Global Diversity SFF Thread

[Sci-2]

Review : The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson

Interesting review, will have to pick this one up.

People are transforming, including Scotch whose skin is getting blacker every second. Mythical creatures have appeared and the city is getting weirder. In the midst of all this Chaos, Scotch is determined to find and rescue her brother.

I can describe The Chaos in one word : weird! Weird in a good way. I challenge anyone to find a book similar to this one. It's unique and captivating. I love the mythology and Caribbean folklore added to the story although I know nothing about Caribbean culture, it was still fun to read. The weirdness happening all over the world will put a smile on your face : the Big Ben is blowing gigantic soap bubbles and singing drinking songs, islands are made of gumdrops, there's a chicken-legged house and the list goes on.

For her first young adult novel, I think the author did an excellent job.

[Sci-2]

The Future Fire (Shorts)

The Future Fire publishes socio-political speculative fiction in all genres, but with a particular taste for Cyberpunk, Feminist SF, Queer SF and Eco-SF. Any story that takes a world unlike our own in one small way (be it science fiction set in the future, speculative in the past, a fantastic parallel universe, a psychedelic dream) and uses that setting to examine some aspect of our own world with a social and political conscience, is broadly within our purview... so long as we think it's great. Surprise us. Challenge the expectations of our commodified little world.

[Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren]

Ι have recently heard some quite positive views about the Greek fantasy book:

Οι Γιοι της Στάχτης: Κοράκι σε άλικο φόντο rough translation The Sons of Ashes: Raven on scarlet background.

It is set in a similar to Byanztium world and it is the first book of a fantasy series. All reviews I have found about the book are overflowing with praise, and I have seen it called among the best modern Greek fantasy of latest years and someone even compared it with GRRM's series. Not sure about the availability of the book in other languages though.

[Sci-2]

Is Africa Ready for Science Fiction?

An older piece from Nedi Okorafor, examining the lack of success that SF has had in Africa. One thing I found interesting, beyond the juxtaposition of a Singh professor speaking on Africa, was the idea that SF was essentially a First World Problems genre.

I'm not even sure how much of that is true, as I've rarely seen Near Future SF that asks questions about where we'll be 20-50 years from now. This could be due to my ignorance than any objective reality though.

Ms. Okorator mentions in a recent post how African SF is rising since she made this post, and I'd love to hear more about this development, but I do wonder if there is some truth to the idea that SF is too disconnected to certain parts of the world for reasons beyond technology.

For example, Alex MacFarlane questions "white-washing" often found in SF, stating outright that she doesn't take such depictions of the future seriously. I don't if I completely agree with her assessment, not being much of an SF reader myself outside of short stories, but the article is short and worthwhile IMO.

=-=-=

eta:

Bridge Over Troubled Waters: The City of Haifa in Lavie Tidhar's Stories

Mr. Tidhar informed me that the stories mentioned in the article exist in English but he's not sure if any are online. Regardless, I really liked this article as it managed to connect the historic/modern versions of Hafia with the fantastic/scriptural. It also presents a different facet to the idea of "urban fantasy" and what the [term] can mean.

[Datepalm]

I swear I read a whole honest-to-goodness thesis once on why theres not really any hebrew science fiction, or a really tiny amount anyway, considering that most other genres do pretty well. I think it might have boiled down to it's all first-world-problems. (Theres plenty of fantasy, but it's like the europeans/south americans/etc, mainstream 'magic realist' type stuff.)I'm not sure i'm entirely convinced - I think the particular idiom of western sf, spaceships and aliens and what have you, is actually a fairly narrow one quite strongly tied to english. Other cultures have their ways of writing about the future, or writing about technology, but they don't look quite like that.

[ljkeane]

I might be wrong but I would have thought that a fairly high percentage of the population of Israel is english speaking? If that's the case then I'd say that there's also the possibility that domestic science fiction might be a little swamped with English imports and on the other hand potential Israeli science fiction authors might be tempted to write in English to reach a bigger market. I know when I visited South Africa for example a lot of the books on sale there seemed to have just come from UK publishers because that's pretty easy for them to do as most people spoke English although lots of people did speak other languages.

[Datepalm]

English speakers? Not really. Its a common second language (like, er, everywhere) but it's not a replacement for hebrew literature in any other genre, so what should it be in SF? (And a lot of SFF gets translated, so theres apparently a market.)

