The Canadian Fantastic

in Focus
New Perspectives
Edited by Allan Weiss
Proceedings of th e Academic C onference
ON C anadian Science F ictio n
AND Fantasy, 2 0 0 5 -2 0 1 3

McFarland Si Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina

To the memory of
Judith Merril and Phyllis Gotlieb

L ibrary

of

C ongress C ataloguing - in - P ublication D ata '

The Canadian fantastic in focus : new perspectives / edited by Allan

Weiss.
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Proceedings of the Academic Conference on Canadian Science
Fiction and Fantasy, 2005-2013.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-9592-4 (softcover : acid free paper) @
ISBN 978-1-4766-1790-9 (ebook)
1. Science fiction, CanadianHistory and criticismCongresses.
2. Fantasy fiction, CanadianHistory and criticismCongresses.
3. Canadian fiction-21st century-H istory and Criticism-Congresses.
1. Weiss, Allan Barry, editor. II. Academic Conference on Canadian
Science Fiction and Fantasy.
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,\

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
The Academic Conference on Canadian 5cience Fiction and Fantasy,
and therefore this book, would not exist or be able to continue without the
support of many people, including the conferences founders, Jim Botte and
Sian Reid. I cannot possibly thank the following people enough for their con
tributions of time, money, and moral support; my deepest gratitude to;
Toronto Public Library and the staff of the Merril Collection, particu
larly Collection Head Lorna Toolis and librarian Annette Mocek for
making their space and their time available.
The executive and membership of the Friends of the Merril Collection
for their financial and volunteer support.
The volunteers in particular, including David Cheater (refreshments
committee), Barbara Kwasniewski, Arlene Morlidge, Michael Matheson,
Eva Mocek, Emily Mocek, and Clare Wall (registration and sales), and
Barbara Weiss (official photographer).
Michael Johnstone and Adam Guzkowski for their help with publicity
and maintenance of a social media presence.
The English Department of York University, and especially its chairs
Maurice Elliott, Kim Michasiw, Julia Creet, Art Redding, and Jonathan
Warrenand Rose Crawford, for their extremely generous financial and
administrative assistance.
And, of course, the authors, scholars, readers, and fans (including those
who belong to all those categories!) who have participated in and made
the conference the site of such stimulating, intelligent, entertaining, and
enlightening conversation.
Thank you all very much.

Acknowledgm ents
Introduction Allan Weiss

Keynote Addresses
Why I Read Canadian Speculative Fiction: The Social Dimension
of ReadingRobert Runte
The Body on the SlabVeronica Hollinger

34

Canadian Science Fiction

Cybernetic Opium Eating, the Kantian Use of Human Beings
and Neuromancing the Gothic Imagination; A Narrative
. LinkDavid Milman
One Thing After AnotherDominick Grace

55

Here Be Monsters: Posthuman Adaptation and Subjectivity in

Peter Watts Starfish C\&re Wall

67

Robert Charles Wilsons M ysterium : Thoughts on the Modern

Reception of GnosticismMichael Kaler

81

New Half-Way Tree and the Second World: Themes of Nation

and Colonization in Nalo Hopkinsons M idnight R obber
Brecken Hancock

Canadian Fantasy and Dark Fantasy

Sacred Cities: Charles de Lints Newford Books and the
Mythologizing of the North American Urban Landscape
Cat Ashton
vii

viii

Table of Contents

The Word and the Flesh: Natural Law vs. Catholic Dogma in
Rikki Ducnornets The S tain Ta.mmy Dasti

120

Writing About Invented Places: Esther Rochons Archipelago of

VrenalikMaude Deschenes-Pradet

131

Speculating Diversity: Nalo Hopkinsons Brown Girl in the Ring

and the Use of Speculative Fiction to Disrupt Singular
Interpretations of PlaceDerek Newman-Stille

Introduction
, - 146

A l l a n W e is s

Gods Country, Evils Playground: Susie Moloney, Mick^el

Rowe, Brian Horeck and the Northern Ontario (jothic
Cat Ashton

159

Can the Witch Speak? The Supernaturstl Subaltern in Kelley

Armstrongs OtherworldAdam Guzkowski

173

Navigating the Darkness: Blindness and Vampirism in Tanya

Huffs Blood BooksDerek Newman-Stille

186

Media Expressions
Scott Pilgrim vs. the MegacityChester N. Scoville

200

From Space Oddity to Canadian RealityIsabelle Fournier

212

From Monstrous Mommies to Hunting Heroines: The Evolution

of Women on S upernatural Lisa Macklem

224

A b o u t the C ontributors

241

Index

243

The biennial Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and

Fantasy (www.yorku.ca/accsff) began in 1995. That year I had the privilege
of curating-along with Hugh Spencer-the National L^rary of Canadas
exhibit on Canadian science fiction and fantasy. Out of This World. The
exhibit opened in May, coinciding with a local Ottawa science fiction con
vention known as CanCon. Jim Botte, one of the convention organizers, and
Sian Reid created the somewhat awkwardly named Academic Conference
on Canadian Content in the Speculative Arts and Literature, a single panel
of four papers held at the convention. Those first conference presen
ters were Paul Johanson, Robert Runte, Reid, and myself. Together with the
exhibit and convention, ACCCSAL was part of an exciting celebration of
Canadian achievements in fantastic literature, film, radio, television, and
other media.
^
a
The following year, Jim asked me to help organize the conference a ^
we held ACCCSAL 96 at the National Museum of Science and Technology,
also in Ottawa. This time, the conference was an all-day affair, with sessions
on Identity, Politics and History, and Postmodernist, Feminist, and Othe
Challenges. Among the presenters were Dominick M Grace, who has now
become a regular at the conference, Nancy Johnston, Gail Irwin, and Nanci
White In 1997,1 took over fully as chair, and we changed both the name and
the venue; the Academic Conference on Canadian Science
tasy (ACCSFF) was born, and took up near-permanent residence at the Merri
Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy in Toronto. The Merri
Collection, a special collection in the Toronto Public Library system is one
of the worlds premier libraries in the field of fantastic literature and art. Apart
1

Introduction

Introduction

from a brief period when Nancy Johnston organized the conference, I have
been the proud chair of the conference ever since.
To date, there have been twelve conferences, and each since the move
to Toronto has featured not only traditional academic papers but also keynote
addresses by a Canadian author and a prominent Canadian scholar in the
field. Among the authors who have spoken at the conference are Margaret
Atwood, Robert Charles Wilson, Karl Schroeder, Peter Watts, Nalo Hopkinson, Charles de Lint, Tanya Huff, and Guy Gavriel Kay; the scholars'lnn^
included some of the most important figures in the study o f science fiction
and fantasy, such as Peter Fitting, John Clute, Elizabeth Miller, and Veronica
Hollinger. We have been very proud to host,- and offer a comfortable setting
for discussion and debate for, these luminaries and the various scholars (both
new and established) who have participated over the years.
In fact, I see the conference as an opportunity for writers, scholars, read
ers, and fans to come together and share their love for and interest in Cana
dian science fiction and fantasy. I therefore ask presenters to make their
papers accessible to a general as well as an academic audience, and I encour
age authors to stay for the scholarly presentations. The high quality of the
questions that come from the audience during the discussion periods testifies
to the degree of intelligence and thoughtfulness of all the conference partic
ipants, not just those who sit on the panels.
The conference has expanded year by year, and in 2013, for the first time,
we held sessions on two days due to the number of fine proposals submitted,
not to mention the interesting and enlightening talks given by Tanya Huff
and Robert Runte, our keynote address speakers. Runte, whose paper is
included here, was the first scholar to engage in serious study of Canadian
fantastic literature, and he provided some first-hand insights into the begin
nings of Canadian fandom as well as scholarship. Other scholars have exhib
ited certain common interests over the years: dystopian elements and
biological speculations in the work of Margaret Atwood, posthumanism in
the novels of William Gibson and Peter Wattss Rifter series, postcolonial and
other related themes in the work of Nalo Hopkinson, and monstrosity and
disability in the novels of Tanya Huff and other authors of dark fantasy. ,
I have encouraged scholars to propose papers on other media: radio, tel
evision, film, graphic novels, music, and so on. Some of the most fascinating
papers presented at ACCSFF dealt with Canadian efforts in what we call Media
Expressions, as scholars discussed recent films, television series, and songs with
fantastic themes. The diversity of papers at the last two conferences has been
unprecedented and very exciting, and I look forward to seeing more papers on
non-literary Canadian science fiction and fantasy presented at future ACCSFFs.

One of the issues frequently raised at Canadian science fiction conven

tions, and occasionally raised at ACCSFF, is whether there is something dis
tinctive about science fiction and fantasy created by Canadians. Many readers
havtf detected particularly Canadian themes and approaches to the conven
tions of fantastic literature; Runtes essay tackles this question in some detail,
arguing for the presence of certain distinguishing features but providing valu
able cautions against making generalizations. The theme of national identity
is often cited as one of those features, and so is a less triumphalist and opti
mistic outlook than we see in, say, American science fiction. Such claims may
well be true, but require a far more extensive analysis of the field than we
have seen to date. So far, no one has attempted a comprehensive study of the
Canadian fantastic since David Ketterer, and even his book is more a cata
logue of what was published than an attempt at a broader synthesis.
*

Understanding the Canadian fantasticlike so much elserequires a

historical perspective: we need to trace its roots in literature (and other media)
and in the world outside. Not only that, but the fantastic in Canada exhibits
the sort of linguistic and cultural diversity that characterizes the country
itselfa kind of aesthetic multiculturalism. For one thing, Canadian fantastic
literature, to focus on just one medium, has been written in both English and
French. There are also regional differences, as the fantastic has, to some extent,
been handled differently in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and the Maritimes. For example, a school of surrealist writing emerged in British Columbia
during the 1960s, while an active science-fiction fandom in Edmonton led to
the creation of a strong local community of people interested in the writing,
reading, and discussion of science fiction and fantasy, or what is known as
genre SF (a term that would require an entire paper to unravel).
One argument I have made on occasion, including in the text of the
National Library exhibit, is that science-fiction and fantasy writers have often
dealt with the same themes as more canonical or realist authors, but using
different techniques. Questions of personal and national identity, alienation,
and French-English relations find their way in the works of writers like Mar
garet Laurence, Morley Callaghan, and Hugh MacLennanto cite some of
the earliest authors canoniked by scholars of Canadian literatureand those
discussed below. As Runte says, however, finding Canadian themes is a
challenge in an international context where themes of identity and alienation
are pervasive. Still, reviewing the history of Canadian fantastic literature may
reveal that certain preoccupations that have dominated the field, at least at
some point in that history.

Introduction

Works like the pseudonymous The Dominion in 1983 (1883, by Ralph

Centennius), James de Milles utopian satire A Strange Manuscript Found in
a Copper^Cylinder (1888), and W. H. C. Lawrences The Storm o f 92 (1889)
demonstrate that, for early anglophone writers of fantastic literature, the sub
jects of greatest interest were political and social issues. On the other hand,
Centennius s descriptions of rocket trains and other technological innovations
show that scientific considerations were not entirely absent. Written during
the period when Canadas transcontinental railroad, the Canadian Pacific^Railway, was being built, the text includes extrapolations of how railroaTcf^
technology might advance in the next hundred years. Early.En'glish-Canadian
fantastic fiction exhibits certain common charactejisti'cs, some of which are
less than admirable. Some nationalists during the period believed that to
achieve full nationhood, Canada needed to foster the development of its own
literature (see esp. Colemans book on the subject). Much of the fantastic lit
erature written during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was
part of this nationalist literary agenda, offering visions of a future united,
strong, and prosperous Canada designed to encourage national feeling among
the authors contemporaries.
There was even talk of a Canadian race, one thatby virtue of its vigor
and legacy of British martial power and belief in personal libertywould
eventually become dominant in the world. There is no room here to review
the degree to which early visions of Canadas future were characterized by a
sense of racial destiny. One can say that in such texts as The Dominion in
1983 and Frederick Nelsons Toronto in 1928 A.D. (1908), future Canada is
portrayed as a pure Anglo-Saxon nation that surpasses all others in its
wealth, renewed Christian religiosity, and social cohesion. These utopian
accounts suggest, in Darwinist fashion, that Canadas harsh climate and abun
dant natural resources will inevitably produce a hardy race capable of leading
the world materially and spiritually. Even John Galbraiths In the New Capital
(1897), which is more interested in promoting Henry Georges theories about
the single tax, presents Canada as becoming something of a paradise thanks
to its God-given natural abundance.
Meanwhile, on the French-Canadian side, we see the influence of the
Catholic Church and the role of conservative nationalism in early fantastic
texts. Philippe Aubert de Gaspe, Jr.s Linfluence d un livre (1837) concerns the
evils of alchemy, while the separatist Pour la patrie (1895), by Jules-Paul Tardivel, portrays a Quebec about to be politically absorbed by the rest of Canada
but saved by a politician who receives visits from St. Joseph and the spirit of
his late daughter. Theological themes recur in Georges Bugnets SiVa/(1934),
in which two disembodied spirits discuss various spiritual and moral questions.

Introduction

A genre that was extremely important in Quebec during the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries was the roman de la terre, whose most important
exemplar is Louis Hemons M aria Chapdelaine (1914; first book edition 1916).
These novels offered fictionalized expressions of the conservative nationalism
in Quebec at the time. Conservative nationalists believed that in order to
secure la survivance, or survival, of the French-Canadian people in Canada,
they-needed to rely on a number of institutional pillars, including an agri
cultural way of life. The roman de la terre depicted the value and benefits of
remaining on the farm, and following the ways of ones ancestors. It is not
surprising, then, that most of the francophone utopian texts of the first half
of the twentieth century portray agrarian utopias; significant examples
include Jean-Charles Harveys Marcel Faure (1922) and Armand Greniers
Erres boreales (1944) and he defricheur du H am m ada (1953). Quebecois
authors of the fantastic were so heavily influenced by conservative national
ism that they bucked a very long-standing literary tradition, in that from
Platos time onward utopias tended to be well designed cities, not rural spaces.
There were other separatist texts besides Tardivels, such as Ubald Paquins
he cite dans lesfers (1925).
Political themes thus played an important role in the fantastic literature
of both linguistic groups, while for some time scientific and technological
speculationsnever totally absentwere nonetheless far less prominent than
they were in France, Britain, and the United States. Canada did not produce
a Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, or Edgar Allan Poe. That situation would change
somewhat during the 1930s to 1950s, otherwise known as the Golden Age of
science fiction. On the anglophone side, some writers gained a degree of
prominence publishing in the science-fiction and fantasy pulp magazines
that began to appear in the 1920s, most notably A. E. van Vogt, Laurence
Manning, and, later, H. A. Hargreaves and Phyllis Gotlieb. Gotlieb became
known as the Mother of Canadian science fiction, achieving fame with short
stories in such magazines as Fantastic Stories, the M agazine o f Fantasy and
Science Fiction, If/Worlds o f If, and A m azing Stories, and her classic novel
Sunburst (1964). Given the powerful influences of her gender and Jewish
identity, it would be difficult to extract distinctively Canadian features of her
work. On the other hand, Dominick Grace, the leading expert on Gotlieb s
science fiction, argues in GalFed: The Canadian Galactic Empire that her
interplanetary political system is very Canadian indeed.
The pulp magazines were not the only venue for Canadian scientific,
technological, and political speculations written in the first half of the twentieth
century. Utopian and fantasy novels continued to appear, reflecting both local
and global preoccupations. Hugh Pedleys Looking Forward (1913) anticipates

Introduction

the utopia that Canada will become should the various Protestant denomi
nations resolve their differences and form a United Church of Canada;
Howard OHagan explores Native mythology and spirituality in Tay John
(1937); and even Frederick Philip Grove, who has become almost synonymous
with naturalism in the world of Canadian literature, wrote a satirical utopia.
Consider Her Ways (1947), about a society of ants.
For Frencl|-Canadian authors, the middle of the twentieth century was
characterized a,bove all by a growing desire to throw off the dominance of
the Church once and for all and modernize the province. In'the arts, mod
ernization meant the embrace of innovations in literary and visual-art forms
and techniques that were occurring elsewhere; particularly in Europe. A sur
realist movement emerged after the Secdnd World War, the Automatistes,
and the group released a radical manifesto entitled, Refusglobal (1948). Mem
bers of the group defied the conventions of bourgeois realist art and the teach
ings and power of the Catholic Church, favoring spontaneity, creativity, the
irrational, and the dreamlike in art. That movement eventually led to the rise
of le fantastique, the Quebecois version of magic realism.
Two major issues during the 1950s-1970s preoccupied writers of fantastic
literature on both sides of the linguistic divide: the Cold War and the potential
for global nuclear disaster, and the growing separatist movement that followed
the Quiet Revolution starting in 1960 (for details, see Weiss, Separations
and Unities ). Fears of a nuclear holocaust produced such texts as John Mantleys The 27th D ay (1956), Yves Theriaults Si la bombe m etait contee (1962),
and Maurice Gagnons post-holocaust dystopian novel Les tours de Babylone
(1972), among many others. Texts about Quebecs possible separation include
Bruce Powes Killing Ground (1968), about a Canadian civil war triggered by
the provinces secession; Leo Heapss political thriller The Quebec Plot (1978);
Jean-Michel Wyls Quebec Banana State (1978); and William Weintraubs satir
ical The Underdogs (1979). English-language speculations about Quebec sep
aration extended into the 1980s with Helene Holdens After the Fact (1986).
Scientific and technological themes were not ignored, however. The
development of computer technology, and the expanding role of technology
m our lives, inspired dystopian texts like Robert Greens satirical The Great
Leap Backward (1968) and Jim Willers Paramind (1973), a kind of Canadian
Colossus (1966).
Also, writers in English Canada were exploring widely divergent terri
tories of fantasy. As mentioned earlier, a group of surrealist writers emerged
m British Columbia, thanks to institutional support from the University of
program; leading figures were
1C ae
ullock and J. Michael Yates, and writers like Andreas Schroeder,

Introduction

Jack Hodgins, Ernest Hekkanen, and Rikki Ducornet maintained the tradition
of surrealist and magic realist writing in the province.
The 1960s cultural revolution was reflected in anti-realist fiction elsewhere,
too. Groups of experimental writers arose in Ontario; see the magic-realist
and self-reflexive stories in the anthology series The Story So Far (Coach
House Press, 1971-79). As for high fantasy, Charles Saunders published stories
about Imaro, the black Conan,"beginning in the 1970s; among the venues
in which Imaro appeared was the Canadian magazine Dark Fantasy (197380) out of Gananoque. Other Canadian pulp and semi-professional magazines
were published during the period, although none lasted longer than a few years.
The true flowering of Canadian science fiction and fantasy occurred in
the 1980s, and no one has attempted to account fully for the phenomenon. I
can offer a few possible reasons for the sudden growth in the number and
quality of works by Canadian writers from the 1980s on. (It should be noted,
however, that many began publishing before the 1980s; perhaps they were
not as visible as they would later become.)
First, there had long been fan communities in Canada, but by the 1980s
they had reached a critical mass that made it possible for their members to
move beyond fandom into professional status: writers like Robert J. Sawyer
and Robert Charles Wilson were among those active in fandom before
becoming professional authors. Fandom offered opportunities to publish
in fanzinesmeet and establish relationships with professional writers and
editors, and trade ideas. Thus, fanzines and conventions can encourage and
provide the institutional foundations for creative activity. In Quebec, fans
and scholars created magazines like Requiem/Solaris (1974- ) and imagine...
(1979-97), edited by and publishing such authors as Joel Champetier, JeanPierre April, Daniel Sernine, and Elisabeth Vonarburg.
Second, individuals sought to create awareness of the tradition of fan
tastic writers in the country, and even encourage others to join. John Robert
Colombos Other Canadas (1979) and John Bells and Lesley Choyces Visions
from the Edge (1981) were the first anthologies in the field, making Canadian
science fiction and fantasyespecially early textswidely available to readers
for the first time. Those who wrote in the field could then feel less alone.
Ellen Godfrey, one of the editors at Press Porcepic, asked Judith Merril to
edit Tesseracts (1985), the first of what would become a long-running anthol
ogy series. Merril saw one of her tasks as supporting the writing of science
fiction in Canada, and founded writers groups (like my own Cecil Street
group) as part of that effort. Also, American editor David G. Hartwell, of
Tor, took a special interest in Canadian science fiction, and co-edited antholo
gies of stories by Canadian authors.

