-Fundraiser for Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. Edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older, this promises to feature people forgotten from “official” histories. Writers will include Ken Liu, Amal El-Mohtar, Nnedi Okorafor, Nisi Shawl… and me. Please donate to make it possible! [1]

-Zen Cho on Malaysian SFF in English. Lots of fascinating-looking writers in there.

-Carl V. Anderson reviews On A Red Station, Drifting. I just go “wow”. Also appears he’ll spearhead a discussion of “Immersion” next Sunday over at his blog.

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[1] Incidentally, I find it amusing that the theme of “forgotten history” or “rewritten history” drives this anthology, as much as it drove my latest Clarkesworld story.

The Locus Recommended Reading List for 2012 is out: many, many familiar names on that list (very happy to see Lavie Tidhar, Vandana Singh, and anthologies like AfroSF, Robots: The Recent AI, The Future is Japanese and Breaking the Bow on the list of recommended materials). I’m also on it for my two Clarkesworld stories “Scattered Along the River of Heaven” and “Immersion”, and for my novella On a Red Station, Drifting (which is mentioned by both Rich Horton and Gardner Dozois).

The February issue of Locus also contains Rich Horton’s review of that selfsame novella:

I recently saw two very strong novellas that might be easy to miss. Aliette de Bodard’s On a Red Station, Drifting, is another in her Xuya alternate history, in which the Chinese and Mexica (i.e. Axtecs) have become great space-based powers. Several recent stories have been set in a colonized galaxy and on space stations, some controlled by the Dai Viet. This one is set on a remote station, Prosper, controlled by an obscure branch of a powerful family, and run by a Mind, who is also one of the family’s ancestors. To this station comes Linh, a cousin, fleeing an uprising against the Emperor. Linh has spoken out against the Emperor for his failure to confront the rebels, and so is potentially a traitor, and is also racked with guilt for leaving her previous post under threat. Quyen is the leader of Prosper, but is not confident in her abilities, and also worried that the station’s Mind seems to be decaying. All this seems to portend disaster, amid small betrayals and slights between everyone involved. The authentically (to my eyes) non-Western background powerfully shapes an original and ambitious tale.

Which is pretty, er, nice with a side of awesome? Speaking of which, if you don’t feel like ordering the hardback of the novella, can I point out that you can get an exclusive ebook copy by donating $100 or more to the World SF Travel Fund?

Either way, we’re 60% funded and could use some help meeting our goals, in order to send awesome writers Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and Csilla Kleinheincz to World Fantasy 2013. Go check us out; and spread the word!

Via Cristian Tamas, a rather cool-looking initiative: Europa SF is an English-language portal dedicated to all (non-Anglo) European SF. They have reports on conventions, articles on Dutch, Estonian, Lithuanian SF, and much much more!

Let me cheat a bit and quote from their official presentation:

Europa SF is conceived as an English-language portal of news and information from and for the European fandom, a generic site: http://scifiportal.eu (on demand will be created specific subdomains for each country/fandom involved − bg.scifiportal.eu, hr.scifiportal.eu, ro.scifiportal.eu, de.scifiportal.eu etc − and each country will manage its own subdomain).

Our central idea is to have a permanent, real-time mirroring of all European SF&F products, events and activities. We hope that all European countries with a SF&F community will become involved in this pan-European project.

Europa SF is dedicated to posting news, links and original materials related to science fiction, fantasy, horror, comics, films and TV series from all over Europe. Here are the columns we suggest and their titles:

1. Editorial – a monthly, 2-4,000-character general article on European SF

2. On the spot – short articles (1,000-1,500 characters) about important national or European events (festivals, conventions, book fairs, conferences etc.)

3. News – short news (400-700 characters) on major/minor European or world events

4. Events – a calendar, just the name and the date of the event

5. Reports – 2,000-character articles about (on-going) national or European events

If our correspondents indicate there is an interest in interviews, panels, essays, films, TV series etc. we will introduce new sections to cover them.

Any suggestions and recommendations are most welcome. We need at least one English-speaking person from each European SF community who is willing to help us with this project.

