August 18, 2020
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. (Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness) The field of Speculative Fiction is often accused of being “escapist” as though that’s a bad thing. We all need escape every now and then, and escape to female utopias, the gentle…
October 19, 2019
Greetings, boils and ghouls! I’m channeling the man of your screams — The Cryptkeeper — for this week’s Roundup, as an exorcise in truly terrible puns. Nothing inspiders more terror than awkward wordplay that requires far too much effort on my part, but I’m going to give it a try until I get the fang of it…or spontaneously combust from…
October 15, 2019
The journey of the White Witch to the Beast’s Garden is a fraught and perilous trek through the beginnings of the realm of Faery, starting out at the dawn of humanity, with the first feminist fairy tale, that of the Animal Bride/Groom, in which, according to noted folklorist Terri Windling, “a human man or woman is married to an animal,…
October 4, 2019
Day 4 of our ongoing October horror movie series here at Speculative Chic — and it’s time to enter werewolf country. (Where wolf? There wolf! Sorry. We may veer into Young Frankenstein territory later this month.) More chitchat, film discussion, book recs, and cocktail ideas from Sandra Kasturi and Gemma Files! Welcome to The Kasturi/Files!
May 27, 2019
They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Courtney Bates-Hardy, whose poetry collection, House of Mystery, is available…
March 11, 2019
They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Sandra Kasturi, whose short story, “The Beautiful Gears of Dying,”…