Rocket Kapre – Fantastic Filipino Speculative Fiction

It’s officially Palanca Awards season again, writers from all genres and walks of life are  gearing up for two months of feverish writing (or hand-wringing). While works of speculative fiction can and have won the Palanca, it’s hard to shake the impression that the prestigious body (and ever changing panel of judges) is more receptive to stories of love lost and regained, when the method of “regaining” that love doesn’t involve the dark art of necromancy. Thinking about a submission for the Palanca Awards is about the only time I even consider writing a story without speculative elements, and it’s always been difficult for me to shift gears. With the 2010 awards opening for submissions this month, I became curious as to how other speculative fiction writers go about writing non-specfic pieces–which meant I finally had an excuse to start the second Rocket Round Table:

How different is your experience writing a story without speculative fiction elements, as opposed to writing Spec Fic?

Yeah, I know, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue does it? On to the answers then, and many thanks to the authors who found the time to sate my curiosity.

MARIANNE VILLANUEVA [Blog]

==Marianne is the author of several short story collections, and has been a finalist for the Philippines’ National Book Award. She teaches creative writing for the UCLA Extension Writers Program, and her latest short story collection, “The Lost Language”, was released by Anvil last year.==

Very interesting question!

I’m not a writer of speculative fiction, but I do like to “play” in the genre occasionally –  as I also like to play in the “crime” genre, or poetry, or anything.  Because experimenting is what keeps writing fun!

It always starts, for me, with an emotional trigger.  It’s when I find I can’t end my story properly that I start turning to more non-traditional elements.  Then I go back and start again, but with the non-traditional elements as a fixed part of the story.  Then I see if I can finish it.

So, it’s always how to end that bothers me.  And I’ll try anything, ANYTHING, to see how I can get to the end.  And if I have to throw in some speculative fiction elements along the way, so be it.

ADAM DAVID [Blog]

==Adam is an indie publisher, published author, opinionated blogger. He was recently awarded the Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award for his book, The El Bimbo Variation==.

Nothing really significant as far as authorial mindset is concerned. I used the same amount of braincells when I wrote *snip* as when I’m writing my 365 Stories book, the same amount when I wrote the El Bimbo Variations when I’m writing my terribly irregular essays on komix kritisism. The language is different in various levels, as well as in their little textual effects and affectations, but all those things are only merely decoration – or at their highest level, gilding – for the real substance of the thing, which never changes no matter the medium, whether audience or producer, critic or buyer: art is something you work on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Carljoe Javier is the author of “And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth“ (he also did a recent guest post for the site), and an avowed geek whose particular background and history gives him a unique view of life and geekdom in the Philippines. In the first of a two-part interview, we talk to him about that background, and what the word “geek” means to him.

What’s your family like? Are they geeks like you or the type who love you in spite of the Emma Frost action figures?

My mom is totally non-geeky. She’s very supportive, but I get the sense that she kind of just nods along and thinks, O sige anak kung yan ang gusto mo.

My younger brother, who is also back in the States, is a bro in geekhood as well. Though there’s a five year gap between us, we share a lot of geekhood, we used to hang out in the comic book store and he went a step further by actually working at the comic book store (whereas I just worked at the library). He’s also got a much better Magic: The Gathering ranking than me. And we played a lot of video games together; we’d have our specialties. I could never beat him at fighting games, but I always pwned him at sports games.

I’ve also got a younger sister who I am trying to influence in geekiness, but she’s in high school so she’s still worried about looking cool and fitting in.

As for the extended family, cousins and the like, I’m a bit of an outsider, no geeky group around.

I know that you spent part of your formative years in Los Angeles. How long did you live abroad?

Yeah my mom and I moved to the States when I was three. I’m the eldest, so by the time we moved back to the Philippines when I was fourteen, we were making the trip back with my younger bro and my sister who was a baby at the time.

What was the biggest adjustment you had to make when you moved back to the Philippines?

Oh, the heat. haha. That and the mosquitos. Seriously, I spent the first couple months in air-conditioned rooms and the mall.

But culturally, I found myself in a pretty middle class neighborhood and I had come to the country assuming that I would have to learn and assimilate whatever was in front of me.

In that sense then, language was the hardest thing. I came back to the Philippines armed with enough Tagalog that I could hold a conversation, but the idioms were very different, (the only spoken Tagalog I’d been exposed to other than that spoken by other Fil-Ams came from Tito Vic and Joey and Rene Requeistas movies). People would use words and I’d look them up in the dictionary and they wouldn’t be there. Case in point, “Pare, ang lupit nung flipkick mo kanina.” I’d run home and look at the dictionary and it would say “Cruel.” And I’d be wondering how a flipkick could be described as cruel.

Also, on my first day of school, people laughed at my accent, and I’ve made a conscious effort to not have that accent since then. But then sometimes when I’ve been drinking the accent will sneak out and make an appearance.

Read the rest of this entry »

An interesting discussion is taking place in Adam David’s blog concerning Futurism and Philippine Speculative Fiction, most particularly the lack of “homegrown Futurists” amongst Filipino Spec Fic writers. (Adam’s post has a NSFW pic–consider this a warning–but you can find the post here.) As Adam put it:

“[The local Spec Fic scene's] output has been overwhelmingly Nostalgist/Nativist – from MagRealist fables to (if ever) back-to-basics postapocalypses to manananggal-raver mashups to Brockanian urban dystopias – and if ever someone does do a Futurist take on the Philippines, it is almost always politically infantile, its idioms largely borrowed from another culture’s, ie, Hollywood and Wired.”

