Speculative Fiction in Greece

Guest post by Dimitra Nikolaidou


While attending ΦantastiCon in Athens in 2017, readers of speculative literature must have felt elated to see so many Greek titles on sale for the first time. Compared to the dearth they had experienced for so long, this cornucopia of new voices seemed extremely promising and not a little surprising. What was the story here?

When it comes to speculative fiction, Greece had quite the head start. Lucian's True History is touted as the first work of science fiction; the Iliad and the Odyssey are considered among the first works of epic fantasy. Despite such illustrious beginnings though, the genre took a long while to flourish.

In 1987, the science fiction writer Makis Panorios began gathering more or less the entirety of Greek speculative short stories in six volumes (titled Το Ελληνικό Φανταστικό Διήγημα). His work reflects both the hardships as well as the persistence of those few dedicated to the craft. Until the early 2000's, not many writers had tackled the genre; the turbulent political situation which persisted until the early eighties, had ensured that fiction tended to focus on 'serious' issues, while the fantastical element was mostly limited to children' stories and folk tales. Even the seminal Lord of the Rings was not translated until 1978. As usual, it was pulp that came to the rescue: two separate paperback series, "Aurora" and "Terra Nova", published cheap anthologies that introduced translated classic short stories to the public. Along with paperbacks sold mostly at street kiosks, they introduced fans to the canon of speculative fiction.

In the late '90s-early 2000s, things began to change fast, in part due to the publication of 9 magazine, which was included in the major Eleftherotypia newspaper every Wednesday. While focusing mainly on comics, 9 also published a short story every week, either Greek or translated, thus providing speculative writers with a mainstream outlet as well as familiarizing the general public with the genre.


Soon, more writers felt encouraged to write speculative fiction, and new groups formed, which still remain influential today. ALEF, (Science Fiction Club of Athens), had formed in 1998; the editor of 9, Aggelos Mastorakis, was the president as well as one of the founding members. The Prancing Pony, a Tolkien appreciation society, was formed in 2002; the same year as the Espairos gaming society, began its activities. In 2003, the sff.gr forum allowed writers and fans of speculative fiction to gather in one large community for the first time.

At this time, few publishing houses were dedicated to the genre but almost all of them remain active today: among them are Sympantikes Diadromes (Universe Pathways), Locus-7, Anubis, Fantastikos Kosmos and Aghnosti Kadath (Unknown Kadath), which also operates the only dedicated SF bookshop in Greece. OXY and Triton were among those who ushered in the golden age, but have since ceased publication. Other major publishing houses such as Kedros, Aiolos and Archetypo, took and still take care to include important speculative fiction titles in their lineup.

While the genre had benefited from the success of Lord of the Rings movies in Greece, the same as every other Western country, it was paradoxically the economic crisis that gave it its biggest boost. On one hand, after 2010 more publishers turned to local writers in order to avoid high translation costs. On the other hand, the self-publishing industry suddenly flourished, in many forms: even major publishing houses started offering print-on-demand services, in order to supplement their income. Many speculative works thus found their way to print (though not always to the bookshops). After 2010, the scene grew fast and many new names came to the forefront.

My (inevitably subjective) roll-call of speculative fiction writers in Greece, begins with those who have been active long before the current boom. Makis Panorios, actor, anthologist and translator as well as science fiction writer, is still publishing novels and anthologies at the age of 82. So is Diamantis Florakis, one of the first bloggers worldwide, and author of mostly dystopian science fiction. George Balanos and Thomas Mastakouris both have served the genre for many years as translators and anthologists, while producing their own works in horror and fantasy respectively. Thanasis Vempos also translated many seminal works while producing his own science fiction novels and short stories. Dr Abraham Kawa (Democracy-2015, Το Ασήμι που Ουρλιάζει-2009) has contributed both to speculative fiction with his short stories and novels, as well as to academic research, along with Dr Domna Pastourmatzi, also a frequent contributor to the academic discourse on science fiction.

Among the newer generation, it is notable that many of the authors making waves in the genre began in the sff.gr online workshops, as well as in the ALEF workshops. Among those writers is Michalis Manolios, who won Albedo One's Aeon Award in 2010 with his short story 'Aethra', and whose work (Αγέννητοι Αδελφοί-2014, Και το Τέρα-2009ς, Σάρκινο Φρούτο-1999) falls between science fiction and horror. Other 'alumni' of sff.gr include Vasso Xristou (Λαξευτές 2007-2015), Antony Pashos (Πέρα από τη Γη των Θεών-2009) and Eirini Manta (Το Δαιμόνιο της Γραφής-2012), who have penned fantasy and dark fantasy works. In the realm of horror, (easily the most popular genre among Greek writers), Perikles Bozinakis (Απόκρημνος Χρόνος-2008, Η Άβυσσος πίσω από την Πόρτα-2015), George Lagonas (Μεσονυκτικό-2015), P. Μ. Zervos (Η Εξορία του Προσώπου-2017), Maria Rapti (Τα Χειρόγραφα των Σκοτεινών-2015) and Konstantinos Kellis (H Σκιά στο Σπίτι-2016) are also very well-regarded. Authors Petros Tsalpatouros (Έλος-2009), Teti Theodorou (Από τη Σκόνη-2013), Vaya Pseftaki (Ενυδρία-2011), C. Α. Cascabel (Δράκων-2015), Kostas Xaritos, Stamatis Ladikos, and stand up comedian Elias Fountoulis have produced one quite well-received novel each, while Konstantinos Missios (Η Νύχτα της Λευκής Παπαρούνας-2007) has tackled both fantasy and horror in his two novels. Angeliki Radou, Giorgos Xatzikiriakos and Leta Vasileiou have written children's books that appeal to adults as well.

It is interesting to note that while most of these works take place in Greece, the stories would not look out of place in any Western city. However, there are also writers inspired directly by uniquely Greek themes, history and fables. Efthymia Despotaki, who writes fantasy with a strong Greek flavour (Πνεύματα -Spirits-2016 is her strongest work), and Eleftherios Keramidas, whose best-selling fantasy trilogy (beginning with Κοράκι σε Άλικο Φόντο - Raven on Scarlet Backdrop-2017) is based on the Byzantine era, are such examples. Another writer who also deals with uniquely Greek themes is Xristostomos Tsaprailis, who published Παγανιστικές Δοξασίες (Paganist Doctrines-2017) a collection of folk horror stories with a twist. It is interesting that neither these writers nor any well-known genre works are inspired by the quite celebrated Greek mythology; instead, it is the least known aspects of Greek antiquity and the so called Dark Ages that tend to inform both fantasy and horror.

Two rarer examples are magical realist Zyranna Zateli (At Twilight They Return-2013) and the harder-to-classify Ioanna Mpourazopoulou (What Lot's Wife Saw-2007). Zateli's lyrical work has been translated into French, German, English, Italian etc, while Mpourazopoulou was translated into English and French, resulting in both cases in awards and critical accolades. Their magical realism proved easier to tackle for the literary media, and the two authors are celebrated, unlike the majority of genre writers in Greece. The divide unfortunately ensures that when genre fiction is discussed in Greece, Zateli and Mpourazopoulou are often not a part of the discussion.