BTW, if anyone is reading this from France and would like to give them a hand with the project, they could use some help…

-Jim C. Hines blogs on sexual harrassment here, here and here

-Broad Universe publishes stats on diversity in genre

-The World SF blog Tuesday fiction is “City of Silence” by Ma Boyong (translated by Ken Liu): part 1, part 2. Incidentally, the blog is also looking for fiction they could showcase–preferably set outside the US/UK, or by authors from outside the US/UK (note that this overlaps with, but is not *quite* the same thing as fiction by US/UK PoCs). No payment, unfortunately–everyone’s a volunteer and the website runs on a shoestring, but you’d be contributing to a worthy cause; and they take reprints and stories that have been hard-pressed to find a home elsewhere.

-Charles Tan on Awareness and Bias
-Strange Horizons interviews Sergei Lukyanenko (via the joint efforts of Nicholas Seeley, Shari Perkins, and Natalia Antonova). Awesome stuff about Russian SF, Russian tropes, and Russia vs. the US.
-Jeremy L.C. Jones interviews me for Clarkesworld. Best interview title *ever*.
-Jacob of Drying Ink interviews me
-Over at The Night Bazaar, I blog on “Playing to Your Strengths, Playing to Your Weaknesses” (with many thanks to Courtney Schafer for the invitation!).

-The World SF blog has relaunched as a brand-new website, and merged operations with The Portal to provide short fiction reviews. I signed up as article writer, and I hope to do a series on Franco-Belgian comics, much like I did for Yoko Tsuno. Will keep you posted as I write They’re running fiction on Tuesdays, the most recent being “Dancing Together Under Polarised Skies” by Milena Benini (do note that the fiction has been professionally translated–the poor vocabulary and grammar are deliberate). Also, couple of interviews, one with Sayuri Ueda (author of The Cage of Zeus published by Haikasoru), and one with Hannu Rajaniemi (who needs no presentation–if you feel you need one, read the awesome Quantum Thief).
-Over at Kaaron Warren’s blog, I speak of Master of the House of Darts–using history as inspiration, and how to let your characters have at each other (which should always be your top priority )
-Stomping On Yeti selects his pick of books for October–and I’m more than a little flabberghasted to find out that Master of the House of Darts ties with David Anthony Durham’s The Sacred Band for release of the month. Er, wow?

In other news, finished a short story (which ended up being called “Breath of the Nine Dragons”), about a Japanese-funded project in the Me Kong delta–which probably has the dubious honour of mangling both the Vietnamese and the Japanese culture in the same 7000 words…
And got my UPS package (a self-printed cookbook from Lulu, which has already started falling apart. As you might guess, I wouldn’t advise using Lulu for hardcovers, or maybe I’ve been very unlucky in my particular copy…)
Next up: novella revisions, and some desultory research into the history of Paris for a novel project.

And a thematic news roundup of publishing in non-Western-Anglo countries:

-Charles Tan on “How Publishing Favours the West”. All very true, sadly, and once again a case of the US (and associated UK/Canada/Aus/NZ, who benefit by virtue of language and cultural proximity, even if they’re not the same) oozing into the local markets, feeding tremendous demand but not adapt local prices to said demand (said it before, will say it again: $8.00 does NOT buy you the same thing abroad. In Vietnam, it’s one-fifth of the average monthly salary). And how Amazon and Apple are pretty much doing the same with ebooks. [1]

-K.S. Augustin on her experience with Kindle publishing in a non-Amazon country. It’s horrendous, in case you had doubts: Amazon encourages local publishers to use Kindle, but won’t even grant them access to the software for formatting books and checking out what they look like (I think preventing the publisher from checking out a preview of their own Kindle book has got to be a new low…)

-And apparently, the hot topic of the Frankfurt Book Fair is publishers parcelling out digital English rights in non-Western-Anglophone countries and selling them one by one, presumably to local publishers. That’s right: if all goes according to plan, and you want an English-language ebook in France/Spain/Vietnam, you’ll have to wait for a French/Spanish/Vietnamese editor to buy the English-language rights in France/Spain/Vietnam (yes, I know. Who in their right mind is going to pay more than a pittance for this, especially for books that aren’t bestsellers). Ain’t that awesome.

