If All the Stars Were Suns: the Layman’s Sci-Fi
Mia of Miamor has written a lovely post saying we should write more science fiction. She says in the comments that she's working on two SF short stories at the moment. I'd sure love to read them when they come out :D
Her post just got me thinking. A long time ago (years, more like), I was asking the Phil SF and F mailing list why they think science fiction isn't a hit in the Philippines. I think I said something along the lines of "maybe it's because science instruction here sucks" and people presented some convincing arguments to the contrary.
Now that I've done a lot more thinking (and talking to Mia and other SF enthusiasts), I've come to another conclusion. It's not that our science instruction isn't up to par... it's just that SF is inaccessible. There's little enough SF written by literary writers, and even less in pop media. While we do have mecha anime, some sentai shows and Zaido to look forward to, shows that actually emphasize scientific phenomena and discovery were historically few and far between.
Why don't we have more of it? What are we scared of? Let's set aside the commercial concerns of the media bigwigs for the moment... why don't those of us who have the time and the resources write more science fiction? Why do we tend to say "I'd like to try writing science fiction/crime fiction/magic realism, but I'm afraid I won't be able to write it well."
Why do we even say things like that at all?
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“The Kite of Stars and Other Stories” Launched
I wasn't able to attend Dean's book launch on Saturday, but I'm still happy to hear it went well. See his post for photos and cool anecdotes (crack fiction? XD Asteg!).
The Kite of Stars and Other Stories is now available at Powerbooks and National Bookstore. Soon it will be available at Fully Booked and other local bookshops. Grab a copy now!
Heads up! I want to upgrade to a newer version of Wordpress today, but since I might botch that, this blog might go down for a few hours. I don't really feel like changing the layout since I've grown quite fond of this one... but if the Wordpress upgrade doesn't make it any easier for me to edit/reformat existing posts, I'll be seriously considering it. Edit: I didn't botch it! And I'm keeping the old layout for now. Old clothes are hard to throw away. Even if it's still a pain to edit >:E
Links and Announcements
First off, congratulations to Miss Kristin Mandigma! Her short story "Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang" is now out as the October 2007 feature on the web-based Clarkesworld Magazine.
[ Check it out! ]
A few days ago, we got an announcement from Kenneth that the esteemed Butch Dalisay of the Pinoy Penman was writing a blog post about "Filipino" speculative fiction. I'm only too happy to link to it now:[ Filipino-ness in Fiction]Kenneth has also put up scans of the blog post as it appears in the national broadsheet the Philippine Star. Check out his post for those, and for some choice quotes. Speaking of Kenneth - I'd just like to remind everyone that the deadline for submissions to the Philippine Genre Stories' Christmas special is ending in a few days. October 5, people! Unless um, I missed an announcement about this? I sure hope not. I like to think I have four more days to cram XD Interested parties may check out PGS' submission guidelines.
I kind of slid out of the blogosphere a while back, so I missed some earlier (2005-2006) blog entries raising the issue of whether or not spec fic written by Filipinos should strive to reach a local audience. I spotted a few posts during a casual Google search today and thought I should post them here, if only for my reference: [ Philippine Speculative Fiction (or Phabulism) ]by The Kawanga Kid, circa July 2006. [ Salamanca and Other Matters on Philippine Literature ] by Dirg, circa Dec 2006. This is mostly an excellent review of Salamanca by Dean Alfar (which I haven't read yet I'm sorry to admit ahahah but I WILL!). It's a great post with lots of food for thought, such as the following passage:
A few days ago, we got an announcement from Kenneth that the esteemed Butch Dalisay of the Pinoy Penman was writing a blog post about "Filipino" speculative fiction. I'm only too happy to link to it now:[ Filipino-ness in Fiction]Kenneth has also put up scans of the blog post as it appears in the national broadsheet the Philippine Star. Check out his post for those, and for some choice quotes. Speaking of Kenneth - I'd just like to remind everyone that the deadline for submissions to the Philippine Genre Stories' Christmas special is ending in a few days. October 5, people! Unless um, I missed an announcement about this? I sure hope not. I like to think I have four more days to cram XD Interested parties may check out PGS' submission guidelines.
I kind of slid out of the blogosphere a while back, so I missed some earlier (2005-2006) blog entries raising the issue of whether or not spec fic written by Filipinos should strive to reach a local audience. I spotted a few posts during a casual Google search today and thought I should post them here, if only for my reference: [ Philippine Speculative Fiction (or Phabulism) ]by The Kawanga Kid, circa July 2006. [ Salamanca and Other Matters on Philippine Literature ] by Dirg, circa Dec 2006. This is mostly an excellent review of Salamanca by Dean Alfar (which I haven't read yet I'm sorry to admit ahahah but I WILL!). It's a great post with lots of food for thought, such as the following passage:
This year’s fellow of the Dumaguete National Writers Workshop, Dominique Cimafranca, once shared his sentiment on this matter. He said that Philippine novels don’t have the preference for readership by the Filipinos, because they lack the element of entertainment, which is a very important ingredient for any novel. He said that Filipino writers aim more on writing to earn praises from literary critics rather than on writing to entertain general readers. This could be one of the explanations why the only Philippine novel that most young Filipinos know are Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.Professor Emil Flores also has an interesting take on speculative fiction in popular television. I wish I could better tie this up with what I wrote above re: non-Pinoy influences in Pinoy pop media, and a post I made earlier re: telefantasyas as spec fic influences, but I'm afraid typing up this post exhausted me. Anyway, this is a much more interesting read than anything I could put together: [ Sugod Mga Sugo: Speculative Fiction in Filipino Popular Television ] by Prof. Emil Flores, via Panitikan.com.