Introduction

Introduction

Third, during the 1970s science fiction and fantasy left the genre ghetto
and became part of the mainstream, due in large part to the Star Wars movies
and the cult following and later versions of Star Trek. One should not under
estimate the effect of this shift from fringe interest to Hollywood blockbuster
and best-seller status. More people were watching and reading fantastic works
(think not only of the films of George Lucas but also of the novels of Stephen
King) and that seemed to encourage more people to create them.
Fourth, and perjiaps related to the last point, some mainstream Canadian
authors found in fahtastic fiction an opportunity to explore favorite-themes
in new, highly imaginative ways, such as Hugh MacLennan-( Voices in Time
[1980]), Timothy Findley {N ot Wanted on the V oyageil984]), and Margaret
Atwood {The H andm aids Tale [1985]).
Fifth, scholarly interest began to grow.'with pioneering efforts by Runte
and Colombo in the 1970s and 1980s, and others during the 1990s. Early work
in the field involved much basic scholarship; that is, Runte, Colombo, and
Ketterer sought to catalogue the texts themselves. Efforts to make general
thematic statements about Canadian science fiction and fantasy risked pro
ducing circular arguments, as Runte aptly notes in his paper. Anyone who
tries to generalize about Canadian fantastic art now would have an even
harder time than did the pioneers; our fantastic literature has become too
vast and diverse, ranging as it does from the surrealism of Eric McCormack
(e.g.. Inspecting the Vaults [1987]) to the hard science fiction of Peter Watts.
What may be the most important factor leading to the expanded interest
in studying Canadian fantastic art is the rise of non-traditional theoretical
approaches to art in general. French structuralist, poststructuralist, and fem
inist theory, and then postcolonial, cultural studies, and numerous other
approaches, inspired scholars to seek out fantastic texts, including those in
Canada, that lent themselves to analysis using those approaches. Of course,
it goes without saying that the high quality of the work by Canadian authors
like Nalo Hopkinson, Margaret Atwood, Robert Charles Wilson, and William
Gibson had much to do with that interest as well.
Apart from ACCSFF, scholarly interest has been reflected not only in
the studies by Runte, Colombo, and Ketterer, but also the Canadian Science
Fiction and Fantasy Symposium held in Ottawa in 2001, the recent Science
Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre conference held in Hamilton (2013), and
books like Amy J. Ransoms Science Fiction from Quebec: A Postcolonial Study
(2009) and our own earlier volumes of proceedings. Perspectives on the Cana
dian Fantastic (1998) and Further Perspectives on the Canadian Fantastic
p005). Papers and books on individual themes and authors have appeared
in the major scholarly journals, and the various websites devoted to the listing

and criticism of Canadian science fiction and fantasy add enormously to the
list.
The papers published here come from a variety of critical perspectives,
and represent some of the most interesting ways scholars have begun to exam
ine the field over the past decade. This volume is organized like one of our
conferences; we begin with keynote addresses and then move on to more for
mal sessions organized by genre and medium. I was hoping to include Peter
Wattss address from the 2007 conference and the interview I conducted with
Charles de Lint in 2011, but rights issues prevented me from doing so. To
read them, please visit our website at: http://www.yorku.ca/accsff/publica
tions.html and look for the supplement to this volume, or go to www.yorku.
ca/accsff and follow the links to the Publications page.
The book opens with Robert Runtes survey of writing and scholarship
in the field since his beginnings as author, reader, and analyst, and Veronica
Hollingers account of her own encounter with the genre. Hollmgers paper
is a fascinating portrait of the scholars fear that by subjecting something as
entertaining and (dare one say it) fun as science fiction to serious study, she
is in effect killing it, robbing it of its spirit. The struggle, she suggests, is
between wanting to enjoy it as it is, and seeking ways to enjoy it even more
by learning about it without analyzing it to death. She has demonstrated
throughout her career that one can indeed marry enthusiasm for and aca
demic interest in a genre.
, ^
The first session deals with specific authors and works of science fiction
(although the generic distinctions are necessarily somewhat arbitrary). David
Milman traces links between Thomas de Quinceys writings on opium-taking
and Gibsons posthumanism, connecting them through the aesthetics of Kant.
Milman shows a masterful grasp of the philosophical issues involved, effec
tively synthesizing writers and works that might otherwise not seem at all
related Dominick Grace and Clare Wall look at the fiction of Peter Watts
from very different points of view, as Grace traces the way Watts adapts John
W. Campbell, Jr.s Who Goes There? (1938) and the subsequent film versions
of the story, while Wall analyzes the posthuman elements of the Rifter series,
seeing in them expressions of postmodernist suspicion of the concept of the
stable subject. Starfish (1999), Wall says, highlights the blurring line between
what we take to be normal and wh^t we consider monstrous. Michael Kaler
discusses Robert Charles Wilson from a theological perspective, detailing
the gnostic features of his novel Mysterium (1994). Kaler succeeds in demon
strating how Wilson uses the tropes of science fiction to explore religious

10

Introduction

and philosophical themes. Brecken Hancock examines postcolonialism and

race in Nalo Hopkinsons M idnight Robber (2000), showing how Hopkinson
complicates simple power relations based on historical hierarchies. Hopkin
son, she argues, exposes the effects of such dynamics, as they always lead to
subaltern groups suffering discrimination and worse in any colonial situa
tion.
The next section features papers on Canadian urban, high, religious,
and dark fantasy. Ca( Ashtons study of Charles de Lint places him in the con> text of previous, Tolkienesque fantasy and urban fantasys chaUenge'lo the
genres well entrenched conventions. One of those conventfons is the estab
lishment of rigid binaries: moral, biological, and so eri; De Lints fiction resists
those easy polarities, offering a more modern, complicated view of morality
and the world. Tammy Dasti does a close reading of the relationship between
Catholic doctrine and personal desire in Rikki Ducornets The Stain (1995)
and the paper also reveals a very different relationship in Ducornets work:
the strong ties between ones internal/psychological state and the outside
world. (As such. It might be noted, Ducornet remains solidly in the tradition
of surrealist fiction.) Maude Desch^nes-Pradets analysis of Esther Rochons
work applies a theoretical approach, geocriticism, that may never have been
used before in a study of fantastic literature. The results of her experiment
may well form a solid foundation for future work in the field, as she describes
the challenges faced by the geocritical scholar of fantastic, as opposed to real
spaces. Turning to dark fantasy, we see in Derek Newman-Stilles first paper
a similar interest in place: how Toronto in Nalo Hopkinsons Brown Girl in
the Ring (1998) becomes defamiliarized and reinterpreted as it becomes the
home of non-European immigrants and the site of different cultural expe
riences. Both the protagonist and the city she lives in are characterized by a
very unstable and dynamic identity. Along the same lines. Cat Ashtons second
paper investigates a new genre, the Northern Ontario Gothic; again, place
way^^*
characters, themes, and handling of generic tropes in profound
Adam Guzkowski considers the status of witches in Kelley Armstrongs
Otherworld series, noting that their gender as well as their magical abilities
places them in a marginal position. The witch, he says, is a figure that raises
many questions about power, in particular socially constructed roles and the
tactors that empower and disempower. Derek Newman-Stilles second paper
app les isabihty studies to the theme of vampirism in Tanya Huffs fiction
or Newman-Stille. there are similarities between being visually impaired and
marginalization despite attempts
pass. Guzkowski and Newman-Stille see the conventional "monster figure

Introduction

11

as representing and indeed embodying human alterity, and the way in which
difference becomes the cause of rejection and the denial of recognition or
accommodation.
The final section is comprised of three papers on media expressions:
non-literary forms of the fantastic. Chester N. Scoville analyzes the openly
Torontonian Scott Pilgrim comics and film. Like other papers, Scovilles stud-iesTiow geographical space is treated, as these texts make direct and occa
sionally subversive use of real places. The comics and film portray not just a
city but a particular area of it, suggesting that a city is too complex, geo
graphically and culturally, to be treated as a coherent whole. Isabelle Fournier
provides a fascinating look at adaptation; much like Grace, Fournier shows
how time and space affect how artists interpret and modify earlier texts to
suit current cultural contexts and their own aesthetic aims. Lisa Macklem
provides an overview of the portrayal of women in the television series Super
natural, exposing some of the stereotypes and economic pressures that have
shaped how female characters are presented. What is noteworthy is the degree
to which the shows writers have been affected not just by the conventions of
the horror genre and the demands of the medium, but also by fan reaction.
In a high-tech world of internet chatter and fan fiction, the line between
author/creator and audience grows ever more blurred, bringing us back to
some of the things Robert Runte says in his conclusion.
It would probably be unwise to try to summarize or make generalizations
about such a diverse set of papers. On the other hand, it is hard to miss the
common themes: the role of geography or place; power relationshipscolo
nial, gender, normal or human versus monsterand how they have
been institutionalized; and the fluidity of identity. These seem to be major
interests among our best creators of fantastic art and the scholars who study
them.
I very much look forward to future ACCSFFs, and the exciting insights
into these issues and others that authors and academics will bring to them.
W o r k s C it e d
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaids Tale. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985.
Bell,John, and Lesley Choyce, eds. Visions from the Edge: An Anthology of Atlantic
Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Porters Lake: Pottersfield, 1981.
Bugnet, Georges. Siraf Btranges revelations. Montreal: Editions du Totem, 1934. Print.
Centennius, Ralph. The Dominion iff 1983. Colombo, Other Canadas 296-319. Print.
Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto: Uni
versity of Toronto Press, 2006. Print.
Colombo, John Robert, ed. Other Canadas: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979. Print.

12

I n t r o d u c t io n

De Gaspe, Philippe Aubert, Jr. ^influence d un livre. Quebec; Cowan, 1837. Print.
De Mille, James. A Strange M an u script Found in a C opper Cylinder. London: Chatto &
Windus, 1888. Print.
Findley, Timothy. N o t W anted on the Voyage. Toronto: Viking, 1984. Print.
Gagnon, Maurice. Les tours de B abylone. Montreal: LActuelle, 1972. Print.
Galbraith, John. In the N ew Capital: A N in eteenth-C entury View o f O ttaw a in the
Tw enty-F irst C entury. Ed. R. Douglas Francis. Manotick: Penumbra, 2000. Print.
Gotlieb, Phyllis. Sunburst. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1964.
Grace, Dominick M. GalFed: The Canadian Galactic Empire. Weiss, Further Perspec
tives 5 5 -6 6 . Print.
Green, Robert. The G reat Leap B ackward. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968. Print.
Grenier, Armand. Le defricheur du H am m ada. [Quebec]: Editions Laurin, [1953]. Print.
____ . Erres boreales. N.p.: n.p., [1944]. Print.
Grove, Frederick Philip. C onsider H er Ways. Toronto: Macmillan, 1947. Print.
Harvey, Jean-Charles. Marcel Fame. Montmagny: LImprimerie de Montmag^y, 1922. Print.
Heaps, Leo. The Q uebec Plot. Toronto: Davies, 1978. Print.
Hemon, Louis. M aria C hapdelaine. Montreal: LeFebvre, 1916. Print.
Holden, Helene. A fter the Fact. Ottawa: Oberon, 1986. Print.
o
Jones, D. F. Colossus. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1966. Print.
Ketterer, David. C anadian Science Fiction a n d Fantasy. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1992. Print.
Lawrence, W.H.C. The Storm o f 92: A G randfathers Tale Told in 1932. Toronto: Sheppard,
1889. Print.
Leroux, Jean-Fran^ois, and Camille R. La Bossiere, eds. W orlds o f Wonder: Readings in
C anadian Science Fiction a n d F antasy L iterature. Ottawa: University of Ottawa
Press, 2004. Print.
MacLennan, Hugh. Voices in Time. Toronto: Macmillan, 1980.
Mantley, John. The 27th D ay. New York: Dutton, 1956. Print.
McCormack, Eric. Inspecting the Vaults. Markham: Penguin, 1987. Print.
Merril, Judith, ed. Tesseracts. Victoria: Porcepic, 1985.
Nelson, Frederick. Toronto in 1928 A.D . Toronto: National Business Methods, 1908. Print.
OHagan, Howard. Tay John. Timperley: Laidlaw, 1939. Print.
Paquin, Ubald. La cit& dan s lesfers. Montreal: Garand, 1925. Print.
Pedley, Hugh. L ooking Forward: The Strange Experience o f the Rev. Fergus M cCheyne.
Toronto: Briggs, 1913. Print.
Powe, Bruce. K illing Ground: The C anadian C ivil War. Toronto: Martin, 1968. Print.
Ransom, Amy J. Science Fiction fro m Quebec: A Postcolonial Study. Jefferson, NC: McFar
land, 2009.
Tardivel, Jules-Paul. P our la p a trie. Montreal: Cadieux et Jerome, 1895. Print.
Theriault, Yves. Si la bom be m e ta it contee. Montreal: Editions du Jour, 1962. Print.
Weintraub, William. The Underdogs. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979. Print.
Weiss, Allan. Separations and Unities: Quebec Separatism in English- and FrenchCanadian Science Fiction. Science-Fiction Studies 74 (1998): 53-60. Print.
____ , ed. Further Perspectives on the C anadian Fantastic: Proceedings o f the 2003 A ca
dem ic Conference on C anadian Science Fiction an d Fantasy. Toronto: ACCSFF, 2005.
Print.
____ , ed. Perspectives on the C anadian Fantastic: Proceedings o f the 1997A cadem ic Con
ference on C anadian Science Fiction a n d Fantasy. Toronto: ACCSFF, 1998. Print.
Weiss, Allan, and Hugh Spencer, eds. O u t o f This 'World: C anadian Science Fiction &
Fantasy Literature. Comp. Andrea Paradis. Kingston: Quarry; Ottawa: National
Library of Canada, 1995. Print.
Wyl, Jean-Michel. Q uebec B anana State. Montreal: Beauchemin, 1978. Print.

The Social Dimension of ReadingRohert Runtd

Why I Read Canadian

Speculative Fiction: The Social
Dimension of Reading
R o b e r t Ru n t e
ACCSFF T3

Three Turning Points: A Personal History

of Reading
In elementary school, I was what is today termed a reluctant reader. I
viewed reading as something one had to do in schoolsecond period after
mathand not as something one would spontaneously undertake on ones
own. I was therefore considerably put out when my Grade 5 peer group sud
denly started making in-jokes based on the Freddy the
books. Not wanting
to be left out of the conversation, I had little choice but to borrow a copy of
Freddy the D etective (1932) and force myself to struggle through it. Plowing
through that first chapter book was challenging enough, but having managed
it, I was exasperated to learn that there were another twenty-five volumes in
the series. To retain my standing within the group, however, there was nothing
for it but to read the entire Freddy canon.
Reading the Freddy books was a significant turning point, not just
because reading twenty-six chapter books gave me the practice necessary to
become a more fluent reader, but because it also forced me to learn about
public libraries. My older brother got into the habit of accompanying me to
the library each Saturday to retrieve the next Freddy book. I vividly remember
his expression when I explained that his services would no longer be neces14

15

sary, as I had read the final volume and was now done with reading. I equally
remember my discomfort as he explained that there were many other worthy
books available in the library, and thrust several volumes upon me. I arrived
at school the following Monday reluctantly carrying a copy of Doctor Dolittle
(1920), only to have my friends ask, Are you still only on the first book?
and realized that the whole sorry situation was about to repeat itself.
- " I confess that I started to enjoy reading, a little. I discovered that carrying
a book around meant never being bored again. I found that reading had become
easier and that sharing my experience of a book with friends was deeply sat
isfying. Reading the same books was an easy way to fit in with the group.
The defining moment, however, was when my best friend forced a copy
of Alan E. Nourses Raiders from the Rings (1962) upon me during a lull in
our Grade 6 math class. I initially tried to reject his offering on the grounds
that I was already reading my way through the Borrowers (1953), but Bill was
insistent that I read the book by next Monday, or else. He showed me his fist.
It was the most difficult book I had yet read. I reread the opening para
graphs perhaps a dozen times without really being able to comprehend any
of it. It made no sense: The Raiders could hear the maukis chant from the
moment they boarded the ship from Earth. What was a mauki? How could
a ship he from Earth? I despaired and would have quit entirely, but could not
face Bill again without having read at least a few chapters. So I persisted.
That book changed my life. Once I understood that the book was set in
space, that this was an example of the science fiction Bill had been going on
about lately, I became engrossed. I was vaguely aware of my mother repeatedly
calling me to dinner that evening, but could not bring myself to put the book
down. It was this book that changed me from a reluctant to a voracious reader.
Science fictions sense of wonder grabbed me and has never since let go.
(I recommended the book to everyone I met for the next decade and a
half, until I finally reread it in my late twenties and realized that it is actually
pretty bad. Terrible might not be too harsh. But as I have since argued to
two generations of English teachers, teacher-approved literary merit is no
competition for sense of wonder, and the first step is to get kids reading
whatever grabs their attention. In the long run, they will gravitate to the
appropriate level of quality.)
Under Bills leadership, my friends and I hiked to the library every sec
ond weekend to borrow every volume with the atom/rocket logo that desig
nated SF. When we ran out of SF in the childrens library. Bill talked our way
into the adult section with a fake ID andTot of sincere begging. We added
the Buffalo Bookshop to our weekends when we realized we could buy used
SF paperbacks for twenty-five cents. When we played poker in high school.

17

K e y n o te A d d r e sse s

The Social Dimension of ReadingRobert Runte

the chips were worth one, two, or three basic book units (equivalent to
Buffalo Books rates for pocket, trade and hardcover), thus circulating our
communal library throughout the group. In the 1960s it was almost possible
to read all the SF there was, and we gave it our best shot. Our reading expe
rience was infinitely enriched because we were all reading the same authors
were all part of a community of readersfocused on a single, self-contained
canon. By Grade lly our mastery of the entirety of SF was so complete, and
its influence upon,us so great, that reading each others creative writingassignments we could guess what author the other had been reading that
week.
'
In university, I made the mistake of taking a course in comparative lit
erature. After being exposed to Dostoevsky,'! could no longer bring myself
to read the likes of Heinlein or Andre- Norton. My friends tastes similarly
diverged and our group drifted apatt. I might well have become fixated on
Russian novels, had I not discovered SF fandom shortly thereafter. Once again
I was able to immerse myself in a community of readers, and through them,
recognize that there might be more literary alternatives to Heinlein within
the spectrum of speculative fiction.
Fanzine fandom provided an audience, an interactive peer and referent
group, for which one could write reviews and commentary in the days before
the Internet, blogging, Facebook, or Goodreads. SF conventions allowed one
to meet face-to-face those fans with whom one had been corresponding. Back
in the days when SF was completely marginalized (Runte, Foreword vii-ix),
it was a proud and lonely thing to be a fan, yet fans were nevertheless able
to find each other and share their love of particular titles, of a canon, of a lit
erary lifestyle. Such avocational subcultures can become all consuming for
the participants, and it is no exaggeration to say that fandom became the
focus of my social life and energies.
The explosive growth of SF in the 1970s meant that there were suddenly
more titles being published each year than any one fan could hope to read.
Although the rapid growth allowed for more reading opportunity, greater
variety, and the genre to mature as a literature, that sense of a mutually shared
canon was to that extent eroded. I tried to recapture a sense of community
by focusing my reading on the Hugo and Nebula Award winners so that I
would have at least the most famous and popular works in common with my
fellow fans.
Halfway through that project, I discovered that some SF authors were
Canadian. That had not been immediately obvious because Canadian authors
came out from British and American publishers and their Canadian origins
were generally not identified. SF in those days was dominated by John W.

Campbells Ann/o^ magazinewith its emphasis on the quintessential Amer

ican belief in progress, optimism, and engineeringand the distinct British
voice of Wells and Clarke. One did not think of SF as part of CanLit (though
it turned out that almost every great CanLit authorfrom Margaret Atwood
to Hugh MacLennan to Leon Rookehad written at least some speculative
fiction). Reading Gotliebs rejection of Campbellian values in her dystopian
-novel. Sunburst (1964), was therefore something of a revelation. By 1979,
when John Robert Colombo released his Other Canadas anthology of Cana
dian SF, and CDN SF & F bibliography, I had switched from the Hugos/Nebulas to seeking out and reviewing Canadian SF.
Colombos Canadian-themed anthology and bibliography were the first
recognition of Canadian SF as a distinct genre, and immediately drew the
attention of Canadian fans. Colombo ignited our latent nationalism, but more
significantly, identified a reasonably small, self-contained canon that could
once again become the focus of a community of readers.

16

Canadian Defined
One concern with Colombos pioneering works was that he defined
Canadian too broadly. Critic Terence Green (1980), for example, complained
that Colombo had included anyone who had ever flown over Canada in a
rocket. Colombo argued that it was better to be inclusive than to miss anyone,
arid further reasoned that we could learn almost as much about our national
identity from the work of non-Canadians writing about us, as we could from
our own writers. Thus, a story of Cyrano de Bergerac set in the snow of New
France became an example of Canadian SF. Most critics, however, dismissed
the inclusion of works by foreign nationals as mere padding, an attempt to
make our contribution to the field seem more significant than it really was.
The issue remains somewhat contentious because many of our best writers
(J. Brian Clarke, Michael G. Coney, Dave Duncan, Pauline Gedge, William
Gibson, Hank Hargreaves, Matthew Hughes, Crawford Kilian, Edward
Llewellyn, Alberto Manguel, Judith Merril, Spider Robinson, Sean Stewart,
Andrew Weiner, Edward Willett, Robert Charles Wilson) originally came
from somewhere else; or, like A. E. Van Vogt or Gordon Dickson, were born
here, but left.
It hardly matters. The ctShtrbversy was itself helpful in raising the profile
of Canadian (and pseudd-Canadian) writers to the point where we could get
over our national inferiority complex and recognize the existence of a Cana
dian canon, however broadly or narrowly defined. The debate was never

18

K e y n o te A d d r esse s

about foreswearing to read American or British or Australian SF; it was about

seeking out those authors with whom Canadian readers were likely to relate.
Seeking out Canadian SF and examining whether it might have distinguishing
themes or characteristics gave Canadian fandom a purpose and identity. Prior
to the 1980s, Canadian fans were more likely to travel south to conventions
than east or west across Canada. The emergence of a national convention
(Canvention) at Hajcon 2 in 1980; the Aurora Awards (1980) (and later, the
Sunburst Awards, 2001); successive iterations of a national SF newsletter starF^
mg m 1981; the Tesseracts anthologies starting in 1985; On .Spec Magazine
(1989), and so on, created a more cohesive Canadian fandom focused in part
on an identifiable body of Canadian SF.

Canadian Preoccupations
As Canadians sought out the extant body of Canadian SF, we quickly
discovered that many of these titles resonated with us in a way that American
and British SF did not.
My favorite example is Guy Kays Tigana (1990). Tigana marked an
important turning point in Kays career and in Canadian high fantasy. Kays
earlier Fionavar Tapestry trilogy (1984-1986) had reflected Kays roots as a
Tolkien scholar. That the trilogy was partly set in Toronto did not mark it as
particularly Canadian, since it relied on traditional fantasy motifs such as
Arthurian legend. Tigana, by contrast, was something completely new (Runte
Guy Gavriel Kay).
The plot concerns the small nation of Tigana, which is overpowered by
the neighboring empire. When the Wizard-Emperors son is killed in battle
he seeks to erase Tigana from the face of the world and so casts a spell that
makes it impossible for anyone to even speak its name. For American or
British readers, Tigana is an exciting, well-crafted adventure filled with the
usual assortment of wizards, rebel armies, assassins, and swordplay. But for
Canadians, Tigana is an examination of the significance of national identity
in ones day-to-day life; how every aspect of ones experience is twisted and
distorted when that identity is lost. No Canadian could read Tigam without
immediately drawing parallels between the Empires occupation of Tigana
and the overwhelming American presence in our own economy, media, an d ultimately--the social construction of our reality. By utilizing a fantasy motif,
Kay was able to conduct a thought experiment in which he could project the
issue m the starkest possible terms, while distancing this exploration from
he prejudicial politics and history of the real world (Runte, Canadian Spec-

The Social Dimension o f Reading Robert Runt^

19

ulative Fiction 1017). It is a theme and a treatment that would likely only
occur to a Canadian author, and resonates with Canadian readers because it
focuses in on our particular experience of, and preoccupation with, issues of
national identity.
That is not to say that other readers could not enjoy or relate to the
book; on the contrary, Tigana sold and reviewed well everywhere. Presumably,
-others can benefit from the Canadian experience, just as we benefit from
American and Russian novels. But I would argue that Canadian SF holds a
unique potential to attract and retain a cohesive Canadian readership, and
that while one may dabble in Russian or American or British novels, there is
no inherent social dimension that would draw one and ones neighbors to
the identical titles. Canadian SF, because it reflects Canadian themes and pre
occupations, should by definition be able attract the critical mass of Canadian
fans necessary to create a cohesive community of readers.

The Four Characteristics of Canadian SF

Identified by Colombo
In addition to drawing attention to the extensive body of Canadian SF,
Colombo was the first to attempt to identif)^ its distinguishing characteristics.
He identified three themes: the polar world, the national disaster scenario,
and the alienated outsider; he also noted the prevalence of fantasy over sci
ence fiction.
I know of no critic today who would agree that Canadians are particu
larly attracted to polar themes. Colombos observation is generally dismissed
as a sampling error, an example of circular reasoning based on his having
defined as Canadian any SF with a polar setting. No doubt some Canadian
authors have written polar SF, but it is not clear that they are more inclined
to do so than American, British, or Russian authors.
By national disaster scenario, Colombo was referring to political rather
than natural disasters, and there is no question that Canada has had a long
history of stories addressing the collapse of Canada. But are they SF? These
were mostly near-future thrillers written by authors who thought of them
selves as writing contemporary thrillers rather than science fiction. And while
the observation was relevant enough in 1979, it is less so now. Since NAFTA,
Canadians have fewer anxieties about outright invasion or annexation
because ... what would be the point? Aside from occasional references to
our future Chinese masters as a running gag on the Rick Mercer Report, the
national disaster scenario has largely died out in English Canadian literature.

