The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 3

In The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 3, editor Lavie Tidhar collects short stories by science fiction and fantasy authors from Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe.

These stories run the gamut from science fiction, to fantasy, and to horror. Some are translations (from German, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Swedish), and some were written in English. The authors herein come from Asia and Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Their stories are all wondrous and wonderful and showcase the vitality and diversity that can be found in the field. They are a conversation, by voices that should be heard. And once again, editor Lavie Tidhar and Apex Publications are tremendously grateful for the opportunity to bring them to our readers.

Table of Contents

"Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods" — Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Thailand)
"A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight" — Xia Jia (China)
"Act of Faith" — Fadzilshah Johanabos (Malaysia)
"The Foreigner" — Uko Bendi Udo (Nigeria)
"The City of Silence" — Ma Boyong (China)
"Planetfall" — Athena Andreadis (Greece)
"Jungle Fever" — Ika Koeck (Malaysia)
"To Follow the Waves" — Amal El-Mohtar (Lebanon/Canada)
"Ahuizotl" — Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (Mexico)
"The Rare Earth" — Biram Mboob (Gambia)
"Spider's Nest" — Myra Çakan (Germany)
"Waiting with Mortals" — Crystal Koo (Philippines)
"Three Little Children" — Ange (France)
"Brita's Holiday Village" — Karin Tidbeck (Sweden)
"Regressions" — Swapna Kishore (India)
"Dancing on the Red Planet" — Berit Ellingsen (Korea/Norway)

About the Editor

Lavie Tidhar is the author of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize-winning A Man Lies Dreaming, the World Fantasy Award-winning Osama, and of the critically-acclaimed The Violent Century. His other works include the Bookman Histories trilogy, several novellas, two collections, and a forthcoming comics mini-series, Adler. He currently lives in London.

Excerpt

From: "Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

In the shadow of machine–gods I tell wayfarers of a time when my people were a nightmare the color of hemorrhage and glinting teeth.

There are other narratives, but this is the one they want to hear most, the one they pay with their adoration and bright–eyed want, for they’ve never known us for anything but peace. Conflict juts out from the skein of Pojama’s history, broken glass–shard, rupturing and ruptured.

I smile; I oblige. Though the story is for me, there are parts that I share simply for the reality of speaking it out loud, for the virtue of being heard.

My mouth moves, output for one of my cranial chips. My fingers sketch, autopilot, the forms of our heroes and enemies from a continent whose name and life has now been lost. My voice murmurs the tragedies and sings the heroics of Kanrisa and Surada, rising for climax, falling soft for denouement. The visitors’ district is machine–dead. What a thrill it must be to hear the thunderclap notes of my gloves, behold the psychedelic fires that pour from my nails.

Once, they interrupt. The figures of our enemies do not seem real. They are right: with sagging eyes the hues of cheap jades and faces like skulls, even for villains they are too fantastical, too unhuman.

“My great–grandmother told of them so,” I say and shrug. “Perhaps she was senile.” With a motion, I turn the figures into shapes more familiar, shapes more like ours.

Inside the vessel of my thought — a garden of sliding intelligences who whisper to me, childhood mates grown to adults next to my ventricles and lungs — a different story unfolds.

I met my betrothed Kanrisa in our second cycle.

A garden festooned with lights, on a day of the scythe. I was in academy uniform, narrow skirt and sigil–carved sleeves, surrounded by girl age–mates. I tried to look severe, and mature, and to be taken seriously. I can no longer remember what the gathering was about, albeit I recall that someone was terra–sculpting on the fly. The earth twitched and jolted, forcing us to hover. For an hour or so, I tolerated this, making stiff comments to my age–mates. The ground eventually stilled — I thought the mischief–maker had simply had enough; the hush that fell on everyone told me otherwise.

A garden patch smoothed into an impromptu landing pad. The craft touched the grass quietly, which was not extraordinary until I realized that the engine had been off long before it touched the ground. It had shed altitude with nothing save clever maneuvering and air resistance. Brave. Reckless.

Its hatch lifted, and out came echoes in training, each fitted in muted flexskin, their throats metallic with Bodhva implants that’d let them synchronize with machine–gods. The last of them, pilot, stepped out. She stood taller than most.

My age–mates rippled, whispering. “Oh her—” “The prodigy, my sister said.” Breathlessly. “Graduating soon, at our age.” “No she’s a little more senior… look how she moves.”

I looked, compulsively. Kanrisa was dressed no differently from the rest, but she set herself apart in the sinuous fluidity of her steps. Where other echoes were soft and pared, she was hard and full– figured.

Now I remember why I was there, that day.

I moved through the wave of giddy students on tiptoes at the sight of rarely–seen echoes, basking in reflected prestige and exotique. Most of us had been taught the theories of Bodhva training; few saw it in person, and even close observation told little. How did one stretch a mind to accommodate the multi–threading of machines?

“She’s lovely, birthed to echo, I think.” “Oh no you don’t, that’s not legal anymore — the molding matrices, surely not!” Someone sighed. “It was legal when she was made. Is she even entered into the Abacus? I’d guess not, a shame…”

One last line of young ambigendered and I was through. From her angle I must have looked as though I’d materialized out of nowhere, scandalized susurrus given flesh. Kanrisa glanced at me, over her shoulder, over a tight little smile: she wasn’t pleased to be here, preferred to be back in meditative spheres or else out flying. For that was the privilege of Bodhva.

We surprised each other. I didn’t expect to catch her; she didn’t anticipate anyone to touch her at all, let alone to clasp her hand and say, “I’m Jidri. You are to be my wife.”

A few heard, her fellow echoes mostly. One or two behind me, part of the academy crowd.

Kanrisa’s smile didn’t change, though she didn’t dislodge me or pull away. “You must be mistaken, student. The Abacus doesn’t rattle my name.”

“It will.” Courage or unreason moved me to draw closer. “Put your name in. It’ll match us.”

Until that day, I had never met her: had no personal knowledge of her, let alone desired her. All she’d been to me was a name, output to me by a modified copy of the predictive algorithm that gave the Abacus its sapience.

Kanrisa submitted her name, out of either curiosity or an angry impulse to be proven right that the exercise was pointless, and within the week we were declared matrimonial potentiates. We would make a union of two, against the average match of four point five.