that's another. Imagination is essential to our survival, as individuals and as a species, and has been for eons. The sad thing is that it can atrophy from lack of use or be stunted by those who've lost their own. The best? The more it's used, the stronger it becomes."
Julie Czerneda: "What technology is to science, I suspect curiosity is to imagination."
Julie Czerneda: "I take pleasure and pride in what makes science fiction a speculation about the real world, by asking that one "what if …" then building a story framework that lets me play with an answer, while keeping as much of what we know factual and true to life. I've no problem inviting a reader to play along with FTL and aliens, but I won't mess with anything more and there's always a science question at the heart of my plot. What if life evolved this way or that? How might biological imperatives affect technological civilizations? Who might we become in the future? What cost is too high or risk too great, when manipulating genetics? I love how science fiction gives me insight into these and any other questions I might have.
KARL SCHROEDER
(https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/interview-with-karl-schroeder/ )
Karl Schroeder: "We spend much of our lives programming ourselves to react automatically rather than to think. It's faster, costs less energy. Part of that process involves the ossification of our basic categories: man/woman, human/nonhuman. SF deliberately blurs these categories in order to almost literally wake us up. It's strangemaking, which is a very valuable capacity, especially in the present situation when the world needs innovative new solutions to some pretty dire problems. It's not that SF presents, or even can present, the solutions to big issues like global warming or global poverty; it's that it helps educate us in the kind of thinking that can lead to them."
Karl Schroeder: "Realism, in literature, painting, and science, is just the rule of the lowest common denominator. It's not actually a successful stance in science, for instance; strictly realist approaches to quantum mechanics fall into paradox pretty quickly. Realism achieves some stability in understanding the world by simply discarding 99% of all the available data (whether that be measurements, opinions, or political stances). That's what the muggles do in the Harry Potter stories… They only think about, and therefore can only see, those things they've decided are 'real.' What's that saying? "If all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." That's muggle thinking."
Karl Schroeder: "There's lots of technologies that are flashy, or might have this or that big effect on the world. Nuclear fusion, augmented reality, nanotech… yeah, they're all great. But we don't need them. There's only one development that we need at this point in our history: better methods and systems for decision-making, both individual and collective."
Karl Schroeder: "We have all the technologies—all the tools and capabilities and understandings—to create a Utopia on Earth now. We can absolutely solve the problem of global warming, for instance; we even know how to reverse it with technologies we currently possess. What's become abundantly clear in the past couple of decades is that the only thing we lack is the ability to make, and follow-through on, the right decisions. So much of my work right now is dedicated to asking what we need to do to get to such capabilities."
Karl Schroeder: "Do you imagine or write a future where anything is possible except the invention of prostheses to compensate for the inadequacies of human decision-making? Does your worldbuilding encompass universes with star flight, robots and nanotech—yet accept royalty, corporations and bureaucracies as inevitable?"
NINA MUNTEANU
(https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/interview-with-nina-munteanu/ )
Nina Munteanu: "The literature of the fantastic: speculative literature, science fiction, fantasy… explore—nay—celebrate and bridge the gap between logic and
Author photo courtesy of Nina Munteanu
imagination, the mundane and the extraordinary, the known and the strange, order and infinite possibility."
Nina Munteanu: "Speculative fiction predicts consequence to current conditions. It projects into the future or alternate reality from current paradigms in science, technology and society. Speculative fiction uses the premise, "What if?": "What if this continued?" "What if we used that this way?"; "What if this caused that?". It provides the proverbial "canary in the mine" on society. Where realist fiction makes commentary on our current society, speculative fiction takes that commentary into the realm of consequence by showing it to us in living colour. It is the ghost of future, present and past to our Scrooge. The arm of speculative fiction reaches far. This is its power over realist fiction and why, I think, mainstream realist authors like Margaret Atwood have discovered and embraced this genre (her latest three books are all speculative fiction). Speculative fiction doesn't just "tell us"; it can "show us"."
Nina Munteanu: "Both ecology and science fiction explore consequence in a big way."
Nina Munteanu: "My ecological interests and experiences have influenced my writing in every way: in providing me with ideas, in world-building, and in the interactive fractal nature of plot, theme, character and premise. For me, the two are intertwined. Writing science fiction has opened the doors of creative problem solving in my scientific pursuits; and my science has opened windows of possibilities in my writing. It's a win-win situation, really."
Nina Munteanu: "Most science and technology presents itself in literature through premise or plot, which influence various characters in their life journeys. Ecology—like setting—manifests and integrates itself more in theme. This is because, while most of the hard sciences study the nature and behavior of "phenomena", ecology studies the consequences of the relationship of these phenomena and the impact of their behaviors on each other and the rest of the "world"."