[ljkeane]

English speakers? Not really. Its a common second language (like, er, everywhere) but it's not a replacement for hebrew literature in any other genre, so what should it be in SF? (And a lot of SFF gets translated, so theres apparently a market.)

I didn't mean English speaking as a first language but in the sense that a significant proportion of the population would be comfortable in buying books written in English but fair enough.

If the specific style of science fiction with spaceships and aliens etc is associated with English then is there a different style of fiction looking to future that you find in Hebrew literature?

[Seli]

I swear I read a whole honest-to-goodness thesis once on why theres not really any hebrew science fiction, or a really tiny amount anyway, considering that most other genres do pretty well. I think it might have boiled down to it's all first-world-problems. (Theres plenty of fantasy, but it's like the europeans/south americans/etc, mainstream 'magic realist' type stuff.)I'm not sure i'm entirely convinced - I think the particular idiom of western sf, spaceships and aliens and what have you, is actually a fairly narrow one quite strongly tied to english. Other cultures have their ways of writing about the future, or writing about technology, but they don't look quite like that.

I don't think it is quite that simple, SF as we usually recognize it is rare in Dutch as well. I can think of four authors in the last 30 years, probably double that aiming at YA and younger markets, and probably half a dozen in comic books. Fantasy is not really common either, especially in the adult market. Even though the genre is well read and translations have been readily available.

And some of the better known SF works are post-apocalyptic/post-disaster, and the few spaceship type SF works are not that well known as far as I am aware.

[Datepalm]

:dunno: That pretty much what I said. The only language I can think of offhand that has its own strong tradition of spaceship-sf that isn't english is russian. I wonder if Chinese or Japanese do? Anime at least had a solid SF bent.

I think part of it is that it feels kind of strange to imagine a small country as the focal point of the kind of the kind of globe spanning things that SF usually brings up. I mean, theres something very parochial and silly imagining that the alien invaders are going to attack Jerusalem and not New York, and likewise if i'm reading a story with Israelis in space, i'm kind of going to assume its about Israeliness in some distinct way, rather than some general human thing if they were British or American.

(I'd like to see the author who's got the guts to set a near future SF here though. I think Teppers Tapestry featured jerusalem, and frankly it was one of the most offensive books i've ever read.)

[Galactus]

The only real significant swedish SF works I can think of are either dystopic (Kallocain) or... an epic, that is, a real epic. Written in hexametre and everything (Aniara) I know ol' Sam J. Lundwall wrote a few stories, but he's mostly famous as a publisher/translator.

[Seli]

:dunno: That pretty much what I said. The only language I can think of offhand that has its own strong tradition of spaceship-sf that isn't english is russian. I wonder if Chinese or Japanese do? Anime at least had a solid SF bent.

I think part of it is that it feels kind of strange to imagine a small country as the focal point of the kind of the kind of globe spanning things that SF usually brings up. I mean, theres something very parochial and silly imagining that the alien invaders are going to attack Jerusalem and not New York, and likewise if i'm reading a story with Israelis in space, i'm kind of going to assume its about Israeliness in some distinct way, rather than some general human thing if they were British or American.

(I'd like to see the author who's got the guts to set a near future SF here though. I think Teppers Tapestry featured jerusalem, and frankly it was one of the most offensive books i've ever read.)

:blushing: , I noticed the 'first-world-problems' bit but missed the bit about english.

Perhaps it has to do with the space-race mentality. Although sf does have roots that predate that era.

There is a relatively near-future work set in the middle east and using Israel. But more as a power in the background than anything else, and of course by an US author. It was published before the second American gulf war (Looking for the Mahdi, by N. Lee Wood, review here).

edit: For any other country I have no idea how the absence in the english language SF is caused (with lack of translation, lack of visibility, or lack of local tradition as possible causes). I can only look at the Netherlands and see that in that case it is mostly because there isn't that much to be translated. It is interesting to see that is the case for other countries as well.

Which leads back to the current development in genre, and the question how much of it is people discovering local traditions and how much is local people starting to write in the US/British tradition. Fantasy is a slightly different story, since that seems to be a bit stronger in most countries, if of a different flavour to the international successful US/UK style.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

:dunno: That pretty much what I said. The only language I can think of offhand that has its own strong tradition of spaceship-sf that isn't english is russian. I wonder if Chinese or Japanese do? Anime at least had a solid SF bent.

We certainly always had quite a lot of this kind of science fiction in Poland. Japan is obviously another example, as there is quite a lot Japanese genre books translated into Elnglish, and a significant part of them are SF. As for the rest of the world, I don't really know enough. We used to have some French space operas translated into Polish back in 70s and 80s, but I don't know if this is still living tradition in France.

