Rocket Kapre – Fantastic Filipino Speculative Fiction

The website is still a work in progress, but Charles Tan, of the Bibliophile Stalker blog and a few hundred (minor exaggeration) others,  has announced that the ebook version of his new reprint anthology, “The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009″ is now available for free download. You can choose from either the PDF edition or the EPUB edition. (If you have the Stanza desktop ebook reader you can export the EPUB file to different file formats–say, if you want a .mobi file for your Kindle/Kindle reader, although such conversions usually junk the formatting). The anthology has cover art Elbert Or, a cover design by Adam David, (who also did the PDF layout and design) qith the Web and EPUB layout handled by Dominique Gerald Cimafranca.

Sixteen stories from fifteen authors, selected by one of the most well-read and difficult-to-please critics in the country–all for free? What are you waiting for?

Charles is the co-editor (alongside Mia Tijam) of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler, which was released in 2008.  I hope that this is the start of an annual compilation (and I hope that this isn’t the only yer a story of mine qualifies ^_^)

Here’s the full table of contents. Congratulations to Charles and all those involved:

• Summation 2009 by Charles Tan
• The Fires of the Sun in a Crystalline Sky by Francezca C. Kwe
• The Day the World Lost Its Gravity by Camsy Ocumen
• Strange Weather by Dean Francis Alfar
• The Sewing Project by Apol Lejano-Massebieau
• Lex Talionis by Paolo Chikiamco
• Isa by Marianne Villanueva
• Spelling Normal by Mia Tijam
• Daddy by Yvette Tan
• From Abecediarya by Adam David
• The Annotated Account of Tholomew Mestich by Elyss G. Punsalan
• Beats by Kenneth Yu
• Wildwater by Crystal Koo
• Moondown and Fugue by Alexander Drilon
• The Maiden’s Song by Kate Aton-Osias
• Capture by Gabriela Lee
• The Secret Origin of Spin-man by Andrew Drilon

… specifically, the excellent World SF News Blog, an excellent source of news, interviews and features (we’ve linked to them many times) which casts a spotlight on speculative fiction and comics worldwide, especially works from authors/or which originate from places beyond the traditional bastions of the genre in the U.S.A. and the U.K. (Yes, that includes us here in the Philippines, as Bibliophile Stalker Charles Tan is one of the contributors.)

The WSNB is a companion blog to the Apex Book of World SF and now they’re asking for some help from readers in order to sell 92 more copies of the book by the end of January, as a way to support the site. In case you didn’t know, and could use another reason to support the site and the book, the Apex  Book of World SF contains “The Kite of the Stars” by our very own Dean Alfar.

The book has received good reviews so far–here are a few I found online:

• Review on Strange Horizons
• Review on Val’s Random Comments
• Review on The Weirdside

(Image source: Amazon.com)

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.

Happy new year everyone! If you’re anything like me, the holidays were less a time for rest and more a time for oh-my-god-why-are-they-here-we-don’t-have-a-gift-quick-rip-that-fruit-cake-in-half… you get the picture.  Here’s your latest batch of chained links to catch you up on what you might have missed during the holiday season.

We’ll lead off with a few from the Metakritiko section of the Philippine Online Chronicles. I’ve recently been named editor of the section (which is the POC’s arts/culture and reviews portion) so if any of you have arts news of interest, events that need attention or creative works that you’d like reviewed, drop me a line and we’ll see what we can do.