Nina Munteanu: "Environmental issues are largely a global phenomenon—concerns like water quality and quantity, air pollution, resource acquisition, allocation and sharing, wildlife extinction, etc. Science fiction is the literature of consequence that explores large issues faced by humankind; it can provide an important vehicle in raising environmental awareness. Literature in general has always served as a cultural reporter on themes important to humanity….The science fiction genre—and speculative fiction particularly—explores premise based on current scientific and technological paradigms. What if we kept doing this?…What if that went on unchecked?… What if we decided to end this?… These are conveyed through the various predictive visions from cautionary tales (e.g., Atwood's "Oryx and Crake") to dystopias (e.g., Huxley's "Brave New World").
JEROME STUEART
(https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/interview-with-jerome-stueart/ )
Jerome Stueart: "Speculation is about seeing natural consequences, about thinking about choices and figuring out where they will lead, and about large-scale
Author photo courtesy of Jerome Stueart
societal consequences. I think speculative fiction is the reason we don't condone cloning, or have nuclear war—science fiction showed us that there are no good ways of having those, and we believed them."
Jerome Stueart: ""I would put MORE speculative literature in the classroom…. I would teach kids to imagine their own futures—what will they be doing 20 years from now, and what will society be like. What do they WANT society to be like? And where do they see the forces in control trying to lead us? Kids can be taught to think speculatively and use it wisely. "
Jerome Stueart: "I think SF can help us get ready for change, and see change as positive and desirable. We get in our ruts. If we want the Star Trek universe—we're gonna have to work for it. LOL. But I think it can examine multiple paths for us—examining all possible scenarios and showing us a positive path.
Jerome Stueart: "Maybe that's the greatest strength of SF—it has a wide angled lens. SF is about commenting on societal problems more than character problems. Maybe that's why the characters can be more universal, and sometimes flatter, because SF is interested in the "what if" of the story—the what if of the society. It can handle a universal character because the society is what we want to examine in SF, and the choices a society makes."
Jerome Stueart: "I think the current problems with getting the world to understand climate change is directly related to an inability to speculate—or see the future from the evidence you have. Society has equipped scientists to extrapolate from their research, but we don't take their recommendations because we don't trust science anymore, or intelligence. Unless the majority of the population respects knowledge, has a healthy speculative mind, they can't see consequences."
(https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/interview-with-douglas-smith/ )
Douglas Smith: "That's the power of SF and fantasy (and I'd put SF as a specific subset of fantasy)–there are fewer (no?) limitations to the types of stories that I can tell."
Douglas Smith: "If there is a social issue that a writer wishes to explore and bring attention to, speculative fiction provides the freedom through its "distorted mirror" to let a writer bring whatever focus they desire to that issue."
Tagged biology, body, Camille Alexa, critique of science, disability, Diversity, Douglas Smith, ecology, Editorials, environmentalism, gender, Jerome Stueart, Joseph Macchiusi, Julie Czerneda, Karl Schroeder, Leah Bobet, literature for social change, Margaret Atwood, medical, mutation, Nina Munteanu, psychiatric, psychological disability, questioning social conventions, science, science and science fiction, Scott Fotheringham, social versus technological change, Sparkle Hayter, unfamiliar body, werewolves
January 1, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
Year in Review: What is Canadian Speculative Fiction – from the authors
People are often asking if there is such a thing as "Canadian identity", something that differentiates Canada from other nations. I thought I would ask authors if they thought that there was something distinctly Canadian about Canadian Speculative Fiction or how much they felt that their Canadian identity influenced their writing.
I have provided links to the full interviews below each author's comments so you can re-read them or, if you haven't had a chance to read them yet, to read them for the first time.
Claude Lalumiere:
"I know that [my Canadian identity] does [influence my writing], but I am not sure if I'm equipped to know how, aside from the fact that Montreal is often an important setting in my stories. On the subject of my being a Canadian writer, Paul Di Filippo, in his introduction to The Door to Lost Pages, wrote, 'Claude Lalumière is not only a universal author but a regional writer. His native Canada, specifically the city of Montreal, is as much a player in these stories as the people, even when not specifically named. There's some numinous element of these tales that acts as a counterbalance to the hegemony of US fantasy trilogies. We are hearing a voice literally from beyond the lands we (we American readers) know.'"
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/interview-with-claude-lalumiere/
Steve Vernon:
"We Canadians are champion diehard storytellers. I mean take a look at our winters. Take a look at our television network. Take a look at our mosquitoes. What else have we got to do but to tell stories to each other?
"In some ways my Canadian identity limits me – in that it is harder to find my place in the international market. But my Canadian identity helps make me the writer that I am today. Remember – I have a half dozen regional books out at this moment from Nimbus Publishing – Nova Scotia's largest publishing network. I am also close to signing a contract with another new Canadian publisher for a series of YA horror novels. My regional books have sold in the thousands – which makes me a bestselling author in Canada."
