Zen Cho

I have just emerged from a 13-hour flight into a brilliantly cold Easter Sunday morning — and the public announcement of this year’s Hugo and Campbell award nominations. So, um, I’ve been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer! The other nominees are:

Max Gladstone
Mur Lafferty
Stina Leicht
Chuck Wendig

I am terrifically pleased and honoured to be part of this list, and to be part of a longer list of past nominees which includes (to mention only names from recent years) Naomi Novik, Aliette de Bodard, Tony Pi and Karen Lord. Among others! (Jo Walton is, of course, also a prevous winner ….)

But more than anything else I value the nomination for what it implies — i.e. that a number of people valued my work enough to put me on their ballot. I’m pretty sure I know who some of you are! Thank you for that, and thanks to everyone who recommended my stories and linked to my awards eligibility post. I feel very undeserving, but will do my best to produce good work and retrospectively justify the nomination!

I’m also gonna hazard a guess that I’m the first Malaysian to have been nominated for the Campbell (though I’d be delighted to be contradicted, haha). That’s pretty cool! TBH though it was only officially announced yesterday I have been telling friends and family since I found out a week ago, because, as I said to my BFF Max, never mind six degrees of separation, it would take like twenty degrees before anybody I knew IRL would link through to somebody who actually knew or cared what the Campbell Award was. (It is a bit difficult to explain to people whose primary association with “Campbell” is likely to be soup. I start by saying, “Do you know what the Hugos are? Well, it’s not a Hugo! ”, but my loved ones seem to find this singularly unenlightening.)

***

On another pleasing note, I am informed that I should have a short story in the April “Brilliant Malaysians” issue of Esquire Malaysia! If I sound uncertain about this point, it is because I am: I do not even know what Esquire ended up calling the story (I offered a couple of different titles, since the original — “The Many Deaths of Hang Jebat” — was too long).

It is basically a “Four Ways Hang Jebat Died, And One Way He Didn’t” story (see this Fanlore entry about Five Things for background regarding the format). Except I had to cut one of the ways Jebat died because, again, it was too long! So it’s more of a Four Things story.

Anyway, Hang Tuah fanfic is the best. You should buy Esquire Malaysia and let me know if the story IS in the magazine, and if so whether I should have included the “Tuah and the Hangs are a time-travelling boyband” scenario. (I suspect the answer to the second question is yes. You can never go wrong with a story that posits Tuah as the floppy-haired caramel-voiced lead singer of a boyband.)

ETA: Confirmation! The story is in Esquire under the name JEBAT DIES: see pictorial evidence.

Although it is the wrong time of the year for it*, I like this poem by Thich Nhat Hanh, posted on the Dreamwidth Poetry community: Fall Moon Festival.

What will happen when form collides with emptiness,
and what will happen when perception enters non-perception?
Come here with me, friend.
Let’s watch together.

*I know the OP says it’s especially for people in the southern hemisphere, but isn’t the Mid-Autumn Festival still celebrated at the same time of the year in the southern hemisphere?

Not Just Vast Armies Clashing on Dark Plains at Night: An Interview With Ken Liu

I’m sure this has been much-linked, but I really loved this interview with Ken Liu. There’s a ton of good stuff in it, like –

Children can be very hard and judgmental about their parents, and disappointment is often the result of misunderstanding. So how do I pass on my culture and experiences to my children in a meaningful way? How do I give them a sense of connectedness, of purpose and context, especially in a dominant culture that often devalues what I value, that is often ignorant about things that matter to me, that is often callous and dismissive to what I care about? The questions made me think about the experiences of my grandparents and parents, and my own process of gradual understanding and empathy with them. How to make the past meaningful for the future is both a big question—it’s the task of history—and a very personal, intimate one—it’s the narrative of family.

And so as I work through these issues, as I read and learn and think and write, I’m speaking both to my children and to my ancestors.

The line-up for Readings@Seksan this Saturday. I’m gonna go if I can wangle a ride — you should let me know if you’re going too.

I wrote this little intro to my list of Malaysian SFF writers in English, but decided to cut it out of the post itself so as not to distract from the list. I’m throwing it up ‘cos I really think this is a thing!

I’ve noticed before that what I might call Highlander syndrome is pervasive among Malaysian English-language genre writers (and to an extent, English-language genre writers from other Asian countries as well). I’ve only noticed this syndrome among writers in English, presumably because if you are writing in English you would’ve been brought up on books by Westerners — local writers in other languages appear to be more aware of their contexts and communities. (Also, I’m personally most familiar with the English-language writing scene. Once in a while I buy a Malay book and spend about six months getting through it. This is not the sort of experience which would qualify me to speak to the concerns of Malay-language writers.)