There are, of course, many names one could add to the list; as mentioned above, there is currently a cornucopia of new titles available. Unfortunately, this happens in part because of the proliferation of a certain type of self-publishing: in the last years, many small publishing houses were founded in order to offer print on demand services along with a legitimate publishing logo. While this practice did kindle interest in the genre, by giving an actual outlet to authors, it also created for many the very false impression that to be published, one needs to pay for the privilege; furthermore, there are no established criteria for these self-published works.

This is one the reasons that many Greek writers have turned to writing in English instead, where the competition is greater but the field is considered fairer. Natalia Theodoridou, Christine Lucas, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Eleanna Castroioanni, George Kotronis, Vaya Pseftaki and (caution: shameless self-insert) myself, have been published almost exclusively in English language magazines such as Apex, Clarkesworld, Shimmer, Metaphorosis, Colored Lens, Beneath Ceaseless Skies etc., as well as in various anthologies and collections.

Despite these obstacles, it is quite obvious that the speculative fiction scene in Greece is growing and spreading. Two major websites have attracted the attention of fans: nyctophilia.gr, edited by writer and translator Elaine Rigas, focuses on horror and publishes articles and fiction, while willowisps.gr, edited by illustrator Marilena Mexi, focuses on fantasy. Both websites host a generation of writers and critics focused exclusively on the genre. ALEF's magazine Fantastika Chronika (Φανταστικά Χρονικά - Chronicles of the Imagination) continues successfully in print since 2003, while a new magazine, Ble Komitis (Μπλε Κομήτης - Blue Comet), has just been published to some acclaim. ALEF and the gaming company Gamecraft also publish anthologies, always including some of the most interesting voices in the field. Dedicated imprints such as Arpi have also sprung up, showcasing exclusively the work of Greek genre writers. Other relatively newly founded publishing houses include Selini, Ars Nocturna, Medusa and Jemma Press.

Another proof that the scene in Greece is vibrant and growing, is the proliferation of conventions. I have a special place in my heart for ΦantastiCon, which takes place in Athens and focuses mostly but not exclusively on fantasy. Other major cons are Athenscon, Comicdom and Comicon. The latter takes place in Thessaloniki, where the Thermi Society for Friends of Fantasy has also been organizing events for years. The city is also the seat of our own Tales of the Wyrd, which organizes open creative writing seminars and workshops dedicated exclusively to speculative fiction. Recently, the Prancing Pony Tolkien Society set up a new chapter in the same city, which also hosts several events.

The fantastic then is definitely on the rise in Greece; the first vampire series is currently being produced for mainstream TV, while gaming groups, thematic coffee shops and themed bands accompany this rise in popularity. While the highest praise for a writer used to be that their book 'had nothing to be envious of when compared to foreign literature,' this mindset is slowly going away. As a member of the scene, I am finally looking forward to the next con, the next workshop, the next book. Come visit us sometime; we have many stories to tell you.

---

Dimitra Nikolaidou is currently completing her PhD on role-playing games and speculative fiction at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is the head of publications at Archetypo Publications, and she is also teaching speculative creative writing at Tales of the Wyrd. Her articles have been published at Cracked.com and Atlas Obscura, while her stories are included in various anthologies and magazines (Metaphorosis, See the Elephant, After the Happily Ever After, Αντίθετο Ημισφαίριο).

Science Fiction in Tunisia I

Panorama of Tunisian SF
Dr Kawthar Ayed (University of Tunis)

(Abridged and translated by Djibril al-Ayad)

In the Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (1986), an anthology that claims to present samples of work from all over the planet, editors Brian Aldiss and Sam Lundwall stated that they found not a single work of science fiction written in Arabic.

More than 40 SF titles were published in Arab countries between 1950 and 1990. From 1950–60 we find no explicit mention of the term science fiction, they speak rather of a new literary genre. From 1960–78 the notion of “scientific novel” (al-riwayya al-ilmiyya, الرواية العلمية‎) appears, and after 1978 the term SF (khayal ‘ilmi, خيال علمي) was finally adopted by authors and editors.

I believe that with the arrival of science fiction, Arabic fantastic literature moved from the irrational which drops us into the universe of The Thousand and One Nights, where extraordinary events are explained as miracles or magic, to the rational which explores the marvels (and the mischiefs) of science and technology.

Between the 5th–10th centuries, the Arab cultural space saw the birth of a category of text that mixed the marvellous and the strange (al-‘adjib wal-gharib, العجيب والغريب) in multiple extraordinary imaginary universes. Al-Mass‘udi’s Prairies of Gold and Mines of Jewels (9th century), includes a story about Alexander the Great featuring a submarine (centuries before Jules Verne!) and terrifying hybrid sea creatures. In his 2006 dissertation, ‘Abd Allah Tādj considers The Thousand and One Nights as a foundational text of Arabic fantasy literature, full of magic and sorcery, and including in particular the story containing an ivory and wood horse built as a flying machine, with buttons on its shoulders to control altitude and acceleration.

Modern Arabic science fiction was born in Egypt, effectively starting with Mussa Salama’s 1924 novel, Introduction to an Egyptian Utopia, which may predict the Internet and eugenics. A key phenomenon of Arabic futuristic fiction was the military utopia, visible in particular in a 1986 anthology of SF edited by Nabil Faruq, an anti-expansionist genre in which stories take a defensive character, telling of perpetual struggle for freedom (of Egypt, of Earth, or even extraterrestrial peoples)—in stark contrast to, and perhaps even deliberate conflict with, the conquering hero of 1950s American science fiction.

But on to Tunisian science fiction itself. I will try to summarise the few literary productions of Tunisian SF in three categories: precursors, founders, and dabblers.

I have found traces of two precursors to the genre. Sadek Rezgui’s 1933 novel The Lost Continent, is an unfinished but important futurist utopian novel, set on a non-existent continent and featuring advanced technologies including wireless telecommunication, transport, complete police surveillance, and laser surgery. Tayeb Triki in 1977 published a collection of short stories titled Sindbad in Space, whose cover situated it in science-fictional space by featuring a cosmonaut in a cockpit preparing for take-off. These seven adventures of “Sindbad the Terran” actively recall, but remodel, Sindbad’s adventures in The Thousand and One Nights, and thus situate the fiction in an Arabo-Persian rather than Western context. The stories are full of scientific jargon, justified by the presence of academics and scientists, and so I consider this a precursor of the science fiction genre in Tunisia.

The principal founder of the genre is Hedi Thebet, who published Ghar El Jin (1999) and Djebel Alliyine (2001), two futuristic novels, followed by If Hannibal Returned in 2005, and The Temple of Tanit in 2012. The covers of three of these novels included explicit reference to science fiction (رواية قي الخيال العلمي), for the first time to my knowledge in Tunisia. Through Hannibal in particular, Thebet makes Tunisia’s glorious past into a promise of a better future, resurrecting a utopia by reconciling with our history. His texts are a vehicle for an acerbic criticism of the reality of twenty-first century Tunisia, and propose an alternative. He attempts to send a subdued, impoverished and assimilated people the message that change is possible.

I have also detected traces of texts that belong to the genre of science fiction but that did not have the label attached to them, and will present a few examples here.

Dhafer Naji’s 2006 collection of short stories, The Things, is especially interesting to consider and analyse; it bears the significant subtitle, “four imaginative stories that could come true in a century.” The first story, “The Forbidden Language” is an Orwellian dystopia in which the Arabic people are ruled by the Free State of “Zone 01” (previously known as Texas), forbidden to speak their own language, and dictated to daily with regard to the colour of clothing to wear, food to eat, and so forth—rules which they follow with mindless docility. A parable of American cultural imperialism that evokes the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the erasure of linguistic, cultural and even intellectual diversity that follows from forced “civilization” and democratization.

