Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction

T.L. Huchu, Xia Jia, Clelia Farris, James Patrick Kelly, Carlos Hernandez

Description

In its brief existence, Rosarium Publishing has worked hard in “introducing the world to itself” through groundbreaking, award-winning science fiction and comics. In combing the planet to find the best in each field, Rosarium's own Bill Campbell has found a fellow spirit in Italian publisher, Francesco Verso. Borrowing from the fine tradition of American underground dance labels introducing international labels' music to the people back home, Rosarium brings to you Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction, a thrilling collection of innovative science fiction originally published by Francesco Verso's Italian company, Future Fiction. Here you will find thirteen incredible tales from all around the globe that will not only introduce you to worlds you may not be familiar with but also expand your horizons and the horizons of the science fiction field itself.

Bill Campbell is the author of Sunshine Patriots, My Booty Novel, and Pop Culture: Politics, Puns, "Poohbutt" from a Liberal Stay-at-Home Dad, and Koontown Killing Kaper. Along with Edward Austin Hall, he co-edited the groundbreaking anthology, Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond as well as Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany (with Nisi Shawl) and the Glyph Award-winning comic book anthology, APB: Artists against Police Brutality (with Jason Rodriguez and John Jennings). Campbell lives in Washington, DC, where he spends his time with his family, helps produce audio books for the blind, and helms Rosarium Publishing. 

Francesco Verso is the author of several SF books in Italian and winner of the Odyssey Award, The Cassiopea Award, and two Urania Mondadori Awards. He's currently working on his latest book, I Camminatori, that will deal with the consequences of the substitution of food with nanotechnology. He is the editor of the mutlicultural Future Fiction anthology series in Italian. He lives in Rome with his wife and daughter.

Foreword - Bill Campbell

Introduction - Francesco Verso  

Tongtong’s Summer - Xia Jia

The Quantum Mommy - Michalis Manolios

The Way of Water - Nina Munteanu

Loosestrife - Liz Williams

What Lies Dormant - Swapna Kishore

HOSTBODS - T.L. Huchu

Bernardo’s House - James Patrick Kelly

The International Studbook of the Giant Panda - Carlos Hernandez

Creative Surgery - Clelia Farris

Citizen Komarova Finds Love - Ekaterina Sedia

Grey Noise - Pepe Rojo

Proposition 23 - Efe Tokunbo

Sujets

• Anthologies
• Science Fiction
• Speculative fiction
• General officer
• General
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Rosarium Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781495626937
• Langue: English