The post has elicited some interesting responses in the comments section (which is now much longer than the actual post), with comments from Spec Fic writers like Joseph Nacino, Kenneth Yu, Carljoe Javier and Eliza Victoria. Topics discussed in the comments include: clarifying what is meant by “futurism”, how to get writers to write about specific topics, the socio-cultural background of a Filipino SF writer, the nature of editing, and the future of the Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, amongst others.

(Image source: Behold the cow of the future by thewamphyri CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic)

Carljoe Javier is the author of “And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth“. He still hopes that he can one day become a Jedi Knight, a member of the anti-Skynet resistance, or a member of the A-Team. The following essay is part of a new collection he is in the process of writing, so consider this a sneak preview. He’s looking for feedback as well, so be sure to let us know if you like it–it’ll be too late for complaints once the book is on the shelves ^_^:

The first night she spent at my house my friends went crazy for her. I was having a party and the moment that they saw her, their jaws dropped. They huddled around her, much to the dismay of the girlfriends and wives present. “Dude, how?” My friends asked me. And all I could do was smirk and shrug, not affording them the satisfaction of an explanation.

“Carl, why?” one of the girlfriends asked.

To which I answered, “Why not?”

“Well, duh! Hello? What are you thinking?”

“What do you mean what am I thinking? Look, all the guys love her!”

She looked at me, sighed, and then slumped her shoulders. There was a slow nod, which I could only interpret as disapproval.

Later in the night, we caught her boyfriend fondling the new girl’s breasts.

“Dude, not cool,” I said.

His girlfriend had a rather more extreme response: “What the Hell are you doing?”

I came to his defense, “He can’t help it.”

“How can he not help it?”

“Well, they are now saying that she’s an Omega-Class Mutant. As a telepath, she can project images, manipulate your mind, and that’s just for starters. I mean, Cyclops wasn’t immune to her wiles, and he had a potentially worlds-destroying girlfriend at the time.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Anna Felicia Sanchez is a published author, a professor at the University of the Philippines, and a Palanca Awardee. She is also, (refreshingly) unabashedly not only a fan of anime/manga but also a fanfic writer, and one of the few people I’ve found locally who deem fan writings to be an important aspect of popular culture worthy of academic study. I missed her fanfic writing seminar last summer, when I heard that the UP Lingua Franca organization was having her as a guest speaker to talk about fanfiction, I decided it was worth braving the Katipunan school day traffic to hear what she had to say.

Over roughly one and a half hours, Professor Sanchez discussed, amongst others, definitions of Geek and Fan (and what role gender/sex plays in each definition), how it feels to be a girl surrounded by geeks, the Noranians-Vilmanian War, “Aca-Fans”, Consumerism/Cosplay/Community in fandom, Subject and Object in the Shoujo genre and what the real world advantages are to writing fanfic.

With the gracious consent of the organizers and Professor Sanchez, I’ve uploaded excerpts from her talk “Confessions of a Shipper: The Joys and Transgressions of Fan Writing” which she gave in front of a packed classroom in the UP College of Arts and Letters. Enjoy!

More video excerpts under the cut:

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s start off December with another link roundup of news that might be of interest to readers and writers of Philippine Spec Fic:

• Ateneo University Press is having a booksale (via Philippine Genre Stories)
• The 2nd San Pablo City Comics Festival will be held this Sunday (via Azrael’s Merryland)
• Adam David reviews El Indio (via thePOC.net)
• Carlo Vergara wants More Pinoy Graphic Novels (and dishes out some advice for budding creators who want to do just that) (via The Carver’s House)
• On the other hand, Dennis Villegas asks Nasaan na ang mga Komiks?
• “The Ascension of Our Lady Boy” by Mia Tijam is now up on Expanded Horizons
• The Philippine Daily Inquirer has an article on a book covering “The First One Hundred Years of Philippine Comics” (via Komikero)
• Carljoe Javier makes it on to Playboy’s Top Five Wordsmiths Worth Watching in 2010 (via Ballad of the Comeback Kid)

Via a post from Kyu over at Philippine Genre Stories, it seems that the National Book Development Board is holding a series of lectures in honor of Book Development Month. Quite a few of the featured speakers are Spec Fic authors so for those interested, here’ s the post:

The National Book Development Board is hosting a series of lectures this month, beginning tomorrow, as part of the 13th Philippine Book Development Month. The November schedule of activities for the series, Galing Pinoy, Basahin!, can now be seen on their website. The lectures will be held at The Filipinas Heritage Library. The details:

How To Read The Next Generation (Poetry)
Featuring: Mesandel Arguelles, Mikael Co, Conchitina Cruz, Joel Toledo; Moderator: Gemino Abad; Nov. 10, 2009

How To Read The Next Generation (Fiction)
Featuring: Dean Alfar, Angelo Lacuesta, Edgar Samar, Tara FT Sering; Moderator: Jose Y. Dalisay; Nov. 11, 2009

How To Read The Next Generation (Non-Fiction)
Featuring: Louie Cano, Vlad Gonzales, Carljoe Javier, Luis Katigbak; Moderator: Tony Hidalgo; Nov. 12, 2009

Reading Nick Joaquin; Nov. 16, 2009

Click on the above links for all the details, and to see how to reserve a place at the lectures. They are free and open to the public. The rest of the schedule for the month can be seen on the NBDB website.