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November 19, 2009 6:22 PM   Subscribe

The Apex Book of World SF gathers stories from around the globe, giving Science Fiction a global aspect not always seen. Charles Tan interviews the writers who contributed.
posted by Artw (13 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Looks great. I always find it a bit strange that the only SF books I read are exclusively written by native English speakers, especially ones from Britain and the U.S. In more mainstream fiction, you'll find a lot more international works translated from other languages, but for modern SF, they're harder to find. Thanks for this.
posted by zardoz at 6:27 PM on November 19, 2009


Philippine Speculative Fiction
posted by Artw at 6:32 PM on November 19, 2009


And here I was wondering what to buy with this Amazon gift card. Thanks Artw!
posted by JaredSeth at 6:58 PM on November 19, 2009


Haikasoru - Japanese prose science fiction from Viz.
posted by Artw at 8:00 PM on November 19, 2009


SF Signal (from the interview link) also had a recent series of their Mind Meld feature on the question: What is going on right now in the international sf/f scene that anglophone readers might be missing out on? (link goes to part 4, which has links to parts 1-3).
posted by Jakey at 5:46 AM on November 20, 2009


perfect. more cool things to look for.

thank you as always, artw!
posted by artof.mulata at 5:49 AM on November 20, 2009


Thanks very much for this post; I've just added the Apex book to my Amazon wishlist.
posted by languagehat at 7:50 AM on November 20, 2009


Early Bengali Science Fiction
posted by brundlefly at 10:14 AM on November 20, 2009


At the risk of being cynical, it's hard to take this seriously as a collection of "worldwide SF" when not a single story is by a writer from South America or Africa.
posted by Target Practice at 9:37 PM on November 21, 2009


> At the risk of being cynical, it's hard to take this seriously as a collection of "worldwide SF" when not a single story is by a writer from South America or Africa.

Christ, I hate this kind of automatic snark. Right, it's impossible to take an international collection seriously unless it has representatives from every single country in the world. I noticed they don't have any Russian SF either, but so fucking what? It's one book. If it does well, there will probably be others, doubtless with stories from South America and Africa. But you would apparently prefer to have no anthology at all rather than one that isn't your impossible dream of an all-inclusive one.

I would also point out that Latin American SF, like Russian SF, is a strong enough tradition that it has had anthologies of its own, and so perhaps there is a case for including less prominent traditions here. I don't know about Africa; if you're an expert on African SF, perhaps you could suggest some candidates.
posted by languagehat at 6:43 AM on November 22, 2009


Well, Africa did have the biggest SF film hit of 2009.

( if you ignore some higher grossing stuff that is only nominaly Science Fiction)
posted by Artw at 9:30 AM on November 22, 2009




Larry Niven: “International SF” and Problems of Identity
posted by Artw at 2:40 PM on November 24, 2009


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