Apex Book Company

Those of us who work outside the English-language world or parallel to it – that is, those writers who either work in their native languages or choose to use English for fiction despite it not being their first language – are committing an act of cultural appropriation. Science fiction and fantasy as genre fiction arise – despite various historical markers from the Odyssey to Frankenstein brought out like dusty family heirlooms every now and then by scholars of the genre – from the American pulp magazines of the first part of the twentieth century. The works we identify as genre are part of what Raymond Chandler called the formula story, developed in Astounding and Weird Tales and Black Mask and Thrilling Wonder Stories and any number of other thrillingly-titled cheap magazines.

Yet those stories had, and continue to have, an appeal beyond the American mainland and the English-language world – an appeal that led to those stories and novels being translated into other languages and, later, for writers in other languages to try and write similar stories in their own tongues.

The history of non-English science fiction and fantasy is – despite various histories of genre that might point variously to the Bible or Journey to the West as preceding works in a long literary tradition – one of appropriation from the American mode, of a writing and a re-writing of formulae and tropes first fashioned in the furnaces of American pulps. And they continue, to a large extent, to be fashioned in the magazines and paperback houses of America.

What, then, does it mean for us outsiders? Are we wrong to appropriate American modes? Do we fail by doing so? And what does it mean when we consistently fail to engage in dialogue with the particular culture that fostered our shared love for these genres?

The last is perhaps the most perplexing, although the easiest to answer. Translation from other languages into English is, at best, negligible, and this phenomenon is carried evenly across genres. The English-language market, put simply, is not overly concerned with reading translations. In comparison, a very large percentage of books published in Europe and Asia are translations – not only from English but also from other languages (although English dominates). Genre, literature as a whole, in this case, is not a dialogue but a monologue, with us on the receiving end. Occasionally an answer might filter back – a Spanish best-seller translated into English, a specialist press putting out a small-circulation anthology of Chinese short stories – but that vast world of non-English genre remains a terra incognita, uncharted and unknown.

It is perhaps because of this, that a new generation of writers are beginning to use English to tell their stories, people like myself who have, at one point or another, made a conscious choice as to language, and came down on the side of English (at least, predominantly, although not exclusively). But what stories do we tell? Do we continue to emulate American stories? Should our characters be called Bill and John and Bob, or shall they be Wu and Ho and Eshkol and Phaiboon? And who will end up in space – will it be full of Americans or Chinese? Can there be Israelis on Mars? Can there be Malay in the asteroid belt? Is the future American – or is ours?

The future, of course, belongs to everyone, but the question remains: to what extent do we take our act of appropriation? Do we stay faithful to it, or do we attempt to subvert and rewrite it in our own image?

These are not, of course, questions to be answered in an article. The debate on these points is taking place right now in countries all around the world. It takes place in Israel, and in the Philippines, and in France, and everywhere genre fiction has taken hold. They are tenacious, those seeds of genre fiction. They plant deep roots.

Some – most – of us would remain unknown to American and British and Australian readers. Most writers are best in their native tongues, and so we get Chinese science fiction novels and epic French fantasy and Israeli YA novels and Malay horror. There are perhaps great works of genre being written and published around the world that we will never know of (and having an American award called the World Fantasy Award will not change that). But English is the new universal tongue. Many of us come from former British colonies. For many, English is a valid language and we are making the attempt to scale that previously-unassailable world. These are exciting times to be a writer.

But are we right to do it? The cultural appropriation debate that took place recently was, it seemed to me, conducted primarily between Americans. But how do we conduct the same argument? Whether Chinese or Argentineans, we are not (usually) minorities in our own countries. And yet we are constantly in the position of outsiders – at least when we put ourselves in direct comparison with the American model. Which we must do because, for better or worse, that is the model we initially drew upon.

Cultural appropriation, it seems to me, is, or should be, at the cornerstone of genre fiction. Not having it would mean that 1950s John W. Campbell Jr. future – a future of Anglo-Saxon men, a future of Johns rather than Isaacs, if you will. For bad or worse, Campbell shaped genre fiction. He ushered in The Golden Age. Only, to me, Campbell not so much shaped the course of the river as dammed it, and his Golden Age was an age in which I, and others like me, could not go. I’d like to celebrate the end of the Golden Age.

We must borrow from each other and do so liberally. Sometimes we might fail – often, perhaps. But we must make the attempt to weave a tapestry of voices rather than a single one, realise that the future is Asian as much as American, Muslim as much as Christian, and that – more than that – it is being written by different voices, even if – particularly when – they speak in other tongues.

Lavie Tidhar writes weird fiction. This is his web site. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and lived in South Africa and the UK. Most recently he’s lived in the Banks islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Lavie’s website is http://www.lavietidhar.co.uk/.

In 2007, Apex Publications released a collection of Jewish adventure stories titled HebrewPunk from Lavie Tidhar. This book is available as a direct order from the Apex Store and from the Apex aStore.

In 2009, Apex will be releasing his anthology of world SF titled The Apex Book of World SF.