Author: Robin Rowland

Prisoners of the Empire: a disappointing, cherry-picked mishmash

Earlier this summer I saw a prepublication notice for Sarah Kovner’s book Prisoners of the Empire Inside Japanese POW Camps, where the Harvard University Press promotion  called the book “A pathbreaking account of World War II POW camps, challenging the longstanding belief that the Japanese Empire systematically mistreated Allied prisoners.” I eagerly pre-ordered the book. […]

Aranzazu Banks, horror on Hecate Strait, in Canadian Dreadful anthology

            A mariner sailing from  BC’s  Douglas Channel to Haida Gwaii is seduced by mysterious lights on Hecate Stait, not knowing a seductive monster lurks off Aranzazu Banks. My short story Aranzazu Banks appears in the new anthology of Canadian horror and magic realism Canadian Dreadful  edited by David Torcher […]

Short story Dragon Hunter in the Citadels of Darkover anthology

My short story Dragon Hunter is now available in the Darkover Anthology Citadels of Darkover, edited by Deborah J. Ross A young paleontologist arrives on the mysterious planet Darkover with what appears to be an impossible assignment, find out if there were ever “dinosaurs” or the planetary equivalent on the planet. He faces bureaucratic resistance […]

Kitimat Chronicles III launch

A big crowd turned out Wednesday night, January 25, 2017 for the launch of Kitimat Chronicles III, the third volume in the self published history of the Kitimat valley and region by Walter Thorne and Dirk Mendel, the follow up to the popular Kitimat Chronicles I and Kitimat Chronicles II (Good Reads links) The stories […]

Robert Heinlein’s nightmare vision. The US elects a dictator in 2016.

In the year AD 2100, an evil Dictator rules the United States. He maintains power through the clever use of advanced science and pyschology. And he is backed by a dedicated military clique…. From Robert A. Heinlein, the dean of space-age fiction, comes this thrilling novel of a soldier who dare to defy Authority who […]

Re-elected Harper government to crack down on dual citizens of Beringian origin

A re-elected Harper government would crack down on dual citizens originally from Beringia, sources are saying. The sources say Harper and his advisors consider many Beringians to be a threat to Canada or at least to Harper’s vision of Canada. According to Statistics Canada there were at least 1,400,685  residents of Beringian origin in Canada […]

Haisla author Joe Starr weaves magic in short story collection

In the opening short story of Haisla First Nation author Joe Starr’s collection, Nuyem Weaver, an elderly woman, the weaver, makes her last journey, by canoe, to the site of an abandoned village where the yellow cedar trees call to her so she can strip the bark and weave a new floor mat, a thlee-we […]

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the children of veterans

On Sunday, March 16, 2014, the lead item on CBS Sunday Morning was about how the trauma of war is often passed on to the children of veterans.  The item concentrates on the current crisis with U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and also touches on Vietnam through the story of Christal Presley who took […]

Marmite

Marmite kept my father alive.

Updates with CFIA statement saying Marmite not banned When I was a little kid my father insisted—yes insisted—that I eat my Marmite. This morning I woke up to the news that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has apparently banned Marmite, a yeast extract spread, in this country, along with some other British “comfort foods.” (After […]