The Canadian Fantastic in Focus

Bringing together papers presented at the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy from 2005 to 2013, this collection of essays includes Veronica Hollinger’s keynote address, “The Body on the Slab,” and Robert Runté’s Aurora Award-winning paper, “Why I Read Canadian Speculative Fiction,” along with 15 other contributions on science fiction and fantasy literature, television and music by Canadian creators.
Authors discussed include Charles de Lint, Nalo Hopkinson, Tanya Huff, Esther Rochon, Peter Watts and Robert Charles Wilson. Essays on the television show Supernatural and the Scott Pilgrim comics series are also included.

Allan Weiss is an associate professor of English and humanities at York University in Toronto. He edited two previous proceedings volumes for the conference, Perspectives on the Canadian Fantastic and Further Perspectives on the Canadian Fantastic, and his short-story collection Living Room appeared in 2001.

Edited by Allan Weiss
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 256
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9592-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1790-9
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments vi

Introduction—Allan Weiss 1

Keynote Addresses

Why I Read Canadian Speculative Fiction: The Social Dimension of Reading—Robert Runté 14

The Body on the Slab—Veronica Hollinger 34

Canadian Science Fiction

Cybernetic Opium Eating, the Kantian Use of Human Beings and Neuromancing the Gothic Imagination: A Narrative Link—David Milman 44

One Thing After Another—Dominick Grace 55

Here Be Monsters: Posthuman Adaptation and Subjectivity in Peter Watts’ Starfish—Clare Wall 67

Robert Charles Wilson’s Mysterium: Thoughts on the Modern Reception of Gnosticism—Michael Kaler 81

New ­Half-Way Tree and the Second World: Themes of Nation and Colonization in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber—Brecken Hancock 95

Canadian Fantasy and Dark Fantasy

Sacred Cities: Charles de Lint’s Newford Books and the Mythologizing of the North American Urban Landscape—Cat Ashton 108

The Word and the Flesh: Natural Law vs. Catholic Dogma in Rikki Ducnornet’s The Stain—Tammy Dasti 120

Writing About Invented Places: Esther Rochon’s Archipelago of Vrénalik—Maude Deschênes-Pradet 131

Speculating Diversity: Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring and the Use of Speculative Fiction to Disrupt Singular Interpretations of Place—Derek ­Newman-Stille 146

“God’s Country,” Evil’s Playground: Susie Moloney, Michael Rowe, Brian Horeck and the Northern Ontario Gothic—Cat Ashton 159

Can the Witch Speak? The Supernatural Subaltern in Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld—Adam Guzkowski 173

Navigating the Darkness: Blindness and Vampirism in Tanya Huff’s Blood Books—Derek ­Newman-Stille 186

Media Expressions

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Megacity—Chester N. Scoville 200

From “Space Oddity” to Canadian Reality—Isabelle Fournier 212

From Monstrous Mommies to Hunting Heroines: The Evolution of Women on Supernatural—Lisa Macklem 224

About the Contributors 241

Index 243

“Solid pieces of scholarship and engaging, accessible reads”—Science Fiction Studies; “contributes to our overall appreciation of SF and of Canada”—SFRA Review.