Five Continent Reading in Second Life

Michael Iwoleit got in touch recently to tell us of an incredibly cool thing he’s organising – a virtual book reading in the world of Second Life, by 5 science fiction authors each from a different continent!

Michael writes:

On May 5th an event will take place in Thorsten Küper’s and Kirsten Riehl’s steampunk location Kafé Kruemelkram that may be unique in the history of the 3d Internet world Second Life: Five science fiction writers from five continents, all writing in English, will read from their works live. The invited writers are:

For Asia: Guy Hasson (Israel)
For Africa: Jonathan Elorm Dotse (Ghana)
For Europe: Michael K. Iwoleit (Germany)
For South America: Gustavo Bondoni (Argentina)
For North America: Ahmed A. Khan (Canada)

For further information please refer to Michael K. Iwoleit’s homepage (iwoleit.wordpress.com – in English) or Thorsten Küper’s blog (kueperpunk.blogspot.de – in German).

Introducing Hyperpulp

Hyperpulp is a new electronic magazine from Brazil, edited by Alexandre Mandarino. It is a bilingual magazine, publishing the stories in both Portuguese and English. This seems to be becoming more common – see, for instance, the recent French-English web magazine Onirismes - it will be interesting to see if this heralds some new movement in world sf magazine publishing.

The new issue of Hyperpulp features Gustavo Bondoni from Argentina, Carlos Orsi from Brazil, and Berit Ellingsen from Norway, amongst others.

The Portal reviews Gustavo Bondoni’s Tenth Orbit

Over at the Portal, Sarah Goslee reviews Argentinian writer Gustavo Bondoni‘s short story collection Tenth Orbit:

Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places is a single-author collection by Argentine writerGustavo Bondoni, put out by the small press Altered Dimensions and available in paperback and ebook editions. The twenty-two stories comprising this volume are primarily idea-driven science fiction. According to the author, all were originally written in English, rather than having been translated. I believe at least some of the stories were previously published, but there is neither publication history nor individual copyright date for any of them. I would have liked to trace the development of Bondoni’s writing style chronologically, but was unable to do so.

The opening story, “Twilight,” is reminiscent of Golden Age science fiction stories. The image of a world of robots guarding the relics of their vanished creators is a long-familiar part of the science fictional landscape. This version of the trope invokes more a modern biological understanding, but is otherwise very similar to its predecessors. Most of the back story is filled in using large chunks of dialogue. I didn’t think there was enough new here to justify reusing such a familiar setting.

Some of the collected works are more vignettes than stories, with no character growth or development. “Trained Monkeys” is one such. It presents an idea about, well, trained monkeys, but doesn’t take it anywhere. The whole objective is to present a clever idea. This approach was nearly ubiquitous during the Golden Age, but much modern science fiction has adopted a more character-based style. Fans of early science fiction may appreciate this collection. – continue reading.