By Carl Slaughter:

THE APEX BOOK OF WORLD SF, VOL. 1

Editor: Lavie Tidhar

“The Apex Book of SF series has proven to be an excellent way to sample the diversity of world SFF and to broaden our understanding of the genre’s potentials.”

—Ken Liu, winner of the Hugo Award and author of The Grace of Kings

The Apex Book of World SF, Vol. 1, edited by Lavie Tidhar, features award-winning science fiction and fantasy short stories from Asia, Eastern Europe and around the world.

The world of speculative fiction is expansive; it covers more than one country, one continent, one culture. Collected here are sixteen stories penned by authors from Thailand, the Philippines, China, Israel, Pakistan, Serbia, Croatia, Malaysia, and other countries across the globe. Each one tells a tale breathtakingly vast and varied, whether caught in the ghosts of the past or entangled in a postmodern age.

Among the spirits, technology, and deep recesses of the human mind, stories abound. Kites sail to the stars, technology transcends physics, and wheels cry out in the night. Memories come and go like fading echoes and a train carries its passengers through more than simple space and time. Dark and bright, beautiful and haunting, the stories herein represent speculative fiction from a sampling of the finest authors from around the world.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• S.P. Somtow (Thailand) —“The Bird Catcher”
• Jetse de Vries (Netherlands) —“Transcendence Express”
• Guy Hasson (Israel) —“The Levantine Experiments”
• Han Song (China) —“The Wheel of Samsara”
• Kaaron Warren (Australia/Fiji) —“Ghost Jail”
• Yang Ping (China) —“Wizard World”
• Dean Francis Alfar (Philippines) —“L’Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)”
• Nir Yaniv (Israel) —“Cinderers”
• Jamil Nasir (Palestine) —“The Allah Stairs”
• Tunku Halim (Malaysia) —“Biggest Baddest Bomoh”
• Aliette de Bodard (France) —“The Lost Xuyan Bride”
• Kristin Mandigma (Philippines) —“Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang”
• Aleksandar Ziljak (Croatia) —“An Evening In The City Coffehouse, With Lydia On My Mind”
• Anil Menon (India) —“Into the Night”
• Melanie Fazi (France, translated by Christopher Priest) —“Elegy”
• Zoran Zivkovic (Serbia, translated by Alice Copple-Tosic) —“Compartments”

VOLUME 2

Editor: Lavie Tidhar

In The Apex Book of World SF 2, editor Lavie Tidhar collects short stories by science fiction and fantasy authors from Africa and Latin America.

An expedition to an alien planet; Lenin rising from the dead; a superhero so secret he does not exist. In The Apex Book of World SF 2, World Fantasy Award-nominated editor Lavie Tidhar brings together a unique collection of stories from around the world. Quiet horror from Cuba and Australia; surrealist fantasy from Russia and epic fantasy from Poland; near-future tales from Mexico and Finland, as well as cyberpunk from South Africa. In this anthology one gets a glimpse of the complex and fascinating world of genre fiction—from all over our world.

Featuring work from noted international authors such as Will Elliot, Hannu Rajaniemi, Shweta Narayan, Lauren Beukes, Ekaterina Sedia, Nnedi Okorafor, and Andrzej Sapkowski.

VOLUME 3

Editor: Lavie Tidhar

In The Apex Book of World SF, Volume 3, editor Lavie Tidhar collects short stories by science fiction and fantasy authors from Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe.

These stories run the gamut from science fiction, to fantasy, to horror. Some are translations (from German, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Swedish), and some were written in English. The authors herein come from Asia and Europe, Africa and Latin America. Their stories are all wondrous and wonderful, and showcase the vitality and diversity that can be found in the field. They are a conversation, by voices that should be heart. And once again, editor Lavie Tidhar and Apex Publications are tremendously grateful for the opportunity to bring them to our readers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction — Lavie Tidhar
• Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods — Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Thailand)
• A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight — Xia Jia (China)
• Act of Faith — Fadzilshah Johanabos (Malaysia)
• The Foreigner — Uko Bendi Udo (Nigeria)
• The City of Silence — Ma Boyong (China)
• Planetfall — Athena Andreadis (Greece)
• Jungle Fever — Iko Koeck (Malaysia)
• To Follow the Waves — Amal El-Mohtar (Lebanon/Canada)
• Ahuizotl — Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (Mexico)
• The Rare Earth — Biram Mboob (Gambia)
• Spider’s Nest — Myra Çakan (Germany)
• Waiting with Mortals — Crystal Koo (Philippines)
• Three Little Children — Ange (France)
• Brita’s Holiday Village — Karin Tidbeck (Sweden)
• Regressions — Swapna Kishore (India)
• Dancing on the Red Planet — Berit Ellingsen (Korea/Norway)
• Cover art and design by Sarah Anne Langton.