• SF Related Metakritiko Articles:
  • Fantastic Mr. Fox Review (by me)
  • Inglourious Basterds Review (by Fidelis Tan)
  • Avatar Review (by Mighty Rasing)
  • Wapakman Review (by *sob* me)
  • My 10 Most Entertaining Reads of 2009 (by me, and yes, they’re mostly Spec Fic. What can I say?)
• Local SF in Mainstream Media:
  • “News of the Shaman” by Karl R. De Mesa was featured in the January 3, 2010 edition of the Philippine Daily Inquirer as one of the books to watch out for in 2010 . The paper version of the article had a picture of the book cover as well, which you can see above. (Image from Trust Your Black Shirt)
  • In case you’re interested in a taste of  Karl’s aforementioned and upcoming short novel, Karl generously let us use an excerpt from it in Ruin and Resolve, our charity anthology–which Butch Dalisay has magnanimously mentioned in his column today in the Philippine Star.
• Writing Related:
  • Just remembered Three Headed Monster Publishing and checked their website to discover that they’re open to comics/prose stories dealing with superhero romance until January 10, 2010. Bit late to start one now, but if you’ve heard of this before or have one lying around…
  • Music for Another World: speculative fiction where music is integral to the story. Deadline is still a ways off (April 30, 2010) but since the theme is so specific, might want to get an early start. And hey, that £80 payment is nothing to sneeze at…
  • SeaBeast Anthology: Elves - deadline is October 1, 2010. (Take a good look at those contingent royalties though.)
  • Charles Tan interviews Leonardo Giron (World SF News Blog)
  • Expanded Horizons’ World SF Stories Summary 2009
• Genre Related:
  • Mary Robinette Kowal – The Evolution of Fantasy Musicals (Sci Fi Scanner)
  • Top 10 Science Fiction Movies of the Decade (BSC) and here’s John Scalzi’s Top 10 (Sci Fi Scanner)
• Science Round-up:
  • Top 10 Physics Stories of 2009 (NewScientist)
  • Top 10 Space Stories of 2009 (NewScientist)
  • Sorry Vegans: Brussel Sprouts Want to Live Too (New York Times)
• Related to the Philippines:
  • A post on an online repository of pdfs of articles found in Asian Ethnology/Asian Folklore Studies, quite a few of which relate to the Philippines and Philippine culture. (The post links to a few sample articles on Philippine mythology.)
  • Despite fund lack, the arts thrive (Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Over at the Bibliophile Stalker, Charles Tan turns his steely gaze on the first issue of Usok. You can check out the review here. Thanks for the review Charles, and I hope we can win you over in the future ^_^

Fell a bit behind on the news linking this week, so  here’s a handy grab bag of some interesting links from this week, for your weekend reading pleasure:

• This Sunday, November 15, there’s a Dante Perez, Jose Tence Ruiz Exhibit at the KAIDA Gallery (from Komikero - check out the rad poster above)
• Visprint posts their Publishing Proposals Update (does this mean we’re not getting Trese 4 until 2012 at the earliest? The horror!)
• Alien life is compatible with Christianity (from Discover Magazine)
• A Kindle program (emulator?) for the PC is now available for free at Amazon
• Review of El Indio at the Philippine Daily Inquirer
• Here’s a set courtesy of the indefatigable Charles Tan:
  • At Ecstatic Days, he posts A Pre-Summation of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009 (Usok #1 missed it by *this* much)
  • At SF Signal, he has an interview with Dean Alfar
  • And on his own blog, he has an essay on “The Dilemma of the Term “World SF”

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!

No, no, this is not some zombie-sequel–it’s been two weeks since the release of the Farthest Shore, and with the anthology being mentioned over at the Agony Column (thanks to Bibliophile Stalker, as always, fore the heads up) I thought it might be a good time to compile some linkage.

• Here’s a link to the Bibliophile Stalker’s Review of the Antho;
• As mentioned above, the newest bit of coverage comes from Rick Kleffel’s The Agony Column;
• Here are some other blogs/writers who helped plug the anthology:
  • Jeffrey Ford
  • World SF News/ Lavie Tidhar
  • Ian Rosales Casocot

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!

It’s a happy day for fans of Philippine Speculative Fiction–most particularly for fans of Philippine Horror–as the long-awaited Horror Issue of the Digest of Philippine Genre Stories is now available at Comic Quest branches at Megamall and SM North EDSA (it will also be available soon at National Bookstore). Yvette Tan takes over as guest editor for this issue, and gathers stories from Dominique Cimafranca, Alex Paman, Charles Tan, Raymond G. Falgui, Sean Uy and Joseph Nacino

You can see a preview here, and an advance review here.