Charles Tan wins Last Drink Bird Head Award!

Tireless WSNB contributor, blogger, interviewer, reviewer and much more, Charles Tan has just won the inaugural Last Drink Bird Head Award, given by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, in the International Activism category: In recognition of those who work to bring writers from other literary traditions and countries to the attention of readers in North America, the United Kingdom, and...

New Zealand Speculative Fiction Blogging Week

Anna Caro writes in to say: The place of speculative fiction in New Zealand is full of contraductions. On the one hand, it has a history of being marginalised, and writers face the dual challenges of local markets which tend towards publishing literary fiction, and international markets which can (though there are notable exceptions) be...

The Black Mirror & Other Stories

The Black Mirror & Other Stories is a 2008 anthology of German and Austrian science fiction short stories, edited by Franz Rottensteiner and translated by Mike Mitchell. It is published by the Wesleyan Press. Adam Roberts reviews it this week over at Strange Horizons, beginning his review with: Being raised Anglophone in a world that...

The Dragon and the Stars anthology announced!

Editors Eric Choi and Derwin Mak have announced the table of contents for the forthcoming anthology The Dragon and the Stars. The Dragon and the Stars, edited by Eric Choi and Derwin Mak, the first anthology of fantasy and science fiction stories by ethnic Chinese outside China, will be published by DAW Books next year....

Monday Original Content: Guy Hasson on Making “Heart of Stone”

Our Monday's original content this week is the first part of Guy Hasson's new column for us, SF From the Rim. In this first installment Guy talks about the making of his first feature film, the Hebrew science fiction movie Heart of Stone. SF FROM THE RIM Making ‘Heart of Stone’: An Israeli SF Film (Part I)...

New Philippines Short Story

Charles was quite taken with this story, by Francezca C. Kwe over at the Philippine Graphic: The Fires of the Sun in a Crystalline Sky (after Greg Brillantes). "There is a reason why I tell it this way," my grandmother continues her speech. "I first heard the story after the war, when all of us were poking...

United Malays National Organisation Calls for Ban on Horror Films

The Star newspaper of Malaysia reports that "Puteri Umno wants the Government to ban the production of “horror, mystical and superstitious” movies, claiming such films can weaken the faith of Muslims in the country. The movement also wants the authorities to empower the Islamic Development Department (Jakim) to take action against such productions." UMNO's Wikipedia entry...

Polish Comics!

An introduction to comics in Poland, looking at stand-alones,  series and magazines, as well as artists.

An Interview with Komatsu Sakyô

The web archives of the Science Fiction Studies journal are full of fascinating articles, and here is a 2002 interview with Japanese writer Komatsu Sakyô. From the introduction: Komatsu Sakyô (pen name of Komatsu Minoru) was born in Osaka, Japan on January 28, 1931. With Tsutsui Yasutaka and Hoshi Shin’ichi, Komatsu is one of the...

New Review for The Apex Book of World SF

The Apex Book of World SF is coming out in two weeks (and is still available for pre-order from Apex Books), and one of the first reviews has just come in. Over at 42Scifi-Fantasy.com, reviewer Randy Lazarus is particularly taken with Dean Francis Alfar's The "Kite of Stars" and with Aleksandar Žiljak's "An Evening in...