In a similar context, Mustapha Kilani’s 2004 Mirrors of Dead Hours, recounts a sombre dream—the narrator warns the reader in the prologue that the novel tells of a premonitory dream that he is compelled to write. He tells the story of a world seven hundred years in the future, in which the people of the global south are imprisoned within electric fences by the totalitarian northern state, their land polluted by nuclear waste and clean air rationed daily. Recounted as a nightmare, this novel captures the fears and obsessions of a people crushed by despotic regimes and haunted by ravaged, crisis-filled future.

Finally, Abdelaziz Belkhodja’s 2005 novel, 2103, The Return of the Elephant, opens with a description of the Republic of Carthage in the year 2103. Advanced technology allows the city a utopian status, and maintains stability and peace. This African utopia recalls the promise of a future that brings humans wisdom and knowledge rather than violence and hegemony. The novel alternates two messages: one that criticises the situation in countries of the third world, and another that questions the logic of the domination, thanks to their progress, of developed countries.
In conclusion, the themes addressed by Arabic science fiction echo modern reflections on humanity and the world, and often display a deep unease. Fiction reflects reality, but as it might be transformed by time. These future societies “are built on the allegory of the fears and hopes of the period of their production” (as Gianni Haver puts it in De beaux lendemains, 2002). They depict therein hypothetical societies placed in a future time-frame, by deforming or exaggerating features from reality.

In the Arab world, the twenty-first century has seen the birth of a disenchanted form of expression that accompanies the arrival in power of tyrannical systems in tandem with American military hegemony and Western cultural influence. This expression takes the form of futuristic nightmares, such as Taleb ‘Umran’s The Dark Times (Syria, 2003) and Mustapha Kilani’s Mirrors of Dead Hours (Tunisia, 2004). The restrictions on liberty, exploitation of wealth, inequality of opportunity, levels and conditions of life between people in the West and those of the third world push these authors to ask questions and to disturb the reader.

Science fiction literature is transforming into a spacecraft that transports us to worlds distant in both time and space, a time machine that casts a curious and ravenous eye on the future. Built by an imagination full of innovative ideas, this machine transcends reality to delve in the deepest depths of history and of space to question homo sapiens, to reveal our dreams and unveil our fears. It is a world literature that deserves revaluation and study—far from the ignorance and disdain with which it is often addressed.

Speculative and Dark Fiction in Croatia

Guest post by Milena Benini

Croatian speculative fiction has a long and surprisingly rich history. Although fantastic ideas can be found even in Renaissance texts, it is usually considered that the key-work of autochthone Croatian fantasy is Jože the Giant (Veli Jože), the story of a gentle giant, the eponymous Jože, who works as a serf for the people of Motovun, a small and picturesque town in Istria, on the west coast of Croatia. The story is based on local folklore—Istria in particular has numerous stories about giants—but also addresses political issues, particularly the position of ordinary folk in contrast to (most often foreign) nobles and rich men. Although nominally a children’s story, this short novel remains a classic to this day, and has even given rise to a festival dedicated to all things Jože, held every year in Motovun.

In a twist from the usual ideas of genders and genres, while Croatian fantasy started with a man, science fiction in Croatia started with a woman: Marija Jurić-Zagorka, a novelist and journalist from the early 20th century, who would deserve a post all to herself—she ran from an abusive marriage, managed to become the first female journalist in the region, and went on to become one of the most prolific and beloved authors of her time. Her novel The Red Ocean (Crveni ocean), published in weekly instalments in 1918-1919, described the adventures of a young inventor, combining the fascination with technology typical of early SF with the political ideas of equality and a better future.

It can be seen even from these two examples that Croatian speculative fiction before World War II has often had a political bent: considered ‘light’ and ‘popular,’ such literature was seen by a number of authors as a means to spread national awareness (Croatia was long under the rule of foreign powers) and later, as a way to support ideas of democracy, equality and political change. Of course, there was also a number of adventure stories, most often signed by foreign-sounding pseudonyms, such as the novel often considered as the first ‘true’ science-fiction novel in Croatian, On the Pacific 2255 (Na Pacifiku 2255) by Milan Šufflay, who published it under the name of Eamon O’Leigh in 1924.

This approach continued all the way to the war: in 1940, two local writers, Tanko Radovanović and Zvonimir Furtinger, wrote Omega Master Conquers the World (Majstor Omega osvaja svijet) and signed it ‘Stan Rager.’ This novel, in which a mad scientist tries to conquer the world using a nuclear-powered submarine, could stand the comparison with any other techno-thriller of the era and, had it been published in the States, would have probably inspired a black and white film adaptation with spectacularly bad special effects showing atomic bombs falling over New York.

Mr. Furtinger continued working after the War, teaming now with Mladen Bjažić but no longer feeling the need to use pseudonyms. It should be noted that, after 1948, Yugoslavia, of which Croatia was part, differed significantly from the East Bloc countries, so Western speculative fiction was freely available and so was fiction produced in the Soviet Union, so that local writers had access to both worlds, so to speak. The Furtinger-Bjažić tandem produced a number of speculative novels, among which of particular note are The Space Bride (Svemirska nevjesta), from 1960, which combines humour, a love story and robots, as well as Professor Kružić’s Mysterious Machine (Zagonetni stroj profesora Kružića), published that same year, a young-adult novel in which a pair of children on vacation discover an antigravity-machine in the attic of the family house in a small seaside town.

No matter how popular these novels were, the true blossoming of Croatian speculative fiction came in the mid-1970s, with the start of a legendary and internationally awarded magazine Sirius. Modelled after American SF magazines such as Asimov’s or Astounding, it was the brainchild of Borivoj Jurković and Damir Mikuličić, and it served two important functions: on one hand, it provided readers with an opportunity to see current and historically important short-story production in the genre, but also gave writers a chance to get published and reach wide audiences (Really wide: in its heyday, Sirius would have met SFWA criteria for a professional magazine both by payment and by circulation.)

Perhaps following in the footsteps of Marija Jurić-Zagorka, or maybe thanks to the socialist gender equality efforts, Sirius also revealed a relatively high percentage of women interested and working in Croatian SF. It is important to note here that the focus of Sirius was almost exclusively on science fiction, while fantasy, if it appeared at all, was mostly limited to satire and liminal cases. This was due primarily to the editors’ tastes, but also to the more general attitude that science fiction could be considered at least somewhat ‘mature’, while fantasy was either for children or for metaphor: while a number of literary authors used fantastic elements in their stories, commercial fantasy was, at the time, practically non-existent.

However, female writers such as Veronika Santo, Biljana Mateljan, Vesna Gorše and many others wrote for Sirius, and are today considered among the best Croatian SF writers: the editors of Ad Astra, an anthology of Croatian short-form SF from 1976 to 2006, often stress that women were, on average, superior authors, more in touch with the times and more inclined towards stylistic excellence. The authors—particularly women—produced mostly postapocalyptic and dystopian stories, with some old-fashioned space opera thrown in for good measure; it is interesting to note that cyberpunk, for instance, did not gain any significant foothold among local authors, and it was only later, in the 1980s, that first Croatian cyberpunk stories began to appear.

