Critical Reception and Postmodern Violation of Generic Conventions in Jacques Brossard’s "Monument aux marges": L’Oiseau de feu

Québec writer Jacques-Edmond Brossard's 1989 novel, L'oiseau de feu-1. Les années d'apprentissage, first of the five-part Oiseau series, created a literary sensation as a potential monument of la science-fiction québécoise. Despite critical approbation, however, few readers endeavour beyond the series' first instalment, and the whole stands at the margins of the field both for readers and scholars. In part, the difficulty of identifying Brossard as primarily a mainstream or a science-fiction writer has estranged fans and critics of both camps. But more importantly, his series' ludic irreverence toward and self-conscious play with generic conventions – one of its many postmodern features – works against its long-term engagement of québécois/French-Canadian critics in both the mainstream and the genre milieux. Yet, this "monument aux marges" deserves more attention precisely because of its postmodernism

Mark Bould and Williams Rhys, Sf Now

Who said the Left is dead? It is alive and kicking in a major strain of science-fiction writing and criticism as witnessed in the most recent edition of the annual journal Paradoxa, edited by Mark Bould and Rhys Williams appropriately titled Sf Now. If this is a publication that is not on your radar because of its annual appearance, if you are interested in rigorous, cutting edge scholarship, you should check it out (paradoxa.com). With an international editorial board that includes such heav..

A Companion to the Companions

What is a companion ? A companion is someone who is frequently at our side, a fellow traveler with whom we dialogue and share opinions, whose advice we might seek when in doubt. At least that begins to define the nature of a human companion ; but what is a “companion” when it is a book ? That question, in part, provided the impetus for this review essay on the widening array of introductory and reference books on the science-fiction genre. For some time, I have been trying to untangle the mea..

Mike Ashley. Out of This World: Science Fiction, But Not As You Know It

The British Library held an exhibition on science fiction from 25 May to 25 September, 2011. Mike Ashley’s beautiful companion volume, Out of This World, offers a brilliant, illustrated history of science fiction. Destined for newcomers to the genre, the oversize tome provides a useful handbook and even some tidbits of lesser-known factoids for the specialist. I highly recommend this work for all libraries and coffee tables. Ashley has proven himself to be one of the genre’s foremost historia..

Le sublime naturel dans le “cycle de Neubourg” de Daniel Sernine

Le « cycle de Neubourg et de Granverger » de Daniel Sernine se compose de dix romans pour la jeunesse publiés entre 1980 et 1995 et d’une vingtaine de nouvelles fantastiques pour adultes réunie dans trois recueils publiés entre 1978 et 1983. Leur auteur y raconte les événements insolites qui touchent la vie des colons et de leurs descendants installés sur les bords d’une rivière fictive, la Paskédiac en Nouvelle France/Québec, depuis leur arrivée jusqu’au présent. Ces rencontres avec le surna..

Le temps et l’utopie dans l’œuvre de Jacques Brossard

Jacques Brossard (1933-2010) presents a unique case among Québec’s intellectuals who drew upon the discourse of utopia during the Quiet Revolution and the subsequent movements for sovereignty. Not only did the jurist author several juridico-political studies examining Québec’s status in relation to Canada regarding immigration, territory and the constitution, he also created a massive literary utopia, the five-volume trilogy L’oiseau de feu (1989-1997). After demonstrating how Brossard’s fiction and non-fiction works reflect the context within which they were developed, this essay examines the complex treatment of time in this author’s epic novel as well as his short fiction. The non-linear treatment of time by Marxist utopian theorist Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) helps us to understand how Brossard’s complex interweaving of several temporal layers and his blurring of the boundaries between past, present and future represent a utopian treatment of time itself