Hello everyone, and here’s to a good March for word-and-world-building! Welcome to Issue VII of the newsletter.
What I’m Reading
Speculative reading in the second half of February involved two novellas: Yaroslav Barsukov’s Tower of Mud and Straw, and Nghi Vo’s Empress of Salt and Fortune. They were very different from each other, and I enjoyed them both. Barsukov’s was a frenetically-paced, Tower-of-Babel-inspired piece of science fantasy, that was driven as much by the intense moral conflict thrust upon its protagonists, as it was by its deeply vivid imagery. Empress of Salt and Fortune was altogether more reflective and deliberate, a fall-of-an-Empire story told through the slow unraveling of events long past, from the perspective of a spectator-participant. Both stories dealt admirably (and in different ways) with the novella-form challenge of combining quick world-building with leaving a lot - but not too much - untold and telling just enough to set the atmosphere.
A couple of days ago, I began reading Joshua Johnson’s The Forever Sea. It’s a fantasy novel with a unique premise: ships that sail over endless seas of grass, powered by a special “hearthfire”, which is maintained by a class of singers. I’ve only read the Prologue and the first chapter so far: the Prologue, in particular, was excellent, reminiscent of the style of Guy Gavriel Kay in novels like Tigana: a partial revealing that makes the reader wildly curious about all the world that is unrevealed.
In non-SF fiction, I’ve been reading Hamid Ismailov’s wonderful Of Strangers and Bees. I first came across Ismailov - an Uzbek writer exiled to England for writing novels with “unacceptable democratic tendencies” - when I read the melancholic, beautiful, and haunting The Devil’s Dance (reviewed here), a novel set during the parallel timelines of Stalin’s purge of Uzbek intellectuals in the 1930s, and the warring Central Asian Khanates a century before. Like The Devil’s Dance, Of Strangers and Bees follows the parallel storyline format (this time, the storylines involve the historical figure Avicenna, an Uzbek novelist in the middle of the 20th-century, and… a worker bee). Of Strangers and Bees is an altogether lighter tale than The Devil’s Dance, wryly savage prose interspersed with moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity. I’m a third of the way in, and loving it so far.
I’ve recently started outlining for my next fiction project, and begun that somewhat vague process of background research, a.k.a., reading interesting-looking books that may prove useful at a later point. Two brisk non-fiction reads in this department last week were Leslie Kern’s Feminist City and Pablo Sendra and Richard Sennett’s Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City, both of which were excellent - if rather Eurocentric - introductions to the politics of urban design.
What’s Happening at Strange Horizons
Kuzhali Manickavel’s regular Stories from the Radio column; and this round-table conversation with the editors/editorial collectives of three new-ish online SFF zines: Rikka Zine, khōréō magazine, and Constelación. Fortituous timing, because the inaugural issues of the latter two are just out (links above), and after you read the conversation, check out the wonderful cover art and the first few short stories on display.
At the end of March - just to remind you - we have our first special issue of 2021, and this one’s dedicated to Palestinian SFF. I’ve dreamed of a Palestinian-themed Strange Horizons issue ever since I joined the magazine in 2016, and I’m quite thrilled it’s happening at last (only took five years!). There’s going to be a lot of great stuff when it comes out, but if you want to get warmed up for it, you can always check out Emile Habiby’s classic - and marvellous - The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist, or the more contemporary Palestine +100.
The Indian Scene
In Issue 4 of the Translunar Traveler’s Lounge, Amal Singh’s short story, “The Taste of Your Name”: a deliciously weird and wonderful tale about the language of taste and the taste of language. Give it a read!
Recommendations Corner
Emile Habiby’s The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist - a classic of Palestinian writing (and should be a classic of world SF) - follows the adventures of Saeed the Pessoptimist, a Palestinian who stays behind after the creation of the state of Israel, becomes an Israeli informer, and finds himself getting into one scrape after another with the authorities, while becoming more and more estranged from his sometime-countrymen. Filled with supernatural happenings, twisted chronologies and unbelievable denouements, the narrative tries to paint reality even while unmooring itself from reality; almost as though the only way to capture the bizarre actuality that is Israel/Palestine (labels are political) is by breaking with traditional narrative realism. Full review: here.
Quote Corner
“The moon is closer to us now than are the fig trees of our departed village.”
Emile Habiby, The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist
wondering if you could suggest some SFs, Fantasy novels for a teenager?!