Among the most prominent authors of the ‘Sirius years’ (1976-1989) was certainly Predrag Raos, whose epic novel Shipwrecked at Thula (Brodolom kod Thule), published in 1979, encompassed both classic futurism, describing a future society that builds first ever faster-than-light ship, Clarkean hard SF, page-turner race against time and fine psychological insights.

In the same period, Croatia made its first truly speculative film, The Rat Saviour (Izbavitelj), loosely based on the novella “The Ratcatcher” by Russian author Alexander Grin. The film, shot in 1976, follows the destiny of a poor writer who discovers rats have developed the ability to transform themselves into humanoid creatures, and predates The Invasion of the Body Snatchers by two years, rivalling the more famous American creation by the slow mounting of horror and claustrophobic atmosphere. The film won an award at the Trieste SF Film Festival, and was part of a short-lived horror wave in Yugoslavian film, of which the other most famous product is the Serbian She-Butterfly (Leptirica) from 1973, a rural horror with a truly Slavic take on vampires.

In the 1990s, with the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the ensuing war, Croatian speculative fiction had to struggle to survive. It did so largely thanks to the existence of Futura, a magazine started in 1992 that replaced Sirius as much as it was possible in the circumstances, providing local authors with a venue to publish their production, and the continued efforts of the local fandom, which managed to keep SFeraKon, one of the oldest SF conventions in the region and the oldest (and largest) in Croatia.

At the turn of the century, another important step for local community happened with the appearance of Mentor publishing house, a small publisher specializing in local authors of speculative fiction. Between 2003 and 2006, they published short story collections for twelve authors: Tatjana Jambrišak, Igor Lepčin, Darko Macan, Aleksandar Žiljak, Zoran Krušvar, Dalibor Perković, Zoran Pongrašić, Zoran Vlahović, Milena Benini, Goran Konvični, Krešimir Mišak and Danilo Brozović. They were also the publishers of the already-mentioned anthology Ad Astra, and continue working with local authors to this day, albeit on a much smaller scale.

In the late nineties, the first inklings of commercial fantasy production started to appear, in the form of two novels: in 1995, Zvjezdana Odobašić published a YA novel Miraculous Scales (Čudesna krljušt), and in 1997/98, Futura magazine serialized the novel Chaos (Kaos) by the author of this overview. However, even though there were a number of other works that appeared more or less at the same time or in the early 2000s dabbling in fantasy, most were poor copies of tolkienesque worlds; only in the 21st century, particularly with the start of annual Istrakon convention collections with Istrian folklore-themed stories will fantasy in Croatia truly start to take off. Among the most prominent names in the field is Vanja Spirin with his Junker’s and Vailliant series, in which the two heroes are named after famous brands of water heaters, conveying the ‘potboiler’ nature of the series but also, of course, playing off the name of one of the most famous fictional knights of all times, Prince Valiant.

Horror fared slightly better, gaining a rather popular proponent in Viktoria Faust, a writer whose vampire-related stories, particularly the novel In the Angelic Image of the Beast (U anđeoskom liku zvijeri), published in 2000, developed a strong following among local fans of Anne Rice. In 2007, Boris Perić wrote a novel loosely based on the existing local stories about vampires, The Vampire (Vampir), while Zoran Krušvar created his own take on the vampiric lore in the dark fantasy novel Executors of the Lord’s Intention (Izvršitelji nauma gospodnjeg). Later, Vladimira Becić entered the vampiric field with fairly popular YA urban fantasy Orsia, a novel about truly teenage vampires looking for a way to express their rebellion against old ways of life.

After the demise of Futura in 2010, the gap in the market was filled by not one but two magazines: the literary Ubiq, started in 2007, is a biannual magazine covering both theory and practice of speculative fiction, which publishes fiction only by local authors, while SiriusB, as its name suggests, is intended to replace the old Sirius and publishes both Croatian originals and translations.

At the same time, Hangar7, the publishers of SiriusB, have started publishing books by local authors, focusing exclusively on speculative fiction. So far, they have published several novels: dark thriller The Road (Drum) by Ivan Lutz and Goran Sundać, Deeper than the Abyss (Dublje od bezdana), a dark fantasy by David Kelečić, Night Train to Dukka (Noćni vlak za Dukku) by Danijel Bogdanović, a sort of a science fiction take on Murder at the Orient Express, Milena Benini’s space opera Dreamseller (Prodavač snova), a philosophical variation on space exploration When Darkness Rules (Kad tama zavlada) by Oliver Franić, young-adult urban fantasy about energetic beings trapped on human plane The Exiled (Izgnani) by Ivana Delač, and a breakneck-paced dystopia leaning on the heritage of William S. Burroughs and Dick, EschatonTV (EshatonTV) by Goran Gluščić.

For those seeking to find an introduction to the world of Croatian speculative fiction, probably the easiest way is to find Kontakt (Contact), an English-language anthology of Croatian SF published in 2012, when Eurocon was held in Zagreb. (The epub version of the book is available at Kobo and Amazon). Or you can visit one of Croatia’s numerous conventions—there are five big ones and so many smaller ones that Croatian con-goers need a jointly kept calendar, which can be found on Facebook—Croatian fandom will welcome you gladly, and since most of us speak English, communication won’t be a problem, either.

---

Milena Benini is the winner of a number of local awards, among which the tastiest Croatian award, a whole prosciutto ham, for the most Istrian story published in 2009. She also received five SFera awards, of which the latest for her novel Dreamseller, also the winner of the Artefakt award. Her English-language stories have been published in several magazines and anthologies, including Contact (an English-language anthology of Croatian science fiction) and Salacious Tales (a collection of erotic speculative fiction). She has contributed to The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy and The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction, while her novel Priestess of the Moon was published in English before it appeared in Croatian. Her short stories have been translated into several languages, including Spanish and Polish.

Speculative and Dark Fiction in Italy

We open our survey of Mediterranean dark literature with a guest post about the Italian scene, signed by Alessandra Cristallini and Andrea Gibertoni. Pronti al viaggio?

It hasn’t always been easy for Italian SFF authors to be successful: for decades the common opinion was that the country “of the sea and the sun” wasn’t able to produce dark literature, or that the Italians were just not very good at writing SFF at all. And yet, there’s a thriving SFF scene. Some of the best Italian authors have already been translated abroad: this is the case of Dario Tonani, one of the most popular Italian sci-fi writers. He has published several novels and short stories, and some of his works have been translated into English and Japanese. His most famous work is the universe of Mondo9, a desert planet full of dangers like poisonous sands and half-animal half-mechanical creatures where giant ships roam the sands. Always in the sci-fi scene, we find Francesco Verso, winner of several awards, the mind behind Future Fiction publishing house and much more. Some of his short stories have been translated into English, and his cyberpunk novel Nexhuman has been translated in English and Portuguese. Nexhuman is the story of an obsessions that consumes Peter Payne through all his life, the obsession for a perfect nexhuman woman torn into pieces. If you want to have a taste of Clelia Farris, one of the most popular female authors in this field don’t forget to check out this collection of short SF from around the world published by Future Fiction: it includes her short story Creative Surgery translated by Jennifer Delare.