I call it Highlander syndrome because “there can be only one”. It’s this sense of being singular in writing science fiction and fantasy, accompanied by a sense that nobody is interested in your work because it is genre, that local publishers will ignore you for that reason, and the only stuff people will read in the region is self-help books or literary fiction (now that’s a blockbuster genre in the making – literary self-help. I suppose that’s what Alain Botton writes!).

My personal belief is that the reason one feels that way is not because there is no one else writing SFF in the local scene, or because there really is such enormous resistance to SFF from the reading public. Admittedly my friends and acquaintances are a self-selecting sample, but I don’t know a single Malaysian who would refuse to read a book on the grounds that it was genre. Everyone I knew at school liked the Hong Kong TVB adaptation of Journey to the West, and if monkey gods born out of rock who travel by cloud and visit the underworld as easily as the supermarket don’t count as fantasy to you, then you must be very hard to satisfy!

The reasons for Highlander syndrome are probably various, but IMO include:

• the issue I noted above about reading books by Westerners mostly (since that’s what’s available in English);
• the common geek experience of being the only person one knew growing up who got more excited over hobbits and spaceships than boybands. This is often ameliorated in the West when one grows up and finds out about cons and that sort of thing, but it’s slightly more difficult in Malaysia just because the community is smaller;
• the fact that the Asian writers best-known in the West are writers of literary fiction (and the best-known writers of Asian SFF are Westerners!); and
• perhaps most of all — the fact that often when you are a writer it is easy to feel that your whole life is one long sad story of no1curr. That’s a feeling every writer has, and isn’t particular to Asian genre writers.

I’m not denying that there’s a line of thinking that SFF doesn’t quite measure up to literary fiction in terms of literary value, mind you. I’m just not convinced that this mind-set is so much more ingrained in Malaysia than it is elsewhere. Admittedly there aren’t any dedicated venues for English-language SFF in Malaysia, but there aren’t that many venues for English-language fiction in Malaysia full-stop. English-language writing in Malaysia is still developing, and I’m personally very optimistic about it.

Following a Twitter exchange I drew up a list of all the Malaysian SFF writers in English I knew of. Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and Joyce Ch’ng asked me to post it, so here it is. It is by no means comprehensive, and I welcome suggestions for additions.

Also, super a lot of links, so give me a shout if any of them are broken ya.

A. M. Muffaz has a long list of publications including short stories at Fantasy Magazine in 2008 and 2009: A Foreigner’s View of the River and Into the Monsoon. I’m not sure if she’s had anything published more recently.

Eeleen Lee‘s writing straddles a number of different genres – literary, SFF, horror, crime and erotica. I’m not sure any of her more speculative stuff is available online, but you can find links to some of her short stories at her website.

She also wrote a couple of overviews of local genre fiction in English for SFF Portal: The Rough Guide to Modern Malaysian Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Magical Roots of Malaysian Horror Fiction in English.

Fadzlishah Johanabas writes SFF short stories, and I think also writes slice of life. Examples: Kuda Kepang; Act of Faith. Also has a story in the upcoming Fixi Novo KL Noir: Red anthology, an anthology of noir short stories set in KL.

Golda Mowe is a Sarawakian writer of Iban and Melanau heritage. A commenter alerted me to her YA fantasy novel Iban Dream, which draws on Iban mythology, and is available as an ebook and in print — click on the title to go to the Monsoon Books website, which has links to retailers.

Ika Koeck used to go by Ika Vanderkoeck and had a short story called Crossing The Waters in DAW anthology Ages of Wonder. I understand she’s been working on novels, and has since self-published a short story: To Kill A King.

Jaymee Goh does a lot of non-fiction writing about steampunk and race, which includes blog posts for Tor.com. She’s also published a few steampunk short stories, e.g. Lunar Year’s End.

KS Augustin writes science fiction, fantasy and contemporary romance. Her stuff’s been published by Carina Press, among others: In Enemy Hands.

Nin Harris created and co-edits Demeter’s Spicebox, a Cabinet des Fees spin-off fairytale/folktale retellings zine. She’s had speculative poetry published in Goblin Fruit — The Domestic Sundial — and I liked her essay in Stone Telling on Malay poetry, Visions of Courtly Life Translated into Contemporary Meditations: Muhammad Haji Salleh’s Sajak-Sajak Sejarah Melayu.