20

K e y n o te A d d r esse s

Of course, the theme may still be relevant in French-Canadian SF, as

Quebec contemplates yet another referendum; though in this case, the dis
aster in question is usually depicted as Q uebecs failure to separate.
The alienated outsider is certainly an identifiable theme of Canadian SF
to this day; but then alienation is a dominant theme of much of twentiethcentury literature, a reflection of the general anomie characteristic of devel
oped economies. Tljie industrial age gave rise to the factory job: turning a
screw one-quarter turn clockwise each time an item comes past on the assen>^
bly line defines alienation. Employment in the service sector, of our post
industrial, information age is little better, so almost everyone is alienated
from their labor, which used to form the core of ones identity. Ask any waiter
who they are today, and they are more likely'say that they are really an actor,
a writer, an artist, or etc., and that waiter forms almost no part of their selfimage. Nor do we any longer have deep roots in the land: urbanization has
not only meant abandoning the ancestral farm, but any real sense of place.
The average Canadian family now moves every five years as it cycles through
both employment and family demographics. Indeed, we seldom even know
our immediate neighbors, preferring the much more tenuous connections of
Facebook. No wonder, then, that much of literature concerns itself with
themes of alienation.
I would argue, however, that the Canadian experience adds two addi
tional elements to the generalized anomie of Western societies: our national
inferiority complex and our multiculturalism. As Canadians, we grow up
knowing that anything newsworthy is happening someplace else. We watch
American TVor increasingly, the satellite feed from the Old Country,
whichever language that happens to be inand so grow up alienated from
our own daily experience as Canadians. And given that multiculturalism is
the central myth of our culture (in contrast to the assimilation imperative of
the United States), with every Canadian having a hyphenated identity, we are
all ultimately alienated from each other.
Our multiculturalism and inferiority complex may also have contributed
to Colombos observation that fantasy was more prevalent than science fic
tion. Our preoccupation with preserving our separate pasts predisposes us
to look backwards to our mythic origins, and perhaps discourages us from
future-oriented SF. America promised its immigrants a brighter future on
the condition of their giving up their ethnic identity to become mainstream
Americans, a new identity based in large measure on the Campbellian values
of science, progress, and individualism. Canadians tend to be less techno
cratic, less optimistic about the future, and less likely to view themselves on
the cutting edge. Canadians see themselves as the designers of the Canadarm

The Social Dimension of ReadingRobert Runte

21

rather than of space shuttles. We areas in the satiric CBC radio series,
Canadia 2056move likely to see ourselves as the janitors than the captains
of the space fleet. So perhaps Canadians really were less inclined to write sci
ence fiction than fantasy. By the 1980s, however, fantasy was edging science
fiction off the shelves everywhere, so it is difficult to say whether the orien
tation to fantasy is particularly Canadian or merely part of the larger trend.

Post-Colombian Themes
Since Colombos pioneering work, a consensus has formed around the
identification of seven themes or characteristics typical of Canadian SF:
focus on environment/ man subordinate to nature
distrust of technology and progress
the alienated outsider / uninvolved observer
. the average citizen as (bungling) protagonist / protagonist as nice
guy
ambiguous endings
tendency to more literary SF
less rigid genre boundaries
Naturally, not all themes are found in any one work, and not all Canadian
SF conforms to these generalizations, especially as many Canadian authors
consciously write for the American market. Nevertheless, to the extent that
one can identify trends, these are widely regarded as applying to the larger
canon of Canadian SFat least, so far.
It is important to emphasize that the role of the critic is to analyze what
is already published, not to dictate to writers. No one is saying that Canadian
writers are restricted to these themes, or must demonstrate these character
istics to be considered truly Canadian. On the contrary, the thrust is to
encourage Canadian writers to find their own voice. Recognizing that they
may be part of.aTargerCanadian movement, school, or trend may help val
idate that voice in the face of repeated rejection by American editors and
reviewers, who may simply not get the Canadian genre. By the same token,
our culture is constantly evolving, and it would be ludicrous to assume that
the themes that preoccupied Canadians twenty years ago will continue to be
our primary focus indefinitely into the future.
This is particularly the case now, given the emergence of print-ondemand and digital self-publishing. The emergence of these technologies has
begun to undermine the role of editors and critics as cultural guardians, and
online stores have made geography irrelevant to distribution. Consequently,

22

K e y n o t e A d d r esse s

The Social Dimension of ReadingRobert Runt6

although ones region may shape how and what one wants to write, selling to
a global market may increasingly compel writers to focus on only the most
universal themes.
So these observations are about Canadian SF up to now; as for the future:
all bets are off.

across the prairies at night may not be a perfect parallel to space travel, but
it reminds us what distance really means. If it is this difficult for someone
in Ottawa to relate to conditions in Halifax or Victoria, then how much more
ridiculous to expect the bureaucracy to manage a colony on a planet circling
some distant star? In Infinite Variation, Hargreaves one nod to interstellar
travel, for example, the colonial official is left isolated at the end of a tooIdng line of communication, forced into actions he does not want to take,
provoking consequences he does not want to consider (Runte, Afterword to
North by 2000+ 265-6).

Focus on the Environment / Man Subordinate to Nature

Colombos Polar World theme has morphed into an acknowledgement

that Canadian writers are often more focused on setting. Take for example
Candas Jane Dorseys classic Sleeping in a Box, which won the 1989 Aurora
for short fiction: there is arguably no plot, just claustrophobia. The setting is
the story. Living in Canada, one cannot help but notice the environment,
especially when it is minus 40, so it should not be surprising that many Cana
dian writers project setting as the determining factor in their speculative fic
tion. The environmental determinism of Dave Duncans West o f January
(1989) springs to mind as an obvious example.
Of course, setting is important in all SF, since it cannot be taken as a
given and world-building is always a key determinant of quality. What often
distinguishes Canadian SF, however, is that Canadian protagonists tend to
be subordinate to nature. Take for example the work of H. A. Hargreaves,
whose 1976 collection North by 2000 was the first ever marketed as Canadian
Science Fiction. In Protected Environment (1976), our hero sets out with
his high-tech survival gear to confront the Canadian winter anddies ...
just literally fades away. In Tee Vee Man (1963), the protagonist survives,
but at cost, and his only reward for intruding into the unrelentingly hostile
environment of space is the privilege of doing it all again tomorrow (Runte,
Afterword to North by 2000+ 265).
These examples are very different from the Campbellian version of the
genre. (Indeed, both stories were originally submitted to Analog and rejected
by Campbell before being published by Ted Carnell in the British magazine.
New Worlds.) The typical Analog story depicts the scientist-hero landing on
a new planet, identifying a problem, and engineering an ingenious solution.
The triumph of man over nature, the larger-than-life heros ability to dominate
every aspect of his environment, is essentially the whole point of the American
genre.
The Canadian trope of subordination to the environment may also
explain why our writers tend not to create vast interstellar empires. We live
in a country in which enormous areas are virtually uninhabitable and popu
lation centers are separated by immense distances. Flying up north or driving

23

Distrust of Technology and Progress

That American SF was from its earliest origins predicated on a belief in
progress, the ability of technology to solve all mans problems, and the asser
tion of mans right to control and dominate Nature, is too obvious to belabor.
Canadian SF generally starts from the opposite assumptions. Phyllis Gotliebs
Sunburst, for example, was one of the first novels to question the assumptions
of progress, the value of technology, and to suggest that attempting to dom
inate nature in the atomic age could have devastating side-effects. Of course
there are counter examples from the Canadian canon, such as Leslie Gadallahs sympathetic treatment of science in The Legend o f Sarah (2014), but even
Gadallah starts from the assumption that most people do not accept science,
that our current civilization is headed in the wrong direction, and that sci
entists are as likely to make a muddle of things as anyone else.
A case could be made that the American genre has shifted somewhat to
a more cynical view of technology and a more pessimistic view of the future,
reflective perhaps of the economic realities of the post-boomer generations.
A closer examination of this trend may reveal Canadian authors leading that
charge; that disillusionment with the American Dream provided an oppor
tunity for Canadian writers to more easily penetrate the American market
(Runte, Afterword to Tesseracts^ 342-3). The American version, however,
tends to be more focused on conspiracy theories and a general distrust of
government, whereas Canadian authors are more likely to focus on extrap
olating broader social, economic, or technological trends.

The Alienated Outsider / Uninvolved Observer

My favorite example of the aliened outsider is Hargreaves Dead to the
World (1968). A computer error lists our hero as deceased, with the result
that his apartment is reassigned, his credit cards are cancelled, and he is no

25

K ey n o te A d d r e sse s

The Social Dimension of ReadingRobert Runte

longer able to access any goods or services. Cut off from his identity as a
living citizen, totally and irretrievably isolated from the community around
him, Joe Schultz is the perfect example of alienation in our computerized
world. What makes the story distinctly Canadian, however, is that Joe even
tually achieves a lifestyle and contentment that would have been impossible
in his former role as participating citizen. In the end, Joe Schultz realizes that
he is, quite literall)^ better off dead (Runte, Afterword to North by 2000+
266-7).
I
That being an outsider might he preferable is something that cOuld only
resonate with a Canadian. Again, I attribute this to ,0 0 1 ^central mythos of
multiculturalism and our proximity to the United^tates. Whereas the Amer
ican melting pot attempts to assimilate'everyone into a single culture
dynamic, the official Canadian policy of multiculturalism attempts to preserve
a mosaic of interacting but distinctive cultures. Remaining outside the main
stream, then, is a Canadian cultural imperative (Runte, Afterword to North
by 2000+ 267).
David Kirkpatricks classic (Aurora Award, 1986) The Effect of Terminal
Cancer on Potential Astronauts is an obvious example. The story follows a
day in the life of a mediator whose job it is to resolve the conflicts that
inevitably arise between the separate cultural enclaves that characterize the
Toronto of the future. The story is both hilarious and strangely familiar to
Canadian readers, but I strongly suspect incomprehensible to anyone unfa
miliar with the issues of multiculturalism.
By the same measure, Canadians often feel economically, politically, and
culturally overwhelmed by our American neighbors. Consigned to the hin
terland of (North) American civilization, we often perceive ourselves isolated
from the people and events that are shaping the world and the future. Some
times it seems as if the only thing all Canadians have in common is the vague
feeling that whatever is important in the world, it is not to be found here
(Runte, Afterword to North by 2000+ 267).
Consequently, Canadians have a tendency to write from the perspective
of the uninvolved observer. In Paul Stocktons High Pressure System (1996),
the story of the alien invasion of America plays out on the TV in the back
ground of Western Pizza, almost unremarked by its patrons. Instead they
complain about the weather and propose the death penalty for whichever
bastard stole the power cord to their cars block heater. It is a brilliant little
commentary on Canadian winter and our detachment from events in Amer
icabuilt around the premise that Regina is too cold for the aliens.
Or to return to the example of the Hargreaves collection, the story
ForeEightSixteen (1989) is told not from the perspective of the inventor.

but that of one of his sidekicks; and the narrator in Infinite Variation (1979)
sees himself as essentially a powerless bystander stuck observing a situation
in which he has no choice or control. The hero of Tee Vee Man ends a polit
ical crisis and saves (an African) democracy, but he does so unknowingly as
a kind of distant and anonymous bystander to the main events of the day.
Even when the viewpoint character is the actual protagonist, as with Jason
in Cain", the protagonist is not the storys instigator. It is the system that
has shaped Jason, not the other way around; he is acted upon more than he
acts.
Unfortunately, the uninvolved observer perspective often strikes Amer
ican editors as violating the fundamental rules of good storytelling: in the
Campbellian tradition, the larger-than-life hero is necessarily the viewpoint
character; to do otherwise is to get it wrong (Runte, Leslie Gadallah 279).
But being the outsider provides Canadians with a unique perspective from
which to observe and comment. Sometimes being the janitor gives one a
clearer perspective than Captain.

24

The Average Citizen as (Bungling) Protagonist /

Protagonist as Nice Guy
Parallel with the American genres traditional expectation of the dom
inance of man over nature is the depiction of the protagonist as the domi
nating hero. The usual Analog protagonist succeeds by dint of his own actions,
guided by his superior (scientifically-trained) intellect, and often accom
plished through tests of physical strength or endurance. Even when these
heroes are cast as females, they behave as alpha-males, overcoming obstacles
and enforcing their will on the world around them through their personal
prowess.
Canadian authors are less likely to cast the protagonist as alpha-male,
and usually depict things going badly for any viewpoint character that tries
to act like one. Again, Hargreaves stories provide absolutely typical illustra
tions of the principle: when the villainous protagonist of In His Moccasins
(1979) tries to overcome the oddsytake charge of his situation, and impose
his will on those around him, he fails utterly; indeed, he ends up out in, the
cold, alienated even from his own body, forced to view the world from some
one elses perspective. Similarly, the macho hero of 2020 Vision (1980) is
forced to the realization that he is fighting a losing battle, that the world has
moved on, and that ultimately he has become no better than the enemy that
destroyed his wife (Runte, Afterword to North by 2000+ 269)
In contrast, Hargreaves heroes tend to be mild mannered, well-meaning

26

K e y n o te A d d r esse s

individuals, like the minister, Benjamin Scroop. Although Scroop is unable

to provide effective help to the protagonist in Dead to the World. he does
manage to make some headway against the bureaucracy in "Tangled Web
(1972). Instead of focusing on the scientists in Tee Vee Man, Hargreaves
makes the story about the humble repairman-turned-astronaut. And so on.
Ordinary people rising to the occasion as best they can.
Similarly, in The'Legend o f Sam , we have the typical Canadian protag
onists of Reese and Sarah (and the secondary characters of Michael and Caf'
Anna) as ordinary people caught up in events they neither^understand nor
control, but who nevertheless somehow manage to coper Instead of imposing
their will on the environment and those around them, they adapt themselves
to the situation. In American fiction, it is about the hero fighting through
barriers to reach his goals; in Canadian fichon, it is often about the protagonist
adjusting his/her goals to the options available (Runte, Leslie Gadallah 281).
And Canadian heroes tend to be nice: decent people motivated to do
the right thing. Nice in this context should not be confused with soft
wishy-washy, or ineffectual. Casey Wolf s collection. Finding Creatures i
Other Stones illustrates the Canadian version of nice: a tough-spirited nice
that can survive -40, the isolation of a trapline, the death of loved ones, the
unfairness of life, and still remain optimistic, still value diversity, still be
decent where others might have sought revenge, given up hope, or at least
been kind of grumpy about it all. The kind of nice that after a lifetime of
abuse, still puts itself out and walks through a Canadian winter to help a total
stranger, just because it is the right thing to do, as in Wolfs story, Thunderbirds (Runte, Rev. of Finding Creatures).

Ambiguous Endings
If I may indulge in some obvious over-generalization, American (massmarket) fiction tends to have happy endings, whereas British novels are as
ikely to be bleak and end badly for the protagonists. Russian novels generaUy
ave too many characters to say whether the ending overaU is happy or not.
Japanese novels do not end: they stop before the resolution. (Junichiro lamzakis The M akioka Sisters is a good example: the story is about the last
chance of finding a husband for the third sister, but stops before the train
arrives where she is to meet the final suitor and the reader never finds out
whether she agrees to marry.)
ambiguous endings: things have changed
rw b ?th
ften difficult to
whether the characters are better or worse off. Take, for example, Leslie

The Social Dimension o f ReadingR obert Runte

27

Gadallahs three novels. In C ats Pawn, the protagonists have a rip-roaring

space opera adventure, blasting their way through to victory, but somehow
end up in dreary exile. The books postscript makes it clear that these were
the wrong battles and the war lost. So, in terms of personal survival, a clear
win; in terms of achieving any of their larger goals, not so much. In the sequel.
C ats Gambit, the protagonists manage to destroy the enemys base and win
the warbut die in the process. So a clear win, but not exactly a Star Wars
happy ending, not the triumphant awarding of metals that is supposed to
greet the destruction of the Death Star in American space opera.
In The Legend o f Sarah, Sarah fails to achieve her primary goal of
enthralling Reese, and instead manages to lose the one refuge where she felt
safe. She achieves her fairy-tale ending, but it is not at all the one for which she
had been striving; nor is her success the result of her own plans or actions. Sarah
achieves a happy ending not by reaching her goals, but by maturing sufficiently
to change them. Similarly, the character of Sarahs rival sets out to rescue Reese
from jail, but mobilizing the bureaucracy to that end launches her on an
unexpected career in politics; and when she finally gets her rescue party, they
break into the wrong prison. It all works out well in the end largely because
their alpha-male antagonists are even more incompetent than the good guys.
To American reviewers, Gadallahs novels appeared muddled because
that is not how they expect genre narratives to unfold. Heroes are supposed
to win through to their goals, not get sidetracked and sidelined; and they are
supposed to triumph by dint of their own strengths and struggle, not by being
lucky or by adopting completely new goals. But Gadallahs are among my
favorite novels precisely because life seldom delivers clear-cut resolutions.
Real life is muddled, ambiguous, ambivalent, and (if one is lucky enough)
continues to evolve after the conclusion of this particular adventure. I love
that it is Sarahs abandoning her original goals that marks that she has now
achieved the level of maturity necessary to take advantage of the opportunities
presented to her. The Legend o f Sarah is not about achieving ones goals so
much as it is about being forced out of ones comfortable rut, about rising to
the occasion. Gadallahs narrative structure may not be typical of the Amer
ican genre, but I would argue that that is precisely what makes it resonate for
Canadian readers.

Tendency to More "Literary SF and ,

Less Rigid Genre Boundaries
As previously suggested, almost every major figure in Canadian literature
has written at least some speculative fiction. This observation has two imme-

28

K eyn otb A d d r e sse s

The Social Dimension of Reading-Robert Runte

diate corollaries: (1) that Canadian SF contains a higher percentage of literary

work; and (2) that the boundaries between genres is perhaps less rigid in
Canadian than elsewhere.
It is not entirely clear which way the causation behind this correlation
runs. Is it more literary because the less rigid boundaries allow literary writers
to contribute to the genre without fear of becoming typecast and trapped in
the genre ghetto?' Or is it that there are less rigid boundaries because a number,
of high profile Canadian writers have chosen to pen speculative hctioh?
One possible explanation is that the Canadian Literature shelf was never
large enough to divide into subgenres, so Canadian writers could range more
freely between them without fear of losing'their place. Alternatively, perhaps
the market for Canadian fiction was so tight that not even writers of Atwoods
stature could afford to ignore any opportunity, even SF-themed anthologies.
Or, perhaps it is not so much that there is a higher proportion of literary
SF in the Canadian canon as it is a question of junk SF being underrepre
sented. The Canadian literary establishment has always been a bit hesitant
about publishing or reviewing genre fiction (unless one considers CanLit
itself a distinct genre), so it may be that only those with impeccable CanLit
credentials have been able to penetrate the Canadian market.
By the same token, it may be harder for Canadian-themed SF to sell to
the predominantly American or British markets. Almost every Canadian
author with whom I have spoken has told me that they have one or more
manuscripts in their bottom drawer that had been rejected by their American
editors for being "too Canadian. It could be that only at the more literary
end of the spectrum have Canadian authors been able to connect to an inter
national audience.
I hasten to add I do not wish to imply any parochial bias on the part of
American and British editors. Campbell, for example, repeatedly invited Har
greaves to rewrite his stories to fit Analog, so the refusal was in fact Harg
reaves not Campbells. It is the editors responsibility to choose only those
stories likely to resonate with their readers, and if Canadian-themed stories
are too far off the mark for the American mass market, that is no ones fault
exactly.
Nor is this to suggest that Canadians have not always been active and
successful participants in the forefront of the SF genreA. E. Van Vogt comes
immediately to mind, and even the quintessential Canadian-themed fantasy,
Tigana, was embraced by the American and world audience. Rather, I am
arguing that to the extent that Canadian authors indulge in Canadian tropes,
the quality of the writing must be correspondingly better to break into a mass
market whose readers may not immediately connect to Canadian themes.

Of course, literary quality is necessarily subjective, and the assertion

that Canadian speculative fiction tends to be more literary may be pure pre
tension. It remains to be seen how things will fall out as self-publishing and
online distribution increasingly removes the intervening variables of acqui
sition editors and regional distribution, and the entire range of Canadian
authors are unleashed on the global market.

29

Wither Canadian SF?

Having identified seven characteristics of Canadian speculative fiction,
the question naturally arises as to where Canadian SF goes from here. No
one knows.
On the one hand, it would not be unreasonable to be entirely pessimistic
and argue that Canadian SF has no future. That, realistically, there is no
longer a distinct Canadian culture, that multiculturalism is a myth, and that
the current generation of writers is growing up within a homogenized culture
dominated by American media and economics. That American culture is the
Borg, and we have already been assimilated.
On the other hand, the emergence of new publishing technologies has
greatly increased the opportunity for writers to find their audience. As the
large corporate publishers continue to merge (now down to five) and com
pletely dominate the remaining brick-and-mortar bookstores, airport news
stands and drugstore racks, there has been a corresponding migration of
writers to epublishing and online distribution. Hundreds of print-on-demand
and ebook publishers have emerged to serve various niche markets too small
to be economical for the giants. Perhaps it has been difficult for Canadian SF
authors to find Canadian publishers interested in genre fiction, or to break
into the contracting market for American SF, given that successive corporate
mergers have eliminated the majority of SF lines. Penguin Canada, for exam
ple, today publishes only one science fiction author (Robert J. SaAvyer) and
one fantasy author (Guy Gavriel Kay), because Penguin can only carry those
genre authors who can sell in the quantities nepessary to satisfy Penguins
economies of scale. But if the market for Canadian SF is too small to attract
the attention of Penguin Canada, there are plenty of micropublishers, such
as CZP, Edge, Five Rivers, Bundoran, and Tycho, happy to take it on.
And that is not even considering the self-publishing option.
So the bottom line is that the potential now exists for Canadian SF to
be more readily published than ever before.
Of course, the new technologies of publishing and distribution pose sev-

30

Keynote Addresses

eral problems for the critic. First, if we may anticipate an explosion of Cana
dian output, then trying to cover the entire field may quickly become a logis
tical impossibility.
Second, global online distribution may again make it difficult to identify
who is Canadian, as the physical location of publishers and authors may be
obscured, or even deliberately downplayed. I tried searching for Canadian
science fiction on'my Kobo the other day, for example, and the distincU^ non-Canadians George RR Martin and Orson Scott Card canae-onf at the
top of the list. On the other hand, these are still emerging technologies, and
the search algorithms are likely to become rapidly more sophisticated, so we
may reasonably anticipate that Canadian works may be more readily identi
fied in the near future. Provided, of-course, that the authors continue to
believe that tagging their works as Canadian would help, rather than hinder.
Third, the potential for marketing globally offered by online distribution
may pressure some writers to consciously edit out Canadian tropes to max
imize international sales. Including works deliberately stripped of Canadian
content may distort the analysis; but it would be even worse to succumb to
the circular reasoning of a priori defining what constituted Canadian con
tent to determine whether a work should be included in the analysis.
Fourth, it may be difficult to define which works count as part of the
Canadian canon without the former criterion of professionally published.
If one excludes self-published works, the analysis would clearly be invalid,
because even accomplished and commercially successful authors are increas
ingly choosing that option. But if self-published works are included, then
one has to recognize that a numberperhaps the majorityof entries will
include first draft, unedited, vanity self-publishing. Does a 14-year-olds direct
imitation of Twilight or Hunger Games count as Canadian SF? And if it does
not, who gets to draw that line, and where?

