As I said on Twitter, this post will be comprised of squee and speculation in the wake of this exciting teaser video from Guillermo del Toro: So, quick recap. We are promised the following by 2017 – Animated series More comics Pacific Rim 2 (in 2017) Please pardon me while I flail for a moment. Like so:
After being bonded with the alien Tao, making good strides against the Genjix, and becoming a better man in the process, physically and otherwise, you’d think Roen Tan would have it made. Instead, several years after the events of The Lives of Tao, Roen and Tao have self-exiled themselves not only from Jill and their son, but also from the remainder of the Prophus. It’s a particularly painful separation. And, sidelined as they have made themselves out to be, Roen and Tao’s side are in a relatively weaker position now, and the stakes are higher than ever. The Genjix are winning their long secret war against the rebellious Prophus. More and more of the countries of the world are falling under covert Genjix control. It’s everything Jill (and her own Quasing Baji) can do to keep things from slipping too badly. In The Deaths of Tao, though, that might not be enough, as the Genjix have a new rising star in their ranks and a seemingly tantalizing approach to an old, old dream. Not the ancient dream to escape Earth, but a different desire entirely…
Author’s note: This blog post will be a little bit different from the usual SFF in SEA variant. Recently, I was rocked by a wonderful and startling revelation from my dad about his grandmother. My great grandmother was a herbalist and a travelling physician. From his tone, I could tell my dad admired her. She had “ben shi”, ability, talent. She could do stuff. Yet, my grandmother, my great grandmother’s daughter, wasn’t that forthcoming. She let out her stories in weak spools. She didn’t talk about things that made her sad. According to my dad, she quarreled with her mother who forbade her to leave for Nanyang (the Chinese term for Southeast Asia). My grandmother left for Singapore soon after that. Imagine the wounds still unhealed, the words left unsaid, unvoiced. My grandmother passed away last year. My paternal grandparents came from Hui’ An, Fujian. Isolated from the mainland, Hui’ An still retains characteristics of a minority group in China: the women’s clothing are unique and more reminiscent of clothing from Indo-China. The Hui’ An people are nominally Han Chinese. They are a coastal people, fishing and harvesting/farming oysters as part of their livelihood. At the same time, the women folk work at granite mines. Still deeply patriarchal, Hui’An society has women working at the coast and at the workshops while men idle away at tea houses. As a result, the women are tough, resilient and innovative.
(That’s probably because you rolled up nothing but Limericks about exciting things!) I’ve been like a magpie lately, collecting shiny things from here and there. There’s no unified theme to this post, except everything in it is an awesome idea. So I decided to force a theme in a way that will likely yield terrible results: Limerick writing! I am making these all up on the spot, and giving myself no more than 5 minutes to do each one. So, hang on tight; this may be a bumpy ride! Gears for Queers
Jonathan Strahan’s third “Infinities” anthology, Reach for Infinity, changes focus yet again for the series. While Engineering Infinity and Edge of Infinity explored solid Solar System-set science fiction, Reach for Infinity’s stories and mission concern the attempts of man to get into the solar system, pulling back even further from the more grandiose hard science fiction in the first Infinities volume, Engineering Infinity. However, even given the more narrowed and tight focus, the stories are no less full of wonder, characters, science and excellent writing. The previous volume, Edge of Infinity, felt in some ways like a manifesto from the editor, as if it had been curated and created to advance an argument. Reach for Infinity eschews that sort of editorial point of view and instead presents a set of excellent stories.
By the time this post goes up — at least in my part of the world — it will exactly be a year since the World SF Blog was retired. Its success, in my opinion, lies in the hands of the editor-in-chief of the site, Lavie Tidhar, and the efforts of the various contributors (the list would be too long…) from around the world. The Apex Book of World SF 3 has also been announced, so June is a special month for me (and because I had nothing to do with the anthology, I can read it with surprise and delight). Before I digress, I want to point out that the more I pondered the issue of World SF, the more I discovered how the term was problematic (which Is discussed in my essay “World SF: Our Possible Future”). Here’s the thing: no one owns or speaks for World SF. It’s too broad, too all encompassing, and it’s often defined by what it isn’t. It’s a reaction to the current status quo, of major publishers publishing books by US and UK authors, and those books becoming the canon in various parts of the world. It’s to rebel against cultural appropriation, to combat cultural stereotypes, and most of all, to not do a disservice to readers of various races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