"Nova Scotians are the true storytellers of Canada. We have an even worse selection in television, bigger mosquitos, and less opportunity for honest work. Again I ask you what else can we do but sit around and spin out yarns?"
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/interview-with-steve-vernon/
Ian Rogers:
"Is there something that makes our stories inherently Canadian? Possibly, but it would probably take someone who isn't from here to determine that. They say you should write what you know. I agree with that, but I would add a corollary: you should also write where you know. I know Canada, specifically Toronto and the GTA, so that's where I typically set my stories."
"I like to think that Canadian authors are reclaiming the "horror" word in much the same way David Cronenberg reclaimed it for Canadian film."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/interview-with-ian-rogers/
Nancy Kilpatrick:
"I think my work is multi-national, multi-cultural and encompasses a lot of attitudes and values that Canadians hold to like gender equality and equal pay for equal work. For example, I'll use fairness. Canadians like to be fair and that leads to that stereotyping of people from this country always apologizing. But really, it's not so much apologizing out of guilt–as the Americans imagine–as Canadians being polite, acknowledging the other person's existence and that they, too, have rights. I think my writing incorporates that even in the conflicts of the story, even when a character is obnoxious. I try to give the characters the chance to do the right thing. If they do, they are holding to my values and the values I see around me, despite how much the current climate tends to try to erode those values."
"I'd say that in general, Canadians write with intelligence, and that includes the darker genres. They are educated and that becomes clear when you read the stories and novels. Nothing here is slapped together and I suspect that's because in the past we didn't have a horror publishing industry so writers have had to work harder, knowing their English-language markets were in the U.S. and Britain, and the French markets in France."
"Besides being thoughtful and intelligent, Canadians write from their experience. Cities here are different than cities in the U.S. For example, our citizens don't carry guns. Our landscape involves a lot of nature, which is important to Canadians, and that allows for a certain type of horror that can be both visceral and psychological. Characters in the stories and novels produced in this country — and I've read a lot of short fiction for the four anthologies I've edited for Edge (two were all Canadian authors and the other two have a goodly chunk of Canucks) and the eight before those for the U.S. market — read like real people, well-constructed, with depth and lives and thought-processes which aren't stereotyped. Because the characters are intelligent, even if a tad whimsical, readers can respect them. There's nothing worse in a horror novel or story than the clichés, for example: "Let's split up!" Stories by Canadians strike me as having characters who are loners, not necessarily out of some twisted or evil past but more because of the way we live here, a kind of self-sufficiency that isn't bitter. What I mean is, you get characters who just get on with it and deal with things to the best of their ability. And most of the time they don't have arsenals at their disposal so they have to use brain-power while coping with the emotions evoked by the horrific situation.
"Don Hutchison, who was the editor of the wonderful anthology series Northern Frights, used to say he thought Canadians wrote with a sense of place, and that might be what I'm getting at. But I think it's more. I think the place shapes the person and their world view and how they cope with everything. What I like about what I'm reading by Canadians — besides the fact that they like to slide between genres, which I find fun — is that they bring themselves to the fore and that Canadianism is recognizable. In my view, we don't need the government shoving Canadian content down our throats as if it has to be protected or die out, or shoving language down our throats, ditto the reasons. These things already exist and can stand on their own. It's who we are and it shines through in the writing. When travelling, one can usually spot travelers who are English or French or German because they are distinctive. But you can also spot Canadians because we are distinctive in our way. Canadians are nice, fair, friendly without being in your face, and honest. Why Canadians don't see and appreciate these rare qualities in themselves, I don't know, but it's also in the writing and in the books we're now producing that are in the horror/dark fantasy genre and that's one of the reasons Canadian fiction stands out."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/interview-with-nancy-kilpatrick/
Paul Marlowe:
"If I can depart from the standards of civil debate for a moment, I would suggest that in a country where anti-intellectualism is on the rise – where anyone interested in technology or SF is branded a geek, and where a political leader such as Stéphane Dion can be discredited amongst the public by being called "professor" by that weird gang of mediocrities, cranks, embarrassing amateurs, control-freaks, spin-doctors, and corporate sock-puppets comprising the Government – the question facing Canadian SF is: how many of us want to think?"
"It's probably premature to begin identifying what, if anything, differentiates Canadian from international steampunk. If its popularity survives for more years, then a comparison might be worthwhile. In some ways, the real history of Canada is kind of like an alternate history of the United States – we were the part of British North America that chose to stay British. Those who didn't want to become republican Americans came here as Loyalists.