The Social Dimension of Canadian SFs Future

The future of Canadian SF depends, then, on whether it can attract a
critical mass of readers, and that the readers can easily identify and obtain
Canadian SF. It is obviously in the financial interests of the Canadian SF niche
publishers to reachor createthat audience, but it is an uphill battle com
peting with both the multinational corporate publishers and the avalanche
of available self-published ebooks.
The problem may be illustrated by my own efforts to interest my ado-

The Social Dimension o f Reading'Robert Runte

31

lescent daughter in the works of Dave Duncan. As a fantasy fan she should
have been drawn to Duncans Magic Casement (1990), but it sat on her shelf
for over a year before she even opened it, and while she agreed that it was an
excellent read once she started, she stopped after only a couple of chapters.
She chose instead to read Hunger Games, because that is what her friends
wereading. Just as with my own experience forty years ago, if you wish to
fit in, you read what your peer group reads.
Thus, even though Canadian readers may find that Canadian SF is more
likely to resonate for them, Canadians are unlikely to read Canadian SF unless
and until readership for particular titles or series reaches the critical mass
necessary to become a talked about book within ones social network.
Taking the long view, however, I remain unreasonably optimistic. Any
change in the means of production leads to a change in the social relations
of production. Thus the emergence of new publishing, distribution, and net
working technologies will change the relationship between readers and writ
ers. Once anyone can publish a book, everything changes.
The invention of moveable type meant that anyone could become a
reader, but it remained largely a one-way conversation: from writer to
reader(s). With the invention of practical self-publishing and distribution,
that changes to a two-way conversation. For the first time ever, the average
reader can now write/publish back.
Whereas many critics complain about the appalling quality of much of
what is self-published, I see this as a temporary disruption as we shift modal
ities. As an educator, I cannot but applaud that a million new voices have
joined the conversation, even if their first efforts are often inarticulate. Out
of that million, even if only 10 percent make the effort to learn how to
improve-to revise and edit-that is still another 100,000 new writers; and
if only 10 percent of those become polished, thats 10,000 new voices in the
cultural choir; and if only 10 percent of those ever make it to commercial suc
cess, that is still a satisfying number of new professionals who would not
have been there otherwise. One cannot simultaneously decry the qualify of
self-published work and the erosion of reading among students. Yes, they
would be better writers if they read more, but the other half of that equation
is that (at least some of them) will become better, more critical and sympa
thetic readers for having participated in HaNoWriMo or its equivalent.
What I see emerging with fiction is ttie situation that already largely
obtains for poetry; essentially the only people who read poetry in Canada
any more are themselves aspiring poets. Consequently, the more people we
can engage in writing SF, the larger the potential audience.
Take for example the Okal Rel universe. Canadian Lynda Williams

33

K e y n o te A d d r esse s

The Social Dimension of ReadingRobert Runte

started her ten novel series in 2003, but almost immediately her fans leapt
pn her characters and concepts to respond with their own fan fiction.
Williams encouraged the growth of her fan base by fostering the growth of
her fans as writers, by founding both a magazine and Absolute xPress to pub
lish the best work submitted. The result is that the fans have written and pub
lished more books in the Okal Rel universe than Williams herself (Williams).
(And most of them a^e pretty good, even though often written by authors
still in their teens.) *
It is an incredibly encouraging example of the use and power of the
social dimension of readingand now writing. If Canadian SF has a future
as a distinct genre, then this is what that future will have to look like. Far
from disparaging self-publishing and fan fiction, we need to be encouraging
and channeling it. We need to create spaces where youth can explore what it
means to be Canadian by undertaking their own thought experiments in the
tradition of Guy Kays Tigana. They need to read and write within the context
of a cohesive canon, supported by a cohesive social network. They need to
play with the existing Canadian themes, tropes and characteristics, and then
find their own voice by inventing their own.
Exciting times!

,____ . Protected Environment. N orth by 2000. Peter Martin Associates, 1976. 43-56.
Print.
____ . Tangled Web. N ew W ritings in SF21. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1973.117 45. Print.
____ . Tee Vee Man. N ew W orlds 46.137 (Dec. 1963): 60-71. Print.
_____ . 2020 Vision. A lberta M agazin e (July-Aug. 1980). Print.
Kay, Guy Gavriel. The D arkest R oad. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. 1986. Print.
Fionavar Tapestry Book 3.
___21. The Sum m er Tree. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. 1984. Print. Fionavar Tap
estry Book 1.
____ . Tigana. Toronto: Penguin, 1990. Print.
____ . The W andering Fire. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986. Print. Fionavar
Tapestry Book 2.
Kirkpatrick, David. The Effect of Terminal Cancer on Potential Astronauts. Tesseracts.
Ed. Judith Merril. Victoria, BC: Press Porcepic, 1985. 247-73. Print.
Lofting, Hugh. The Story o f D o cto r D olittle: Being the H istory o f H is Peculiar Life a t
H om e a n d Astonishing A dventures in Foreign Parts. London: Lippincott, 1920. Print.
Norton, Mary. The Borrowers. New York: Harcourt, 1953. Print.
Nourse, Alan E. Raiders fro m the Rings. New York: Van Rees, 1962. Print.
Runte, Robert. Afterword. N orth by 2 000+ . By H. A. Hargreaves. Neustadt. ON: Five
Rivers, 2012. 262-74. Print.
____ . Afterword. Tesseracts^. Ed. Robert Runte and Yves Meynard. Edmonton: Tesser
act, 1996. 342-48. Print.
____ . Canadian Speculative Fiction (Science Fiction and Fantasy). E ncyclopedia o f
L iterature in C anada. Ed. William H. New. U of Toronto P, 2002.1016-21. Print.
____ . Foreword. Curious i f True: The Fantastic in Literature. Ed. A. Bright. Cambridge:
Cambridge Scholars. 2012. Print.
____ . Guy Gavriel Kay. N CF G uide to C anadian Science Fiction a n d Fandom , 2003.
Web. 2 Feb. 2014.
____ . Leslie Gadallah and Canadian Space Opera. Afterword. The Legend o f Sarah.
By Leslie Gadallah. Neustadt, ON: Five Rivers, 2014. 279-85. Print.
,____ . Rev. of Finding Creatures & O ther Stories, by Casey June Wolf. N eo-O psis 18
(2009): 72-73. Print.
StoclUon, Paul. High Pressure System. Tesseracts.^ Ed. Robert Runte and Yves Meynard.
Edmonton: Tesseract, 1996. 231-35. Print.
Watts, Matt. C anadia 2056. CBC Radio One, April 2007. Radio.
Williams, Lynda. Okal Rel Universe. Web. Feb 2, 2014. <http://okalrel.org>.
Wolf, Casey June. Finding Creatures & O ther Stories. Vancouver: Wattle & Daub, 2008.
Print.

32

W o r k s C it e d
Brooks, Walter R. Freddy the D etective. New York; Knopf, 1932. Print.
Colombo, John Robert. Canadian Science Fiction and FantasyIs There Any? Preface.
O ther C anadas. Ed. Colombo. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979.1-6. Print.
Colombo, John Robert, Alexandre L. Amprimoz, John Bell, and Michael Richardson.
C D N SF&P. Toronto: Hounslow, 1979. Print.
Dorsey, Candas Jane. Sleeping in a Box. M achine Sex a n d O ther Stories. Edmonton:
Tesseract, 1988. 9-13. Print.
Duncan, Dave. The M agic Casem ent. New York: Del Rey, 1990. Print. A Man of His
Word #1.
____ . W est o f January. New York: BaUantine, 1989. Print.
Gadallah, Leslie. The Legend o f Sarah. Neustadt, ON: Five Rivers, 2014. Rpt. of The Lorem asters. 1988. Print.
Gotlieb, Phyllis. Sunburst. New York: Fawcett. 1964. Print.
Green, Terence M. Rev. of O ther C anadas, by John Robert Colombo. Science Fiction
R eview 9.1 (1980): 44. Print.
Hargreaves, H. A. CAIN".N ew W ritings in SF 20. London: Dobson, 1972.83-134. Print.
-------. Dead to the World. N e w W ritings in SF 11. London: Dobson. 1968. 139-56.
Print:
-------. 'ForeEightSixteen. On Spec 1.1 (1989): 18-23.
-------. In His Moccasins. C algary M agazin e 1 (Aug. 1979): 36-38, 40-42, 61. Print.
------ .. Infinite Variation O ther Canadas. Ed. John Robert Colombo. Toronto: McGrawHill Ryerson. 1979. 214-19. Print.
____ N orth by 2000. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1976. Print. [Re-released in an
expanded edition N orth b y 2000-i. Neustadt, ON: Five Rivers, 2012.]

The Body on the S/abHollinger

The Body on the Slab

V e r o n i c a H o l l in g e r
ACCSFF 05

Im honored to be attending this years conference as guest scholar, and

I thank Professor Allan Weiss for the invitation, and everyone here today for
supporting the academic study of science fiction in Canada.
The trouble is that, ever since Allans invitation. Ive been like Mary Shel
ley trying to think up a ghost story to impress Percy and Byron in Switzerland.
Heres how Shelley describes her anxiety in the Preface to the 1831 edition of
Frankenstein (1818):
I busied myself to think o f a sto ry [she writes].... One which would speak to the
mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror.... Have you thought
of a story? 1 was asked each morning, and each morning 1 was forced to reply
with a mortifying negative [195; emphasis in original].

And then, of course, Shelley experienced the reverie that inspired her great
novel:
1 saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put
together. 1 saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the
working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy,
half-vital motion.... On the morrow I announced that 1 had thou ght o f a sto ry
[196-97, italics in original].

Now whenever I fall into a reverie these summer days, I tend to have
visions that are more closely associated with gardening than with science fic
tion, so, rather than wait for inspiration. Ive decided to take advantage of
Shelleys, particularly the image of that hideous phantasmthat monstrous
body on the slabso that I too can say (in italics): Ive thought o f a story ...
34

35

sort of. Its a story that, like Frankenstein, is about the creation of a hybrid
jjodyin this case, a body that has been accumulating its various bits and
pieces from a whole array of different narrative arcs, styles, cultural and polit
ical moments, national and ethnic traditions, popular story conventions, and
even academic theories, in an increasing multiplicity of forms, from literary
narrative through a whole range of electronic media and its been doing
this' for more than a century by now.
And, during all this time, its been undergoing slow and constant frag
mentation, re-composition, demolition, and transformation...
This monstrous body on the slab is science fiction, of course. And one
thing, for me, remains true about it, no matter what transformations its been
through: the body on the slab is a genuine cyborg, in this case a textual rather
than a material oneby which I mean that science fiction is a creature com
posed of science and technology as much as its composed of elements from
the natural world. In a broad sense, the function of science fiction is to tell
stories about the incredibly varied and complex interactions between the
hurqan world and the machine world.
But what happens to the body on the slab when it ends up in a classroom
or in a philosophical discussion about postmodernism? What effect is there
on science fiction as a popular literature when it becomes the object of aca
demic study? Many people consider that science fiction is best left to its own
natural development in the low culture ghetto of popular entertainment.
This is a kind of reverse snobbery on the part of people whove feltand
rightly so, to a large extentsnubbed by the representatives of high cul
ture.
This issue can come up in the most unexpected quarters and one of my
own favorite versions was raised by J.G. Ballard in 1991, in connection with
a special issue of Science Fiction Studies on Science Fiction and Postmod
ernism. Among the various pieces, we included a roundtable discussion and
we invited Ballard to participate. Heres Ballard response, which took us com
pletely aback, although we also really enjoyed it:
I thought the whole problem SF faced was that its consciousness, critically
speaking, had been raised to wholly inappropriate heightsthe apotheosis of the
hamburger. An exhilarating and challenging entertainment fiction which^Edgar
Allan Poe and Mark Twain would have reliAed has become a disciplineGod
help us-beloved of those like the Delany who will no doubt pour scorn on my
novel of the early 70s [Ballard is referring to Crash (1973)]. The theory and
criticism of s-f! ... bourgeoisification in the form of an over-professionalized
academia with nowhere to take its girlfriend for a bottle of wine and a dance is
now rolling its jaws over an innocent and naive fiction that desperately needs to
be left alone. You are killing us! Stay your hand! Leave us be! Turn your intelli-

36

K ey n o te A d d r esse s

The Body on the SlabHollinger

gence to the iconography of filling stations, cash machines, or whatever non

sense your entertainment culture deems to be the flavor of the day.... But [Balla id concludes,] I fear you are trapped inside your dismal jargon [329)].

for the action-filled plots and for the exotic creatures and locations that filled
them.
But I think I appreciate Edgar Rice Burroughs more as an adult than I
did as a young reader, because I know more about his life and about the con
ditions under which he published his stories. I know more about the venues
in which they appeared, and about the historical and cultural pressures that
shaped their characters, plots, and locales; I know more about the influence
they continue to have on other writers. And I understand, more coherently
and more expansively, something about what these stories do as stories and
something about how they do it. Andmost important understanding of
allI understand more about what these stories have to do with our lives in
the real world.
The great poststructuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida argued very
strongly that nothing makes sense without contextneither a word, nor a
baseball game, nor the events of 9/11. The more we know about the context
surrpunding any particular event or text, the more we understand about the
kind of sense that it makes. Of course, Derrida also concluded that context
is infinite: arguably, the complete context for any texteven Burroughss A
Princess o f Mars (1917)would be the entirety of human history; so, no matter
how much I might wish it, in Derridas terms I will never completely know
even a single one of Burroughs novels ... that certainly gives one pause for
thought.
This attention to context (broadly conceived) is a core feature of Cultural
Studies work as I understand it. It means to work on finding out as much as
possible about the circumstances that shape any and all of the products cre
ated in human culture, most especially the frameworks and forces that pro
duce specific versions of the human subjectarguably, this human subject
is cultures most complex achievement. This work is also political, paying atten
tion as it does to the inevitable power dynamics in any scenario that involves
human beings. So, for me, one of the most interesting and useful develop
ments in science fiction scholarship has been the appearance of a new gen
eration of cultural historians whose work tends to be skeptical of the historical
truisms that have accumulated around science fiction over the years.
This is work thats genuinely interested in tracing the historical and cul
tural developments of that body on the slab, not in order to preserve it
with that dreadful implication of embalming,ffut in order to trace its life
line, to give it a life and a history that, by now^ is extremely complex and really
fascinating. One good example is Australiih scholar Justine Larbalestiers
The Battle o f the Sexes in Science Fiction (2002), which takes up the truism
that there were no women in science fiction before the 1960s and demolishes

Now this reaction is interesting for several reasons, not least for the way in
which Ballard presents himself as the protector of an exhilarating but inno
cent and naive kind of fictionthis from the author of science fiction novels
that include not only Crash, which Ballard himself called the first porno
graphic novel based on technology (9), but also The D rowned World (196^-and High Rise (1972), not to mention such short stories as The Dead'Astro
naut (1968).
'
Whats also interesting is the very real anxiety that Ballard expresses
about the fate of science fiction as an innocent entertainment once it falls
into the hands of academic-theory mavens who clearly have designs on its
virtue. In his view, the editorial collective at Science Fiction Studies was
involved in despoiling this once-virginal popular literature by thinking and
writing about it in the context of postmodern theory. In spite of his ques
tionable metaphors (academia as a male figure with a girlfriend) and in spite
of his shot at Samuel R. Delany (whose writing has always been heavily influ
enced by critical theory), Ballard raises an issue that really does seem to be
of concern to many fans of science fiction: What are those academics doing
to science fiction by turning it into an object of the scholarly gaze? Whatll
be left of it once science fiction has been killed into scholarship and dis
sected on the table of interpretive autopsy by contemporary versions of Victor
Frankensteinthat is, by professional academics? In Ballards view, instead
of putting the body together, here we are ghoulishly concentrating our ener
gies on dissecting it, taking it apart, leaving it in pieces, dead on the slab.
What can possibly be left of the vital exhilaration that Ballard identifies
with the experience of reading science fiction? At the most immediate level,
Ballards critical reply suggests that to study and teach science fiction is to
kill it into intellectual content, to risk marring the pure enjoyment of a
reading experience unmediated by interfering theoretical ideas.
Now it seems to me that, if something is worth knowing aboutand I
think were all agreed here that science fiction is certainly worth knowing
aboutthen knowing more about it is a better way to bring it to life, to appre
ciate it, than is knowing less, even if appreciation doesnt always equate to
simple admiration. My own best test case is the oeuvre of Edgar Rice Bur
roughs, to which I was devoted in my youth; my original hardcover copy of
Tarzan (1912) still owns a particularly good piece of real estate on my book
shelf. At twelve, I wasnt conscious of the racism and jingoism in Burroughss
many novelsnot to mention his rather awful writing style. I read them then

37

38

K ey n o t e A d d r esse s

The Body on the SlabHollinger

it in a thorough and thoroughly entertaining way. Larbalestiers research into

the 1920s and 1930s, in particular, is meticulous, including careful attention
to material other than simply the fiction that was published. In particular,
she makes very good use of a variety of readers letters published in the pulp
magazines of the period. Larbalestier reminds readers of Connie Williss
scathing comment about the supposed absence of women in science fiction
before second-wave feminism: Theres only one problem with this version
of women in SFit^ not true (qtd. in Larbalestier 152).
My American colleague Rob Latham is undertaking a quite differ^t
project, one that promises to be equally significant: Latham has been taking
on the truisms surrounding the New Wavemost especially that there was
no style, no sex, no maturity in science fiction before the New Waveand
finding out that this is a pretty misleading representation of 1950s and 1960s
science fiction. So Lathams history of the New Wave wont be about ruptures
from one period to the next, but about the kinds of continuities within which
the New Wave was able to develop in both England and the U.S. In an unpub
lished draft of some of his research, Latham writes:

But all this fine scholarship raises another question: Whats the point of
researching and teaching science fiction? Before actually trying to answer
itan impossibility, in any caseits interesting to consider the question
itself. To some extent, this question comes out of the deep suspicion of pop
ular culture that still pervades the communities of higher education, no
matter what you hear these days about the breakdown or blurring of the
boundaries between high and low culture. The question of use-value
demands a justification from a genre commonly held to be a form of popular
entertainment. It wants to know what science fiction can contribute to an elite
intellectual enterprise. A genre such as science fiction, even though its per
mitted some space in college and university teaching and research, is expected
to pay the rent, to justify the space that it takes up. This demand that science
fiction justify the attention its been getting has always haunted academic
scholarship in the field.
This is pretty clearly demonstrated, for instance, in the incredibly influ
ential definition of science fiction developed by Darko Suvin in his 1979 study.

it is probably wise to be suspicious of a simplistic repressive hypothesis, an

assumption that taboos surrounding sexual expression automatically operate to
silence discussion of sex rather than to sustain and proliferate it.... SF, willynilly, is always treating sexual topics, perhaps most powerfully when it seems to
be primly avoiding them.

My most recent find is British academic Roger Luckhursts cultural his

tory of science fiction, simply titled Science Fiction (2005). Luckhurst ambi
tiously maps some of the conditions of emergence of science fiction as a
genre, as well as the social and political transformations that have shaped it
since the late nineteenth century. Here is how Luckhurst maps the condi
tions in the late nineteenth century that "converge to produce the space for
what will become SF:
These conditions are: 1) the extension of literacy and primary education to the
majority of the population of England and America, including the working
classes; 2) the displacement of the older forms of mass literature, the penny
dreadful and the dime novel, with new cheap magazine formats that force for
mal innovation, and drive the invention of modern genre categories like detec- '
tive or spy fiction as well as SF; 3) the arrival of scientific and technical
institutions that provide training for a lower-middle-class generation as scien
tific workers, teachers and engineers, and that comes to confront traditional sites
of cultural authority; and in a clearly related way, 4) the context of a culture
being visibly transformed by technological and scientific innovations that, really
for the first time, begin to saturate the everyday life experience of nearly [every
one] ... [16-17].

39

Metamorphoses o f Science Fiction: On the Poetics and H istory o f a Literary

Genre. Suvins Metamorphoses is still the single most influential genre study

ever .written about science fiction; even after 25 years, his definition of SF
turns up regularly to justify any number of scholarly discussions and it goes
like this: Science fiction is a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient con
ditions are the presence and interaction o f estrangement and cognition, and whose
main form al device is an imaginative fram ework alternative to the authors
environment (7-8; emphases in original). Suvin identifies SF as "a literary

genre, which immediately confers some respectability on it (as opposed to

Samuel Delanys insistence that SF is a paraliterature). Suvins definition
identifies SF as a rational genre of story-telling, one that appeals, not to our
emotive but to our cognitive facultiesits a literature of ideas. Its purpose
is to recontextualize familiar features of the world in ways that invite us to
think about them freshly, to consider them as if weve never seen them before.
This is cognitive estrangement, in Suvins construction; and, as a committed
Marxist, the work of cognitive estrangement, as far as Suvin is concerned,
should best be deployed at the service of critical analysis and left politics.
Now this definition has been working wonderfully well for a long time:
it provides an intellectual justification for science fiction, one that can prop
erly situate it among other intellectual pursuits. Twenty-five years ago it also
gave scholars a way to talk about science fiction, a way to model it, to abstract
itto estrange it, in factto get sortie theoretical distance from it. But, while
I have no argument with Suvins preference for intellectuality and critical
resistance, his definition cuts away major portions of that body on the slab

40

K e y n o t e A d d resses

The Body on the SlabHollinger

not least its own particular aesthetic appeals, one of which is its appeal to
our sense of wonder. Rigorously applied, Suvins theory of cognitive
estrangement relegates an awful lot of science fiction to the trashbin of cul
tural value.
Since Metamorphoses was published in 1979, theres been an explosion
of interest in science fiction from many different research directions, from
computer studies to feminist cyborg theory, all of which pay some attention
to science fiction as a*particularly privileged site for imaginative thinking
about the effects of living in technoculture on individuals, communities', and
the natural world. Approaching SF in this way often has lesslo do with trying
to define it, and more to do with thinking about.the kinds of stories that it
tells. Here is what I wrote several years ago about this unexpected explosion
of academic interest in science fiction from so many different directions:

in technoculture. Because, when all is said and done, the monster on the slab
is not only science fiction, its also the human subject thats undergoing the
techno-evolutionary process of becoming so m eth in g else...

SFs ongoing generic metamorphoses have been at least partly responsible for
the increasing heterogeneity of the contemporary critical enterprise. SF no
longer refers only to a literary subgenre: it is also a particularly popular kind of
cinema and television; it provides the visual stimulus for a whole range of video
games; it spills over into slipstream fiction; its aliens and spaceships feed into
some of our cultures most acute millennial anxieties. As both a body of imagery
and a field of discourse, it provides particularly apt imaginative portrayals of
contemporary technoculture....
The widespread attention which cyberpunk attracted from outside the SF field
has been one important factor in its growing prominence as an object of study
in a variety of disciplines. New perspectives in critical and theoretical workinfluenced, for example, by post-structuralism, by feminism, by race and gender
studies, and by the multiplex of postmodernismshave also found in SF an
especially rich source of cultural material. In particular, SF is increasingly fea
tured in the expanding areas of cyberculture studies ... and cultural studies of
science and technology.... What should we make of SFs incorporation into such
a variety of disparate theoretical discourses? Are they a promise that SF studies
will continue to develop and to expand? Or are they threats that SF studiesas
the specific study of a specific literary fieldwill disappear as it becomes dis
persed over a variety of other academic sites (even as the literary product itself
threatens to disappear into the vast terrain of multi-media SF)? It is not difficult
to feel a certain scholarly anxiety in the face of such apparent disarray. One
might easily be tempted to work at delimiting the field according to very specific
generic criteria, to place conceptual guards at the borders to control SFs appro
priation by everyone from Jean Baudrillard to feminist critics of science. But
resistance is probably futile, and it will be fascinating to follow the fortunes of
SF and of SF studies into the new millennium ... [262].

Because science fiction is the only kind of story-telling that can look
closely, not only at what it might mean, but also at how it feels to be a subject

41

W orks C ited
Ballad, J.G. Crash. London: Triad/Panther, 1975.
- " The Dead Astronaut. The C om plete S h ort Stories. London: Flamingo. 2001
760-68.
____ . The D row n ed World. New York: Berkley, 1962.
____ . High Rise. London: Jonathan Cape, 1975.
-------. Introduction to the French Edition of Crash (1974). Crash. London; Triad/Pan
ther. 1975. 5-9.
-------. A Response to the Invitation to Respond. Science Fiction Studies 18 3 (1991)329.
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. A Princess o f M ars. Chicago: McClurg, 1917.
____ . Tarzan o f the Apes. Chicago: McClurg, 1914.
Hollinger, Veronica. Contemporary Trends in Science Fiction Criticism, 1980-1999.
Science Fiction Studies 26.2 (1999): 232-62.
Larbalestier, Justine. The B attle o f the Sexes in Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 2002.
Luckhurst, Roger. Science Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
Shelley, Mary. Authors Introduction to the Standard Novels Edition (1831). Franken
stein or The M odern Prom etheus. 1818. Ed. Marilyn Butler. Oxford: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 1994.192-97.
Suvin, Darko. M etam orphoses o f Science Fiction: On the Poetics a n d H istory o f a L iterary
Genre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.

