Today we've started raising money for a themed issue of
TFF, tentatively dated for the end of 2012, to be titled
We See a Different Frontier. If we're able to raise enough money, this will be a professional rate-paying anthology of colonialism-themed speculative fiction from outside the First World perspective, guest co-edited by Fabio Fernandes (who talks about the rationale of the idea
on his blog).
If you feel this would be a worthwhile project to support, you can donate at this page:
All donations, however modest, are genuinely appreciated. Even if you can't spare the money, it would be great if you could help to signal boost this appeal: blog it, tweet it, facebook/g+ it, email your friends about it, shout it in the market, slip fliers into books or onto café tables, bribe young attractive people to mention it casually to strangers in nightclubs...
We're going to be pushing this quite hard over the coming few weeks, with guest posts, interviews, videos, giveaways, contests, gimmicks and whatever else we can think of. We might add new rewards by popular demand. If you have any ideas for things we can do, or that you can do to help, please give us a shout. If you'd like to guest blog for us, appear on video explaining why non-Western SF is important, offer some goodies as a further reward or giveaway, we'd love to hear from you.
I'll quote the full description from the appeal:
Colonialism is still a thorn on the side of humankind. Many of the problems of the Third World, for instance, are due to the social-political-economic matrix imposed on its countries by the First World countries since the 17th century (e.g. the manufacture by European powers of arbitrary borders and tribal conflicts in Africa, and then the creation of Arab countries to defeat the Ottoman Empire in WWI). The balance of power is changing in the 21st Century, but it's still essential to look back if we want to truly understand the forces at play in the political and cultural panoramas of Third World countries—and even in countries that hardly can be labeled as Third World, like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).
Much widely distributed science fiction and fantasy is written by American and other Anglophone authors, and treats subjects close to the hearts of straight, white, English-speaking men. There's nothing wrong with this sci-fi itself—we love lots of it—but there's clearly something missing. Having white Anglo cis/hetero/males as (the only) role models is not an option any more. We aim to redress this balance, not only by publishing speculative stories by people with different viewpoints and addressing concerns from outside of the usual area (see World SF), but also by explicitly including fiction that addresses the profound socio-political issues around colonisation and colonialism (see Race in SF). We want to see political stories: not partisan-political, but writing that recognizes the implications for real people and cultures of the events and actions that make up science fictional or fantastic histories, as well as our own history.
For this anthology we will be looking for stories from the perspective of people and places that are colonized under regimes not of their choosing (in the past, present or even future). We are not primarily interested in war stories, although don’t completely rule them out. We are not interested in stories about a White Man learning the error of his ways; nor parables about alien contact in which the Humans are white anglos, and the Aliens are an analogue for other races. We want stories told from the viewpoint of colonized peoples, with characters who do not necessarily speak English, from authors who have experience of the world outside the First World.
We want to raise at least $3000 so that we can make this a professional rate-paying anthology for authors and artists from outside of the mainstream. All editorial and technical work will be carried out for no pay, but we feel strongly we should pay authors fairly for their work. This money will cover the cost of paying around $250 for each of 7-8 stories, plus a cover artist, publicity and advertising, review copies, rewards for donors, etc. All profit from sales of the anthology will be paid to the contributors as royalties. If we raise more than this, we can buy even more stories and/or pay even more professional rates to the authors. If we don’t quite make it, we’ll still publish this great anthology, but it may not be as large, as great, or as professional.
The call for submissions will follow at the end of this fundraising process (in early June), at which point we will be able be able to tell you how much we are going to pay for fiction, what other specific eligibilities and requirements there will be, and so forth. In the meantime, help to make this a great anthology to submit to by spreading the word now!
I’ve been enjoying the stories in the We See a Different Frontier anthology of postcolonial science fiction, and thinking about how I could contribute to the blog carnival that the editors had devised to accompany its release. I’d already written about the constraints on expectation, the presumption of a small and specific sphere of interest, that marginalised cultures can have for the literary output of their own people, and I didn’t want to repeat myself. I’m also aware that, as a person of relative privilege within both my birth country of Jamaica and my adopted homeland of the UK, I’m not particularly well-placed to rail against inequity. Besides, the big injustices are easy to spot. It’s harder to unpick the small, everyday presumptions about what is standard and what is strange, the subtle and mostly unremarked prejudices that inform judgements and guide aspirations.
