A Probability of Being

My friend Patricia posted a challenge to a writing group I'm part of: What does your past or future Malaysia look like, 50-60 years from today? Write it as a story or a poem, both works. Bonus Points: If your character(s) speak in Manglish or variations thereof Double Bonus Points: If your setting has magic/future tech Triple Bonus Points: If it's Malaysia in outer space WITHOUT referencing politics 

The other day, K. Tempest Bradford posted a challenge to XOJane: Stop reading straight white cis male authors for a year ! Typically, people are up in arms because how can they stop reading their straight white cis male favs! And how dare anyone tell readers what to read! And isn't excluding people based on their identity discriminatory anyway! But this challenge comes from a very particular place. In much of the English-language reading world, most of the authors who get the most attention tend to be straight white cis men, especially in the science fiction fantasy world. In trying to read widely, and read what the mainstream rates the most highly, it's easy to fall into a trap of reading the same type of writer, over and over again. As Silvia Moreno-Garcia points out, narrowing one's reading to particular themes, lists, and kinds of authors is actually a very normal and useful exercise . In English degrees, you will have classes like "Writers of the 18t...

Recently, I went to see Jupiter Ascending , and right now I can't think of a more wonderful movie to have experienced in theaters! Perhaps the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . But Jupiter Ascending isn't an adaptation, except one of the imagination, especially of the young imagination when we were busy creating impossible characters that people told us were unrealistic. It was so fun, my fan buddy Jeanne and I had to recap it! We included as much detail as possible, and added commentary. Jeanne's commentary is in blue , mine is purple ! Read the first half of the recap at her blog ! This recap will be long, and image-heavy, so you've been warned! Without further ado, ACT II:

Sometime around this time last year, I sent out a call for submissions to The Sea Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia. Over the next few months, my co-editor Joyce Chng and I would receive many submissions. Many didn't make the first cut. A few got past, but eventually we could not use them. We were eventually left with twelve stories, with various levels of editing work required, each unique. After that it was a matter of deciding their order, and then getting a cover. I approached Khor Shing Yin, an artist I found through Tumblr, who, it turned out, is Malaysian-Chinese, although she's spent most of her life in the States. We met briefly at San Diego Comic Con 2014, and more recently last August in Los Angeles. For SDCC, I made a frantic last-minute request for her to make up a promotional postcard that I could bring to raise awareness of the anthology. The result was the following:  I was elated! It was based off a photograph of a street in Melaka, with ...