This is a particular flavour of insane (and I still think ebooks should be sold by language, not territory. Yeah, sure, authors and publishers are going to be losing out a bit, but it’s a fairer deal, and it doesn’t leave us in non-Anglo countries feeling like second-class citizens).

Also, this is all leaving me very puzzled, because I think any media business strategy today has got to be weighed against the cost of the piracy option, whether it’s for ebooks or for movies. We can argue all we want about how morally incorrect piracy is, but the fact remains: it’s available, and it’s relatively easy, and its only drawbacks are non-guaranteed quality, and possible legal prosecution (which means downloading a pirate ebook or movie is not quite free: there’s an equivalent cost, defined as the sales value when a given buyer will prefer a legit option to downloading the pirate copy).

But if you have a model in which you keep feeding demand (as Hollywood does, by exporting movies everywhere and making them the baseline of cinema; as the Big Six publishers do in a lesser measure) but not making stuff available at reasonable prices, or not making stuff available at all, you’re basically encouraging people to turn to piracy (and sure, you can say you’ll stomp on pirates, but let’s face it: stopping all piracy dead in its tracks is far from easy). And you can complain pirates are taking away all your business, but for me you’re bearing a share of responsibility because of the demand, prices and availability policy you set (not all the responsibility, to be sure, but still…).
What I’m seeing of the situation so far sounds like another music industry train wreck waiting to happen. It seems to me that we’re going to need a new legal model and new copyright laws to deal with the digital age; but so far this hasn’t exactly been happening.

An addendum on book and DVD prices: I can’t remember where the stat comes from (it was a scholarly report on piracy in various countries, but I can’t find the link for the life of me), but a DVD in India is sold for an equivalent value of $700, if we bring the price in rupees back to US-cost-of-living dollars. Imagine that you kept seeing ads and trailers for the new Batman movie, that people kept talking about it at work, kept insisting that if you hadn’t seen it, you were really behind the times and totally uncool; but that the act of seeing it cost you $700. No wonder there’s a whole generation in Asia growing up not knowing what a legit DVD or book is… [2][3]

Why, yes, I’m feeling cheerful and optimistic about the future of the ebook market today…

(and I suspect not everyone will agree with me RE copyright laws, piracy and ebooks. Feel free to comment/argue/refute in the comments. This is very much something I would love to hear discussion on).

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[1] I know, it’s a complicated problem from a business point of view, especially with the permeability of boundaries: it was fine to set prices in the US for the US; and then to deal almost on a case-by-case basis on export problems, but today the market and the demand have gone global (and there are people taking advantage of this–see arbitrage in financial markets).
[2] There are pirate physical books, too. If you’ve ever gone to Asia (well, at least India and Vietnam. I haven’t tried elsewhere), you’ll find itinerant book peddlers selling bound books basically made of photocopies. It’s a sobering experience when you dwell on why they’re here at all.
[3] And yes, I agree that it’s not legal, and probably not ethical either. But the rise of piracy has all too clearly demonstrated that people do not have a natural moral fiber.

A bit late, as those were awarded in Shanghai on August 27th, but only just saw this. The Sky Awards are “fan/judge-voted awards for Chinese science fiction and fantasy literacy. These awards are initiated and administered by the Sky Award Organizing Committee composed of a number of senior SF/F fans, and the Judge Panel consists of writers, editors, critics, and professionals in the SF/F field in China.” (stole the definition from the World SF blog, on which it appears to have quotes, so I’m leaving them…)

Best Novel:
Three Body III: Dead End, Liu Cixin (Chonqing Publishing House)

Best Short Story
“Algorithm of Simhuman”, Chi Hui (Science Fiction World, May 2010)

Best Translated Novel
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman, translated by Hu Yaqian (Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing House)

Best Translated Short Story
“Turing’s Apples”, Stephen Baxter, translated by Cai Yu (Science Fiction World, May 2010)