Many works that have not been translated are definitely worth being taken into consideration. Just to mention a few:

•  Dimenticami Trovami Sognami (Forget me, Find me, Dream me) by Andrea Viscusi, where a young man takes part in a science experiment with unexpected results. Published by Zona 42;
• Senza Un Cemento di Sangue (Without a Cement of Blood) By Anna Ferruglio Dal Dan (who attended the Clarion workshop), a space opera that feels like an adult and cruel take on Star Wars. It’s a compliment. Published by Delos Books;
• Real Mars by Alessandro Vietti, winner of the Italia Award in 2017 tells us the story of a space mission made into a reality show for financing reasons. Published by Zona 42.

Moving from sci fi to dark fiction, we feel like we have to start from some names of the “old school”, authors that have been in the scene for the past decades, and have heavily influenced the newest generations of writers. Impossible not to mention the great Danilo Arona, active for the past 40 years and author of an astonishing amount of short stories, novels, essays and articles. He is a passionate expert of traditional folk tales of his region (Piemonte) and has a past of proper “ghost hunter”. The Roman Paolo Di Orazio, mind and body of the magazine Splatter (that, during the 80s caused scandal for the violence and crudeness of the printed images), is also a prolific and interesting author of several novels that could be labeled as splatterpunk. Eraldo Baldini is one of the few genre authors that has managed to be published by a major publishing house like the historic Einaudi. Creator of the so-called rural gothic, it brings together, very personally, modern topics with the folklore and traditions of Italian rural areas, where the nights are still populated by archaic creatures and nightmares.  Nicola Lombardi, recognisable by his very elegant style, has been writing novels and short stories since 1989. His recent La Cisterna (The Tank, Dunwich 2015) was shortlisted for the last edition of the Bram Stoker Awards.

Some of the younger (and sometimes really young!) protagonist of the darker side of the Italian SFF seem to have learnt from the anglophone classics of the genre, but also to have added their own peculiar touches that make their work original and immediately recognisable. A very hot name is Luigi Musolino; only 30 years old, he has already won a flattering number of awards and is unanimously recognised as one of the best promises of Italian horror/weird. Piemontese like Arona, and passionate about local folk tales as well, he skillfully blends Italian popular tradition with atmospheres that reminds of Lovecraft and Barker. A completely different style characterises Pietro Gandolfi, prolific and talented author of “extreme horror” novels (inspired to Ketchum and Laymon, among others), and successful comic writer (The Noise, Cosmo editoriale). He prefers to set his stories in small, completely made up, American cities, creating a perfect, and quite convincing, personal microcosm.  Samuel Marolla, also comic writer for the prestigious Bonelli editore, is a brilliant narrator of metropolitan nightmares, usually set in Milano, his own city. Translated various times in English, his Black Tea has been the first Italian short story to be included into Apex’s Book of World SF. His two collections of stories Malarazza and La Mezzanotte del Secolo (Edizioni XII) are considered seminal works in the contemporary Italian horror.

Other honorable mentions are:
Alessandro Manzetti–the first Italian writer to win the Bram Stoker Award (2016) with his poetry collection Eden Underground–, Barbara Baraldi–author of novels and script writer for the iconic horror comic Dylan Dog–, Daniele Picciuti, Claudio Vergnani, Fabio Lastrucci, Maico Morellini (sci fi author who likes to explore, quite succesfully, much darker literary lands).
Moving from authors to publishing houses, in the last years, a number of brave and fierce PH (mostly small and independent) have been working to revive SFF literature in Italy, both translating foreign authors and publishing (or republishing) the best Italian voices. Besides the already mentioned Future Fiction, there is the Milanese Hypnos, founded in 2010 by Andrea Vaccaro, publishing for the first time in Italian classic authors like Hodgson, Chambers,  Aickman, Jean Ray. It is also thank to his work that the weird genre has been introduced in our country.

But many other names have contributed to carry the bloody ensign of dark fiction in Italy. Among them:
Dunwich edizioni, Nero Press, Vincent Books (PH emiliana offering names such as Arona, Di Orazio and Gandolfi), Elara (the first in Italy to publish Thomas Ligotti), Cut Up, Independent Legions, the amazing (and much missed) Edizioni XII and the very young people at Cliquot, who have just published, for the first time, a collection of horror story by Fritz Leiber.
The scene we have described so far appears to be dominated by male authors. The problem is that there are few women in the Italian fandom and among the authors. Since its creation in 1989 there has been only one female winner for Italy’s most prestigious sci-fi book award, the Urania Award: Nicoletta Vallorani with Il Cuore Finto di DR, which has been translated into French. It goes slightly better for the Robot Award, which has seen two female winners (Morena Medri and Emanuela Valentini) in its 12 editions so far. Another exception is Alda Teodorani, true dark lady of the Italian dark scene, influential member of the Neo Noir movement that animated Rome at the beginning of the 90s. She has written several stories, novels, poems, and has collaborated with cinema directors like Pupi Avati. She is still an important figure in Italian SFF. Her example has encouraged a number of young women writers and readers to approach a genre that too often seems reserved to men.

A certain lack of female presence in the Italian SFF scene can be seen already in the attendance at conventions and literary events. The important con Stranimondi, for example, is mainly composed of middle-aged men so far. Last year all the women invited to speak at a panel devoted to women in sci-fi had something in common: at least one of their works had been published with the picture of a naked/half-naked woman on the cover, even if their stories featured none. It doesn’t seem very welcoming, but there’s great determination behind many women in Italian SFF. This situation is probably due to sheer numbers as well: to give an example, this year Urania has created another award, specifically for short stories, and it has been revealed that of the 164 people who have sent a story only 20 are women. Statistics are against us, at least for now… but this doesn’t justify the naked women on the covers.

That being said, if you get the chance to attend Stranimondi do it, it’s definitely worth it: it has had only two editions so far (the third one will be held in October 2017 in Milan), but it has already established its importance in the field. It may be small compared to the biggest cons that are held abroad, but if you want to see what the Italian SFF/speculative fiction scene has to offer, that is the place to be. You can find out some of the most interesting independent publishers by looking at the list of publishers which will be present at Stranimondi. There you’ll see other publishers which also aim to publish works translated into English, like Acheron books.

We have no doubts that the internet is helping in keeping the local SFF community alive, and the more we look at the local scene the more we expect—no, we demand—an exciting future for it. We managed to convince some of the most reluctant readers, the Italians themselves, that Italian authors can write good sci-fi, crime, horror and weird so the future holds something promising indeed. Well, if global warming doesn’t kill us all first.

---

Many thanks again to our awesome contributors Alessandra and Andrea!

Alessandra Cristallini is the mind behind the blog Fragments of a Hologram Dystopia (bilingual page / English only page), a sci-fi blog where she collects pictures and posts short stories and reviews. She is a translator and has published two short stories for the charity event Penny Steampunk. She loves cats, tea and untranslatable grammar jokes.

Andrea Gibertoni born in 1975 in Reggio Emilia, where he still lives, makes ends meet with odd jobs until, on the threshold of his 40s, decides with his wife Giulia to open Miskatonic University: a bookshop dedicated to all sorts of speculative fiction. His shop has became a reference for all the Italian SFF lovers, and organises a number of event, exhibitions and launches. You can find more info at https://www.facebook.com/miskatonicuniversityre/ or drop Andrea an email at miskatonicuniversity@gmail.com

Shubbak: Imagined Futures

A couple weeks ago I spent an evening in the Barbican watching the only part of the Shubbak Film Festival: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture that I made it to this year—a program of five short films titled “Imagined Futures.” These were not all science fiction, by any means, although at least two of them explicitly position themselves within the genre. I’m not going to try to review the films or the collective here, but give a few thoughts and reactions—if you can catch any of this series for yourself, you should surely do so.

