…om de Bodard, the story is thought-provoking and challenging, and built around a nice SFnal idea. The story is set on a space station inhabited by apparently Asian-descended people. Quy’s family runs a restaurant often catering to “Galactic” tourists. The central SFnal maguffin is “immerser” technology, which helps people take on different appearances, and speak different languages, to deal with people of other cultures. Quy uses it, begrudgingly,…

…Sister”, “Younger Sister”, “Child”…), but this is very complicated and beyond the scope of this list! (picture credits: Timitrius on flickr, shared under a creative commons attribution share alike generic license)    …

…etail, which makes the pages of this just fly by (loved that Jade snarkily comments on the quality of Chinese vases in London townhouses, and just loved her relationship with Ravi). Zen is posting one chapter a day on her website, or you can buy the book from amazon or smashwords if you want to support her (well recommended!) –Night, Again, by Linh Dinh: all right, I’ll confess. One of my pet peeves about fiction set in Vietnam is the freaking hig…

…nd turning it over at the halfway mark (when the upper surface has gone golden) is a pretty good and painless substitute for deep-frying [1]. [1] Deep frying has two drawbacks: the first is that it’s fairly messy with high risks of burns (yes, clumsy cook here), and the second is that I can only do it in batches of 4-5 objects in order not to crowd my wok. By contrast, I can stick 20 fried rolls into the oven at a time (more if you count the fact…

…rarians. Doesn’t get much cooler than this! -You can find me over at the Founding Fields blogging on writing non-Western fantasy, cultural appropriation and the Obsidian and Blood books–many thanks to Abhinav Jain for the invitation (and for the rather awesome review). -Also, I’m at Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog for “My Favourite Bit”, in which I talk about the monsters in Obsidian and Blood -Reviews of “Immersion” at too many places to mention (and…

…Exile”, which was about Mind-ships and countries at war, and inciting incidents (as Rochita was saying, it’s actually a very 9/11 story, though I hadn’t realised it at the time). It’s set in the Xuya continuity, in that developing bit of space that has two factions of Imperial Vietmam cohabit rather uneasily. And, er, I sold said short story to Ian Whates for Solaris Rising 1.5, an ebook anthology that will be out this summer. Will you just look…

Settler: “A person who settles in an area, typically one with no or few previous inhabitants.” (from my Apple dictionary and from google def, not sure what the source is?) Colonialism: (1) “The practice or manner of things colonial” and often serves as a synonym for “provincial;” (2) “The colonial system or principle. Now freq. used in the derogatory sense of an alleged policy of exploitation of backward or weak peoples by a large power.” (from t…

…ws, I have learnt more vocabulary by translating a fairy tale (Mỵ Nương and Trương Chi). I’m pretty sure mandarin ranks of Ancient Việt Nam are of no practical use, but “hát” (to sing) could conceivably come in handy. Still torn over words like “cung” (palace, temple), ngôi (throne), and “nhan sắc tuyệt trần” (exceptional, divine beauty), but who knows, I might need them some day……

Because it’s such a pretty, heartbreaking poem: Yêu Tác giả: Xuân Diệu Yêu là chết ở trong lòng một ít Vì mấy khi yêu mà chắc được yêu. Cho rất nhiều song nhận chẳng bao nhiêu; Người ta phụ, hoặc thờ ơ, chẳng biết… Phút gần gũi cũng như giờ chia biệt. Tưởng trăng tàn, hoa tạ với hồn tiêu, Vì mấy khi yêu mà chắc được yêu! – Yêu, là chết ở trong lòng một ít. Họ lạc lối giữa u sầu mù mịt, Những người ai theo dõi dấu chân yêu; Và cảnh đời là sa mạc c…

…r becomes replaced by a stream of good American soldiers fighting the evil communists? (or the reverse. Not really saying one is better than the other) -On the same subject, Marie Brennan has a series of posts on Information Density and whether it is possible to educate the reader away from what they know while keeping a narrative going at full clip: here and here I guess that, for me, it all boils down to: worldbuilding doesn’t happen in a vacuum…