"Once you get past the superficial bric-a-brac of steampunk that is common in books from various countries, the Canadian angle has interesting opportunities, since it places the reader in North America, and yet also in the greatest multinational empire that has ever been.
"For a writer of fiction, the fluid, evolving nature of the empire that Canada was a member of provides plenty of opportunities to imagine what it might have become, for better or worse, had its evolution proceeded differently."
"Not being a scholar of Canadian SF, I don't know if my forecast would be any better than those of Environment Canada since their budget cuts. It looks like SF will continue to be sidelined, culturally, for the foreseeable future, since there's a sort of literary apartheid in Canada (as in other countries), which places SF down in the lowest class where it can be disenfranchised by excluding it from the grants, prizes, reviews, media attention, and the rest of the grease and hot air that lets the literary machine chug along, hoisting books out of the shadows and into the public eye.
"Some countries, perhaps, do a bit better than Canada. In the US, where every stage of the Lit Cycle from writing to reviewing to award-giving isn't subsidized by a federal or provincial ministry of official culture, there seems to be an acknowledgement that literature consists of something beyond self-conscious nation building, lyrical tales of suicide on the prairies during the Great Depression, and other dismally "realistic" but morally uplifting fare. Coincidentally, the US also has a huge SF publishing industry, attracting writers from, among other countries, Canada. And there's probably a reason why writers like Sir Terry Pratchett appear in the UK, and not in Canada. Despite there being the same tendency to pretentious literary cliques in the UK as we have here, Pratchett was knighted (the equivalent of a Companion of the Order of Canada), his works have been performed as stage plays, as TV programmes, and on the BBC, and he won this year's Wodehouse Prize (equivalent of the Leacock Medal, but with more pigs and champagne). Writing SF requires imagination, but I'm not sure that I have enough to imagine a Canadian fantasy writer being similarly celebrated by his or her country.
"Government assistance was certainly necessary here to kindle a national book industry and literary institutions. Unfortunately for many "genre" writers, it's now simply supporting an industry that does little for them but denigrate and ignore their work. Canadian literature won't be as rich and varied as it might be until the bigotry of the industry abates. I suppose the best way for that to happen might be for more people involved in Canadian SF to sit on grant & prize juries, write reviews, and speak out when they're discriminated against, not on their literary merit, but on their choice of subject matter (or choice of friends)."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/an-interview-with-paul-marlowe-about-the-wellborn-conspiracy-series/
Douglas Smith:
"Well, beyond the Canadian and Toronto settings in many of my stories, now that I think of it, one of the [Canadian] themes that recurs in my work, especially the Heroka shapeshifter stories, is that of the conflict between our civilization and the natural wilderness, as our resource-based industries, which feed our cities' growing hunger for timber, water, power, minerals, and land, consumes more and more of the natural world and habitats of our wildlife. Our country has always been defined by its vast wilderness areas, and yet the huge majority of our population lives in only a few highly urbanized pockets of that vastness. So there's this destructive dichotomy between us and the land we live in–we live off of the land but we don't really live in it. But for those who do live there and for the wildlife species that live there, we're destroying more of that wilderness every year to feed the hunger of the cities. This is the central theme in The Wolf at the End of the World and in most of my other Heroka stories. The Heroka are a race of shape shifters whose vitality as a race is tied directly to the vitality of their totem animal species, species that are dwindling as their natural habitats are destroyed by logging or mining concerns, or flooded for hydro-electric projects.
"Other Canadian themes in my work include a suspicion of both corporate and political power, a suspicion that I think is greater here in Canada than, for example, in the US."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/interview-with-douglas-smith/
Kelley Armstrong:
"I don't think [Canadian supernatural fiction] is heading anywhere different than supernatural fiction in general, which is beginning a downswing. It will never go away completely, but the market will be smaller."
"There are differences in the [Canadian versus other nations']markets. What is a bestseller in the US will not necessarily be a bestseller in Britain. That's the same for all geographic areas—Canada also has differences from both. The literature produced in our country reflects the differences in regional taste. I'm not sure it affects the supernatural aspects of the story as much as the general ones—the tone, the themes etc."
"[My Canadian identity] makes it easier to do Canadian characters and settings 🙂 On the other hand, it makes it harder to do American ones, and that's where a lot of my stories are set, for the simple fact that I can have a larger cast of supernaturals that way—it's easier to speculate that so many supernatural beings go unnoticed if the population is much larger. Beyond that, I don't feel it's had much impact on my opportunities as an author or how I'm treated."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/interview-with-kelley-armstrong/
Chadwick Ginther:
"I quite enjoyed blending Canadian folklore with other myth cycles. It's a sandbox I could see myself playing in for a long time. It's easy to think that Canada doesn't have a folklore unique to our borders. But I don't think that's the case. I would love to see our own folk stories and tall tales take centre stage. I would also love to see Indigenous writers bringing modern takes on their myths and folklore to the fantasy genre. Something I've so far only really seen from Daniel Heath Justice."