Mare Nostrum is a Syrian/French production directed by Anas Khalaf and Rana Kazkaz, which in 13 minutes shows us a Syrian father apparently being irrationally cruel and abusive to his young daughter. The father’s own anguish at his daughter’s fear and suffering makes it clear that there is more going on, and the story ends on a heartbreaking—if all-too-familar—dénouement.

An animated short film from Lebanon directed by Chadi Aoun, Silence lasts only 15 minutes and is a beautiful/terrible dystopia where silence is obligatory (and brutally enforced by military agents), and rebels dance supernaturally to a music that seems to result from their choreography. Very nicely animated, tear-provoking film.

Selma, a joint Algerian/French production directed by Batoul Benazzou, is at 35 minutes the longest in this anthology, and rather than futuristic is about a girl worrying about her future after graduating school. Another longish piece, the 21-minute Lebanese parable Submarine, directed by Mounia Akl, is about the only woman who refuses to abandon her town when the garbage crisis gets apocalyptically out of control.

The shortest film of the evening was the 10-minute, Palestine/Denmark co-production Nation Estate, directed by and starring Larissa Sansour (who also joined us for a Q&A in the theater after the films), a squeaky clean dystopia in which the entire Palestinian people are housed in a single huge tower block. Their lives are luxurious, well-fed, with plenty of space for everyone and every resource and comfort they could want. The protagonist even has an olive tree in her living quarters, and instant, classic Palestinian food in preserved containers in her kitchen. The pseudo-utopian setting is so convincing that—Sansour tells us—a German critic went so far as to delightedly proclaim that this would be a good solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict! A spine-chilling, and more subtle science fiction offering than most of those shown here. Other than a couple of fascinating/infuriating anecdotes, the Q&A was brief and rather shallow (the questioners’ fault, not Sansour’s), but the collection of shorts made for some nice contrasts, and none of the films were duds.

Interview with Joyce Chng, author of Starfang

We’re delighted to welcome back to TFF an old friend Joyce Chng (we published her story “Lotus” in We See a Different Frontier, the hauntingly beautiful “The Lessons of the Moon” in Accessing the Future, a poem “Lessons of the Sun” in TFF-X, and a mini-sequel to “Lotus” here as part of our ten year celebration). Her latest novel, Starfang: Rise of the Clan is now out from Fox Spirit Books, and Joyce joins us to talk about this book and her other work.

Joyce Chng is Singaporean. She writes science fiction, YA and things in between. She can be found at @jolantru and A Wolf's Tale.

Is a clan captain going to sacrifice everything for her clan? Tasked by her parents to kill Yeung Leung, powerful rival clan leader of the Amber Eyes, Captain Francesca Min Yue sets out across the galaxy to hunt her prey, only to be thrown into a web of political intrigue spreading across the stars. Is Yeung Leung collaborating with the reptilian shishini and playing a bigger game with the galaxy as a price? Is Francesca’s clan at stake? Welcome to Starfang: Rise of the Clan, where merchants and starship captains are also wolves.

---

TFF: In one line, can you tell us what Starfang is about?

Joyce Chng: Starfang is about werewolves in space, clan wars, and a female captain’s loyalty to her pack and clan. It is also a space opera with alien races and starship battles.

TFF: I thought most mashups of scifi and fantasy tropes had been done, but Werewolves in Space may be a new one on me. Where did the inspiration for Starfang come from?

JC: The inspiration for Starfang came from watching cargo ships. I like taking my daughters to this jetty and small beach. It faces out into a small channel whereby large cargo ships ply through.

One day it just struck me: why don’t I just write a space opera… with ships and werewolves? I have always liked the idea of space ports and stations. Plus the fact that Singapore has always been a port city. Imagine the type of stories that arise from this.

TFF: Do you already know where the rest of the Starfang series will go, or are you still making it up as you go? Any sneak previews for us?

JC: The other two books have been written!

Sneak preview from the second book: captain goes on a hunt for her hunted enemy:

The arrival of a Clan warship was normally a joyous occasion, as a tour of duty would take months up to a year. Its return would be followed with feasting and hunting. But for Starfang, there was no joy, no feasting. The warship was in mourning, the loss of an important member of the pack still keenly felt. An emptiness echoed on the bridge. Starfang was now in hunting mode, a predator on the trail of an elusive prey. Even a refit and refuel above Noah’s Ark would mean a delay. I itched to move on, to continue the hunt, the kill.

Francesca, illustrated by Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein

TFF: Your previous trilogy, the Jan Xu series, was also a werewolf-themed story (and your blog is named A Wolf’s Tale!)—what is so important or attractive about wolves, for you?

JC: I love wolves. I love that pack and loyalty to family are part of wolf social structure.

TFF: Clan, pack and family seems to be crucial to this book and many of your other stories. Can you tell us more about the relationship between the individual and community in your work?

JC: I feel that the individual is part of their community, part of an intricate web that ties them together. What the individual does bears consequence to their family and community. In my other stories, I also explore the depth of family, both blood and found. My first YA web story Oysters, Pearls & Magic explores the important of family and how it ties the protagonist, first to her blood kin and then to her found family. Ultimately, she still returns to where she was born. The same goes for her daughter in Path of Kindness where, after years of wandering, she returns to her mother in the village.

In Starfang and in the Jan Xu series, clan, pack and family are part of the story, part of the protagonist’s identity. Captain Francesca’s ties to her family and her pack are deep and thick, sometimes even stronger than galactic politics.

TFF: The first two Starfang novels were originally serialized on your blog, before being polished and edited up for print publication. How does this change the way you sell or market the novel now?

JC: In a way, it doesn’t really change how I sell or market the novel. Serialization is one of the ways authors and writers can use to reach their audiences. For people who read my work and follow me on social media, they get to read the stories as they are written and uploaded on my Wattpad and Patreon.

TFF: What are you working on next? What can your fans look forward to?

JC: A couple of short stories, and a sword fantasy series.

TFF: And what about supporters of your Patreon—what bonus materials are they getting access to these days?

JC: They get poems and new stories that have been not published before in sff venues. Likewise, they get to read installments from an ongoing space opera I am writing. The space opera is inspired by Admiral Zheng He, a Chinese Muslim explorer who visited Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century.

---

Thanks so much for joining us, Joyce! Best of luck with Starfang (Amzn) and the rest of the novels.

Accessing the Future reviewed in BMJ

Our 2015 anthology of disability-themed speculative fiction, Accessing the Future guest edited by Kathryn Allan, has received a fabulous, in-depth, lengthy and positive review in an imprint of the British Medical Journal. (The journal Medical Humanities has been running since 2000, and the fourth issue of 2016 was themed “Science Fiction and Medical Humanities.”)

This review, by Hannah Tweed (University of Glasgow), is behind BMJ’s paywall, but the first couple of paragraphs are available at the link:

http://mh.bmj.com/content/42/4/e36

(Full citation: Medical Humanities 42.4 (December 2016): Science Fiction and Medical Humanities. Pp. e36-e37.)

