Free ‘virtual anthology’ of Philippine speculative fiction

Paul Raven @ 17-11-2008

Philippine Speculative Fiction anthology cover artNormally I save up free fiction links for our regular Friday round-up, but as this is something a little bigger than usual I think it warrants special mention. Filipino genre fiction mavens Charles Tan and Mia Tijam have co-edited an entire virtual anthology of speculative fiction written in English by Filipino writers – a great way to expose new writers to an otherwise hard-to-access market. Here’s the table of contents:

Thanks to SF Signal for the heads-up… If you take a look, let us know what you think.

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“The Decaying Corpse of Genre Ficiton”

Jeremy Lyon @ 22-07-2007

Genrezombie Ruth Franklin’s review of Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” starts off with a statement calculated to raise the ire of speculative fiction readers:

Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it.

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote a delightful response that begins:

Something woke her in the night. Was it steps she heard, coming up the stairs — somebody in wet training shoes, climbing the stairs very slowly… but who?

The illustration accompanying this entry is cropped from the original drawn by bellatrys inspired by the LeGuin piece. There’s already a chapbook (pdf link).

Overall, Franklin’s review is not as dismissive as the opening sentence implies, but instead reflects what I think of as a profound ignorance of thoughtful, entertaining work being done in genre fiction. Her ignorance is captured best in the inverse of a complement she pays to Chabon’s book, calling it “a ‘what if?’ story for adults.” For adults — as if anything published in genre fiction is written for children. Why do you think the literary establishment is so ignorant of genre? [mefi]

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