"Because I so enjoyed mixing myth and Manitoba, I also hope that Thunder Road can inspire readers to look more closely at their homes to find those ties to the mythological past."
"I have to be honest, I've never thought about my work in [the] context [of its Canadian identity]. I certainly didn't set out to write the Great Canadian Fantasy novel and am woefully unfamiliar with the Canadian literary canon (perhaps if it included more dragons and robots…). I suppose one could say there is an element of the immigrant's tale to Thunder Road, not a uniquely Canadian experience, but we are a nation built by immigrants. It's one of the reasons I decided not to make Manitoba Ted [the main character from Thunder Road]'s home. Having him trying to start a new mundane life in an unfamiliar place echoed his becoming a part of the Nine Worlds, and the new fantastical life that awaited him."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/chadwick-ginther-interview/
Karen Dudley:
"I do believe that Canadians (myself included) have a distinctive sense of humour – part bawdy British, part self-deprecating Canadian. I'm not sure an American, for example, could have written a book like Food for the Gods. Canadians also have a reputation for being nice. I'm not sure if I'm nice or not (I like to think I am!), but as a Canadian, I can't relate to the more extreme or paranoid political cultures. This can't help but inform my work, and my characters tend to display a certain tolerance and trust in their world which matches my own."
"Apart from the same way it speaks to any modern reader, I think here in Canada, we have a unique perspective on mythologies simply because so many of us come from different cultures and traditions. That's a lot of stories, a lot of different perspectives on how we live our lives. With such an incredibly rich diversity, these myths have something to say to just about anybody regardless of which cultural tradition they come from."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/interview-with-karen-dudley-about-food-for-the-gods/
Liz Strange:
"I try to set a majority of my works in Canada, or at least have a Canadian character represented. Our recognition in the world as peace keepers, progressive thinkers and top providers to our citizens is very important to me. I am proud of my nationality and our country's history, and come from a long line of writers, historians, politicians and educators."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/interview-with-liz-strange/
Helen Marhsall:
"Canada has always seemed to me to be a place struggling with memory. Both of my parents emigrated to Canada just before I was born, my mom from South Africa and my dad from England via Zimbabwe. I didn't feel a strong connection to Canadian history. I grew up reading books about European history, reading children's literature that was grounded in mythologies that seemed very distant. Stories were things that happened in other places. As a medievalist in Canada, I find I always have to explain why I do what I do. When I go to England, they get it. Because it's a part of their history and it matters to them. I've learned to live with that dissonance."
"I think the macabre in Canadian fiction accomplishes what the macabre accomplishes in all fiction: it gives us a sense of our own mortality, of the body as something that will inevitably die. It reacquaints us with fear, and at the same time it enlivens us. Does Canada have its own unique brand of the macabre? Most definitely. Canadian literature has been traditionally considered to have a strong vein of realism to it, but the macabre, the Weird—the kind of books that ChiZine Publications has championed–are doing something to open that up. That's good. I don't believe in straitjacketing literature."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/interview-with-helen-marshall/
Nina Munteanu:
"Canada is a truly multi-cultural country and serves an excellent fractal microcosm for writing about mixed civilizations in the universe."
"[Canadian Speculative Fiction] tends to be darker and more reflective. With fewer happy endings… LOL! Who else but a Canadian would write a science fiction romance with a tragic ending? When I wrote The Cypol (Extasy Books) I discounted the protocol of the romance genre for happy endings. The Canadian publisher accepted the novelette, which says a lot. Even though the critics liked it, romance fans hated the book. LOL! I think that Canadian SF authors bring a dark edge to the genre that slides a bit into literary fiction. Again, perhaps why Booker prize-winner in literary fiction Margaret Atwood finds herself writing speculative fiction. Her works are a good example of what Canadian SF writers do best: infuse meaningful reflection and deep allegory in speculation. I think much of Canadian speculative fiction springs from our multi-cultural and northern setting."
"I feel a strong Canadian identity and I'm certain it imbues my main characters and the cultures I portray. Firstly, I make a point of using Canadian places as settings for my fiction (if set on Earth, that is).