Dr Tweed summarizes the goals of the anthology in some detail, including the fact that the volume is not just about accessibility, but endeavors to be accessible as far as possible. She then discusses most of the stories individually, drawing out themes including intersectionality and disability, access, autonomy, invisible disability and communication. This is a scholarly review from a critical studies and English literature tutor who I think really gets what we were going for, so it’s great to see it in such an august venue! (If you get the chance to read the whole thing—try logging onto wifi in your local university library if they subscribe—do, it’s worth it.)

Accessing the Future: anthology fundraiser

Quick Pitch

We are running a campaign via IndieGogo to fund an anthology of dis/ability-themed speculative fiction, Accessing the Future, co-edited by Kathryn Allan and Djibril al-Ayad, to be published by Futurefire.net Publishing.

Support the anthology here: http://igg.me/at/accessingfuture

This anthology will call for and publish speculative fiction stories that interrogate issues of dis/ability—along with the intersecting nodes of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class—in both the imagined physical and virtual spaces of the future. We want people of all abilities to see themselves, as they are now and as they want to be, in our collective human future. The call for stories will open as soon as the fundraising campaign ends in September.

Who We Are

Futurefire.net Publishing is the publisher of both The Future Fire magazine of social-political speculative fiction, and of two previous anthologies, Outlaw Bodies (2012, co-edited by Lori Selke) and We See a Different Frontier (2013, co-edited by Fabio Fernandes). Djibril al-Ayad, a historian and futurist, co-edited both volumes and has edited TFF since 2005.

Kathryn Allan is an independent scholar of feminist SF, cyberpunk, and disability studies, and is the inaugural Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellow (2013-14). She is editor of Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure (2013, Palgrave MacMillan), an Associate Editor and Reader of The Future Fire, and her writing appears in both academic and popular venues. She tweets and blogs as Bleeding Chrome.

The Anthology Details

Inspired by the cyberpunk and feminist science fiction of yesterday and the DIY, open access, and hacktivist culture of today, Accessing the Future will be an anthology that explores the future potentials of technology to augment and challenge the physical environment and the human form—in all of its wonderful and complex diversity.

We are particularly interested in stories that interrogate issues of dis/ability—and the intersecting nodes of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class—in both physical and virtual spaces. Dis/ability is a social construct, and all bodies do not fit into or navigate the material environment in the same way(s). Personal and institutional bias against disability marginalizes and makes “deviant” people with certain differences, but it doesn't have to be that way.

We want to ask:

• How will humanity modify the future world?
• What kinds of new spaces will there be to explore and inhabit? Who will have access to these spaces and in what ways?
• Given that we all already rely on (technological) tools to make our lives easier, what kinds of assistive and adaptive technologies will we use in the future?
• How will augmentations (from the prosthetic to the genetic) erase or exacerbate existing differences in ability, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and race?
• What does an accessible future look like?

Accessing the Future will be a collection of speculative fiction that places emphasis on the social, political, and material realms of being. We aren’t looking for stories of “cure,” that depict people with disabilities (or with other in/visible differences) as “extra special,” as inspirations for the able bodied, or that generally reproduce today’s dominant reductionist viewpoints of dis/ability as a fixed identity and a problem to be solved. We want stories that place emphasis on intersectional narratives (rejection of, undoing, and speaking against ableist, heteronormative, racist, cissexist, and classist constructions) and that are informed by an understanding of dis/ability issues and politics at individual and institutional levels. We want to hear from writers that think critically about how prosthetic technologies, new virtual and physical environments, and genetic modifications will impact human bodies, our communities, and the planet.

Contribute to the Accessing the Future fundraiser, and reserve your copy of the anthology now! 
Save this URL: igg.me/at/accessingfuture

Guest post: Come For the Science Fiction, Stay For the Romance

Guest post by Heather Massey

Chances are high you know about a genre called "science fiction." Chances are even higher you're familiar with a genre that goes by the name of "romance." And chances are astronomically high that you've heard of—wait for it—women!

Now put romance, science fiction, and women into a blender (umm, not for realz!), and then pour out the contents. What's the result? A genre called science fiction romance (SFR).

What is SFR? Basically, it's a type of story that focuses on the intersection of romance and science and has an upbeat ending (a.k.a. the "Happily Ever After," another ubiquitous story element I'm betting you've encountered a time or two thousand). There's a whole bunch of women (and a few men) who write SFR. It's a genre for everybody, but is currently often written by women and frequently harnesses the female gaze. So it tends to be a female-centric genre.

Now, if you'll kindly recall, half of the global population is female. Let's just sit and chew on that for a minute. Okay, go ahead and swallow.

SCIFIISTA RUMBLINGS IN DE-COLONIALIZING AZTLÁN

by Ernest Hogan

So it's not just me. Things are happening here in Azltán, the Aztec homeland, the part of the United States of America that was once Mexico. The future has arrived, and it's firing imaginations.

It started with a post by Rudy Ch. Garcia, Spic vs spec – 1. Chicanos/latinos & sci-fi lit, in La Bloga about his story “Last Call for Ice Cream” in the webzine Flurb. A critic said, “It has so much slang that it become tiresome very quickly.” After a few brain clicks, Rudy asked, “Do Chicanos/latinos read sci-fi?” and “How many are writing sci-fi? Should more latinos be writing it?

This got responses from science fiction writing Latinos that triggered Spic vs spec – 2. providing some background, and answering questions from the readers.

So I had to devote my next Chicanonautica column (every first and second Thurday in La Bloga), to Sci-Fi Evolution and Revolution in the Global Barrio in which I gave examples of science fictional art and even polticial discussion, gave some advice to aspiring scifiistas, and even plugged The Future Fire and We See a Different Frontier.

In Spic vs spec – 3. Rudy went on to ask about where science fiction readers are (both Anglo and Latino), the need for entry-level books in the genre, and that “future jobs will be filled by someone who will likely have an interest in sci-fi lit.”

The series ended with Spic vs spec – 4. Rudy got a response from a publisher that was interested in, and had published multicultural science fiction and fantasy for, the young adult audience and gave a nod to David Macinnis Gill's Black Hole Sun, a YA about a Latino mercenary on Mars.

I went on with another Chicanonautica, Chewing Scifiista Holes in the Tortilla Curtain with links to blogs dealing with science fiction, fantasy, and horror in Spanish, plus a few others to help rescue sci-fi from the monocultural ghetto.

And not to be outdone, Rudy announced the approaching publication of his novel, The Closet of Discarded Dreams, a post-cyberpunk tour-de-force that boldly demonstrates how Chicano is a science fiction state of being.

Things have being stirred up. I hope some writers who hadn't considered science fiction as a possibility are creating visions of the future the likes of which no one has ever seen.

And I encourage those of you who haven't checked out La Bloga to do so. Some very interesting things are happening there.

Ernest Hogan is the author of the pioneering Chicano science fiction novel Cortez on Jupiter. His infamous short story “The Frankenstein Penis” has recently become available in the anthology Love That Never Dies. His blog is Mondo Ernesto.

Guest Post: I Didn't Know I Was an Alien, or: How I Became a Recombocultural Sci-Fi Guy

text and art by Ernest Hogan

It's the 21^st century. Modern media interconnects the world. Suddenly, we have a global civilization, and it is diverse.