New Half-Way Tree and

the Second World: Themes
of Nation and Colonization in
Nalo Hopkinsons Midnight Robber
Brecken H a nc o c k
ACCSFF 05

In Midnight Robber (2000)a work of speculative fiction that combines

elements of fantasy, science fiction, folktale, and mythNalo Hopkinson
explores postcolonial ideas of place and space by weaving an allegory for
displacement and exile (Rutledge). Hopkinsons protagonist Tan-Tan is
abducted by her father and taken to an alternate realitya prison planet
called New Half-Way Treewhere she must learn to protect herself from her
fathers abuse and live in harmony with the douen, a race of beings that orig
inally inhabited New Half-Way Tree before its colonization by humans. In
this paper, I will take a preliminary look at the two worlds Hopkinson creates
in Midnight RobberToussaint and New Half-Way Tree. Using Alan Lawsons
theories about the Second Worldthat is, about settler culturesI will
unpack some of the implications of colonization in the novel. In particular,
I will focus on the relationship between the First Nation of douen on New
Half-Way Tree and the human settlers who attempt to forge a new society
away from their home planet.
Midnight Robber details Tan-Tans emotional and social development as
she grows from a child into a young womana journey that leads her through
exile, abuse, and self-awareness. We follow her from her home world Tous95

96

C a n a d ia n S c ie n c e F ic t io n

saint to New Half-Way Tree, a planet whose function is explained to TanTan by her father Antonio just before he forcibly takes her there. He says,
'When people do bad things, we does send them away so they cant hurt
nobody else. Killers, rapists ... people we dont know what to do with, and
like so (72). Antonio, exiled because he killed his wifes lover, kidnaps his
daughter. After a dimensional shift and a trek through the wilderness, the
two find themselves' in Junjuh, one of many villages on New Half-Way Tree.
Antonio eventually^ remarries but he continues to think of Tan-Tans mother^,
and begins to see Tan-Tan as an incarnation of his lost wife. When Tan-Tan
turns nine, Antonio gifts her with his wedding ring and forces her to fulfill
the sexual role that goes with it. After seven years of abuse, on the day before
she turns sixteen, Tan-Tan can endure it no longer and kills her father while
he rapes her. Exiled again, this time from her community where the law
demands a life for a life, she escapes with Chichibud, the douen man who
first led her and Antonio through the bush when they arrived on New HalfWay Tree. Chichibud takes her to live in the douen community where she is
safe from harm but isolated from other humans.
By detailing Tan-Tans dual exilefirst from Toussaint and then from
JunjuhHopkinson is able to explore themes of community and belonging
while critiquing the colonial impulse to conquer landscapes and any First
Nations that stand in the way of domination. Significantly, both Toussaint
and New Half-Way Tree are clearly described as colonized worlds. Toussaint
is a two-hundred year old colony populated by people from earth who Hop
kinson explains derive from a Caribbean background, specifically Trinidad
and Jamaica, which, like all the Caribbean countries, are multicultural and
multi-ethnic (Hopkinson, Time Warner Bookmark Interview). Toussaint is
ordered, vibrant, and safe with an AI that watches over everyone. All citizens
are connected to this web via earbugsnanotechnology implanted at birth.
Toussaint is not perfect, but it is painted as idyllic. Hopkinson herself was
surprised by this; she explains, At some point... I realized ... that I had cre
ated a utopia. I hadnt set out to do that, am not sure I could have if Id made
a deliberate effort... There are no poor people on Toussaint, and no wage
slaves. And earlier in the same interview she says
The artificial intelligence that safeguards all the people in a planetary system
becomes Granny Nanny, named after the revolutionary and magic worker who
won independent rule in Jamaica for the Maroons who had run away from slav
ery. Rather than being a Big Brother paradigm it is an affectionate reference to
her sense of love, care, and duty [Hopkinson, Time Warner Bookmark Interview].

Other names in the novel also signal an affirming connection to history

and religion. The smart house is called an eshu, named after the West African

Nation and Colonization in Midnight RobberHancock

97

deity who can be in all places at once, who is the ghost in the machine (Hop
kinson, Time Warner Bookmark Interview); Toussaint is a reference to Tou
ssaint LOverture, one of the leaders of the first slave rebellion in the Caribbean
in the nineteenth century (Ramraj 34, n. 3); and Marryshow, the corporation
that organized the earth engine that colonized Toussaint, references T. A. Marfyshow, a commanding proponent in the twentieth century of black empowernient and democracy in Grenada and the West Indies (Clemente 13).
Underneath this history-affirming utopia, however, lies genocide and
violent plunder. Hopkinson complicates the paradisiacal world of Caribbean
heritage by juxtaposing it with New Half-Way Tree, the wild version of Tou
ssaint, untouched by Granny Nanny. It is made clear that the original inhab
itants of Toussaint have been cleared out to make the planet comfortable for
its human settlers. This point is emphasized when Tan-Tan arrives in New
Half-Way Tree and encounters the dangerous flora and fauna that used to
inhabit Toussaint. Right at the beginning of the novel, Hopkinson has Granny
Nanny explain the relationship between Toussaint and New Half-Way Tree:
New Half-Way Tree, the mirror planet of Toussaint. Yes, man; on the next side of
a dimension veil.... Where Toussaint civilized, New Half-Way Tree does be
rough.... New Half-Way Tree is how Toussaint planet did look before the Mar
ryshow Corporation sink them Earth Engine Number 127 down into it like god
entering he woman; plunging into the womb of soil to impregnate the planet
with the seed of Granny Nanny.... On New Half-Way Tree, the mongoose still
run wild, the diable hush still got poison thorns, and the mako jumbie bird does
still stalk through the bUsh, head higher than any house [2j.

Toussaint is a colony that no longer looks like a colony because, as the house
eshu explains, Indigenous fauna, now extinct (33). All traces of colonization
have been exterminated.
New Half-Way Tree, on the other hand, is wild; its human settlers, exiles
from Toussaint, try to make their way in a harsh environment without the
benefit of their home-planets technology. In fact, where Toussaint has erased
the evidence of its colonial past, in effect becoming an imperial power all its
own separate from earth except for historic nostalgia. New Half-Way Tree is
distinctly recognizable as a settler-colonyand it is here that I see the appli
cability of Alan Lawsons discussion of the Second World. Speaking specif
ically about the settler societies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and pre
imperial U.S.A. (A Cultural Paradigm for the Second World 6), he suggests
that we
recognize the Second World of the settler as a place caught between two First
Worlds, two origins of authority and authenticity: the originating world of
Europe, the imperium, as source of the Second Worlds principal cultural

C a n a d ia n S c ie n c e F ic t io n

98

authority; and that other First World, that of the First Nations, whose authority
the settlers not only effaced and replaced but also desired [Postcolonial Theory
and the Settler Subject 29].

The human settlers on New Half-Way Tree certainly demonstrate the position
Lawson describesthey are caught between their originating world, Toussaint, and the world of the douen, the indigenous beings of New Half-Way
Tree who know how fo survive, making optimum use of their surroundings
while living harmoniously among the natural plants and animals.
Through Tan-Tan and Antonio we are introduced to the plighrof the
settler on New Half-Way Tree. When they first arrive, like.aH'hther newcomers
to the mirror planet, they are helplessly lost and vulnerable. Tan-Tan describes
their surroundings;
All around them it had some big knotted'-up trees-them, with twisted-up roots
digging into the ground like old mens fingers. The air was too cold, and it had a
funny smell, like old bones. The light coming through the trees was red, not yel
low. Even the trees-them looked wrong; the bark was more purple than brown.
Some beast was making noise in one of the trees over her head.... This wasnt
her home. This ugly place couldnt be anybodys home [76].

Chichibud, a douen guide, finds them before long and offers to lead them to
human settlement. They are at first suspicious of the being who, to them, looks
like a leggobeast or bat masque it own self {Midnight Robber 92) and is
dubbed by the humans douen, or children whod died before they had their
naming ceremonies. They came back from the dead as jumbies with their
heads on backwards. They lived in the bush {Midnight Robber 93). These
ethnocentric descriptions, reminiscent of colonists ubiquitous derogatory
labeling of Indigenous peoples all over the world, are soon proven to be wrong
by even Tan-Tans childish eyes: Tan-Tan took a hard look at the little per
son.... No, it didnt look like a dead child. Too besides, it didnt have no
Panama hat like a real douen (96). She is surprised and dismayed to learn,
upon reaching human settlement, that Chichibud calls humans boss ; when
she instructs him that no one is higher in status than anyone else and that
he'should say Compere the human men laugh, saying, is that human that?
( 121).

Chichibud may not be human, but it quickly becomes clear that AntoniO
and Tan-Tan would die in the bush if not for his guidance. He teaches them
where to camp, how to start a fire, how to find supper in the forest, and how
to set up shelter. Antonio especially seems to have a knack for summoning
disaster; Chichibud saves him from the giant, predatory mako jumbie bird
and from the explosion of halwa seeds that Antonio spits into the fire despite
Chichibuds warning. In spite of his disgust for Chichibud, Antonio must

Nation and Colonization in Midnight RobberHancock

99

learn to respect the knowledge that protects him and his daughter from dan
ger and certain death. He is caught between his First World authority, which
he believes himself to be invested with even though he is no longer on Toussaint, and Chichibuds First World authority, which is more useful on New
Half-Way Tree.
Although Tan-Tan and Antonio are humans and therefore part of the
settler culture of New Half-Way Tree, it is the guidance of the First Nation
of douen people that allows them to survive. When they reach Junjuh, how
ever, Tan-Tan notices a stark division of labor between the human and the
douen: Two-three of the houses had douen men working in the gardens,
digging and hoeing (124). The douen men, we soon learn, trade labor and
crafts for special items that humans bring over from Toussaint, such as
lighters and glass bottles (98). The douen, however, are not dependent on
humans for sophisticated products, as Tan-Tan learns during her stay in their
community when she is introduced to their foundry:
a grey cement dome of a building with big round window-holes all round it.
Tan-Tan frowned. Those were douens she could see through the man-height
windows; she thought they didnt know anything about building with cement or
forging metal. But is metalworking they were doing for true [228].

The douen, as Chichibud explains to Tan-Tan, need to learn to work with

fire and metal because the humans use these things to make "Guns. Bombs.
Cars. Aeroplanes. He says, if douens dont learn tallpeople tricks, oonuh
will use them pon we (230).
In fact, the humans do turn their technology on the douen by the end
of the novel. Antonios New Half-Way Tree wife, Janisette, searches for TanTan until she tracks her to the douen home in the daddy tree, a huge tree
that provides their food and sheltet,With the help of two metal smiths who
have learned to manufacture a car and a gun, Janisette is dangerous and for
midable. Significantly, the fact that'the metal smiths have spent their time
learning to replicate technology from Toussaint is again consistent with Sec
ond World culture where, as Lawson explains, mimicry is a necessary and
unavoidable part of the repertoire of the settler (Postcolonial Theory and
the Settler Subject 26). Unable to let go of the comforts they enjoyed on
Toussaint, the settlers endeavor to re-create their lifestyle, seeking to repro
duce the things with which they are familiar. Rather than learning to adapt
flexibly to a new environment, they mimic their past society.
In the fight to protect Tan-Tan and the daddy tree, two douen are shot
to death. Chichibud comments, 'What a stupid-looking thing, only a tube
with a handle.... Who woulda think it could cause so much pain? (271-72).

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C a n a d ia n S c ie n c e F ic t io n

Nation and Colonization in Midnight RobberHancock

When the douen finally force Janisette and her companions to leave the bush,
they are confronted with a tragic dilemma. They had kept their home hidden
from humans in order to protect their children and their lifestyle from human
interference and violence, but now they have been discovered. They decide
to cut down the daddy tree and break up their community, scattering them
selves among other douen settlements.
The douen realize that the humans are a threat to their very existence.
We, as readers, know that this is exactly the case because we are already aware
of the history of Toiissaint where the douen have been eradicated. Early in
the novel, Tan-Tan is given a lesson by the house eshu that teaches'her about
Toussaint before and after human settlement:
,

Way Tree what they did to Toussaint. The douen and other species will again
be extinguished.
Hopkinson, however, seems to offer a ray of hope for New Half-Way
Tree at the end o f Midnight Robber. Tan-Tan insists that her child, the product
of her fathers violation of her body, be born in the woods. The boy is born
neither within the douen community nor within the human community, but
Tan-Tan has her best friends, a douen woman and a human man, by her side
whenshe gives birth. She names the new boy Tubman, she of the under
ground railroad fame (Clemente 23), the human bridge from slavery to
freedom {Midnight Robber 329). He is born with Granny Nanny song in his
blood. We learn that he is a sort of cyborg. The earbug nanomites in TanTans ear became infected during the dimensional shift. Usually the earbug
dies during the transport, but Tan-Tans nanomites survived. In the end we
find out that the novel has been told as a story by Granny Nanny to Tubman
in the womb. Granny Nanny explains:

100

It showed her how to see the fossils trapped in some'of the stones. It told her
about the animals that used to live on Toussaint before human people came and
made it their own.
You mean chicken and cow and so?
No. Mistress, Them is from Earth. I mean the indigenous fauna: the mako
jumbi-them, the douen. The jumbie bird all-you does farm for meat and leather
is a genesculpt [32].

Toussaint is a world that humans have re-designed for their own use, for their
safety and for their comfort. This is a typical use of colonial land by settlers
according to Lawson:
In almost endless repetition, colonial space is figured as lack, absence, emptiness
... as Dorothy Seaton points out... colonial space is figured as outside dis
course, a place of nonmeaning, a place of chaos that threatens the coherence of
the subject.... The colonial explorer had to empty the land of prior significa
tionwhat is already known cannot be discovered, what already has a name
cannot be named. For the settler too, the land had to be empty. Empty land can
be settled, but occupied land can only be invaded. So the land must be emptied
so that it can be filled, in turn, with both discourse and cattle [Postcolonial
Theory and the Settler Subject 25].

The Marryshow Corporations Earth Engine Number 127, the exploration/set

tlement shuttle that landed on Toussaint, literally emptied the land and settled
it when it impregnated Toussaint with the seed of Granny Nanny, the com
munication web that allows the utopian functioning of the planet. Everything
from cows to bamboo is put in the place of native species. The colonization
of Toussaint is complete in M idnight Robber. It has reached the status of impe
rial nation. The emptying and refilling of the land was successful.
New Half-Way Tree is a colony-in-progress. The settlers mimic the soci
ety of their home-world, and if things continue to develop in the same way,
the cars and guns and bombs and airplanes will eventually do to New Half-

I instruct the nanomites in your mamee blood to migrate into your growing tis
sue, to alter you as you grow so all of you could fe e l nannysong at this calibra
tion. You could hear me because your whole body is one living connection with
the Grande Anansi Nanotech Interface [328].

Tubman is not only born between the worlds of the human and the douen,
but also between the worlds of the organic and the mechanical. As Bill
Clemente argues, the conclusion points to ways that humanity and technol
ogy can merge and signals hope in the new world for the melding of the
douen general empathy and environmental sensitivity ... with the technical
achievement Granny Nanny represents. This potential bridging of differences
Tan-Tans experience heralds (23).
Hopkinson, then, leaves us optimistic about the potential for harmony
in Second World contexts. Significantly, sh^ locates this optimism in the act
of speculation. In M idnight Robber, speculation takes the form of a cyborg:
Tubman, invested with the melded strengths' of human and technological
being. But beyond the examples offered in her fiction, Hopkinsons interstitial
writing itself is an example of the multifaceted possibilities that arise when
borders are blurred. While straddl[ing] the borders between science fiction,
fantasy and Caribbean folk tales and legends (Misrahi-Barak 94), Hopkinson
proposes that positive contact between genres, cultures, languages, nature
and technology, even humans and aliens, is possible. Furthermore, Hopkin
sons own experiencewhich she calls one flavour of black experience, and
Caribbean, and Canadian, and female, and fat, and from feminist and sex
positive politics (Hopkinson, Interview with Rutledge)allows her a unique
perspective from which to speculate about future worlds. Ruby Ramraj, citing

lp2

C a n a d ia n S c ie n c e F ic t io n

Nation and Colonization in Midnight RobberHancock

an interview between Hopkinson and Nancy Batty, notes that, for Hopkinson,
moving to different places in the CaribbeanGuyana, Trinidad, Jamaica
and the US and Canada from the time she was eight months old gave her a
sense of hybridity, of collage (Ramraj 34, n.8).
This sense of hybridity shapes the characters and settings in Hopkinson s
fiction. In M idnight Robber, Tan-Tan, whose ancestors were born on earth,
is a native of Tous^aint, exiled from her homeworld and finally from all
human communities. She lives on the fringes. Furthermore, the language she
speaks is a blend of dialects; as Hopkinson explains, a number of sociodi
alects are somewhat native to me, and my instinct is toebmbine them (Inter
view with Batty 177). Hopkinsons privileging'of collaged experience and
identity fits nicely with Lawsons theories on Second World texts. In A Cul
tural Paradigm for the Second World Lawson seeks to interrogate some of
the ways in which the prevailing and pervasive dualisms of Western thought
have been rewritten and re/placed in a specific kind of post-colonial context
(68), namely in the Second Worlds of Canada and Australia. He argues:

attracted to the genre for its potential to subvert traditional power structures,
Hopkinson also points out that science fiction has always been a subversive
literature. Its been used to critique social systems well before the marketing
label of sf got stuck on it (Hopkinson, interview with Rutledge). In fact, she
argues that science fiction and other forms of speculation grant her advan
tages over the limitations of realism:

[t]he customary project of Western thought has been to contain disorder and
divergence, to see the resolution of dichotomy, polarity, binary in harmony and
unity, to synthesise and to re-integrate.... Second World texts are under no such
cultural imperative. The states of interphase exist epistemologically without the
boundaries of resolution of their self-and-otherness and take the multiple per
spectives, the polyphony, the diachronicity, that is their birthright as their cre
ative source of endless subtlety [A Cultural Paradigm for the Second World
70, quotation from White 447].

In her use of blended dialects, in her focus on the cultural diversity of her
characters, and in her exploration of fringe identity, Hopkinson participates
in the discourse of Second World texts. Furthermore, by ending Midnight
Robber m th the birth of Tubman, Hopkinson embraces irresolution and mul
tiplicity. A product of incest but somehow also the future hope for New HalfWay Tree, Tubman is an ambiguous figure who embodies a chance for past
exploitation, violence, and abuse to transform and heal, creating possibilities
for positive interaction between humans and douen, Toussaint and New HalfWay Tree, and the organic and the technological.
Here we also begin to see how hybridity has influenced Hopkinsons
approach to the genre of science fiction, a genre that has not traditionally
attracted black writers. She explains that sf [has] a stigma about being adven
ture stories in which white people use technology to overpower alien cultures.
Small wonder that black writers havent been drawn to it in large numbers
weve been on the receiving end of colonization (Hopkinson, interview with
Rutledge). Recognizing other possibilities in science fiction, and being

103

When I read the work of African American realist writers, theres always the
awareness of the white world in which the characters live; there has to be, if the
fiction is to be representative of the real world. The realist work of Caribbean
writers must reference the effects of hundreds of years of colonization.... Specu
lative fiction allows me to experiment with the effects of that cancerous blot, to
shrink it by setting my worlds far in the future (science fiction) or to metonymize
it so that I can explore the paradigms its created (fantasy). I could even choose to
sidestep it altogether into alternate history [Hopkinson, interview with Rutledge].
M idnight Robber, set far in the future when Caribbean people are exploring

space and colonizing planets other than earth, addresses the cancerous blot
by investigating human greed and violence away from the context of earth,
its specific countries and histories of exploitation.
However, because of Hopkinsons experience of hybridity and collage,
in particular her movement between countries and culturesfar from irrel
evant to real-world politics. M idnight Robber is rooted in historical and con
temporary global realities. Specifically, I think that Hopkinsons novel reflects
a multiracial, pluri-ethnic, post-colonial Canadian context and that Hopkin
son uses speculative genres to contribute to a critical Canadian discourse
that complicates notions of race, class, and nation. To support this analysis
of Hopkinsons work, Linda Hutcheons article Circling the Downspout of
Empire: Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism will be particularly helpful.
In her article, Hutcheon qualifies Canadas status as a post-colonial nation
by reflecting on the differences between settler colonies and nations like the
West Indies or Africa or India (155) where the cultural imposition associated
with colonialism took place on the homeground of the colonized people
(155). Beyond that, in her discussion of other distinctions between Canada
and Third World nations (159), Hutcheon^JJngers on the more recent set
tlement patterns of Canada, namely
the pluri-ethnic (and lately more multiracial) nature of Canadian society. Some
of the immigrants who populate this country are not from colonized societies
and they often consciously resist being labelled post-colonial.... But there are
other immigrants who ... come to Canada from the West Indies, Asia, or Latin
America and see it as a necessarily occupied territory because land was denied
somewhere else (Davies 33).... The specificity of C an adian post-colonial culture
today is being conditioned by this arrival of immigrants from other post-

105

C a n a d ia n S c ie n c e F ic t io n

Nation and Colonization in Midnight RobberHancock

colonial nations.... This is the doubled sense of post-colonialism that is part of

some of the writing we now call Canadian [Hutcheon 160].

Davies, loan. Senses of Place. C anadian Forum April 1983: 33-34.

Hopkinson, Nalo. Caught by a ... Genre. Interview with Nancy Batty. A riel 33.1 (2002):
175-201.
____ , Interview with Gregory E. Rutledge. A frican A m erican R eview 33.4 (1999): 589610.
____ . Interview, Time Warner Bookmark. 2000. Time W arner Bookm ark: The Authors.
November 6,2005. <http://www.twbookmark.com/authors/84/1272/interview9676.
html>.
M idnigh t Robber. New York: Warner Books, 2000.
Hutcheon, Linda. Circling the Downspout of Empire: Post-Colonialism and Post
modernism. A riel 20.4 (1989): 149-75.
Lawson, Alan. A Cultural Paradigm for the Second World.A ustralian -C anadian Studies
9.1-2 (1991): 67-78.
____ . Postcolonial Theory and the Settler Subject. Essays on C anadian W riting 56
(1995): 20-36.
Mishrahi-Barak, Judith. Beginners Luck among Caribbean-Canadian Writers: Nalo
Hopkinson, Andre Alexis and Shani Mootoo. C om m onw ealth Essays a n d Studies
22.1 (1999): 89-96.
Ramraj, Ruby. Power Relationships and Femininity in Nalo Hopkinsons The Salt
R o a d s Foundation 91 (Summer 2004): 10-24.
Seaton, Dorothy. Colonising Discourses: The Land in Australian and Western Canadian
Exploration Narratives. A u stralian -C an adian Studies 6.2 (1989): 99-113.
White, Patrick. Voss. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.

104

Hutcheons discussion of the ambiguous nature of Canadas post-colonial sta

tus is useful when unpacking the political implications of writing such as
Hopkinsons.
Hopkinson, a Jamaican-born Canadian speculative fiction author, writes
work that reflects wh'dt Hutcheon calls the doubled sense of post-colonialism.
Hopkinson corpbines her multi-national perspective with her partialityJbr speculative genres to push themes of colonization, immigration, and inte
gration into an experimental and theoretical realm. Ip M idnight Robber spe
cifically, Toussaint and New Half-Way Tree, be<^use they are each at a different
stage of colonization, shed light on and cpiPplicate colonial realities. By cre
ating these two planetsthe former a successful colony where pre-contact
plants, animals, and intelligent life Tiave been wiped out, and the latter an
early-stage settler colony with a First Nation of douen, where small human
settlements are surrounded by dense forest that contain hostile plants and
animalsHopkinson is able to explore issues of real colonizationdis
placement, exploitation, genocidewhile extrapolating from history to imag
ine future implications of a colonial mindset. Furthermore, by setting the
novel away from earth, writing the colonized race as non-human, and casting
her humans as Caribbean descendants, she pushes the doubled sense of
post-colonialism to a tripled or quadrupled sense.
After unpacking some of the ways in which Midnight Robber comments
on colonization in general and the Second World in particular, the political
implications of Hopkinsons writing resonate. Both Lawson and Hutcheon are
useful in helping situate Midnight Robber as a Second World text with specific
significance in the Canadian context. In the novel, the relationship between the
humans and the douen, the humans and the natural world, as well as the rela
tionship among humans within and between settlements, raises questions about
the future of colonization and the intrinsic quest for power in humans. While
the novel pessimistically extrapolates that any future utopia will come at the
expense of plants, animals, and potentially aliens, it does not fail to note the
potential for community-building on the fringes of defined, sanctioned societies.
In fact, I think what hope the novel offers is located in Tan-Tans alienation,
from which Tubman, border-straddler, bridge to freedom, is able to emerge.
W orks C ited
Clemente, Bill. Tan-Tans Exile and Odyssey in Nalo Hopkinsons M idn igh t R obber
Foundation 91 (Summer 2004): 25-35.