[Galactus]

There's certianly a lot of french SF/Space opera in comics, not so sure about actual books though.

[dornish prince]

http://worldsf.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/tuesday-fiction-you-cannot-fight-the-war-by-aditya-bidikar/

not sure what i think of it yet, as it is still sinking in, but i'm having a difficult time wondering what the point of it all was. it was interesting and everything but i'm not sure that i get it.

ETA: i'm having trouble linking stuff the way that i used to. :(

[Happy Ent]

I mean, theres something very parochial and silly imagining that the alien invaders are going to attack Jerusalem and not New York, and likewise if i'm reading a story with Israelis in space, i'm kind of going to assume its about Israeliness in some distinct way, rather than some general human thing if they were British or American.

“Warp Core Ejections and the Jewish Problem.” I say go for it.

—

There is German SF with space ships and blasters: Perry Rhodan.

[Datepalm]

"Space: The Final Solution"

*Must resist holocaust jokes. Will start tomorrow.*

(True story, "The Road to Ein Harod", the only Israeli SF book ever turned into a movie, starred Benito Mussolinis granddaugter.)

[The WaterDancer Knight]

There's certianly a lot of french SF/Space opera in comics, not so sure about actual books though.

Not much now. A lot was published during the 70's and 80's mosly in one of the two Fleuve Noir SF collections: Fleuve Noir Anticpation and Fleuve Noir Science Fiction.

Now it seems that if a French autho wants to be published he/she better write fantasy than SF. And even that is difficult. The overhelming majority of Sf and Fantasy books published are translations from english.

[Sci-2]

SFF as metaphor: aliens, vampires, foreigners and immigrants by Aliette De Bodard

When you portray a group of funky-looking people with odd customs who either live on different planets, or try to integrate in a modern human society–whether you consciously want it or not, you’re bringing to mind real-life parallels. Namely, respectively non-Western countries (during the colonial era or during the globalisation era, depending on your portrayal), and immigrant communities.

I see what she's saying, but I don't it it is always problematic. I think at times being the minority-as-a-human can be instructive, but I agree a problem arises when you try to draw parallels without considering the difference between humans and creations of SFF:

This is then reinforced by choosing to depict, say, specism/racism against your aliens/vampires and basing it (because you have to) on real-life examples. -This then poses some serious problems, because as a parallel, this suffers from a very deep flaw. Vampires are rightly discriminated against because they feed on blood and kill human people; the fae have wild and dangerous magic and toy with human lives; and aliens really are different species.

Foreigners and immigrants are none of these.

It's interesting she mentions fey, given the times I've pointed out that Felurian is a rapist and no amount of "cultural relativism" changes that. Also, see X-men and the way mutants are handled.

I think of the interesting problems she highlights is how the desire to fit in can be less about being human and more about showing off the superiority of the normative culture:

-The specific comparison of UF supernatural creatures to immigrants and minorities is also problematic because in many books, it ends up putting such a high value on “normal” society (by which read heterosexual, White and American)–even more so than if it was just immigrants trying to fit in.

I'm not sure, however, that the issue is fitting in with White/American society, though I can see how it is heteronormative.

Really, what I wish for were some examples. On the one hand, I can see how this idea of fitting in is emphasized by a lot of SFF, but I can also see how using aliens can reach people in ways that using human immigrants couldn't. But I'd like to see examples of the books that use these ideas well and the ones that don't.

[Galactus]

I think at times being the minority-as-a-human can be instructive, but I agree a problem arises when you try to draw parallels without considering the difference between humans and creations of SFF

An interesting point is, "would it really matter?" though. I mean, structurally a society in which people BELIEVE there are blood-drinkers among them would be identical to one where there actually are: IE the prejudices, policies, etc. would pan out the same.

I think of the interesting problems she highlights is how the desire to fit in can be less about being human and more about showing off the superiority of the normative culture:

Something that the X-men mainly don't do though.

I'm not sure, however, that the issue is fitting in with White/American society, though I can see how it is heteronormative.

I'm also not sure that's not a well... Thing. In order to immigrate somewhere there must be, on some level, a pull factor. (if only "over there I'm not going to be killed.") Be it a desire for a better job, more freedom, just a new place, etc. etc. I'm reminded of Moberg's immigrant-series.

So in some sense, there needs to be *something* attractive about the target of migration, else there would be none.