Actually, that's an illusion. Civilization has always been diverse. Unless you are part of an isolated tribe that never contacts the outside world, you have to deal with cultures not your own. It's a basic survival skill going way, way, way, way the hell back.

This illusion is part of the colonial tradition. The conquerors come in and bring “civilization” to the natives, who are expected to cooperate if they don't want to be wiped out. In my part of the world, the Wild West, AKA Aztlán, AKA The Southwest (of the United States of America), it gets interesting – especially since I'm of Mexican descent, with some Irish thrown in, and I accidentally have the same name as the controversial Father of Ragtime.

I find myself to be a vintage, veteran multicultural (though I prefer the term “recombocultural” for reasons I'll explain later) science fiction writer.

Some folks would say speculative fiction – and they may be right, but let's get to that later . . .

I didn't intend to become Mr. Sci-Fi Recombozoid. It was thrust upon me, like my ethnic identity and place in society.

I was a wee tot way back in 20^th century, in the Fifties. I was born in East L.A. – some folks call it the Barrio, my parents called it the Neighborhood. For me it was the flowers in my grandmother's garden that towered over my head. I thought the whole universe was like that.

Science fiction came in through the television set. Space Patrol and Commando Cody taught me about the larger universe. Later, Forbidden Planet landed at a local drive in. My developing mind learned early about crossing borders, and new frontiers.

At first the monsters scared me. I was plagued with nightmares, but couldn't stay away. Eventually, I came to love the monsters. They were easier to identify with than the whitebread-kid mold that the media was trying to stuff me into. I found it was easier to tell the kids at school that I was Martian rather than explain myself.

Those were the days of Godzilla multiculturalism: Japanese monsters, Mexican vampires, Russian space epics, European sleaze, and Filipino horrors were mixed in with the low-rent Hollywood fare. We can't forget that after Bruce Lee, guys in the ghettos and barrios felt they could be heroes, too.

It was the fabled Sixties. Besides comic books and monster movies, there was the space program, UFOs, ESP, LSD, and a world gone mad on the evening news. After the Chicano Moratorium riots, I found out I was part of a minority group.

Before that, Chicanos were invisible. Teachers would talk about “Mexicans” – as if we weren't in the room with them. Suddenly, we were problem. It was easier being a Martian.

So I let my overdeveloped imagination go wild. I wasn't just into science fiction – I was into surrealism, satire, underground, art films, low-budget obscurities, anything weird and out of the ordinary. Cultural mutations became a life-long obsession. Science fiction was a focus, but never a limit to my interests.

By the Seventies, my reading went to Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. Dangerous Visions and the New Wave were a big influence – yes, “speculative fiction.” I also read translations from other countries when I could find them. I was always happy to find a new kind of sf.

I also reveled in writers like William Burroughs, Ishmael Reed, and Hunter Thompson.

I boldly started writing and trying to sell my work, I didn't limit myself. I tried to come up with the most daring, outrageous stuff I could, inspired by the diverse world I lived in.

Yeah, it took me years to get good – but even after I improved, I noticed that the genre and I were going in different directions. After Star Wars, science fiction became popular, but suddenly, everyone thought they knew what it was – traditional melodrama in funny clothes – and it wasn't what I was doing.

It was also assumed that the audience was white and male – all heterosexual nerds.

I was told things like “You have blacks and hispanics in there – you have to be careful, they get offended, you know.”

My name – that I share with a black historical figure – had them thinking I was white.

By the Eighties, I began to sell stories. These were out in the fringes, but I had my foot in the door. Some readers were confused as to what I was doing in their sci-fi magazine.

And I wasn't just submitting to sf markets. I sent my stories everywhere – especially if they paid well. It just happened that most of the places that have published me have the words “science fiction” as part of their title. There seems to a tolerance for strangeness in some of these places. It also may be a hold over from when science fiction was a catch-all term for things you didn't understand.

When I sold Cortez on Jupiter, I didn't mention anything about the Chicano or Aztec stuff. Or the Spanglish. I played up the science fiction elements. I had learned how to get away with things.

When it came out, I got good reviews (The best [first novel] I've read in science fiction since Neuromancer. – Locus), and bad (an avalanche of excessive verbiage and abominable prose style – Locus, a few pages later). But nobody called it dull. And some folks really liked it.

When my second novel, High Aztech, came out, the publisher did not promote it. The ad in Locus showed the cover, but had no text. No review copies were sent out. People told me that they had to call the publisher and cuss them out to get copies.

Still, High Aztech gained an audience. People still discover it and put good reviews online. You could say it has a cult following.

And in the introduction to the glossary for the Españahutl slang is my first use of the word recombocultural. I coined to explain what I do in my work, that was rapidly being label multicultural – a term that was becoming maligned, and associated with political correctness. The recombo is as in recombinant DNA, emphasizes that what I am writing about are the cultural mutations that happen when cultures come together, fuck & fight, damage chromosomes, and generate fascinating new monstrosities.

But, back in the Nineties, they weren't ready for diversity. The New York-based publishers wanted formula entertainment for their sci-fi consumers that didn't present disturbing concepts. They assumed that the audience was white and middle class. Non-white characters were either pale or only showed the back of their heads on the covers.

Ideas became scarce. I kept meeting readers who said, “I like science fiction because I always know what's going to happen.” I wondered what I was doing trying to write in this genre.

Also, word spread about my ethnicity. It seemed like I was being treated differently – like the most talented leper they ever met. Like an alien. And it didn't seem to matter if I was legal.

I could still sell occasional short stories to far-out fringe markets, but New York wouldn't touch my novels. The rejections followed the same format: They would praise my work as highly original, then tell me that it wasn't what they were looking for. Then they'd inform me about the latest hot, new trend – military sf, sexy vampires, zombies . . .

After years of rejection, I published my novel Smoking Mirror Blues through a small press. I got a hint of why New York wouldn't touch it when an artist refused to do the cover because of a tantric sex ritual in the beginning. There was also a Chicano mad scientist, lesbian lovers, religion, politics, and the world-as-we-know-it reconstructed to illustrate conflicts that are shaping the future. Yet it has attracted a following.

As the 21^st century lurched along, I gave up on New York. They still saw me as an unpublishable alien. The audience is now seen as being young women who are sexually attracted to the undead. And publishing is going through a crisis, with the economic turmoil and the arrival of the e-book. They say they only want to publish bestsellers, but nothing seems to be selling.

In the midst of it all, I see young writers coming on the scene, doing the sort of thing that I have been doing for decades. I hope they get treated better than I was. My advice to them is to write the most exciting fiction they can, inspired the world they live in.

Projects like We See a Different Frontier show promise by doing things in a non-traditional manner. We need these experiments. I expect to see traditional publishing dropping dead very soon.

Empires are falling. Colonies are rearranging. Cultures are mutating.

Recomboculture is in the air.

I have given up on being “commercial.” I am releasing my novels as ebooks, and working on ideas that the dying publishers wouldn't dare touch – like my science fiction bullfighting novel. I have seen the audience, and they are diverse.

The funny thing is, I am not alien – I am native. I am impure, a Chicano, a mestizo, a mongrel. And that is the future.

Ernest Hogan's Cortez on Jupiter is available as an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords. Smoking Mirror Blues and High Aztech be available later in 2012. Links to short fiction that can be read for free can be found at his blog, Mondo Ernesto.