Spcci/fatin^ DiversifyNewman-Stille

Speculating Diversity: Nalo

Hoplcinsons Brown Girl in the '
Ring and the Use of Speculative
Fiction to Disrupt Singular
Interpretations of Place
D e r e k N e w m a n -S t il l e
ACCSFF 13

Nalo Hopkinson does not create easy notions of race, ethnicity, and dias
pora in Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), but, rather, embraces the complexity
of a diasporic identity and the multiple draws on the diasporic person. Her
characters show a complex and conflicted engagement with the notion of
home, pulled toward multiple forms of home and displaying the multifac
eted nature of diasporic identity. Smaro Kamboureli notes that diasporic
identity is hybridized, constantly under revision, and does not lend itself to
easy subjectivity (2123). Place is inscribed with multiple levels of meaning
for diasporic populations, being read through lenses of the present and past
simultaneously (Kamboureli 20).
Situated in a Toronto of the not-so-distant future, which has been cut
off from the rest of Canada and ghettoized due to its economic and perceived
social issues, Hopkinsons Toronto is made into a conflicted space, unsure of
its own identity and place of belonging. It has been designated an unsafe
space and becomes a place where radicalized and economically disadvantaged
people are trapped. It is a place where riots have occurred between people
with various claims to space and is called a war zone (11). It is disconnected.
146

147

searching to establish an identity for itself in exile. Like people in diaspora,

itSrepresents a simultaneity of past and present, a doubling or multiplication
of identities. It is the ideal setting for a woman in diaspora to search for her
oWn identity, notions of belonging, and sense of place, and to challenge sin
gular notions of place and home.
Ti-Jeanne is a woman of Caribbean descent, comfortable with aspects
of her Caribbean identity (food, clothing, and other forms of identity expres
sion that Canadian Multiculturalism views as safe) but she is uncomfortable
with religious notions from her familial homeland and the religious traditions
of her grandmother, Gros-Jeanne.
Ti-Jeanne herself wasnt so sure. There was the drumming that went on in the
crematorium chapel, late into the night. The wails and screams that came from
the worshippers. The clotted blood on the crematorium floor in the mornings,
mixed with cornmeal. Obviously, other people than Mami still believed in that
duppy business. Ti-Jeanne didnt understand why Mami insisted on trying to
teach her that old-time nonsense [36-37].

Yet, these traditions are a part of her, expressing themselves against her wishes
through dreams, visions, visitations from Vodoun gods, or Loa, and her mag
ical abilities. She fears these moments when her Vodoun heritage interacts
with her body, imposing what she considers to be uncomfortable, unwanted,
and foreign presences on her body. Her grandmother stresses to her the
importance of expressing and understanding this part of herself in order to
ensure that her magical abilities do not override her. Anthropologist Erika
Bourguignon echoes this sentiment when she suggests that
We cannot act without memory, nor can we understand ourselves unless we under
stand our own pasts.... Our capacity both to remember and to share our memo
ries with others is distinctly human, since it involves the use of language and of
other complex symbolic representations.... The tension between our contradic
tory desires to remember and to forget, that too is distinctly human [64-65].

Ti-Jeanne cuts herself off from her cultural memory when she resists
the expression of her magical abilities, and yet the symbolic system surround
ing those repressed memories resurface in the form of her confrontation with
the Loa. The identity schism she has created means that the unexpressed parts
of her are warring for expression, desiring manifestation, and the Vodoun
gods are tired of being ignored. It is significant that Bourguignon states that
silence is looking away, unwillingness to confront reality. Ignoring, denying
the past, we risk madness, yet the call to action of mythic history may have
grave consequences (84) since Ti-Jeanne, told stories about how her mother
resisted her Vodoun gifts and became mad, fears that her own power will

148

Canadian Fantasy and Dark Fantasy

lead to her madness and loss of sanity. Her power and selfhood are divided
between the traditions that still encompass her life and her desire for a per
ceived normal Canadian life, free of what she sees as complications of her
past. She is diasporic and split between two homes, each laying claim on her
and influencing her identity and each expressing themselves through her
diasporic body.
She, like her Toronto, is in a conflicted place about identity, uncertain,
and on shaky groundi Her body is a place of duality, simultaneously repre
senting her cultural past and cultural present and complicating easy notions
of home. At times, she experiences a double vision, a doubling"of her sight
of the places around her, seeing both a modern Toronto-foti shop, for exam
ple, and an overlay of a green tropical meadow v^th Caribbean plants in it
and the figure of the Jab-Jab, a creature from' Caribbean myth:
She dragged the door open and ran into the roti shop. The warm, fragrant air on
her face was a shock. How come she was outside, and why was it warm? ... She
appeared to be in a green tropical meadow. A narrow dirt path ran through it,
disappearing in the distance as the road curved gently downward. The scent of
frangipani blossoms wafted by on the gentle breeze__A figure came over the
rise, leaping and dancing up the path. M an -like, m a n -ta ll on long, w obbly legs
look as i f th ey hitch on backw ard. Red, red all over: R ed eyes, re d hair, n a sty
p o in ty red ta iljo o k in g up in to the air. Face like a grin n in g A frican m ask. O n ly is
n o t a m ask; the lip s-th em m o vin g a n d it h ave real teeth behind them lips, atta ch ed
to real g u m s.... The Jab-Jab turned its appalling grin of living wood in their
direction [17-18, italics in original].

She enters an in-between space, complicating the Toronto landscape with

her dual vision of two different homes. Toronto is a changing space, and
Hopkmson uses this doubling of Toronto and changes in the Toronto land
scape to resist singular notions of space or easy allocations of identity. Places
cannot be read through a single lens or with a single idea of meaning, but,
rather, are shifting places, acquiring new identities and shifting meaning as
new people interact with their features. Toronto in Brown Girl in The Ring is
a place in flux, shifting, changing, and representing different things for dif
ferent people, reflecting the reality of home for people in diaspora. Her
dual vision inscribes the place both with different physical features and also
a different mythical reading, inserting elements from Caribbean socio
religious beliefs into the Canadian space.
As a Caribbean-Canadian author, Hopkinson is keenly aware of the abil
ity of places to take on different meanings and of the complexity of being a
person who has moved from one nationality to another. When she first
arrivqd.in Canada, she noted that she began reading Canadian speculative

Speculating D iversityFlevfman-Stille

149

fiction as a means to understand her new place (Final Thoughts 380), and
therefore she knows the potentiality that speculative fiction holds to give
voice to notions of place and to capture the complexities of locality. She rec
ognizes that landscapes are texts, texts that are read in certain ways that are
shaped by the narratives told about them, and she uses the text of Brown Girl
in the Ring to suggest an alternative reading of the Toronto environment,
iiyecting it with aspects of Caribbean myth to illustrate the Canadian myths
of single nationhood that are imprinted on the city.
* In order to assert a form of belonging in a space that traditionally denies
racialized and ethnic others, Hopkinson rewrites the Toronto landscape of
the future. Denied a past in Canada because of the erasure of blackness from
the Canadian landscape, she instead writes diversity into the Canadian future.
Bourgouignon notes that in spite of (often selective) memory work, we also
have efforts at silencing, forgetting, repressing, and denial and this is pre
cisely the erasures that Hopkinson resists, focusing on re-asserting a Caribbean
presence onto a Canadian landscape that often ignores it or relegates it to a
space of Otherness. Rinaldo Walcott notes that blackness has been systemically erased from Canadian history, branded as a recent thing, which denies
the long history of blackness in Canada {Black Like Who). Blackness has been
systemically denied a place in Canada and cast as new, and unsettledas
something foreign. Images of nationality have cast Canada as a white space,
a place with two founding peoples (French and English) and a European cul
tural context. Himani Banner) i suggests that constructions of nation in
Canada constantly [signify] the White population as Canadians and immi
grants of colour as others and that the state and media jointly portray
immigrants from non-White, poor countries as the problem (295). Casting
non-White populations as Other has created a White Canadian exclusivity
in the notion of national construction. Non-White Canadians are configured
as threats, dangers to the Canadian imaginary and as virtual presences on
the landscape that are in Canada, bqt not o f Canada. Frances Henry refers to
this process as differential incorporation, whereby certain groups are more
incorporated or integrated into mainstream society than others and have
different access to economic, social, and cultural capital in a given society
(11). She notes that this is the case for Caribbean people in Canadian society
who have been differently incorporated than other groups whose ethnicity
or race was configured as being more desirable in Canadian constructions
of national belonging (ibid. 11-12).
Hopkinson uses the speculative fiction medium to take an iconic image
of the Canadian cityscape, the CN Tower, and transform it through a
Caribbean-inspired Vodoun ritual into the world tree and pillar of the

150

C a n a d ia n Fantasy

and

D a r k Fantasy

Vodoun temple. Toronto becomes temporarily a space where the Loa (Vodoun
gods) walk the landscape. Ti-Jeanne climbs the CN Tower and calls upon the
Vodoun gods, inviting them down through the pillar that the tower can be
seen to represent (rather than hegemonic masculinist notions of progress) in
order for them to transform Toronto into a ritual space, a space of Caribbean
identity that is not limited to regular multicultural portrayals of hyphenated
Canadians through their foods, clothing, and other consumables. This trans
formed Toronto fbecomes a mythic space, a ritual space, and a space that
defies its image ds an urban location of commerce and commercialisinr
She remembered her grandmothers words: The centre p o le is the bridge betw een
the w orlds. Why had those words come to her righf fhen? Ti-Jeanne thought of
the centre pole of the palais, reaching up into the air and down toward the
ground. She thought of the building she^as in. The CN Tower. And she under
stood what it was: 1,815 feet of the tallest centre pole in the world. Her duppy
body almost laughed a silent k y a -k ya , a jokey Jab-Jab laugh. For like the spirit
tree that the centre pole symbolized, the CN Tower dug roots deep into the
ground where the dead lived and pushed high into the heavens where the oldest
ancestors lived. The tower was their ladder into this world. A Jap-Jab type of
joke, oui [221, italics in original].

It is significant here that Ti-Jeannes memory focuses on the nature of the

center pole as a bridge between the worlds because it becomes a bridge not
just between the urban and supernatural worlds, but also between the dif
ferent mythic constructions of Canada, allowing for multiple readings. Hopkinson plays a Jab-Jab type of joke on the notion of urban space, illustrating
that it is multifaceted, complex, and not easily limited to one interpretive
framework. This mythical play destabilizes the notion of a singular interpre
tive framework, teasing out the inconsistencies. Walcott indicates that in his
perspective
The project for black Canadian artists and critics is to articulate a grammar of
black that is located within Canadas various regions, both urban and rural. The
invention of a grammar for black in Canada that is aware of historical narrative
and plays with that narrative is crucial in the struggle against erasure. A gram
mar for black needs to occupy a number of different positions, social and cul
tural identities, and political utterances [149].

This is something that is characteristic of Hopkinsons workher desire to

play with notions of stability, to question narratives and insert presences that
resist erasure.
The CN Tower becomes a point of intersection within the text allowing
the dead to rise up from the ground and the Loa to descend from above. It
becomes a place that has memory summoned into it, imbued into its struc-

Speculating DiversityNewman-Stille

151

ture, preventing the erasure of the past by inserting it into the structures of
the present. It becomes a literal shaky ground where multiple readings inter
sect: The chandelier was swaying. In fact, the whole structure of the CN
Tower was shaking. An 1,800-foot needle, trembling (222). Memory and the
dead, the erased, and disempowered, become present and act on their land
scape, resisting erasure or removal from the cultural and economic politics
of their place. Characters who had been killed or had their willpower taken
away now become actors in the world, arising from the grave, illustrating
Hopkinsons assertion that memory and myth have power and can act in our
world to facilitate change.
She transforms the Canadian landscape by disrupting notions of the set
role that artifacts and architecture are constructed to represent and by sug
gesting another dialogic possibility. She reconfigures aspects of the traditional
Canadian landscape into a traditional Caribbean landscape, marking the
space as multivalent and subject to multiple interpretive frameworks. She
illustrates that meanings are not static, but constantly shifting, being rein
terpreted and reconfigured by new people with new ideologies and new sys
tems of meaning. The CN Tower in Hopkinsons proposed future Toronto is
not a static thing, but, rather, is transformative, changing with the populations
that change in Canada. The landscape and its meanings are constantly altered
as our social and political landscapes shift and things that are traditionally
Canadian, like the CN Tower, are able to be reinterpreted as Canadas tradi
tions and ideologies move to include a more diverse group of Canadians with
more diverse readings of the features of heritage.
Hopkinson calls attention to the way that the future (where Brown Girl
in the Ring is set) interacts with the present and the past, and all are inter
woven in a complex way. Walcott suggests that the gaze or look is a return
of sorts to the past and at the same time a gesture to the future-present (148).
The past has implications for the lens with which we view our world and our
vision of the future shapes our present reality. By bringing attention to tem
porality and implications for national narratives around ethnicity, Hopkinson
illustrates the complex way in which the'^past continues to arise and influence
our present and the development of our future.
By calling up the dead in her ritual, Ti-Jeanne is ritually enacting the
intersection of past and present. David Lowenthal notes that people of the
Caribbean embrace their long-dead ancestors along with the present, and
that remembered places often converge in our memory, collapsing disparate
images into a few dominant ones (28). When people emulate (or in this case,
literally invoke) the past, they make the past anew, creating entirely new ide
ological frameworks (33).

152

C a n a d ia n Fantasy

and

D a r k Fantasy

As Bannerji suggests, Caribbean identity in Toronto is mediated through

racist notions of stereotypes that Canadian multiculturalism applies to com
munities viewed as ethnic. Communities are commoditized according to
current fashion and current market tastes (295). Multicultural identities
are mediated through festivals like Torontos Caribana, which essentialize
cultures and cast them exclusively through performative elements like cloth
ing, dance, music, and food (ibid: 296). They become consumable cultures
to be feasted upon by a presumed White majority spectator.
As long as multiculturalism only skims the surface of society, expreiring itself
as traditional ethics, such as arranged marriages, and ethnic food, clothes, songs,
and dances (thus facilitating tourism), it is tolerated by the state and Canadi
ans as non-threatening. But if the demands go a little deeper than that (e.g.,
teaching other religions or languages), they produce violent reaction, indicat
ing a deep resentment toward funding others arts and cultures [ibid.].

By focusing on a structure associated with commercial tourism in Toronto,

the CN Tower, Hopkinson brings attention to the way that commercialism
has an overpowering influence over relationships and our understandings.
When she destabilizes the commercial focus of the Tower and asserts a
Caribbean religious presence, Hopkinson centers the notion of depth to
understanding and the sense that understanding can be disrupted and
changed with new ideological growth and the introduction of different per
spectives.
By asserting a religious presence on the Canadian landscape through
the imposed duality of Toronto as both an urban Canadian locale and as a
Vodoun temple, Hopkinson brings out these uncertainties within the Cana
dian multicultural program. Even Ti-Jeanne herself, who evokes the Vodoun
gods, fears the dual presence in her own body of her Torontonian identity
and the simultaneous treatment of her by the Vodoun gods as a vessel, a
figure that can be possessed and treated as a priestess. She is initially threat
ened by her own religio-cultural difference and views it with fear and suspi
cion despite the fact that she is willing to readily cook and eat the food of
her grandmother and use creolized language. She rejects the religious heritage
her grandmother represents because it threatens her ideas of normalcy, ideas
that are hegemonically imposed through the taming of cultural difference
in Canadian multicultural policies. Yet, Frances Henry, in her ethnographic
study of the Caribbean diaspora in Toronto, notes that religion is an extremely
important institution for diasporic Caribbean societies (148). She also sug
gests that the migration of Caribbean people to Canada changes their reli
gious life, and religious activity declines in the second generation (ibid. 151).
Henry s informant Margaret described her experience with religion in

Speculating DiversityNewman-Stille

153

Cdnada: Here you get lost in the milieu because nobody cares (ibid. 152).
Ti-Jeanne, as a third generation Caribbean Canadian, has experienced a life
shaped by distance from her Vodoun religious roots.
When she encounters the presence of Vodoun spirits interacting with
her, Ti-Jeanne felt the gears slipping between the two worlds (19). She feels
a heightening of her instability of place and identity. This duality is figured
-hi-Ti-Jeannes mind as a form of madness since she hears voices in her head
and sees visions from her second sight. She seeks to ignore these visions,
fearing them since she views them as something that drove her mother mad
and could potentially drive her mad as well (ibid. 20).
Frances Henrys study revealed that Caribbean women tend to be more
attracted to religion than Caribbean men and see it as a source of solace and
support. For many women whose lives are extraordinarily difficult, religion
and reliance on God is their main source of emotional and spiritual support
(150), which may be why Ti-Jeannes grandmother encourages her to engage
more strongly in Vodoun. Indeed, Henry suggests, The deep-seated reli
giosity of Caribbean women, especially working class women, means that
religiosity is transmitted to their children (ibid.). Vodoun religion becomes
a means for Ti-Jeanne to not just connect with home, but also with her family
lineage.
The doubling of place is not only religious, it is also cultural and extends
to the vegetative level. Ti-Jeannes grandmother tries to teach her healing
remedies that combine Caribbean knowledge with a Canadian landscape:
What you does put on a cut to heal it?
Damn. One of Mamis spot tests. Ah, aloe?
And if we cant get aloe no more? Tell me a Canadian plant.
Shit. It was the one with the name like a tropical plant, but it was something
different. What, what? Oh, yes: Plantain leaf [36].

Her herbalism is doubled, representing both Caribbean landscapes and tra

ditions and a simultaneous re-reading of the Canadian landscape to represent
a resource for Caribbean notions of healing. The land can be re-purposed
for new uses. Furthermore, knowledge about that land can be re-purposed
as Mami freely mixed her nursing training with her knowledge of herbal
cures (12), combining knowledge she acquired in Canadian schools with
that discovered through her investigations in Caribbean herbalism. Knowl
edge itself is capable of transcending cultural barriers and mixing and com
bining into new forms that adapt Jo diverse situations. The fact that this
combination of traditions is usedrto treat the body and bring it to health
illustrates Hopkinsons interest In the implications of combining traditions
both for the landscape as well as tlie bodies of individual participantsthere

154

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and

D a r k Fantasy

are literal bodily implications for the combination of traditions and bodily
health and understanding is culturally constituted and constructed.
Walcott suggests that black works of art and fiction are not merely
national products ... they occupy the space of the in-between, vacillating
between national borders and diasporic desires, ambitions and disappoint
ments. These works suggest the possibilities of the new, but in many cases
can not leave varic|us kinds o fold behind (xii). Hopkinson blends the new
and old and ,blub notions of national boundaries through her insertion of
Vodoun and Caribbean mythology onto a Canadian landscape, a cultural
landscape that is often uncomfortable with ideas,of'Vodoun and any nonJudeo-Christian-normative religious structure: She makes Canada a space of
Vodoun and where Vodoun can occur and'suggests that this combined space
and combined use of space has implications for the healthy bodies of those
contained within national boundaries.
It is significant that Vodoun serves as the scaffolding for constructing a
dualistic vision of Canada and Canadian landscapes. As Bourguignon sug
gests, In Haiti mythic history is told mostly through ritual practice and the
explanations associated with it (79). Vodoun itself is a blend of traditions,
made from a combination of African rituals within a Catholic colonial struc
ture. Vodoun is particularly apt for exploring dual visions and the intersec
tions of multiplicities of place because it represents an intersection of Africanderived beliefs and Roman Catholicism. It is a religious system that is already
configured in the African diaspora. As Frances Henry notes, The so-called
voodoo of Haiti is the best known of these, but African-derived syncretic
religions are to be found in almost every country in which Roman Catholi
cism was the colonizing European religion (148-9). It is a religion of re
inscriptions, using icons from the Catholic religion of the previous slave own
ers in Haiti to express figures of a religion that incorporated aspects of a pre
vious African religious structure, including elements of spirit possession,
direct appeals to multiple gods, and requests to gods or Loa through the offer
ing of rum. Vodoun participants often use images of Catholic saints as rep
resentations of their own gods, substituting Erzule, the goddess of love, for
Mary, using images of St. Patrick to represent Damballah, the snake god, ejc.
It is a religion that itself represents the reinterpretation and re-ascription of
meaning onto symbols of oppression or exclusion. Vodoun in Haiti was also
used as a.means of resistance, attached to movements like the Maroons, who
sought to create a free Haiti by resisting colonial rule and empowering slaves
to escape. Vodoun represents a combination of narratives, an incorporation
of different visions of the past within the present, and the power to re-inscribe
sypibols for an empowering objective.

Speculating DiversityNe\fmaii-StiUe

155

Spirit possession, in which the Vodoun Loa are invited into the body of
practitioner, is a common aspect of Vodoun (Henry 149), highlighting the
ultiplicity of the individuals experience.* By being possessed involuntarily,
i- Jeanne is literally being possessed by a past home, overcome by memory,
d her body is subsumed by her spiritual roots. This possession of Tieannes body mirrors that of the city itself when the Loa descend down the
'hr Tower and thereby create a bridge between Ti-Jeannes two homes
"oronto and the Caribbean.
Vodoun can serve as a method for re-inscribing history and re-asserting
a historical presence of blackness. This is particularly significant in Canada,
where, as Walcott {Black Like Who) notes, blackness is systemically erased
and the black historical presence is denied. Canadians, seeking to construct
the Canadian nation as a just society, ignore the Canadian history of slavery
(for example, when portraying Canada as the open end of the underground
railroad rather than accurately portraying the railroad as going both ways
and the act of border-crossing as being the feature causing freedom) as well
as ignoring the historical oppression of black people in Canada. Hopkinson
seems to be using Vodoun to assert a historical presence of blackness in Canada
and assert a longevity of black experience, as well as using it as a symbol for
the ability of people to re-inscribe and reinterpret symbols. It serves as a dis
course for discussing a multiplicity of historic narratives. Vodoun becomes
a space where place is inscribed and where a claim to the landscape is made.
Walcott identifies reinterpretation, reinscription, reimaginings, and Creolisation or hybridization of cultures representative of many diasporic black
texts in Canada, as part of the grammar of blackness in Canada {Black Like
Who). He argues that black diasporic cultures are most engaging and crit
ically affirmative when the practices of (re)invention are highlighted and dis
played in complex fashion (xii). There is no easy cultural borrowing or
consistent reinscription of meaning, but rather a complicated structure of
asserting new meanings and shifting meanings while combining diverse sym
bolisms. It is a process that can be simultaneously nostalgic and critical of
the past and present. Hopkinson displays this diasporic critical analysis
through the medium of science fiction, complicating the present by intro
ducing a different, though still similar apd possible future in which Toronto
has become a ghetto. Canadian science-fiction itself is a genre of complexity
that questions literary media and inyites the audience to not simply read the
text, but question it, engage with it, and often end up with further questions
than when the text began. It is not a text of easy answers, but rather of edgy
spaces that allow for multiple readings and multiple engagements. Hopkinson
further complicates the genre by using the apocalyptic future trope of sci-

154

C a n a d ia n Fantasy

and

D a r k Fantasy

are literal bodily implications for the combination of traditions and bodily
health and understanding is culturally constituted and constructed.
Walcott suggests that black works of art and fiction are not merely
national products ... they occupy the space of the in-between, vacillating
between national borders and diasporic desires, ambitions and disappoint
ments. These works suggest the possibilities of the new, but in many cases
can not leave various kinds ofold behind (xii). Hopkinson blends the new
and old and blui-s notions of national boundaries through her insertion-of
Vodoun and Caribbean mythology onto a Canadian landscape, a cultural
landscape that is often uncomfortable with ideas of Vodoun and any nonJudeo-Christian-normative religious structure. She makes Canada a space of
Vodoun and where Vodoun can occur apd suggests that this combined space
and combined use of space has implications for the healthy bodies of those
contained within national boundaries.
It is significant that Vodoun serves as the scaffolding for constructing a
dualistic vision of Canada and Canadian landscapes. As Bourguignon sug
gests, In Haiti mythic history is told mostly through ritual practice and the
explanations associated with it (79). Vodoun itself is a blend of traditions,
made from a combination of African rituals within a Catholic colonial struc
ture. Vodoun is particularly apt for exploring dual visions and the intersec
tions of multiplicities of place because it represents an intersection of Africanderived beliefs and Roman Catholicism. It is a religious system that is already
configured in the African diaspora. As Frances Henry notes, The so-called
voodoo of Haiti is the best known of these, but African-derived syncretic
religions are to be found in almost every country in which Roman Catholi
cism was the colonizing European religion (148-9). It is a religion of re
inscriptions, using icons from the Catholic religion of the previous slave own
ers in Haiti to express figures of a religion that incorporated aspects of a pre
vious African religious structure, including elements of spirit possession,
direct appeals to multiple gods, and requests to gods or Loa through the offer
ing of rum. Vodoun participants often use images of Catholic saints as rep
resentations of their own gods, substituting Erzule, the goddess of love, for
Mary, using images of St. Patrick to represent Damballah, the snake god, etc.
It is a religion that itself represents the reinterpretation and re-ascription of
meaning onto symbols of oppression or exclusion. Vodoun in Haiti was also
used as a means of resistance, attached to movements like the Maroons, who
sought to create a free Haiti by resisting colonial rule and empowering slaves
to escape. Vodoun represents a combination of narratives, an incorporation
of different visions of the past within the present, and the power to re-inscribe
sypibols for an empowering objective.

