Two interviews with me have recently been published in Korea, both of them quite long. They may be of interest to anyone curious about stuff like what it’s like to be an expat writing SF, my personal thoughts on Korean SF and the Korean SF scene, and so on. The first interview was conducted and translated by my friend Hong Insu, a translator (he did part of The Hard SF Renaissance) and prominent Korean SF fan, now missed by many (as he is in grad school in Arizona). The interview appears in a “mook” — apparently this is some kind …
Tag: World SF
War With the Newts by Karel Čapek
Well, it’s been a while but I’m back with a review of a book I recently finished. I don’t know if I’ll manage to review all of the books I’ve read this year — so far, there’s six this month alone, though one of those I’m reviewing for a newspaper– but I quite enjoyed this bizarre novel and so I figured I’d mention it here.I’ve wanted to read the book since 2001 or so, when my friend Jack was reading it, but I only got myself a copy a few years ago and, well, finally I made the time for …
Why, Revisited: The KOFAC Presentation
On the afternoon of Thursday, July 22nd I spoke at a short SF-related seminar for KOFAC (The Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science & Creativity) in Gangbyeon. I was asked to lay say a bit about how SF writers choose what to write about. Basically, to answer that question I felt I had to explain what I think SF is. So I put it this way: SF is how modern, industrialized culture digests the two shocks of technologically-imposed change on society, and the philosophical changes imposed on culture by science. That’s meaty — note that culture and society are …
Glitch: Tersesat Dalam Waktu (My First Indonesian SF Film)
So, I’ve just finished watching Glitch: Tersesat Dalam Waktu (English: Glitch: Getting Lost In Time) as I write this. (It will end up being posted later, but I’m writing it now, so I’ll just write it in the present time.) It’s one of the DVDs I managed to pick up while in Jakarta that is actually an SF movie, as opposed to mainstream drama or horror. (SF seems rare there, but horror is practically mainstream cinema in Indonesia, from what I can tell.) Anyway, the premise is that some sort of time loops have been set up for some unknown reason, …
Outsider Writing
Now that I’m back in Korea, and have a free morning, I’m just catching up on some blogs and fiction online and so on. I ran across a very interesting post at Aliette de Bodard’s blog, titled, Writing cultures: insider vs. outsider, about the various advantages and pitfalls faced by authors writing about a specific culture either as an insider, or as an outsider, for a Western audience (as in the dominant SF-reading audience, for example). It’s worth a read, including the comments, especially if you’re interested in my thoughts on the subject.