On Recent South(east) Asian SF/F by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Guest Post)
When I first started publishing in 2012, I felt I’d come into an already established community, one thriving with international writers. It’s an environment that I’ve always found welcoming, and doubly so once I started discovering and meeting (online) other writers from my region, wherever in the world they are based. So I’d like to give an overview of what I’ve been seeing in this regard — any excuse would do to talk about these wonderful writers! — and talk a little about my publishing experiences these last couple years, though only a little; it’s not too charming to harp on about myself! I’m covering Southeast Asian and South Asian writers, though (as everyone who follows the state of short genre fiction would be) I closely follow mainland Chinese ones as well, most of whom we’re now seeing in Lightspeed and Clarkesworld through the diligent translations by Ken Liu. Some of the most recent are the lyrical Invisible Planets by Hao Jingfang and the fairy tale-like Grave of the Fireflies by Cheng Jingbo.
Top 10 Episodes and Blog Posts for March 2014
No introductions needed. Here goes. Top Episodes: #17 — Babylon 5 Re-Watch (S1D4: Eps. 13-16) — A Shoot the WISB Subcast w/ Jamie Wyman & Erika Ensign 195. Sons of Steel (1988): A Torture Cinema “Adventure” w/ Danny Oz 116. Season of the Witch — A Torture Cinema “Adventure” Episode 96 — An Interview w/ Sherwood Smith (a.k.a. Scribbles and Cream) Episode 4.2 — Torture Cinema Meets The Wicker Man 190. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2009): A Torture Cinema “Adventure” #16 — Godzilla (1954) — A Shoot the WISB Discussion 193. New Zealander Speculative Fiction w/ Helen Lowe, Norman Cates, & Stephen Minchin #15 — Babylon 5 Re-Watch (S1D3: Eps. 9-12) — A Shoot the WISB Discussion #10 — Babylon 5 Re-Watch (S1D1: Eps. 1-4) — A Shoot the WISB Discussion Top Blog Posts: Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Saga of Pliocene Exile by Julian May (by Paul Weimer) My Superpower: Marianne de Pierres The Disquieting Guest — The Sublime Terror of Kaiju by David Annandale My Superpower: Steve McHugh Business Time: Self-publishing vendors and ‘royalties’ by Mike Underwood For Your Hugo Award Consideration: A Very Big, Non-Endorsement List of Things to Love by Shaun Duke Book Review: Debris by Jo Anderton (by Paul Weimer) A (World) SFF Film Odyssey: Mutant Girls Squad (2010) and Anime’s Excesses by Shaun Duke Cultural Tourists (Part 1): Publishing and Representation by Charles A. Tan The Masks the Monsters Left Behind by Romeo Kennedy (Guest Post)
The World SF Tour: Marvelous March Dates!
Here’s what’s on the tour docket for March: 3/14: Shoot the WISB episode on Godzilla (1954) 3/18: Shoot the WISB episode on Babylon 5 (Season One; Disc Four) w/ Erika Ensign & Jaimie Wyman 3/29: Discussion of Brazilian speculative fiction (tentative) 3/31: Torture Cinema (title TBA) D/U: Discussion of Japanese speculative fiction (tentative) D/U: Interview w/ Sofia Samatar at ICFA (tentative) D/U: Other recordings at ICFA are TBA; we may or may not drop them in March, depending on which episodes have to be pushed back to April D/U = Date Undetermined There are still a bunch of things up in the wind for March, but we should have everything figured out by the end of the week!
My Superpower: Jonathan Wood
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Jonathan Wood to talk about how the power of Multitasking and Toothpaste relates to No Hero. —————————————— When asked to write about my super power, I panicked. I am British and middle class. There’s my ability to consume staggering amounts of bland, flavorless food, but that doesn’t seem like exactly the right subject matter. So I did what I usually do when I am at a loss. I turned to my wife. She shrugged (which, in retrospect, was not the most encouraging sign) and said, “You could write about your multi-tasking thing.”
My Superpower: Steve McHugh
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Steve McHugh to talk about how the power of Having a Brain That Won’t Shut Up relates to With Silent Screams. ——————————– My superpower is a brain that won’t shut up. I don’t mean just one that’s always full of new ideas and stories, but one that just won’t let something go. Now, as a writer, 9 times out of 10, this is the greatest gift in the world. The ability to keep coming up with fresh ideas and stories is pretty much essential if I want to keep writing new books. Normally I’ll have an idea, a glimmer of a story or character, and then I’ll spend the next few days thinking on it, mulling it over and allowing it to evolve into whatever it needs to in order to grow. I discard the notions that don’t work, or file them away for use later, and see how far it needs to go before whatever gave me that initial thought becomes something fully formed and much more real.
My Superpower: Rhiannon Held
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Rhiannon Held to talk about how the power of Metaphor relates to Reflected. ———————————- I am proud to say that my superpower is the power of METAPHOR. I’ve had it all my life, but never realized it until I started writing and learned to nurture my metaphor in a conscious way to make my novels richer. My newest book, Reflected, has metaphor on a number of different levels, and I’m continually grateful that’s the superpower I received when such things were being handed out. Now, to forestall the few pedants and people eager to prove they were paying attention in junior high English out there, I’m going to talk about metaphor in a large, umbrella sense. When it comes down to sentence structure, there is indeed a terminology difference between saying “My heart is a lump of coal” and “My heart is like a lump of coal.” The former’s a metaphor, and the latter’s a simile.
