When Calls for Diversity Are Not Enough
As a writer and reader based in Southeast Asia, I’ve been pondering the term “diversity” — at least, in the context of it’s use on the Internet. First, it’s focused on the Western publishing industry. Filipino publishers publish Filipino-authored works for example (although our publishing industry has different issues of diversity). The same goes for publishers in Malaysia, China, South Africa, etc. I do think it’s important to focus on the Western publishing industry, because it’s usually a one-way street: books from the Philippines rarely go out of the Philippines, but books from the US or the UK gets distributed around the world. A novel like Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, published by both Jacana Media in South Africa and Angry Robot Books in the US/UK, is the exception to the norm. And in my case here in the Philippines, there are some Filipino books that might not have been picked up by a local publisher if it weren’t acquired by a US/UK publisher first. And for all the talk about diversity in the US publishing industry, we have conversations like the ones mentioned by Jennifer Pan & Sarah McCarry.
Book Review: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Jeff Vandermeer has always been a frustrating author to me. He is an incredible anthologist and an adroit genre critic. I want to love his books. I should love his books. The New Weird movement got me into writing in the first place. But, for some reason, I’ve had a hard time getting into them. Not so with Annihilation, and that’s a relief. Annihilation is the story of “Area X,” an irrational, transitional landscape in the south. With shifting, horrible borders that must be passed through under hypnosis, it’s at once part of and separated from the mundane world. Inside Area X, monsters come in familiar forms, and nothing is what it seems. Expeditions have been going into Area X for a long time, with few survivors. The mysterious organization dubbed the “Southern Reach” controls Area X. They also condition and “prepare” each expedition, but there is so much unknown about Area X.
Business Time – Many Paths up the Mountain
This last weekend, I was at BaltiCon in Hunt Valley, MD. I had the pleasure of being on a number of business/business of writing panels, and I noticed something very cool that I wanted to loop back around to talk about. In one of the panels, I was the only traditionally-published author out of a group of five, but there was no animosity, no rancor, no posturing. It was five creatives who had all taken different paths to getting their work out into the world. It is my hope that we’re at a place where writers and creators looking to work in the SF/F prose field can approach the business with open eyes and a sense of freedom — of possibility. There are many paths up the mountain, and as many ways of having a career as there are authors (and considering how some authors reboot their careers, there may be more ways than there are creators). It’s not just Traditional and indie/self-publishing — there are a hundred gradations and combinations. Here are just a few:
2014 Hugo Award Episode Pack: Download away!
If you’re a Hugo Voter, you’ll have seen the little document in the Fancast category from us which includes recommended episodes from 2013 — one from each of our episode types. To make it a little easier for folks to download these episodes, we’ve put up a .zip file containing all four mp3 files, which should be easy enough to load up into your player of choice. The file can be downloaded here. If there are issues, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or contact us at skiffyandfanty[at]gmail[dot]com! Enjoy!
Book Review: Veil of the Deserters by Jeff Salyards
In a border kingdom of the Syldoon Empire, a long-range military unit has gotten itself too tangled with local politics for its own good. Its commander, Captain Killcoin, having lost one of the few people who can keep him all together with his dangerous mind-warping weapon Bloodsounder, is in a heap of trouble with higher ups in the Empire. Trouble enough that one of the most dangerous people in the Empire has been fetched to bring him home — his sister. The completion of Killcoin’s task and the journey home to the capital is not going to be a straight road by any means. And chronicling, witnessing, watching this all, an unlikely protagonist — a scribe, with little military skill, who is only slowly shedding his callowness. He’s hired by the Syldoon for purposes only now becoming clear. Purposes that could shake an Empire. Arkamondos is in way, way over his head.
Languages Matter: Some Thoughts on Language and Dialect
I want to expand on what I have written in my essay, “Languages, Dialects and Accents: Why Our Voices Matter.” Much has been said about the use of dialect in science fiction and the outcry that follows. I would like to see more of such discussions because we have been shying away from issues that really matter to us. Perhaps, it is the shift from white Anglo science fiction to a more international/world science fiction that has started the ball rolling. For a long time, the world has been white, male and painfully Anglo-centric, not to mention US-centric. Now we have new voices coming into the song, and some are naturally reacting rather angrily, I would say. Why are we fixating on English – and for that matter, proper grammatical English English? Let’s not bring in the American versus British spelling argument. Let’s talk about English. Why do we insist SFF writers write in English? Probably because science fiction, at the moment, is dominated by the Americans and the British? Bear in mind that science fiction is also written in Mandarin Chinese, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Bahasa. Why does English have so much hegemony in the SFF-sphere?
