Words for Worlds - Issue 76
Hello everyone, and welcome to another issue of the Words for Worlds newsletter!
This past week, The Spinoff published a fairly lengthy article that sets out where we are now in reference to the Neil Gaiman sexual assault allegations. It’s worth a read in that it gives you an up-to-date account of where things stand, and where they are likely to go. It is, of course, an extremely bleak piece - the abuses of power that have come out are sickening, and re-reading them doesn’t make it any easier. It also appears that after a brief period of coverage in the first week of August, things have again gone quiet on the industry front. People have noticed an uptick in Twitter posts about The Sandman and Coraline - looking suspiciously like the job of a PR agency - but we will see where this goes; I think we’re seeing one of those struggles of memory against forgetting played out in real time.
I think it serves me right that I wrote a newsletter critiquing the Hugo Awards selection process, only for Strange Horizons to win the Hugo Award for the first time in its history one week later! We’ve been losing finalists the last eleven years in a row, so I guess I can at least say that it was a relief to get a very large monkey off our backs. I do stand by the critique, though, and perhaps it now has the added benefit of not sounding like sour grapes!
What I’m Reading
I learned about Brothers Apart from the Thawra podcast (which you should absolutely listen to!). Brothers Apart is the story of the Palestinian writers, poets, and artists who remained within the State of Israel after 1948. It tells of how they found themselves navigating a very difficult and treacherous path - often treated with suspicion, and shunned, by both the Israeli State/society, and their counterparts in the Arab world - and how they nonetheless crafted a space for themselves. Among other things, this book reveals some fascinating details about the early life and evolution of Mahmoud Darwish. Most of us know Darwish through his beautiful poetry, but this book tells us about Darwish the man, and his years in Israel, leading up to his self-imposed exile in Cairo.
Another interesting thing I learned was the crucial role played by Ghassan Kanafani in bringing these Palestinian-Israeli writers to the Arab and the world stage. I have, of course, known Kanafani through his novels and stories, and learning about Kanafani the literary critic was like a whole new dimension being added to my understanding of the man. I now admire him even more than I did before, if that were possible!
And speaking of Cairo, Ahdaf Souief’s account of the Egyptian Revolution (Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed) is a devastating - and devastatingly beautiful - read. There are moments when, while reading this book, you just have to stop and take a breath, and you find yourself in tears. Soueif captures the spirit, the idealism, and the resilience of the Revolution - along with the sacrifices and the losses along the way - before its ultimate betrayal.
Familiar figures walk across the pages - Alaa abd-Al Fateh (the incarcerated writer of You Have Not Yet Been Defeated), Omar Robert Hamilton (Souief’s son, and the author of The City Always Wins), Khaled Abdallah (one of the protagonists of The Square), Ramy Essam (the “singer” of the Revolution), and many others. If you haven’t read anything about the Egyptian Revolution, and are looking to start, this is an ideal introduction; or if, like me, you seek out everything you can about those eighteen days in Tahrir Square (and beyond), then this is a first-person, present-tense account, as intimate and proximate as it gets.
The Indian Scene
In the latest issue of Translunar Travellers Lounge, you can read Abhijeet Sathe’s ‘The Weaver of Uswalpur.’
Amal Singh’s latest short story, ‘The Gulmohar of Mehranpur’, can be purchased as a stand-alone original on Amazon, via Tor.
Finally, congratulations to Indra Das for being shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award for his novella, The Last Dragoners of Bowbazaar.
What’s Happening at Strange Horizons
Try some speculative poetry this week: I found R.S. Saha’s Kin to be quite lovely. There are some good reviews in the issue as well, which you can read here.
Recommendations Corner
It’s a Tahrir Square/Egyptian Revolution week, so why not try Comma Press’ latest offering in the +100 series, Egypt +100? The year is 2111, a hundred years after Tahrir Square, and Egyptian SF writers imagine what the future might look like. The book is edited by the irrepressible Ahmed Naji, who spent two years in an Egyptian jail for writing a speculative fiction novel called Using Life (apparently, the novel violated “public decency”). I read Using Life a couple of years ago, and it’s a wild ride - I’d recommend it.
Back to the stories, though: you’ll find an interesting blend of fantasy-adjacent and more SF-oriented stories here (there are, of course, some tech dystopias), but like all the companions books in this series (Iraq +100, Palestine +100, Kurdistan +100), what really sets them apart is the sense of place. This is another unique contribution to SF, which is well worth reading.