VOLUME 4

Editor: Mahvesh Murad

Now firmly established as the benchmark anthology series of international speculative fiction, volume 4 of The Apex Book of World SF sees debut editor Mahvesh Murad bring fresh new eyes to her selection of stories.

From Spanish steampunk and Italian horror to Nigerian science fiction and subverted Japanese folktales, from love in the time of drones to teenagers at the end of the world, the stories in this volume showcase the best of contemporary speculative fiction, wherever it’s written.

“Important to the future of not only international authors, but the entire SF community.” —Strange Horizons

FEATURING:

• Vajra Chandrasekera (Sri Lanka) — “Pockets Full of Stones”
• Yukimi Ogawa (Japan) — “In Her Head, In Her Eyes”
• Zen Cho (Malaysia) — “The Four Generations of Chang E”
• Shimon Adaf (Israel) — “Like A Coin Entrusted in Faith” (Translated by the author)
• Celeste Rita Baker (Virgin Islands) — “Single Entry”
• Nene Ormes (Sweden) — “The Good Matter” (Translated Lisa J Isaksson and Nene Ormes)
• JY Yang (Singapore) — “Tiger Baby”
• Isabel Yap (Philippines) — “A Cup of Salt Tears”
• Usman T Malik (Pakistan) — “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family”
• Kuzhali Manickavel (India) — “Six Things We Found During the Autopsy”
• Elana Gomel (Israel) — “The Farm”
• Haralambi Markov (Bulgaria) — “The Language of Knives”
• Sabrina Huang — “Setting Up Home” (Translated by Jeremy Tiang)
• Sathya Stone (Sri Lanka) — “Jinki and the Paradox”
• Johann Thorsson (Iceland) — “First, Bite a Finger”
• Dilman Dila (Uganda) — “How My Father Became a God”
• Swabir Silayi (Kenya) — “Colour Me Grey”
• Deepak Unnikrishnan (The Emirates) — “Sarama”
• Chinelo Onwualu (Nigeria) — “The Gift of Touch”
• Saad Z. Hossain (Bangaldesh) — “Djinns Live by the Sea”
• Bernardo Fernández (Mexico) — “The Last Hours of the Final Days” (Translated by the author)
• Natalia Theodoridou (Greece) — “The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul”
• Samuel Marolla (Italy) — “Black Tea” (Translated by Andrew Tanzi)
• Julie Novakova (Czech Republic) — “The Symphony of Ice and Dust”
• Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Netherlands) — “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” (Translated by Laura Vroomen)
• Sese Yane (Kenya) — “The Corpse”
• Tang Fei — “Pepe” (Translated by John Chu)
• Rocío Rincón (Spain) — “The Lady of the Soler Colony” (Translated by James and Marian Womack)
• Cover art and design by Sarah Anne Langton.

DARK MATTER: A CENTURY OF SPECULATIVE FICTION FROM THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

by Sheree Renée Thomas

This volume introduces black science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction writers to the generations of readers who have not had the chance to explore the scope and diversity among African-American writers.

OCTAVIA’S BROOD: SCIENCE FICTION STORIES FROM SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS

Editors: Walidah Imarisha, adrienne maree brown

• Whenever we envision a world without war, prisons, or capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. These visionary tales span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. Also features essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a preface by Sheree Renée Thomas.
• “Those concerned with justice and liberation must always persuade the mass of people that a better world is possible. Our job begins with speculative fictions that fire society’s imagination and its desire for change. In adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha’s visionary conception, and by its activist-artists’ often stunning acts of creative inception, Octavia’s Brood makes for great thinking and damn good reading. The rest will be up to us.” —Jeff Chang, Who We Be: The Colorization of America
• “Conventional exclamatory phrases don’t come close to capturing the essence of what we have here in Octavia’s Brood. One part sacred text, one part social movement manual, one part diary of our future selves telling us, ‘It’s going to be okay, keep working, keep loving.’ Our radical imaginations are under siege and this text is the rescue mission. It is the new cornerstone of every class I teach on inequality, justice, and social change….This is the text we’ve been waiting for.” —Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier
• “Octavia once told me that two things worried her about the future of humanity: The tendency to think hierarchically, and the tendency to place ourselves higher on the hierarchy than others. I think she would be humbled beyond words that the fine, thoughtful writers in this volume have honored her with their hearts and minds. And that in calling for us to consider that hierarchical structure, they are not walking in her shadow, nor standing on her shoulders, but marching at her side.” —Steven Barnes, Lion’s Blood
• “Never has one book so thoroughly realized the dream of its namesake. Octavia’s Brood is the progeny of two lovers of Octavia Butler and their belief in her dream that science fiction is for everybody…. Butler could not wish for better evidence of her touch changing our literary and living landscapes. Play with these children, read these works, and find the children in you waiting to take root under the stars!” —Moya Bailey and Ayana Jamieson, Octavia E. Butler Legacy