World SF Needs Your Help

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On January - 20 - 2010

… 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:

(Image source: Amazon.com)

Chained Links: 15 January 2010

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On January - 15 - 2010

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!

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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:

Chained Links: 5 January 2009

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On January - 4 - 2010

NewsOfTheShamanCover

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.

Review of Usok 1 by Charles Tan

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On November - 16 - 2009

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 ^_^

Chained Links: 12 November 2009

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On November - 12 - 2009

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:

Charles Tan Wins Last Drink Bird Head Award

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On October - 30 - 2009

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!

Farthest Shore: 2 Weeks After

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On October - 16 - 2009

The Farthest Shore (Cover)

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.

Filipinos in the Honorable Mentions List of the Year’s Best Horror

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On October - 16 - 2009

As seen on the PGS Blog. Congratulations everyone!

Wonderful (and belated) news!

Three PGS contributors get Honorable Mentions for Best Horror Of The Year from esteemed editor Ellen Datlow. She put up her list last October 3, 2009, and I only saw it now (my thanks to Elyss Punsalan for pointing it out).

The three PGS contributors are:

Elyss Punsalan for “Thirty-Two” from Story Philippines, Volume 2.

Yvette Tan for “Seek Ye Whore” from the July issue of Rogue.

Apol Lejano-Massebieau for “Psychic Family” from Philippine Genre Stories 4.

Congratulations to you all! Thank you very much, Ms. Datlow!

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

PGS: Horror Issue Now Available

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On October - 14 - 2009

PGS Horror issue cover

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.

Charles Tan on io9 and “Spec Fic”

Posted by Paolo Chikiamco On September - 19 - 2009

I think it bears mentioning that, a few days ago, a portion of an article by the Bibliophile Stalker, Charles Tan, was linked to by Charlie Jane Anders over at io9, a major SF news site, as its “Quote of the Day” for 16 September 2009. Charles’ full article, entitled “Speculative Fiction – The Genre without Limitations” can be found at his new column at the BSC Review.

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Rocket Kapre is an imprint of Eight Ray Sun Publishing Inc. (a new Philippine-based publisher), dedicated to bringing the very best of Philippine Speculative Fiction in English to a worldwide audience by means of digital distribution. More info can be found at our About section at the top of the page.

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