Interview with Vietnamese SF writer Vu Kim Dung

Last year, Vietnamese SF writers have banded together to form the Viet Nam Fund of Science Fiction, or VFSF. The Vietnam News carries a fascinating interview with head of the VFSF, biologist and SF writer Vu Kim Dung.You graduated with a degree in biology; how did you become a writer and why did you choose science fiction?I was...

Russian vampire series to be published in US

SFScope report that Russian writer Lena Meydan sold Twilight Forever Rising to Stacy Hague-Hill at Tor Books.Quoting from SFScope:Meydan's agent told SFScope the book is "the first work in a series of Vampire novels. It is already a major Russian bestseller with over 80,000 copies sold to date in hardcover. Twilight Forever Rising is what happens when...

Magical Realism in West African Fiction

Some of the most interesting books relating to world SF are published by academic presses, and are often quite expensive. It is good to know, therefore, that Brenda Cooper's Magical Realism in West African Fiction is available in a reasonably-priced paperback edition from Routledge.About the book:This study contextualizes magical realism within current debates and theories...

Kaaron Warren’s first novel, Slights, released

Apex Book of World SF contributor, Australian writer and Fiji resident, Kaaron Warren [blog][wikipedia] has recently signed a deal for three books with new HarperCollins imprint Angry Robot - and her first novel, Slights, is now out!Stephanie is a killer. After an accident in which her mother dies, she has a near-death experience, and finds herself...

Vandana Singh closing report on the Indian SF/F workshop

Indian writer Vandana Singh has just posted the second and closing installment of her report on the Indian SF/F workshop that took place at IIT Kapur.Along the way I talked about how important it was to keep in touch with SF in non-English Indian languages and their long history.  We had already discussed some examples during...

An Interview with Wu Yan

In case you've missed it when it first came out - Lavie Tidhar interviews Chinese writer and editor Wu Yan over at the Internet Review of Science Fiction (also available online, brand new, in a Hebrew translation).

SF Signal Mind Meld on International SF: Part Four

Apologies for the lack of updates this week - has it really been a week? - let's call it rainy season blues... In any case, SF Signal have brought their mind meld feature on international SF to a close this week, including Apex Book of World SF contributor Anil Menon and a host of other writers...

SF Signal Mind Meld on International SF: Part Three

 Part Three of SF Signal's Mind Meld on International SF is now up, with contributions from the Philippines, Ireland, Denmark, Greece, the Ukraine, Poland and Portugal.And if you haven't seen them already, here are Part One and Part Two.

Haikasoru interview translator Joseph Reeder

Over the new Haikasoru blog, Nick Mamatas interviews Joseph Reeder, translator of Haikasoru's forthcoming novel All You Need is Kill.Linguistically the rules for what can pass as a sentence are much, much looser in Japanese than English. For example, you might have a series of fragments bookending a longer explanatory passage, and that back and...

Emile Habibi’s The Secret Life of Saeed

io9 ran this short article a while ago, about Israel-Palestinian writer (and politician) Emile Habibi and his novel The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist:Then came Habibi's masterwork, The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist. Habibi's partly autobiographical novel about an Israeli Arab who finds himself in space is every bit the equal of The Little...