Nicholas Seeley has put together an expansive and fascinating article for the upcoming issue of STRANGE HORIZONS which features interviews with many of the authors who have stories in THE APEX BOOK OF WORLD SF. Read what Aliette de Bordard, Jamil Nasir, Han Song, Kaaron Warren, and many others have to say on the issues of SF, foreignness, nationalism, and international fiction. Here’s a piece of the article:

“Israeli writer Guy Hasson contributes a story to the anthology that exemplifies some of these challenges. Other than its title, “The Levantine Experiments” has no “local color” whatsoever in its setting. It takes place in an indistinct, possibly futuristic, vaguely Western kind of nowhere. The nature of the story means that there are almost no locations to describe, and the nature and development of the society remains opaque.

Still, it’s hard not to wonder if the story’s gruesome plot reflects particularly national concerns. It’s a nightmare of illicit medical experimentation and its consequences; its major themes include violently contrasting perceptions of sanctuary and insecurity, and a particular return to the question of walls and borders—visible and invisible, physical and psychological. Put these themes together, and it’s hard to imagine this tale coming from anyone other than an Israeli writer.

Hasson, however, doesn’t necessarily buy this interpretation.

“Having lived my childhood half in Israel and half in the US, I feel I belong to both places and yet that I belong to neither,” he writes, in an e-mail. “I think that’s reflected in all my stories. . . . This particular story, in my opinion, doesn’t go back to the Holocaust or to the political situation here. It isn’t even about the horrible medical experiment. It’s about the process the character goes through, the way an idea leads to an idea, newness leads to variations of newness, and to the nature of freedom in our minds.”"

Read the whole article here!