"I like that Robert J. Sawyer, back in the 1980s, either set part of his novels in Canada or made at least one of his main characters a Canadian. This was in a time when it wasn't vogue for a large American publisher to set your novel outside the USA unless it was some place globally recognized, like Paris. Sawyer wasn't the only one; other notable Canadian SF authors who set their stories in Canada include Charles De Lint, Cory Doctorow and Guy Gavriel Kay."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/interview-with-nina-munteanu/
Nancy Baker:
"One reviewer called my characters "kinder, gentler vampires", which strikes me as very Canadian. I certainly felt that you could not have the kind of violent, predatory vampires in Toronto that seemed common in U.S. vampire fiction – though one New York writer I shared a radio panel with seemed appalled at the idea that I assumed you could leave dead bodies all over Manhattan and no one would care. However, I don't think there's any particular type of Canadian vampire. Mine might be "kinder and gentler" but those are the last words you'd use to describe the vampire in Michael Rowe's Enter, Night. One of the interesting things about that book is that the demons that must be confronted are deeply rooted in the book's Northern Ontario setting and in a part of Canadian history we're conditioned to think of as something boring to study in public school. The evocation of nature as a shaping, often inimical, force is one of the things that is considered traditionally "Canadian" and it works brilliantly in that book."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/interview-with-nancy-baker/
Gemma Files:
"In her book Survival, Margaret Atwood once advanced the idea that all CanLit centres around a massive, indifferent, rejecting physical landscape and our place, or lack of one, within it. And while I initially found that idea hard to go by, mainly because I was raised in one of North America's cities. One thing I've learned from teaching Canadian film history is that Canadian "culture" is mainly defined negatively, like in the old Molson's "I am Canadian" beer commercial: We don't eat blubber, we don't have a President, etc.
"Nine times out of ten, particularly in English-speaking Canada, what we're defining ourselves against is the spectre of America—if I had a dollar for every time a student of mine from somewhere else in the world asked me to admit there's basically no difference between us and the U.S., I'd eat free for at least a week. Before that, however, it was about wanting to still be part of the British Empire even after they didn't have any use for us, and these days it's about how our vaunted multiculturalism mainly provides a way for us to stay in insular little groups and only interact when forced to. Which does, in the end, actually stem from geography: We're a country the size of the former Soviet Union with a population the size of California spread out across a very disparate series of environments, most of whom still maintain they were tricked into becoming part of one country united by a railway and a radio-television network.
"When you get down to it, our national self-image is entirely imposed from the outside, a generalization cobbled together from dreams and guilt, then historically distributed through a Film Board put together by a socialist Scots expatriate who hated Hollywood and a Broadcast Corporation run from Ottawa. No wonder we're so unable to explain what sets us apart. I always think about the title of one of Alice Munro's early short story collections, Who Do You Think You Are?, because it perfectly encapsulates the sort of crushing self-doubt and left-over British class system resentment of the individual's capacity for change in the face of static stagnation that defines the heart of the non-indigenous Canadian experience. And while it's slightly different when set within an urban context, it's not even vaguely as different as most of us would like to think.
"Which is all a very roundabout way of saying that there's a big empty place in the Canadian psyche that takes extremely well to fantasy. Hell, even our "non-genre" literature tends to have a massive streak of surrealism and magic realism in it—think about the work of Michael Ondaatje (a poet turned prose writer, which happens a lot up here), Wayson Choy, Paul Quarrington, Derek McCormack, Michael Helm, Anne-Marie McDonald, Barbara Gowdy, Margaret Laurence, Anne Hébert, Atwood herself. But whether you're talking about Charles de Lint and Guy Gavriel Kay or Susie Moloney, Andrew Pyper and Michael Rowe, our fantasy tends to be rooted in the uncomfortable, the self-reflective, the place where power and freedom come with a price, one that must be paid knowingly, and in blood. We accept coincidence and synchronicity, but also understand hubris, and karma. We expect doom at best, failure at worst. It's bleak, but it's familiar, especially to somebody who likes horror."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/interview-with-gemma-files/
Jerome Stueart:
"I think Canadian SF is darker and more experimental than mainstream American SF. I think the publishing industry allows for more kinds of individual author development—we have smaller publishers with greater weight in Canada. In the States, where every microgenre gets codified and calcified, I see a lot more of the same stuff coming out for consumers. I see a lot more undefinable genre in Canadian SF. A freedom because, partly, there's not a lot of fame on the table, but also because there's a desire to create a Canadian SF. It looks like we're nowhere near nailing a specific kind of SF, though, more inviting people to play. Look at Evolve from Edge—the SF future of vampires; look at anything Chizine is doing, which is so out there! It massacres genre-expectations. It also gives authors so much freedom.
"Canada has the opportunity to show what the future of Canada will be through SF, and use our regional identities as a way to forge a truly unique version of Canadian SF."