Shivani Sivagurunathan had a poem published in Abyss and Apex a while ago. Unfortunately you can’t access it without a subscription, but presumably it was speculative! I enjoyed her short story The Bat Whisperer despite the weird formatting – it’s not quite SFF, but probably counts as slipstream.

Stephanie Lai is an Australian-Malaysian writer of steampunk: The Last Rickshaw.

I’m not sure if Ted Mahsun has been otherwise published, but he’s self-published a couple of SFF short stories as ebooks. One of them is entertainingly titled Zombies Ate My Muslim.

Tessa Kum is a writer and editor who’s done a bunch of things, including editing Weird Tales and collaborating with Jeff VanderMeer on a number of Halo tie-in stories. She’s also had short fiction published — see her bibliography on GoodReads.

Tunku Halim has been writing horror for a while – I remember reading his short stories in secondary school. They were memorably horrible! Most of his writing seems to be in dead-tree form and only available in Malaysia, but you can check out his ebooks. He also had a short story, Biggest Baddest Bomoh, in The Apex Book of World SF.

Yangsze Choo‘s historical fantasy novel The Ghost Bride is due out in August 2013 from William Morrow/HarperCollins in the US and Hot Key Press in the UK. The Ghost Bride is a literary ghost story set in 1890s colonial Malaya and the Chinese world of the dead, about a woman who “must uncover her dead suitor’s secrets before she is forced to become his spirit bride”.

Zed Adam Idris wrote a lesbian robot story I liked called Batu Belah in ZI Publications anthology Malaysian Tales: Retold and Remixed. His story The Hunter and the Tigress in Clutch, Brake, Sellerator And Other Stories was also fantasy.

There’s also a thriving Malay-language SFF/horror scene, which I am not remotely qualified to go into – I mean, if you’re both able to read it and interested in reading it, you probably already know more about it than me lor. But e.g. a quick review of local indie pulp press Fixi‘s catalogue will turn up a number of SFF novels (zombies in Putrajaya! Aliens invade KL! Weretigers! I think there’s one about robots in the Golden Age of Melaka???). They’ve also got a new imprint for English-language pulp novels and anthologies, Fixi Novo – no SFF so far, but it’s only a matter of time.

ETA: Jaymee has pointed out that publisher PTS has an extensive Malay-language fantasy catalogue.

A reprint of my story The Four Generations of Chang E will be in Alex Dally MacFarlane’s anthology Aliens: Recent Encounters, due out in June from Prime Books. Am impressed by the august company my wayward immigrant Chang E will be keeping! I know Alex is actively engaged in seeking out and promoting science fictional perspectives from people other than white dudes (though there are also stories by white dudes in the anthology, just in case you were worried!). If that is something you are also interested in, do check out the anthology.

I am populating my Google Reader with blogs so I can check it when I am bored e.g. at a bus stop or something. Do YOU have a blog I can subscribe to on Google Reader? If not, do you have favourite blogs you would like to recommend? Here are things I like reading about:

• Food
• Stories
• Clothes
• Women
• Asian … stuff

The tone I like best in blogging is one that is friendly, personal, funny and not always to the point.

Pls have at it!

Graceling author Kristin Cashore’s Pictures of a Book Being Made, wherein she chronicles the agonising process of writing her much-garlanded novel Bitterblue, made me feel better about the slow stop-and-start of being a writer on a day when I really needed it. I confess I’ve only read Cashore’s Fire*, but I really liked it, and I really like her blog. I admire her willingness to be vulnerable and her great sincerity.

My friend Katy posted an amusing description of a BBC News fluff piece about a dog adopting tiger cubs. I link to her post rather than directly to the video because I think her description makes the video all the funnier. The “I can’t be fucked”ness of the reporter’s voice is brilliant.

I thought this article about Malaysia’s forgotten Jewish community was very interesting. Thousands of Jewish people! Apparently they are mostly Arab and Chinese (the latter is so unexpected that the Malaysian friend I was talking to about the article initially thought I meant Chinese people who marry white Jewish people, like Amy Chua and her husband).

New Malaysian small press Ianslip books is seeking English-language submissions for publication. They’re interested in “fiction/nonfiction/poetry … dude, whatever it may be”.

*I always start series at some inconvenient middle point — my very first introduction to the wonderful sprawling Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian, a 20-book epic which I profoundly love, was the tenth book, The Far Side of the World (great introduction). The first Discworld book I read was The Last Continent (terrible introduction). My first Tori Amos album was From the Choirgirl Hotel — rather challenging; Little Earthquakes would probably have been easier. I basically only got into Tori Amos because I wanted to make full use of the cassette I’d paid good money for, never mind whether I enjoyed the music or not. (I listened to it religiously, frowning in perplexity, until I started enjoying it. I imagine you could train yourself similarly to enjoy opera, or Tibetan throat singing.)

