Octavia E. Butler’s Birthday
June 22, 2008
Octavia E. Butler, a phenomenal writer of speculative fiction, passed away in 2006 and left behind a legacy that will never be forgotten. Her works have been honored with many awards, and her books have entertained millions of readers.
In honor of her birthday, Kate Schaefer and the Carl Brandon Society are requesting donations to the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund. You can learn more about the scholarship fund here: http://www.carlbrandon.org/butlerscholarship/
Learn more about Octavia E. Butler at http://www.sfwa.org/members/Butler/. Also, this fan blog at www.octaviabutler.net features the audio play of her book Kindred.
Welcome to the Carl Brandon Society’s Asian and Pacific Islander specfic blog carnival. This carnival is presented as an end-of-the-month celebration of API contributions to the speculative fiction genres.
The CARL BRANDON SOCIETY also recommended the following speculative fiction books for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month:
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
A collection of stories from one of American speculative fiction’s most precise and beautiful writers.
Atomik Aztek by Sesshu Foster
An Aztec prince or a Los Angeles meatpacker? The protagonist travels back and forth between two alternative realities, never sure which is real.
Hopeful Monsters by Hiromi Goto
Wonderful stories by the author of The Kappa Child.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
In a dystopian England, three children discover that they are clones produced to provide organs to the sick.
Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai
Science fiction set in a dystopian near future in which corporate enclaves house lucky employees, leaving most of humanity to deal with increasingly strange ecological developments.
The Poet’s Journey by Amirthi Mohanraj (illustrated by Kat Beyer)
A young poet sets out into the wide world on a journey to find poetry; with the help of a few magical creatures, she finds more than she ever expected.
Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Mad experiments with the unleashed potential of the dreaming brain.
Of Love and Other Monsters by Vandana Singh
The main character wakes up from a fire and doesn’t know who he is, but can sense and manipulate the minds of others. He is not alone in this ability. Singh takes us on a metamind ride.
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
A wordless graphic novel about immigration and displacement.
On the Other Side of the Eye by Bryan Thao Worra
Speculative poems that take us from the secret wars of the CIA in Laos to the secret edges of the human soul and the universe.
Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Carole McDonnell presents Bryan Thao Worra: Laotian-American Speculative Fiction Writer posted at Dark Parables – Reviews from a Christian Sister.
Claire Light presents Starship & Haiku posted at SeeLight.
Gene van Troyer presents Proceedings of ‘Eighth national conference for science fiction writers ‘ posted at Science Fiction in India.
speculative fiction
Gene van Troyer presents Philippine Speculative Fiction » 2007 Philippine Speculative Fiction Lists posted at Philippine Speculative Fiction, saying, “Excerpt: “Sorry, the Philippines has neither the Hugos nor the Nebulas (or even the Stoker) so instead, four SF&F fans posts their lists of favorite local speculative fiction short stories that was published in the previous year … From the usual suspects (Philippine Speculative Fiction, Philippine Genre Stories and Story Philippines), 2007 saw new doors open which included a lifestyle magazine (Rogue) and off-shore e-zines which published Filipino Authors (Town Drunk, Serendipity and Clarkesworld).”"
writers
Gene van Troyer presents green blood posted at notes from the peanut gallery, saying, “Excerpt: “Manila Prints Sydney and Manila releases ‘Green Blood and Other Stories’, a collection of short stories by a talented new author Erwin Cabucos.
Fifteen short stories exploring a range of themes, including intercultural marriage, racism, social justice, bullying, religious beliefs and growing up Filipino are packed in this new literary feast.”"
Camille M. Picott presents camillemulan: How Raggedy Chan Got Out of Jail posted at Camille M. Picott, saying, “Specfic Author Camille M. Picott”
Gene van Troyer presents Running to Neverland posted at Twelve Hours Later, saying, “Excerpt: “Pan Haitian’s Run, Dajiao! Run, – Pan’s most recent work has been in the realm of fantasy, and he’s been involved with Jin He Zai in the Novoland project, an attempt to build an indigenous fantasy universe.”"
ng for cbs presents First Impressions: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World posted at Nancy O. Greene, saying, “Initial thoughts on Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami.”
That concludes this edition. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our
blog carnival index page.
Technorati tags:
asian and pacific islander specfic, blog carnival.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland at Powell’s Books
I recently purchased the book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami as part of my participation with the Carl Brandon Society API Heritage Month reading list. Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to finish it yet, but I wanted to post about what I’ve read so far and the initial impressions of the work.
Haruki Murakami is one of those writers that has been on the edge of my literary awareness some time. I was intrigued by Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and after the quake, but, for whatever reason, I never got around to getting those books. Because the opportunity to delve deeper into his work presented itself, I started reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and then also decided to read a bit more about him. I’m fond of the works of Kurt Vonnegut and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it appears that they are two writers that have influenced Murakami.
The presence of a Vonnegut-like style of storytelling is hinted at within the first few pages of this book, though Murakami undeniably has a different style and the similarities seem tenuous at best. Still, there is a surreal, out-of-body “invitation” into the story. It opens with a man stuck in a elevator and, due to its nature, he begins to question the passage of time and his own mental facilities:
“The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all.”
After reading the first chapter, I went back to the first page and wrote this initial impression underneath the title: ‘opening paragraph/chapter – trapped? A symbol for the mind and mindless grasping in a modern work-a-day world?’
While I’m in no way sure that this is what’s being alluded to in the first chapter, I’ve found some have said that he writes about “characters that are obsessed with capitalism.” Besides “climbing the ladder,” there might be no better symbol for capitalistic obsession than going upward in an elevator, shut off from awareness of the outside world.
At this point, I’m uncertain as to how much I will like the novel. The writing is striking, but I haven’t gleaned enough from the book yet to get a proper hold on the story it’s trying to tell. I’m up for the challenge and regardless of where it takes me, at the end of this 400 page journey I believe I’ll have much to think about. This is the great thing about getting involved with literary-minded communities—it opens the world up to a slew of works that one may have otherwise overlooked due to lack of time and information.
With roughly 200,000 books published per year, it can be easy to get sucked into a stale reading existence—sticking only to what one is familiar with and nothing else. Books aren’t always inexpensive. And for those of us that really enjoy reading and being invested in the stories we read, works that don’t “click” can be profoundly disappointing. Nevertheless, if one is to discover something breathtaking and new, to grow and learn, one has to be open to the possibility that not everything read will strike a strong cord with one’s particular tastes.