Special Contribution Award:
Liu Cixin – science fiction writer, author of the Three Body trilogy

Here’s wishing some of those get translated in a language I speak… (speaking of which, Clarkesworld recently published “The Fish of Lijiang”, a Chen Quiufan short story translated by Ken Liu. Well worth a read)

(via Elbakin.net)

The wonderful Shweta Narayan is offering a supporting Worldcon membership (which lets you nominate and vote for the Hugos, and get the Voters’ packet)

So I’d like to [pay a membership], for someone who couldn’t otherwise afford it, but wants to, and can:

- read widely
- optionally (though it’d be awesome!) blog about stories, either critiquing or just signal-boosting ones they loved.
- nominate in all or nearly all categories
- vote in all or nearly all categories

I’d like this to be someone who is marginalized in multiple ways (because I think we have under-represented perspectives) so I’d like to consider people who are some combination of:

poor, of color, not US or UK citizens, queer, female or non-binary IDed, living with a disability (including physical or mental illness), not neurotypical, under 35, not native English speakers, not Christian, and/or marginalized in ways I’m not thinking of right now.

Just to be clear, I’m not holding out for someone who’s all these things! But more than one is a good thing.

More details here–and don’t hesitate to reblog this and otherwise boost the signal!

In which the World SF team strikes again:

A combination of genre professionals and fans from the international scene and the United States have gathered together to create the World SF Travel Fund. The fund has been set up to enable one international person involved in science fiction, fantasy or horror to travel to a major genre event.

The first recipient of the fund is genre blogger and activist Charles Tan, from the Philippines.

Charles is a tireless promoter of speculative fiction. Besides his own Bibliophile Stalker blog, he contributes to the Nebula Awards blog, the Shirley Jackson Award blog, SF Signal and The World SF Blog. He also edited two online anthologies of speculative fiction from the Philippines.

Charles is highly regarded in the SF scene both in the USA and internationally. The Fund’s intention is to facilitate Charles’ travel to World Fantasy Con 2011 in San Diego, California. Multiple award winning editor Ellen Datlow said: “Charles Tan has in a very short time, become a major force in science fiction and fantasy. Bringing Charles over to the United States for the World Fantasy Convention would be a boon the convention by adding a truly international voice to the mix and selfishly, it would allow many of Charles’s fans in the field to meet him personally.”

Living in the Philippines, where wages are far lower than in the West, Charles would be otherwise unable to ever attend a major convention. The Fund’s purpose is to make such a trip possible, for the benefit not only of the recipient but for creating and extending dialogue in the wider world of speculative fiction.

Author and editor Jeff VanderMeer said: “Charles Tan is tireless, talented, indefatigable, a great guy, and someone who has become indispensible to our sense of the genre community. He’s a wonderful choice for this initial effort.”

The Fund has set up a Peerbackers Project with the hope of raising $6000, enabling two years of running. The Board, tasked with selecting future candidates, is composed of Lauren Beukes, Aliette de Bodard, Ekaterina Sedia, Cheryl Morgan and Lavie Tidhar and reflects the truly international nature of the SF world today.

For inquiries and further information please contactworldsftravelfund@gmail.com.

The Peerbackers Project: http://peerbackers.com/projects/the-world-sf-travel-fund

If I can add a few words–Charles is a fantastic person, and more than a little insane. I never quite understood how he could hold a dayjob and do all the stuff he does for genre–but he does, and it’s amazing stuff too, from gathering the SF tidbits for SF Signal, to organising interviews for the Nebula Awards, and of course keeping the World SF blog up and running.
I definitely think it’s high time he was brought over from the Philippines, and also high time we had a travel fund like this. There are many things set up to enable fans to travel to conventions, and they’re fantastic initiatives, but so far there has been nothing that focuses on getting people from developing countries into the US or the UK: the price differential, as Lavie points out, is just ginormous for people like Charles–way too much to pay for so much as the entry fee for the con.

There you go. I hope you’ll check out the peerbackers page, and if you can afford to donate anything… (this is very much a case of every little bit helps)