Specu/afing DiversityNewman-Stille

155

Spirit possession, in which the Vodoun Loa are invited into the body of
a practitioner, is a common aspect of Vodoun (Henry 149), highlighting the
multiplicity of the individuals experience.' By being possessed involuntarily,
Ti- Jeanne is literally being possessed by a past home, overcome by memory,
and her body is subsumed by her spiritual roots. This possession of TiJeannes body mirrors that of the city itself when the Loa descend down the
-CN Tower and thereby create a bridge between Ti-Jeannes two homes
Toronto and the Caribbean.
Vodoun can serve as a method for re-inscribing history and re-asserting
a historical presence of blackness. This is particularly significant in Canada,
where, as Walcott (Black Like Who) notes, blackness is systemically erased
and the black historical presence is denied. Canadians, seeking to construct
the Canadian nation as a just society, ignore the Canadian history of slavery
(for example, when portraying Canada as the open end of the underground
railroad rather than accurately portraying the railroad as going both ways
and the act of border-crossing as being the feature causing freedom) as well
as ignoring the historical oppression of black people in Canada. Hopkinson
seems to be using Vodoun to assert a historical presence of blackness in Canada
and assert a longevity of black experience, as well as using it as a symbol for
the ability of people to re-inscribe and reinterpret symbols. It serves as a dis
course for discussing a multiplicity of historic narratives. Vodoun becomes
a space where place is inscribed and where a claim to the landscape is made.
Walcott identifies reinterpretation, reinscription, reimaginings, and Creolisation or hybridization of cultures representative of many diasporic black
texts in Canada, as part of the grammar of blackness in Canada (Black Like
Who). He argues that black diasporic cultures are most engaging and crit
ically affirmative when the practices of (re) invention are highlighted and dis
played in complex fashion (xii). There is no easy cultural borrowing or
consistent reinscription of meaning, but rather a complicated structure of
asserting new meanings and shifting meanings while combining diverse sym
bolisms. It is a process that can be simultaneously nostalgic and critical of
the past and present. Hopkinson displays this diasporic critical analysis
through the medium of science fiction, complicating the present by intro
ducing a different, though still similar mid possible future in which Toronto
has become a ghetto. Canadian science-fiction itself is a genre of complexity
that questions literary media and invites the audience to not simply read the
text, but question it, engage with it, and often end up with further questions
than when the text began. It is not a text of easy answers, but rather of edgy
spaces that allow for multiple readings and multiple engagements. Hopkinson
further complicates the genre by using the apocalyptic future trope of sci-

156

C a n a d ia n Fantasy

and

D a r k Fantasy

ence fiction while mixing it with the magical realist trope of fantasy. She com
bines folklore, which is often inscribed as being something of and from the
past, with an urban landscape of the future and Torontos landscape becomes
an interstitial space between the modernity of science fiction and the fantastic
mythical power of a formative mythology. Hopkinson questions the notion
of reality, adding complexities to the way we view the world, investing her
characters with visions^ the ability to become invisible, and the capacity to
interact with spirits tjirough Vodoun magic and rituals. She uses the genre
of the fantastic to acknowledge the fiction of her text, but simultaneously
reacts against a Canadian political text written onto the blaclcCanadian body
that is equally fictitiousportraying black Canadians as new, as threats, and
as not belonging. By setting her text in an urbaui landscape and using realistic
settings and realistic possibilities which blur the boundaries between Cana
dian reality and the fictional world, she calls on her readers to question the
messages that they receive daily from pop culture and the media which por
tray blackness as threatening.
Walcott suggests that In a Canadian context, writing blackness is a scary
scenario: we are an absented presence always under erasure (xiii). The black
Canadian presence in Hopkinsons novel is literally cut off from the rest of
Canadian society when barriers are erected around the city of Toronto and
it is declared an unsafe, threatening space (modeling the image of blackness
as dangerous), and this segregation and ghettoization of blackness absents
blackness from the Canadian society of the future created by Hopkinson, but
simultaneously makes it hypervisible by, in fact, noting the area as a ghetto
and creating visible walls that would hide it but simultaneously make it con
spicuous as an area that is walled. Like Walcotts description of black Cana
dians as simultaneously invisible and hypervisible, systemically erased and
ignored while their bodies become fixed in the gaze of spectatorship {Black
Like Who), Hopkinsons Toronto is a racialized space that is cut off but simul
taneously noticeable.
Hopkinson plays with ideas of invisibility of difference by having her
characters literally become invisible through Caribbean magic. Ti-Jeanne
and her partner try to escape from Toronto, hiding their presence in order
to get past border security by using a technique and practice from their
Caribbean homeland. She seems to he suggesting in her narrative that the
only place that Canadian racial geographies can be transformed is in a
science-fictional reality.
The strongest assertion of Caribbean identity on a Canadian landscape
occurs when Ti-Jeanne uses Vodoun magic to call down the Loa, the gods of
Vodoun,* through the CN Tower, a fixture and figure of Canadian ipOdernity

Speculating DiversityNewman-Stille

157

in order to assert the idea that places can have multiple meanings. She calls
the Loa through the tower as a Vodoun priestess would call the Loa through
the pillar of the Vodoun temple, turning the CN Tower into this pillar sym
bolically, and, by extension, all of Toronto into a larger Vodoun. temple, a
place where magic can happen and Vodoun spirits can roam and influence
*and change the world around them. She asserts a Caribbean identity on
Torqoto, inscribing it with diversity and the notion that place can be read
through the experiences of all members who call it home, rather than through
an exclusive lens that privileges one groups vision and ideology. She breaks
down hegemonic visions of place by looking at places as hybridized, dualistic,
multiplistic, and conflicted. Places are not easily interpreted by one paradigm,
but under constant shifts and fluxes, changing in meaning as various people
see and experience them.
There is no ease of identity, no simple ascriptions of ethnicity as Cana
dian multiculturalism would like to pretend. People are complex and places
are complex and understood through multiple, diverse, intersecting lenses.
Literature has the ability to create diverse spaces even when it seems as
though it is impossible to transform the physical landscape. Speculative fic
tion can propose an alternative reading to the landscape and allow a space
for diversity. For New Canadians, literature and the arts can become a space
where the Canadian landscape can be transformed into an inclusive space
that challenges dominant narratives of belonging and suggests an alternative
reading of the world and its spaces. The meaning of objects can shift in the
consciousness of diasporic people as they assert their own identities and pre
vent their erasure from the Canadian landscape. Hopkinson uses literature
as a space for the assertion of the idea of home for people in diaspora.
N otes
1. I want to thank Siobhan Carroll for a great discussion at the International Conference
o f the Fantastic in the A rts following her paper Transforming Urban Space and Female
Bodies in Nalo Hopkinsons The Chaos about the role of the body in Nalo Hopkinsons work,
which drew my attention to the way the body interacted with space in Brown Girl in the Ring.
W o r k s C it e d
Bannerji, Himani. Geography Lessons: On Being an Insider/Outsider to the Canadian
Nation. Unhom ely States: T heorizing E nglish-Canadian Postcolonialism . Ed. Cyn
thia Sugars. Peterborough: Broadview, 2004. Print.
Bourguignon, Erika. Memory in an Amnesiac World: Holocaust, Exile, and the Return
of the Suppressed. A nthropological Q u arterly 78.1 (2005): 63-88. Web.
Henry, Frances. The C aribbean D iaspora in Toronto: L earning to Live W ith Racism .
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Print.

158

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and

D a r k Fantasy

Hopkinson, Nalo. Final Thoughts Tesseracts Nine: N ew C anadian Speculative Fiction.

Ed. Hopkinson and Geoff Ryman. Calgary: Edge, 2005. 379-81. Print.
____ . Brown Girl in the Ring. New York: Grand Central, 1998. Print.
Kamboureli, Smaro. Scandalous Bodies: D iasporic L iterature in English C anada. Water
loo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2009. Print.
Lowenthal, David. Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and Memory Geographic
R eview 65.1 (1975): 1-36. Web.
Walcott, Rinaldo. Black Like W ho? W riting Black C anada. Toronto: Insomniac, 1997.
Print.

The Evolution of Women on SupernaturalMacklem

From Monstrous Mommies to

Hunting Heroines: The Evolutiori
o f Women on Supepndtural
L is a M a c k l e m
ACCSFF 13

Women on the television series Supernatural (2005 to the present

[renewed for 2014/15]) have had a hard go of it. Initially, women were cast in
maternal or victim roles or as monsters. Creed points out that [a]s with all
other stereotypes of the feminine, from virgin to whore, she is defined in terms
ot her sexuality. The phrase monstrous-feminine emphasizes the importance
ot gender m the construction of her monstrosity (3). As the show developed,
owever. there was an attempt to create stronger, recurring roles for women,
an resistance spelled the doom of many female characters initially, especially
those cast primarily as love-interests for the male main characters. Sam and
Dean Winchester. In fact, even the possibility of a womans becoming a love
interest could spark immediate and rabid fan hatred. Interestingly, the one
female character who was universally loved. Mary Winchester, the main char
acters mother, evolved from a seemingly passive victim to a kick-ass hunter
in her own right over the course of five seasons as her hitherto unknown past
came to light. Arguably, the acceptance of Marys past helped to pave the way
for more strong female characters such as Sheriff Jody Mills and Charlie
Bradley. Spigel points out that audiences decode media according to their
own social backgrounds and identities (Introduction 9). The women in
Supernatural are constructed both from without, by the fandom, and from
within, by the television and horror stereotypes. The fandom influenced the
224

225

show to such an extent that the show actually incorporated a female fan. Becky,
into the Supernatural universe. Rosinsky notes the split in feminist criticism,
particularly in speculative fiction, of whether the female identity is con
structed from within or from outside of the individual. Judith Butler asserts
that [t] he view that gender is performative sought to show that what we take
to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a sustained set of
act? (xv). Supernaturals construction of women moves from a highly patri
archal and traditional view of women to a more nuanced and complex con
struction in part both because of and despite of its largely female fanbase.
A recent amateur survey on Tumbler indicated that 93 percent of the
Supernatural fans surveyed were women, while 4 percent were male and 4
percent self-identified as other. The same survey indicated that 87 percent of
those responding were under the age of 24 (Non Timebo Mala on Tumblr
http://destiels-impala.tumblr.com/results). Ratings news for the eighth season
(2012/13) indicates that Supernatural had the largest gains in the 18-49 demo
graphic of any show on network television, indicating that the age data of
the survey done on Tumblr may be inaccurate at least as far as overall viewership is concerned. The important point here is that whether or not the
demographic information is accurate for all viewers, it does point to the gen
der of fans who are actively engaging with each other on the Internet and
who are consequently the fans most likely to have an influence on the pro
duction as active fans. Another place that active fans can meet each other
and interact with the stars of the show and even at times those involved in
production is fan conventions. While male attendance at Supernatural con
ventions appears to be on the rise, the vast majority of those in attendance
are female.' The age demographic skews higher than that found on Tumblr.
but that could be attributable to the cost of attending conventions. Online
fans are engaged on many levels with the show, and because they are already
engaged on a more active level than casual viewers, these are the fans most
likely to have an increased interaction with the shows producers. Showrunners oversee every aspect of the writing of the show, from hiring the writers
to negotiating with networks and studios over notes to seeing the scripts
through production as well as interacting with fans. Phalen and Osellame
point out that Ultimately, the showrunner is responsible for the tone of the
writers room and for the script that comes from it (13). Michael Newman
recognizes that the showrunner needs to balance concerns of studios, net
works. and advertisers by attracting and maintaining an audience through
the ebb and flow of the television season. Caldwell points out that these pres
sures may see the showrunner stifle the creativity that comes out of pitch
sessions with writers to satisfy corporate demands (60). There is pressure

226

M e d ia E x pr e ssio n s

The Evolution of Women on SupernaturalMacklem

from above to cultivate a relationship with the fans. Andrejevic points out
that the more the boundary between the offstage site of production and
that of consumption is eroded, the greater the sense of participation-based
loyalty (31). Deery points out that in the past, direct audience influence has
been largely restricted and largely under producer control (168). However,
more recently, according to Deery, the Web enables private reactions to
become public anc^i acquire currency and weight (168). Showrunners Eric
Kripke and Sera! Gamble have been candid about admitting to reading-online
forums and taking an informal gauge of the audience reception of the show
through those interactions. Gamble states that thejthifig that is unique about
the show Supernatural is the quality of the J^nbase. We have always been in
a pretty direct dialogue with our fans through the show (emphasis added).
The way viewers interact with television has changed remarkably in the
last decade, and this is evident in the recently completed five-year study by
Zubernis and Larsen on Supernatural fandom and identity. They concluded
that the relationship between fans and the creative side, as well as the human
representations of the fannish objects themselves, are increasingly reciprocal
(14). Zubernis and Larsens study focused on the relationship itself and not
how that relationship affects the production of the television show itself. Vic
tor Costello and Barbara Moore in their 2007 study also observe that fandoms
have a new-found power with the advent of the Internet to connect individual
fans with one another: Where pre-internet fandom was largely decentralized
and limited in mass, inhibiting the collective bargaining power of individuals
and geographically dispersed fan consortiums, online fan communities have
the potential to produce unified centers of resistance to influence the global
industries of cultural production (140). Fans are beginning to understand
their own power in the greater scheme of the industry. Catherine Johnson
examines the rise of cult television as a way for marginal networks to gain
loyal audiences and compete with the larger networks hi^er ratings. She
sees this strategy as having changed since the inception oficult television in
the 1960s:

one of the major aspects of the current global economy to interest political
economists is the rise of digital technologies and networking and their impact
upon media economics (409-10). Supernatural is on the CW, the fifth U.S.
network.^ As such, it does not have the pressure to have the same ratings as
a show on say NBC or ABC, but it does still have to bring in enough revenue
tq finance the production and justify remaining on the air. As a cult show,
with a small, but fiercely loyal fan base. Supernatural is able to derive a sig
nificant portion of its revenue through alternate streams such as foreign dis
tribution, DVD/Blu-Ray sales, and merchandise. All of these are good reasons
to remain sensitive to audience reaction and reception of characters.
Supernatural has been on the air since 2005, in its ninth season at the
time of writing, and even in that time, attitudes towards women have arguably
changed, but it is important to take a brief look at how far womens roles on
television have changedor not changed. Television has moved from the
Mrs. Cleavers to the Kate Becketts. Jeffrey Brown points out that our depic
tion of women in the media is so grounded in eroticism and objectification
it is difficult to conceive of them in different terms (13). Brown points to the
action heroine as having the potential to function as progressive role models
(14). Supernatural first aired on the WB network, the network that also gave
television audiences Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguably one of the strongest
female action heroes to date. Supernatural would seem to have a natural, cul
tural space for the action heroine in the guise of female hunters, yet there
has been great resistance to the introduction of female hunters on the show.
Mothers and mother figures tend to be the most well-received, and this is likely
an aspect of identification on the part of the 18-49 year old largely female
demographic. Science fiction and fantasy tend to offer better roles for
womenostensibly because they are most often set in the future, the past,
or an alternate reality, such as Captain Janeaway on Star Trek Voyager (19952001), Xena on Xena, Warrior Princess (1995-2001), or Buffy on Buffy the
Vampire Slayer (1997-2003). These shows featured women in lead roles.
Supernatural only featured two women as regular cast members and both
only in season three. Stuller was inspired by Xena and Buffy to look for mod
ern day superwomen role models in the tradition of Wonder Woman. She
devised a four part criterion for superwomen characters: narrative that draws
on mythology, an element of the fantastic, a uniquely identifiable skill or
power, and a mission that benefits the greater good (5-7). Interestingly, while
one would not immediately think of many of the female characters on Super
natural as superwomen, many of them do fit these criteria. Mary Winchester
is but one example: she is an integral part of the mythology of the show as its
matriarch; she appears as a ghost to save her sons in Home (1.09)^; she is

cult television and fan audiences are no longer understood by the industry as
marginal, atypical, or simply irrelevant. As the example of L o st demonstrates,
the networks appeal to the fan in all viewers, encouraging fan activity and loy
alty as a part of television spectatorship in an era when multi-media participa
tion is increasingly becoming the norm [Johnson 144].

Fans have a greater influence and producers and writers have a greater aware
ness of them than ever before. Jeremy Butler points out that the growing inter
est in media production studies places more emphasis on how the industry
encodes the text with meaning; Furthermore, Jeremy Butler points out that

227

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M e d ia E x p r e ss io n s

The Evolution of Women on SupernaturalMacklem

a trained hunter; and the hunter code is hunting things, saving peopleall
the while without ruining the general publics innocence in regards to the
evil surrounding them.
How women are portrayed on Supernatural is a product of a number of
influences. In some ways it grows out of the patriarchal vision generally embod
ied on television. It is also important to realize that the writers room itself on
Supernatural is the product of a largely patriarchal system. In addition, that
writers room has been almost entirely populated by men. At most thereiiave
been three women writers on any given season, even when Sera Gamble was
the showrunner. I would, however, contest the accusations of outright misog
yny on the part of the writers. The discussiqnof misogyny among the writers
has been an on-going one. Most recently,- Misha Collins, who plays Castiel on
the show, said at a fan convention that he is disturbed by the level of misogyny
displayed by the show (Superwiki). Collins is known for making outrageous
and often tongue-in-cheek remarks at conventions, and this comment
arguably falls into that category. The high death toll of women can be more
realistically explained by turning to horror conventions and tropes in general.
Horror as a genre is more stuck in a rigid and stereotypical rut when it comes
to the portrayal of women than perhaps any other genre.
Kawin provides a useful gloss on horror; As a genre, the horror film is
defined by its recurring elements (such as undeath, witches, or gross, bloody
violence), by its attitudes toward those elements (such as that transgressing
limits is dangerous), and by its goal: to frighten and revolt the audience (4).
Creed identifies some of the major female stereotypes found in horror:
archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, possessed monster,/emme castratrice, witch, castrating mother (151). Short criticizes the assumption of
Creed and other critics that the genres main audience is male and [their use
of] psychoanalytic principles to argue that its representation of women either
reiterates male fears surrounding sexual difference, or anxiety about female
power in general (2). Short identifies ambiguities in the stereotypes identified
by Creed and others and sees these as recoverable spaces, providing textual
openings by which to reinterpret meanings and debate possibilities (172).
Other highly recognizable tropes for women in horror include the virgin
(often for sacrifice), the tramp/seductress (interestingly, also often for sacri
fice), medium or seer, the screamer, and the damsel in distress. How then,
do the women of Supernatural fit into these various categories and tropes?
How do they compare to others on television and in horror, and what kind
of response has the audience had, and what was the response of the writers
to that reception, especially in the case of recurring characters?
The mother is a particularly strong trope in Supernatural and drives a

great deal of the plot. The entire entry of the Winchester brothers and their
father into the world of hunting things, saving people is initiated by the
death of Mary Winchester, the mother of Dean and Sam and the wife of John.
The series begins with her death in the Pilot (1.01) and for much of the first
season, the episodes begin with a flashback to her death. Mary begins as the
quintessential sacrifice, right down to the white nightie that is her only cos" tume until the end of season two. In the first season, she is destroyed by fire
not once but twice in the course of trying to save her youngest son. Her real
purpose is as victim, generating the revenge motive for both her husband
and her sons.
The Pilot (1.01) contains two virginal sacrifices which bookend the
episode. Immediately after the scene of Marys death, the first person the viewer
meets in the present is Jessica Moore, also dressed in white, but as a naughty
nurse for Halloween. The mother figure is juxtaposed with the femme fatale
or stereotypical sexy blond of horror movies. The link to Mary is completed
by the camera panning to a shot on the mantel of Mary and John. The audi
ence quickly learns that Jessica is the most important woman in Sam Win
chesters life as she has been his only support and girlfriend while he has been
at Stanford. We next see her later that night being protected by Sam from a
supposedly dangerous intruder who turns out to be his brother. In this scene,
her status as innocent (though still seductress) is emphasized by her wearing
a Smurf t-shirt. The episode ends with a bookend of the opening scene when
Jessica is sacrificed by fire in a white nightie just as Mary was. Jessicas death
becomes the impetus for Sam to rejoin the hunting life. Because his mother
died when he was still a baby, her death had not affected him in the same
way it had Dean and John, but Jessicas death generated the anger necessary
to set Sam on the same road of vengeance as his father. Jessicas character is
never given the opportunity to develop the way Marys is in the show. Neither
Jessica nor Mary has ever represented a point of contention between the fans
and producers. Most often fan rejection of a female character is due to that
character coming between the brothers. In some ways, the fans themselves
mother the characters on the show and are very protective of them.
Mary is able to become a recurring character because of the supernatural
element of the show. In an alternate reality in What Is and What Should
Never Be (2.20), Dean experiences a world in which Mary is alive. Deans
life is very much shaped by the loss of his mother. In the season one episode
Dead in the Water (1.03), Dean tells Lucas that he tries to be brave because
that is what his mother would have wanted. Sam learns, along with the v^^er,
that for some time after his mother died. Dean did not speak. In the Pilot
(1.01) and in flashback in A Very Supernatural Christmas (3.08), Dean