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/interview-with-jerome-stueart/
Posted in Interviews, News
Tagged anti-intellectualism, apologies, Canadian history, Canadian Identity, Chadwick Ginther, ChiZine, Claude Lalumiere, Diversity, Douglas Smith, education, fantasy, Gemma Files, gender, Helen Marshall, horror, Ian Rogers, Jerome Stueart, Karen Dudley, Kelley Armstrong, Landscape, Liz Strange, macabre, Manitoba, Margaret Atwood, memory, Montreal, multiculturalism, myth, Nancy Baker, Nancy Kilpatrick, nationality and SF, nature, Nina Munteanu, Nova Scotia, Paul Marlowe, place and identity, regional, Science Fiction, Steve Vernon, story-telling, Toronto, urban fantasy, winter
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text:
Aussie One Armed Bandits The New Big Brother
Greg Tingle
Mar/21/2011
G'day punters, casino and gambling millionaires and billionaires, legal eagles, government officials...one and all. Today we further investigate the case of proposed mandatory betting limits and the like on Australian poker machines. Media Man http://www.mediamanint.com and Gambling911 probe the Big Brother Australian pokier machine proposals...
It's game on as the Gillard - Labor government, independent MP Andrew Wilkie and a few more supporters try their best to force pokies players to commit to how much they plan to lose. Never mind about winning, but focus on the losing scenario ok.
The announcement that this mandatory plan for 'one armed bandits' will depend on smartcards (not biometrics), will go quite a ways in addressing concerns over privacy and the expensive of the rollout.
The Australian gambling sector that relies on the pokies pulls in some $12 billion in income a year.
Biometric tech was said to be a more comprehensive solution, but what's on the cards is going to be a lot easy to sidestep, says the word in the street and in and around the pokie dens.
Biometrics was going to cost the gaming industry many millions, if you believe the press releases. Punters and many media commentators also got a bit freaked about about the "New World Order" and "Big Brother" feel to the whole thing.
The smartcards are more user friendly and a bit easier to swallow
"The card is programmed and all the machine sees is: yes you can play," said Ian Donald, an executive with smartcard consultant Regis Controls.
He advised the joint Senate select committee on gambling reform that half of Australia's poker machines had smartcard readers. He placed the cost of full implementation at $500-$1000 a machine. All the information is contained on the card. That's the easy part. But how the cards are issued and controlled could produce unpopular recommendations when the committee reports to Parliament. One suggestion is that the cards be issued in the same way as a passport or driver's licence, with a 100-point identification system as well as a photo, to prevent card swapping among problem gamblers.
To the pubs and clubs bodies, such as Clubs Australia...plus local casinos already fighting to compete for high rolling VIPS with new casinos in Macau and Singapore - the concept of the casual gambler being forced to endure a ton of obstacles just to bet can be mind boggling.
These groups are leading the charge for a venue-based, voluntary, preset limit system.
One case put forward by the biggest poker machine beneficiaries, clubs and pubs, was whether the proposed system threatens the worst of all worlds...an expensive system that would scare away casual pokie lovers while providing little help to problem gamblers.
"Registering to use an entertainment product, carrying around a device and preselecting limits will be a disincentive to play for all," Clubs Australia president Peter Newell says.
"If clubs lose their recreational punters, they lose an important source of revenue and will no longer remain viable."
The Australasian Casino Association's Chris Downey sees problems ahead. The gambler would face an "unnecessarily bureaucratic process" if the smartcard system relied on a government agency to regulate and issue cards, although this would only apply to the casino's OABs (one armed bandits) and not, for example, its blackjack, roulette or another gambling offerings.
Clubs Australia flat our rejects the Productivity Commission's findings that up to 40% of poker machine earnings are derived from problem gamblers, but is promoting another 40% statistic; it says this is the potential revenue loss pubs and clubs face if mandatory limits are enacted, leading to huge lay offs.
Clubs with gambling facilities get about 61% of revenue from gambling, with almost the entire amount sourced from poker machines, according to the Productivity Commission's 2010 report on the gambling industry.
Clubs Australia says this is actually down from 5 years back when clubs started diversifying their revenue base.
The commission noted that some "very large clubs with gambling services" predominantly in New South Wales, derive 80% or more of their income from gambling. This means they are more reliant on gambling for their livelihood than Australia's land based casinos, which sourced 78% of revenue from gambling in 2007-08.
Pokies snatch some 41% of casino revenue.
The 12 biggest clubs in New South Wales netted $580 million from poker machine losses in 2007, according to the report.
The state government taxes gouge get about 25% of gambling revenue every year.
Gambling accounted 9% of NSW state revenue in 2008-09 and 13% of Victoria's. That's $1.6 billion for each state. Slots are the biggest money spinners.
The Victorian government has issues with the prop but it is seen to be tackling the problem with plans to remove ATMs from gaming venues by July next year, and the rollout of a voluntary scheme for gamblers by 2015-16.