Extrait

A mind-bendingly adventurous collection with story content as diverse as its authors.
-AJ Hartley, New York Times bestselling author of the Steeplejack series
Future Fiction is a futuristic compendium of wonder and fear filled with mind-shattering technologies and cutting-edge sciences. Jammed with what if s and why not s, each story aches with the possibility of a unique, visceral future. With the right mixture of politics and science, hope and ingenuity, one day the extraordinary worlds imagined by twelve brilliant authors could very well exist. A must for any science fiction reader on the hunt for an immersive, gripping, raw read.
-Monica Valentinelli, co-editor of Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling
Future Fiction offers a selection of imaginative, adventurous sci-fi by international authors-and that is what makes this collection so welcome and exciting. These stories take place in every part of the world and are told in distinct, diverse voices. Whether their focus is transhumanism or ecological devastation, space travel or techno-dystopia, they remind us that the future does not happen to a select few, but to everyone, everywhere. Highly recommended reading for anyone open to expanding their idea of international science fiction.
-Emmi It ranta, author of Memory of Water
- Bernardo s House: First edition in Asimov s Science Fiction, June 2003
- The Way of Water: First edition in Future Fiction, June 2016
- The International Studbook of the Giant Panda: First edition in Interzone, 2013
- What Lies Dormant: First edition in Warrior Wisewoman 3, Norilana Press, 2010
- Aethra: First edition in English in Albedo One, Issue 41, 2011
- Creative Surgery: First edition in Future Fiction: New Dimension in International Science Fiction, Rosarium Publishing, March 2018
- HostBods: First edition in Omenana #1, 2014
- Loosestrife: First edition in Interzone #193, 2004
- Citizen Komarova Finds Love: First edition in Exotic Gothic 3, 2009, Ash-Tree Press
- Grey Noise: First English edition on Cosmos Latinos, Wesleyan University Press, USA, 2003
- Tongtong s Summer: First edition in Chinese in ZUI Fiction, March 2014, First published in English in Upgraded, Wyrm Publishing, September 2014
- Proposition 23: First edition in AfroSF , Story Time, 2012
Cover art by Nick Russell
Cover design by Gerald Mohamed III
Copyright 2018 Rosarium Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any forms or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below:
Published by Rosarium Publishing
P.O. Box 544
Greenbelt, MD 20768-0544
www.rosariumpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Foreword Bill Campbell
Introduction Francesco Verso
Xia Jia Tongtong s Summer
Michalis Manolios The Quantum Mommy
Nina Munteanu The Way of Water
Liz Williams Loosestrife
Swapna Kishore What Lies Dormant
T.L. Huchu HOSTBODS
James Patrick Kelly Bernardo s House
Carlos Hernandez The International Studbook of the Giant Panda
Clelia Farris Creative Surgery
Ekaterina Sedia Citizen Komarova Finds Love
Pepe Rojo Grey Noise
Efe Tokunbo Proposition 23
About the Editors
About the Writers
Foreword
Bill Campbell
Rosarium Publishing s facetious, unofficial tagline is Introducing the World to Itself Since 2013. While a bit tongue-in-cheek, we are sincere in our mission to continue to break down barriers and bring to the public the wide and varied voices that currently inhabit science fiction and fantasy.
We were introduced to Italian publisher, Francesco Verso, and his house, Future Fiction through Rosarian Carlos Hernandez and his book, The Assimilated Cuban s Guide to Quantum Santeria . Mr. Verso wanted to buy the Italian rights to the book. During this process, we each checked out the other s work and immediately knew we found a kindred spirit.
So, in the spirit of American underground dance labels, we at Rosarium decided to put together a compilation of some of the stories that Francesco and Future Fiction has published in Italy. The end result is a challenging, genre-bending anthology with authors from India, Greece, Zimbabwe, and many other countries-including the USA, of course. Some of the authors may be familiar to you (like James Patrick Kelly and Ekaterina Sedia) while others (like Clelia Farris s first-ever English translation with Creative Surgery ) may come as a very welcome surprise.
With that, my job here is done. I hope you enjoy what we ve come up with here and that this vast, fantastic world we live in has become a bit smaller and a just that much more intimiate. I want your experience reading this anthology will be as pleasant as it was for us to put this together. And now, with a more formal introduction, here is Francesco.
Introduction
Francesco Verso
The future is always more present in our lives, not only in film and literary advances that illustrate the scope of technological innovations, but also in everyday experiences: from medicine to transport, from information to entertainment and society, changes are multiplying at an increasing rate giving often the impression of living in a preview of tomorrow. This rain of changes and innovations is so intense and pervasive that it doesn t allow us to fully understand the implications of the new world we are experiencing, and so the positive or negative consequences of many innovations or, better yet, of their combinations, give rise to unforeseen scenarios or realities considered science fiction just a few years ago.
Future Fiction was born to explore and give consistency to this unknown territory by borrowing a definition given by Anthony Burgess to his novels A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed . The guidelines adopted to fulfill this research on possible futures are four: short fiction, multiculturalism, socio-technological speculation and cross-media.
Short Fiction - Science fiction originated as the Fiction of Ideas: a very strong premise, the famous what if or what would happen if, which takes place in a few pages without frills or digressions and a bunch of characters who, tough and well crafted, remain functional to a brief storytelling, to the minimum number of words necessary to ensure maximum effectiveness. These features perfectly match the growing spread of e-readers, tablets, and smartphones, and thus it appeared to be the best recipe to engage not only fans of the genre but also those who don t know it, which is precisely the goal of Future Fiction : widen the listening base beyond the circle of those who already love Science Fiction.
Multiculturalism - The future, by definition, happens everywhere, and Future Fiction wants to give readers the opportunity to seize different views from the dominant ones in the global publishing market where American and Anglo-Saxon literature is often the most represented one. With this idea we intend to highlight stories coming from as many countries and languages as possible and underlying this approach there is the firm intention to preserve the fiction biodiversity of the future.
What would the world be if there s just one language to represent it, if there s just one kind of author to write about it, one single religion, one nation, one point of view, one culture, and in general a single source of storytelling? So, as in the remote archipelago of the Svalbard Islands-near the town of Longyarbyen on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen-there is an underground storage facility built to preserve the genetic heritage of plants around the world from a possible environmental catastrophe, likewise, we would like to preserve the memetic heritage of the future from a possible cultural catastrophe. A fiction shelter, chosen with great care and selected to be available to both present and future generations.
Cultural and Socio-Technological Speculation - We are interested in the future in all its declinations, whether it s near or far, a future which, however, maintains a high level of likelihood, given the premise of the story; what is called suspension of unbelief (a definition coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817 in the book Biographia literaria , chapter XIV): that is, the ability to make a scenario so credible that it can make the reader suspend the judgment on its reliability. On the other side, we are inspired by stories that challenge common sense, stories that encourage new ways of thinking and behaving, what Darko Suvin in the book Metamorphoses of Science Fiction calls cognitive estrangement as a tool to subvert and contradict the status quo. As a matter of fact, we believe Science Fiction is the Fiction of Transformation.
While there is no foreclosure on the classic Science Fiction themes like space exploration or alien encounters, we aim at stories that sink their roots into the present and illustrate a visible future: Artificial Intelligence, Cloning and Bioengineering, Climate Change, Transarchitecture, Post-Humanism, the 3D Printing artisans, the virtual economy of cryptocurrency, the applications of Augmented Reality, and what is defined as the Technological Singularity. All concepts that have a scientific and social value, as well as anthropological and therefore human.
Cross Media - Last but not least, the project calls for collaborations with other artistic and cultural realities to the joint development of a Future Fiction Factory, an integrated fiction laboratory that allows a story to go from the written form to the recited one; from the audiobook to the graphic novel, from performative theater to short films, from multimedia installation to 3D-printed objects. Whatever the medium, the intention is al