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becomes angry when Sam does not afford their mother s memory sufficient
respect. Creed explains that the archaic mother is the parthenogenetic mother,
the mother as primordial abyss, the point of origin and of end (17). Mothers
and their absence is a central theme for the show. Dean is protective of Mary
in What Is and What Should Never Be (2.20), which also features a return
of Jessica in this alternative reality. Both brothers are in successful and happy
relationships, in this alternate reality, but their relationship with each other
is strained. There iS a recurring theme in the series that anything that come_s_between the brothers is suspect and likely evil. This almost perfe,ct world has
been created in Deans mind by the Djinn who is slowly draining the life out
of him. Deans perfect world includes his mother,, afiance for Sam, and a girl
friend who is both beautiful and understanding for Dean. Deans perfect
world is horrific to the fan who wants nothing to come between the brothers
or between the fan and her fantasy' Mary is the one person in this fantasy
world who brings the brothers together. In Dark Side of the Moon (5.16),
in a scene from his past. Dean is protective of Mary even as a child and com
forts her when she and John are briefly separated. Yet, in this same episode,
Mary is used against Dean by Zachariah the angel as he uses her image to
taunt Dean, and she becomes the castrating mother.
Mothers are frequently seen as victims in the show. In the first season
alone, single mothers or women in mothering roles need help or rescuing in
9 of the 22 episodes. Women are central victims in 19 of those 22 episodes.
The season three episode The Kids Are Alright (3.02) centers on mothers
whose children are being taken by changelings. Central to the episode is an
old love interest of Dean s, Lisa Braedon. Dean actually wonders whether her
son Ben could be his child. She tells him no, but there is continuing specu
lation that she may have lied about it. A demon taunts Dean that Ben is his
son in the Braedons last appearance on the show in season sixs episode, Let
It Bleed (6.21). Interestingly, both the episode that created Lisa and the last
one she appears in were written by Sera Gamble, and in season six. Gambles
first season as showrunner, Lisa Braedon emerges as a recurring character
and as a love interest for Dean. Ultimately, her storyline comes to a close
because of an on-going resistance on the part of fans to either of the brothers
having a love interest. This fan resistance may be due in part to the similar
resistance among many fans to what is viewed as a Mary-Sue, a female char
acter used in fan fiction to place the author inside her own fiction: in this
case Gamble. While fans are protective of the characters, in fiction, fans have
little interest in casting themselves in the mother role: Mary-Sues in most
fan fiction are almost always love interests for the brothers. How fans view
the show itself may also be linked to how they view it in fan fiction. Super-

natural is the second most popular show on fanfiction.net, second only to

Glee in the number of stories posted about it. While this chapter is not about

231

fan fiction, it is still important to note the influence that medium has over
fans and their reception of storylines. Fans who style themselves as writers
are more likely to feel they should have a say over the writing of the show
and the shape of the storyline.
^ -Any relationship that comes between the brothers has met with fan
resistance. In season eight, even Deans friendship with Benny was a source
of contention among fans. Regardless of the cause, this fan push back began
in the hiatus between seasons one and two, when it was discovered that a
recurring character in season two would be Jo Harvelle. Jo was touted as a
kickass hunter in her own right and a love interest for Dean. Over the hiatus,
fan reaction to this possibility was extremely heated and negative. Superwiki
reports that Jo was initially named Alex and was heavily rejected by fans
when the character first appeared on the shows IMDb page in June 2006
(Fandom Chronicle: 2006). In July, new sides for the character were leaked
and the character had been completely re-written, ostensibly in response to
the fan reaction. In contrast, Ellen Harvelle, Jos mother, and another mother
figure for the brothers, was extremely well received. By the end of the season,
Jo had disappeared, but Ellen makes a final appearance to help in the final
showdown in All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2 (2.22). However, in that final
showdown, she does become a victim who needs to be saved. Ultimately, in
season fives Abandon All Hope (5.10), Jo and Ellen are given heroes deaths
in the course of saving the brothers. Looking once more to fan fiction, one
of the most popular types of stories on fanfiction.net is hurt/comfort. Who
better to provide succor for the characters than a mother figure? While fans
may fantasize about being the woman in the characters lives, many of them
are in the age demographic to be mothers and therefore can identify with
that role. Mothers are acceptable female characters but female characters are
not acceptable when they pose any kind of a challenge to the male characters
prowess or the relationship between the two brothers.
Marys characterization as passive victim is revisited in season one in the
episode Home (1.09), when she saves her sons, but even more significantly
in season fours In the Beginning (4.03), when Dean travels back in time
and learns that his mother and her family were, in fact, hunters. Even Marys
mother, Deanna, after whom Dean is named, is an effective hunter, even dis
playing those skills in the kitchen while cutting up fruit salad. Young Mary
is seen again in season fives The Song Remains the Same (5.13). In this trip
back in time, she once again plays a strong, competent character who is able
to contribute to the safety of the group on an equal level with her sons, and

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in fact, more effectively than John, their father, who was not a hunter until
after his wifes death. Fan reaction to learning about Marys past was mixed
but primarily positive. The revelation of her past also caused a reassessment
of her actions in the Pilot (1.01). With a hunters knowledge, and knowing
that she had made a deal with Azazel, the Yellow-Eyed Demon in In the
Beginning (4.03), did she know what she was getting into when she stepped
into that nursery? ^as she, in fact, attempting to save her family instead of
simply being a passive sacrifice? These are questions that have never been-definitively answered.
. -'
Creed argues that the central characteristic of the^tchaic mother is her
total dedication to the generative, procreative, principle. She is the mother
who conceives all by herself, the original p>arent, the godhead of all fertility
and the origin of procreation. She is outside of morality and the law (27).
The archaic mother is one of the mPnstrous-feminine archetypes that Creed
describes along with the monstrous womb. Neither of these descriptors par
ticularly captures Mary, but they do describe Eve, the mother of all monsters
who appears in season six, in Like a Virgin (6.12). Eve appears from out of
a fiery abyss in a white nightdress in a mirrored, negative image of Mary and
Jessicas deaths. When Eve wants to try to persuade Dean and Sam, she assumes
the guise ofMary, their own mother, in the episode Mommy Dearest (6.19).
In another odd twist on the mother/child dynamic, it is Dean who names her
newest offspring Jefferson Starships. Ultimately, Dean is the one to kill her.
Because Supernatural is a horror show at its heart, and because the cen
tral characters have dedicated their lives to killing monsters, they necessarily
do kill rather a lot of women in gruesome ways. However, the show is not
completely simplistic in its depiction of female monsters or female horror
tropes either. Vampires are depicted as both male and female. In Dead Mans
Blood (1.20), Kate and Luther are the two vampire leaders. Luther is killed,
but while Kate is held captive and tortured, she ultimately escapes. In Bloodlust (2.03), it is the male hunter Gordon who turns out to be the monster,
not the female vampire Lenore who has trained herself to live on animal
blood and is the leader of her nest, directing the male vampires. Similarly,
werewolves in the show are seen as both male and female. In season twos
Heart (2.17), Madison is clearly a victim when she is bitten. Sam falls in
love with her and ultimately she asks him to kill her to prevent her from
hurting anyone else. In point of fact, in contrast to the usual vagina dentata
of horror, Sam has the penis of death as almost every woman he sleeps with
ends up dead. Amelia from season eight and Dr. Roberts from season fours
Sex and Violence (4.14) are notable exceptions. Even though Madison is a
victim and a monster, she is still given the dignity of determining her own

fate. In season eights Bitten (8.04), the case once more revolves around
werewolves. In this case, Kate is bitten by Brian and ultimately kills him. She
tells Dean and Sam via video that she promises never to hurt anyone ever
again, and they decide to let her live unless she becomes violent.
Possession is another way that women can become monstrous. Creed
explains that Possession becomes the excuse for legitimizing a display of
aberrant feminine behavior which is depicted as depraved, monstrous,
abjectand perversely appealing (31). Creed goes on to describe the mon
strous female as being beautiful on the outside to hide a truly evil nature
inside, reinforcing that notion from Judith Butler about the performativity
of the feminine: being a woman requires that the woman adopt a role. Two
prominent demons recur on the show, and both appear in multiple, but always
beautiful guises. Meg first appears in season ones Scarecrow (1.11) and her
last appearance is in season eights Goodbye Stranger (8.17). Meg moves
from purely evil to an ally of the brothers and a potential love interest for
Castiel. In season twos episode Born Under a Bad Sign (2.14), Meg possesses
Sam. While possessed, Sam displays no overtly feminine traits nor is he weak
ened in any way. Meg is discovered simply because both Dean and Bobby
know Sam well enough to sense that he is not himself. At the end of the
episode, Dean does tease Sam: Dude. You like full on had a girl inside you
for like a whole week. Thats pretty naughty. Dean characteristically makes
a sexual joke about it, but the reality is that it takes the combined efforts of
Dean and Bobby to defeat Meg and get her out of Sam. It would be easy for
Meg as a stereotypical horror figure to have had a static arc, but she is seen to
evolve over the course of the series. She learns from her defeats and disap
pointments to die by redeeming herself and saving the Winchesters, or at
least allowing them to escape from Crowley. It is a testament to the strength
of the character that it takes the King of Hell himself to ultimately defeat and
kill her. Interestingly, Meg was always a favorite among fans, once again
because she did not pose a threat as a romantic interest. Even though she was
a formidable foe, the brothers always managed to defeat her as well.
Positive reception can be linked to the characters not posing a threat to
the brothers as a romantic interest or as being better than the brothers
unless, like Meg, she is a villain. Villains, of course, must be worthy of the
brothers and therefore pose a challenge. In addition, villains bring the broth
ers closer as they must work together to defeat the common enemy. Jos fate
was sealed the minute she disarmed Dean in her first scene. Both Bela Talbot
and the demon Ruby were introduced as regulars in season three. Once again,
as before season two, there was a massive fan outcry. Michael Ausiello of
TVGuide.com, interviewed Kripke after fans ... inundated [Ausiello] with

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hundreds of angry e-mails. According to Ausiello, fans were concerned that

In a bid to broaden the serial thrillers appeal, CW brass [were] forcing pro
ducers to bimbofy the show, hence the two new lady killers. In that interview,
Kripke makes the following, very revealing statement:

states that Historically and in myth, women have often been linked to the
home (Campbell, The Power o f M yth 153) environment and to inner strength
or intuition (e.g., womens intuition) (3). Missouri actually appears in the
episode Home (1.09). Initially, the character was supposed to fill the role
that Bobby Singer filled in the season one finale, but they could not get the
actress who had gone on to book bigger and better (that is, more lucrative)
things. Singer, of course, went on to fill a surrogate father role, so it is likely
that Missouri would have filled a surrogate mother role. She facilitates the
connection between the boys and their mother in the episode, further under
scoring her maternal role. They visit Pamela at her home initially in the sea
son four episode Lazarus Rising (4.01), and she is the one to tie them to
their bodiesanother form of homein Death Takes a Holiday (4.15).
Pamelas literal vision is taken from her when she looks upon the true form
of Castiel the angel, yet she is still able to use her heightened senses to see,
and this even extends to being able to sense her environment to physically
battle a demon, though she loses the fight and is killed.
Season five saw the introduction of Sheriff Jody Millsanother mother
and initially a victim in Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid (5.15). However, she
manages to help save her town, Bobby, and Dean. Mills would go on to become
a romantic interest for Bobby, which was strongly supported by the fandom.
She also develops into a support system of sorts for the brothers, providing
help on a few cases, most notably in season sevens Time After Time (7.12).
In this episode, she acts as a support system, bringing Sam Bobbys research
material and helping him go through it to rescue Dean from the past. She
also acts as a mother figure, even admonishing Sam to go to bed or she will
use her Mom-voice. Mills had the role of mother taken away from her when
her child is killed (twice) in Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid (5.15). Pairing her
with Bobby makes her place as surrogate mother very clear, even though
there was some fan speculation about Jody and Sam having a romantic pos
sibility when they share a bottle of Scotch in Time After Time (7.12). Rhodes
dispelled this possibility at subsequent fan conventions. Conventions are one
way that fans can get clarity on storylines and plot developments. The infor
mation garnered at these conventions is generally shared widely through
YouTube videos and fans blogging about their experiences. Rhodes popu
larity at fan conventions is likely a contributing factor to the character appear
ing again in the last episode of season eight, Sacrifice (8.23). That episode
continued the storyline begun in Clip Show (8.22) that saw Crowley threat
ening to kill everyone the brothers had ever saved. Mills also features in
Rock and a Hard Place (9.08) in season nine when she calls the brothers
in to investigate what looks like a supernatural case. It turns out that Vesta,

First of all, I love our fans. I love them to death. I love how passionate they are.
But they tend to worry unnecessarily. They tend to get stressed before they have
a chance to judge the finished product. We are so conscious and aware of our
fans. Were making the show for the fans; were not making the show for the net
work. We would never do anything to betray them. Im not saying werejjcrfeSt. *
I m not saying we dont make mistakes. But were very conscious and aware. And
when we do make mistakes, we course-correct.
'

Kripke definitively states that the writers room and the production are influ
enced by fan feedback. In this instance, it Would appear to be to the detriment
of the portrayal of women. Both Bela and Ruby begin the season as strong,
independent women. Bela was an independent business woman who bought
and sold supernatural artifacts to the highest bidder. She was projected to be
a potential love interest for Dean, as Ruby was destined for Sam. In an inter
esting twist early in the season, Bela is the one to objectify Dean in Red Sky
at Morning (3.06) and tells him they should have angry sex. Her fate was
sealed with the audience when she outsmarted the brothers on several occa
sions. Later in the season, when it became clear the audience was not accept
ing her, Sam is the one to have a sex dream about her in Dream a Little
Dream (3.10). This returns the male gaze back to objectifying the woman
(Mulvey). Ruby, unlike the other recurring demon, Meg, was universally dis
liked. The character was downgraded to recurring and recast for season four
but did become a romantic interest for Sam. She meets her end violently, lit
erally between the two brothers as Sam holds her and Dean stabs her. Inter
estingly, Kripke wrote and directed Lucifer Rising (4.22) and would have
both written and blocked the scene. Rubys death can be seen as a way of
appeasing fans who had been in an uproar over the character coming between
the brothers. Bela was, no doubt, a victim of fan backlash, but Ruby appears
to have been the character Kripke was asking fans not to worry about in the
interview with Ausiello. Ruby was destined to play a significant role within
the overall mytharc of seasons three and four.
Two other popular characters who also fill a traditional horror stereotype
are Pamela Barnes and Missouri Mosley who are both seers/psychics. Karin
Beeler points out that Women of vision in television and film articulate a
resistance to patriarchal attitudes, but also suggest the need to subvert the
polarization of men and women and the polarization of science or reason
with the inner world of visionary, mystical experience (1). In addition, Beeler

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M e d ia E x pr e ssio n s

the Roman goddess of the hearth, is sacrificing "virgins who used to be sac
rificed in her name to ensure a good harvest. Jody once again helps Sam rescue
Dean when he is captured. The links to losing ones virginity, a rite of passage
for any child, and to the hearth/home theme once again mark Mills as a mother
figure. However, she is able to step in and actually be the one who is stabbed
by the goddess and save both brothers without negative backlash from fans.
This acceptance has been bestowed on few female characters.
Clip Show (8.22) saw the return of Sarah Blake from season ones
episode Provenance (1.19). Blake represents the one love interest introduc^
for the brothers (in this case Sam) who the fans were wilhng to embrace and
yet the writers killed her. Blake had been characterized as a strong character,
able to accept what the brothers do and even help them with the case in
season one. For most of season one, Samjs seen mourning the loss of Jessica.
Fans embraced Sarah because she represented Sams ability to love again and
demonstrated that he had started to move out of the grieving process. Fan
attachment would have been somewhat weaker in season one, and therefore,
fans were more willing to accept the introduction of a love interest. In season
eight, however, Sarah has moved on with her life and is primarily depicted
as the typical female victim. She represents the normal life that Sam has
always yearned for and which he tried to have again with Amelia at the begin
ning of season eight. Sarahs death symbolizes the death of that dream. In
addition, the writers brought back a character that would be sure to garner
the most sympathy from fans, heightening the horror element by playing on
the writers knowledge of fans.
Perhaps the strongest character introduced to date is Charlie Bradbury.
She has extraordinary computer skills, which make her a valuable ally for the
brothers and the target of season sevens major antagonist, Dick Roman, the
leviathan, in The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo (7.20). She
helps them defeat Roman in the episode but is injured and needs to be rescued
in the end. She is next seen in LARP and the Real Girl (8.11) in which she
is Live Action Role Playing, but she is not the victim; she is the Queen of
Moondor and gets to be the one to save the damsel in distress. In Pac-Man
Fever (8.20), she has learned all about the hunting life and is clearly like a
little sister to the brothersDean refers to her as the little sister he never
wanted. In the episode, she gets to appear as a Lara Croft type and is instru
mental m solving the case. Even though she is captured by the Djinn and cast
m the victim role so is Dean. She demonstrates that her researching skills
rival those of Sam. Fan reception for Charlie has been very strong, in part

Day, but to a large extent because the character

IS self-identified as gay. She poses no threat to the viewers of a love interest

The Evolution of Women on SupernaturalMacklem

237

for either brother. In Slumber Party (9.04), Charlie demonstrates that she
is becoming a hunter in her own right, and by the end of the episode, she has
once again saved the brothers, this time from the Wicked Witch. She is last
seen entering Oz with Dorothy Gale, who it turns out is also a hunter. Charlie
is also seen to be a fan herself as she amply displays by her participation in
fan practices. Charlies pop culture references, much like Deans, clearly iden
tify-her as one of us, and this facilitates her acceptance.
Charlie begins as a victim but quickly becomes an ally before evolving
into a hunter in her own right. The show has featured other female hunters,
but the majority of them appear for only one episode. Most are seen to be capa
ble like Reisa in The End (5.04), Tamara in The Magnificent Seven (3.01),
or Olivia Lowry in Are You There God? Its Me, Dean Winchester (4.02).
Most of them are single. Olivia and Annie Hawkins in Of Grave Importance
(7.19) are both living an existence similar to the loner/outsider existence of
the male hunters. Some like Tamara or Gwen Campbell (Exile on Main Street
[6.01], Two and a Half Men [6.02], Family Matters [6.07], and ...And
Then There Were None [6.16]) are part of a family unit. In the end, most of
them meet similar fates to the male hunters on the show who also appear as
victims in need of saving. One example is Lee Chambers in Adventures in
Babysitting (7.11). Interestingly, this episode also introduces his daughter
Krissy who is being raised in much the same way as Dean and Sam were.
Dean is determined to save her from the hunting life even though she proves
herself to be a competent hunter and is even instrumental in helping to save
Sam and Dean in addition to her father. In her second appearance on the
show, after her father has been killed, in Freaks and Geeks (8.18), it becomes
clear that Krissy will very likely continue in the hunting life.
One of the most significant female characters to emerge in the series is
Becky Rosen. Becky Rosen is a fangirl of the Supernatural novels in the series
which the prophet Chuck has written. She is a direct result of the writers
perception of fans. In her first appearance in Sympathy for the Devil (5.01),
written by Kripke, she is contacted by Chuck (Kripkes stand in in the show)
to help the brothers. She is seen writing wincest and cannot stop touching
Sam when she does meet the brothers. She expresses disappointment in Dean
and is clearly identified as a Sam-girl. Initial fan reaction was resistant as she
was seen as a monster who exposed fan practice and who lusted after Sam.
However, her second appearance in The Real Ghostbusters (5.09) is more
sympathetic. She also transfers her love interest to Chuck in that episode.
Her final appearance in Season Seven: Time for a Wedding (7.08), however,
forever tagged her as a stalker willing to go to any lengths to secure the object
of her desire. Once again, fans were confused and unhappy with this por-

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trayal. As Gamble who was showrunner at the time was under fire for two
lackluster seasons, this shift in Beckys portrayal could be seen as a way of
speaking back to the fans. Sam essentially tells Becky to get a life much as
William Shatner famously told fans of Star Trek. Shatner came to regret that
remark as he came to understand the passion fans had for Star Trek and also
the level of understanding they brought to their consideration of the show
(Jenkins 10). Perhaps this final portrayal of Becky might be an indication that
Gamble had coihe to regret the level of input that fans had achieved: there
may be no clearer indication of the influence fans have had on the.storyline
than the fans themselves being incorporated into th^^toTy"itself. However,
in Slumber Party (9.04), showrunner Jeremy Gafver revisits Becky. While
she does not appear in the episode, CharlieThentions her as having been the
one to upload all of the Supernatural Aoveh onto the Internet. Once again,
Becky is seen as a valuable resource. Rather than looking annoyed at the men
tion of her name, Sam, in particular, looks a little embarrassed and uncom
fortable, much more in keeping with his initial response to Becky, so there
seems to be a softening toward the character from the writers.
Some of the more recent successful female characters have been the
monsters. The primary villain in season eight is arguably Naomi, the angel
who has taken over the running of Heaven. She tortures other angels to bend
them to her will. The writers characterize her, as they have the other angels
in administrative positions, as a stereotypical emotionless white-collar
worker. Rather than being a nurturing leader for the angels, Naomi has taken
on this male stereotype. Naomi falls into the performative trap described by
Judith Butler. When she finally realizes that Metatron means to destroy
Heaven, she tries to help the brothers and confesses her deceptions. Inter
estingly, it is while she is trying to help prevent Sams death that Naomi finally
breaks down crying and we see real emotion from her.
Another villain introduced in season eight is Abaddon, a Knight of Hell,
who is determined to take over Hell from Crowley. She first appears in As
Time Goes By (8.12) when she follows Henry Winchester to the present
from 1958. She was modeled after Lauren Bacall, according to writer Adam
Glass (Superwiki). While she is incredibly sexual, she is also the equal of any
of the male villains on the show and has dominated those around her through
force and her intellect. Abaddon is able to embrace her feminine persona
while still remaining the equal of any of the male characters.
Supernaturals portrayal of women is hampered by the shows being
steeped in the tropes of the horror genre. Women inevitably fill stereotypical
roles as victims and monsters. Its cult status and active fanbase allow for a
greater interaction between fans and producers in coding characters, however.

Through the seasons of the show portrayals of women have become stronger
and more positive. The subject of female characters is an active site of dis
course between fans and producers. While the close relationship and on
going dialogue between fans and producers has led to greater creativity in
some areas of the show, in many ways this dialogue has hampered producers
creativity with respect to the portrayal of women.

239

N otes
1. This conclusion is based on the authors own attendance at and observation of roughly
20 conventions between 2009 and 2013.
2. The CW is the fifth largest network in the United States and was formed in 2006 by
a merger between the WB network and UPN. It is jointly owned by CBS and Time Warner.
Supernatural is produced by Warner Bros. Studio (Gray, especially Table 3.1, 84).
3. References to the series will be by title as well as by season and episode number (e.g.
Pilot 1.01).

W orks C ited
Andrejevic, Mark. Watching Television Without Pity; The Productivity of Online Fans.
Television & N ew M edia 9.1 (January 2008): 24-46. Web. 5 Feb. 2013.
Ausiello, Michael. Supernatural Exec: We Wont Be One Tree Hill with Monsters!
TVGuide.com. 21 July 21 2007. Web. 15 Aug. 2013.
Beeler, Karin. Seers, W itches a n d Psychics on Screen. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.
Print.
Brown, Jeffrey A. D angerous Curves: A ction Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, an d Popular
Culture. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011. Print.
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Butler, Jeremy G. Television: C ritical M ethods a n d A pplications. 4th ed. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.
Butler, Judith. G ender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.
Caldwell, John. Convergence Television; Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content
in the Culture of Conglomeration. Television A fter TV: Essays on a M edium in
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Costello, Victor, and Barbara Moore. Cultural Outlaws: An Examination of Audience
Activity and Online Television Fandom. Television & N ew M edia 8.2 (2007); 12443. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.
Creed, Barbara. The M onstrous-Fem inine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York:
Routledge, 1993. Print.
Deery, June. TV.com: Participatory Viewing on the Web. Journal o f P opular Culture
37.2 (2003): 161-83. Print.
Gamble, Sera. Commentary for The French Mistake. Supernatural: The C om plete
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