Rocket Kapre – Fantastic Filipino Speculative Fiction

The Komikon organizers have announced the nominees in four of the categories for the 2011 Komikon Awards (Best Comic series, Best Comic Strip Compilation, Best Graphic Novel, Best Filipino International Artist). Voting is not yet open, but feel free to go over to the Komikon website to see if your favorites have made the cut.

2011 Nominees for Best Comic Series

Ang Astiging Boy Ipis

(Paul Michael Ignacio, Gilbert Monsanto, etc., Sacred Mountain Prod.)

Bayan Knights

(Gilbert Monsanto, etc., Sacred Mountain Prod.)

Foldabots

(Jomike Tejido, KZone Philippines, Summit Media)

Love is in the Bag

(Ace Vitangcol & Jed Siroy, Studio Studio)

The New Adventures of Erek Shawn

(Digital Art Chefs, FHM Philippines, Summit Media)

Read the rest of this entry »

Bewildering Stories just held their Annual Review and released the list of Mariner Award winners for 2010, which includes stories by our very own Filipino authors Dean Alfar (“In the Dim Plane“), Nikki Alfar (“Adrift on the Street Formerly Known as Buendia“), and Elyss Punsalan (“Pursuit of the Litaniera“). Check out their stories if you haven’t already, as well as those of the other award winners. Congratulations to Dean, Nikki and Elyss!

Still adjusting to my new schedule, and trying to balance Metakritiko editing/writing duties with Rocket Kapre and my own fiction, and couple that with my Internet outage (attributable to my router dying apparently) and that means I’ve been a bit behind on my news-of-relevance-to-Pinoy-SF… but that’s nothing a Chained Links post can’t fix!

Philippine Spec Fic News:

• Lola: A Ghost Story (with a story by J. Torres and art by Elbert Or) is a graphic novel from Oni Books that tells the story of a boy who returns with his family to the Philippines for the funeral of his grandmother. Elbert says it should be out in comics stores this week, so you all know what you’re shopping for this weekend. You can check out some reviews at School Library Journal and Comic Book Resources, or check out the 17 page preview at the sites Elbert mentions here.
• A list of indigenous tribes and languages of the Philippines by F. Blumentritt which briefly describes each tribe’s location, culture and religion. Handy resource eh? (Filipiniana.net)
• Project 20:10 is a project with the two-fold mission of drumming up support for local creators, and increasing the amount of local content in fiction, comics, animation and gaming. I’ll have an interview with project organizer Ria Lu (of Talecraft fame) at Metakritiko soon, so watch out for that.
• Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels Seminar by Glasshouse Graphics from January 30-31. You can find the details here – warning, the site has audio. (via Komikero)
• Speaking of comics, komiks creator macoy (I recently reviewed his “Ang Maskot“) posts embedded video of a Kubori Kikiam motion comic (which is obviously NSFW) and an animated mock opening to “The Metro” by Jerome Jacinto –which, I confess, I’ve never heard of before, but it looks awesome.
• The Philippines’ second solar car (there was a first?), aptly named Sikat (see what they did there? *nudge*) is embarking on a nationwide tour. (Good News Pilipinas)
• Spirit Photography is the topic of a recent blog post of Spec Fic author Yvette Tan . Speaking of Yvette, have I mentioned that she plugs our Ruin and Resolve anthology here?
• Trese 5000: No, that’s not a far-future story arc, it’s a sales figure estimate for books 1 and 3. Congratulations to Budjette, Kajo and Visprint on the continuing success of Trese.

Genre and Fandom:

• The Bibliophile Stalker Awards 2009 went up last January 13, in case you missed it.
• Neglected Books and Authors get some love over at Tor.com
• Fandom, Participatory Culture, and Web 2.0 is the title of a course which I’d love to take up, but as that’s unlikely to occur anytime soon, I’m glad that Professor Henry Jenkins has posted his syllabus at his site.

Reading and Writing:

• Bookrun 2010 is taking place on January 31, 2010.
• Charles Tan talks about publication and patience in his Stalker’s Notebook column for BSC. A couple of posts on language: Ekaterina Sedia discusses the “exoticism of language” and the issue of translation (via the World SF News Blog) and an ongoing discussion on some difficulties with language is going on a Catherine Batac Walder’s blog here and here.
• Over at her new blog, Spec Fic author and Vibal officer Tin Mandigma posts some thoughts on publishing in the Philippines in the wake of El Indio.

The UP Institute of Creative Writing and the Madrigal-Gonzalez family have just announced the nominees for the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award for 2009, and we’re pleased to see recognition to the first Trese graphic novel (by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo), Murder on Balete Drive…  albeit the announcement/post up on Panitikan.com.ph seems to imply that it was not an easy decision (or at the very least whatever committee decided this knew that it might be taking some heat):

This year’s selection mirrors the changing landscape of Philippine literature as it includes the bestselling graphic novel Trese, a collaboration between Tan and Baldisimo—a possibly controversial inclusion among purist circles.

Also up for the award is Spec Fic author (well, more like “Boundaries? What boundaries?” author) Adam David’s “The El Bimbo Variations.” From Adam’s twitter feed, it also appears that this is also the first time a self-published book has been nominated. Changing landscape of Philippine literature indeed…

Congrats to Budjette, Kajo and Adam, as well as all the other nominees. You can see the full list here.

From the World SF News Blog, we’ve received word that Charles Tan, of Bibliophile Stalker fame, has won the Last Drink Bird Head Award for International Activism, in recognition for his efforts to bring writers from other literary traditions and countries to the attention of readers in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia…

Last Drink Bird Head is a flash fiction anthology for the benefit of ProLiteracy.org, where editors Jeff and Ann Vandermeer sent an email to writers with “Last Drink Bird Head” in the subject line and the directions “Who or what is Last Drink Bird Head? Under 500 words.”

According to a post on Jeff Vandermeer’s site, the purpose of the Last Drink Bird Head Awards is to celebrate those in the genre community who enrich it with their time, energy, and words, often for causes greater than themselves. Finalists for this year’s award were chosen for efforts in 2008 and/or 2009.

Congratulations Charles!

As seen on the PGS Blog. Congratulations everyone!

Wonderful (and belated) news!

My thanks too to The Bibliophile Stalker for sending PGS and other local fiction publications abroad!