Gillard and co are pushing hard since these sort of matters were a good part of the foundation of the much-needed support of independent MPs such as Wilkie. His written agreement with the Prime Minister includes the implementation of a national mandatory limit scheme to start in 2014.
Should problem gamblers set their own limits or should "Big Brother" keep out?
Speaking before the committee's public hearings last month, Professor Alex Blaszczynski, head of Sydney University's gambling treatment unit, supported the idea that limits can be effective if implemented properly but highlighted some of their flaws.
"Irrespective of whether you have a voluntary or a mandatory system, the real question in my view is for those problem and pathological gamblers who have impaired control: how do you stop them from increasing the limits?"
Blaszczynski says his biggest problem with the Productivity Commission report "is that it is based on an absence of effective research or evidence base".
This is not the fault of the commission or its findings, he says. "The difficulty is, of course, that the quality of research addressing many of these issues I think is lacking and, as a consequence, there is a lot of speculation about what the impacts are of specific gambling measures."
Australia is the 6th biggest gambling nation on Earth, and a number of experts think we may reach the top 3 within the next few years.
Readers... er, punters, how did you like our report? Tell us in the forum.
Take the time to research and learn games before placing down money.
Greg Tingle, Special Contributor to the Gambling911.com website
Gambling911.com has been serving the gambling community with news around the clock since September 2000.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Meek Mill isn't a free man. Despite his joyous appearances at Philadelphia 76ers games or his return to Kevin Hart's Instagram, the Philly native is still navigating the terms of his probation ahead of a hearing in June.
"I'm nervous every day being on probation," he said at a press conference Thursday.
During the conference, Meek mentioned last month's arrests of two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, where an employee called the police on the men who were waiting to meet a friend.
"If that was me in Starbucks on probation, I would have been, actually, in technical violation and still would have been able to be legally sentenced to two to four years in prison just because I came in contact with police," Meek said.


The appliances were all brand new and there was soap so that I could wash my clothes. There was coffee so I did not have to run out everyday. Phillipe was the best host, he was there with our keys and he gave us information around the area. Everything was new and very clean.
Fantastic location, cute flat and great communication with the host. Would definitely stay again.
Great facilities. Air con, coffee machine, cooker, fridge, washing machine etc. Location is excellent in a very cool neighbourhood. A truly excellent place to stay. Very good value too. Highly recommended.
I stay for a week with my daughter. Friendly host, clean, good facilities, private and good neighbourhood.
Super easy to find and good explanation of facilities on arrival. Felipe was very responsive to text messages and gave excellent suggestions of places to eat/drink. Very clean apartment.
The hospitality was amazing. The apartment was very cozy.
Лофт превосходно расположен. Для тех кто любит пешие прогулки все близко. Для тех кто любит транспорт две станции метро разных направлений в трех минутах ходьбы. Для тех кто готовит магазинчики прямо у парадной. Маленький супермаркет в 2 минутах. Кафе везде. Район города очень спокойный. Все , что заявлено у хозяина до мелочей совпадает. Хозяин перевел все необходимые инструкции на язык гостей= очень приятно. Хозяин открыи и пунктуален.
Lock in a great price for Slate Loft by Craft – rated 9.7 by recent guests!
Located in the Centro of Madrid, a 13-minute walk from Gran Via and one mile from Royal Palace of Madrid Palacio Real, Slate Loft by Craft offers free WiFi. The air-conditioned property is 1.3 miles from Temple of Debod.
The apartment features 1 bedroom, a kitchenette with an oven, a washing machine, and a bathroom with free toiletries. A flat-screen TV is featured.
Mercado San Miguel is 1.4 miles from Slate Loft by Craft. The nearest airport is Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport, 10 miles from the property.
When would you like to stay at Slate Loft by Craft?
This apartment has a dining area, air conditioning and washing machine.
House Rules Slate Loft by Craft takes special requests – add in the next step!
Please note that this property is located on a 4th floor, without a elevator.
Please inform Slate Loft by Craft of your expected arrival time in advance. You can use the Special Requests box when booking, or contact the property directly using the contact details in your confirmation.
It was on the fourth floor. BUT if that is ok then it is well worth it!
Nothing, it was perfect. It was on the 4th floor which wasn't a problem for us.
It was great, no complaints!
Not sure if stated in information, and not necessarily a negative, just be aware that it is 5 flights up with no elevator. Also, our flight got changed on us and we arrived just before midnight. I advised the contact person the night before and again with a more accurate timeframe that day and was told to give the lady letting us into the apartment 20 euros for letting us in late. Pictures are pretty deceiving for size, however I believe it's correct for the sq footage listed.
Great location, very clean. As described.
The apartment is good for a couple. Not that fit for 3 friends.


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