I’m ashamed to say I know very little about the history of chemical warfare in Southeast Asia, but I was deeply saddened when I read about American radio show Radiolab’s treatment of two Hmong interviewees in a segment about Yellow Rain, a type of chemical which was used in attacks in the 1970s against people living in Laos.

Published author and professor Kao Kalia Yang, who agreed to be a translator for her uncle Eng Yang in the interview, writes about her experience in Hyphen Magazine:

The Science of Racism: Radiolab’s Treatment of Hmong Experience

I wouldn’t read it if you weren’t in a good place mentally. It is very depressing, but it also says a lot about whose words and experiences are respected, and whose are discarded — whose stories get to be heard, and who gets to tell their stories and be believed.

I bought a Kobo Glo! It’s the most cunning little thing. My Kindle broke down around midsummer, about 1.5 years after my sister had bought it for me as a gift, just as I was absorbed in Ramesh Menon’s retelling of the Mahabharata (Volume 1 and Volume 2). I can’t speak to how well Menon’s book works as a retelling, but it’s very entertaining as a second encounter with the stories. (My first was The Palace of Illusions — also very good.) A lot of fun, and a great price point — I’d recommend them.

What I wouldn’t recommend is being interrupted in the middle of Bheeshma’s adventures in an underwater kingdom by your Kindle freezing up. I restarted it. It kept freezing. I charged it all night. Five minutes after I turned it back on, it froze. I backed up all my books and reset the Kindle to factory settings. Freeze-o-rama.

Since you only get a 1-year warranty and they don’t fix Kindles for you, all Amazon could do was offer me a discount on my next Kindle. Yeah, I don’t think so.

I went back to dead tree books for a while. It does affect your reading experience when you’re doing most of your reading on an ereader, instead of going to bookshops and browsing. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed the opportunities browsing gives you for encounters with things you wouldn’t have known to look for. I don’t look for bestsellers or award winners when I look for books to read — I look for things that are harder to define. Truth, humour, new perspectives.

I wouldn’t have found Yuri Rytkheu’s The Chukchi Bible clicking around in the Amazon Kindle store, but when I found it while poking through a secondhand bookshop on Charing Cross Road, I knew it was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to read. But I wouldn’t have known how to look for it, because I hadn’t known it was what I wanted. You don’t know what you’re missing, sort of thing.

What is good about having an ereader again is being able to find things when you know what you’re looking for. I’d read a brief interview with mystery writer Attica Locke about her second novel The Cutting Season, set on a plantation house in the modern day, and thought: that sounds interesting; I should follow up on that. I wasn’t able to find it in my nearest brick-and-mortar bookshop, but I did download a preview on my Kobo and was impressed. Tevere’s recent review of Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down reminded me that I’d bookmarked it to buy ages ago, and I’ve downloaded a preview of that. I’d probably struggle to find it my local W. H. Smith.

So I do want the easy access to a larger selection that an ereader gives me. It was terrifically dreary going into a W. H. Smith on my lunch break recently to get reading material for an upcoming holiday — all those rows of celebrity autobiographies and 50 Shades of Grey knockoffs. (Not that I object to celebrity autobiographies or erotica in themselves. I just wanted to read something different. I did manage to dig out some interesting reading — a Lindqvist horror novel which is all about how awful it can be to be a teenage girl, wickedly funny Pakistani chicklit, and finally Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, which I bought to make up numbers for the 3 for 2 offer, and which is notable for being fairly readable despite my disagreeing with everything in and about it, from the cover with Benedict Cumberbatch’s face to the repellent worldview.)

But at the same time being deprived of access to ebooks has been a salutary reminder of how important it is to give myself the chance to stumble on books. I think it’s really important to put yourself in the way of finding obscure, interesting books, because the books that are easy to find are always the ones that tell you what you already know. You need to know what it is you’re missing, what voices have been drowned out that you need to hear.

I was going to do a Kobo Glo review, but I seem to have got sidetracked! OK, OK.

Review of the Kobo Glo

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My brother and his collaborator Mahen Bala’s short film Outpost will be airing on Astro this September. He’s posted a trailer on Vimeo. It looks good!

Lance Corporal Yazzid is assigned to an isolated pillbox located along the Kuantan coast at the eve of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Malaya. Airing soon in September 2012 on Astro Channel 318, as part of the My Hometown series.