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[message]The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 1
by Lavie Tidhar
ISBN 9781937009366
Pp. 302
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The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar, features award-winning science fiction and fantasy short stories from Asia, Eastern Europe, and around the world.
The world of speculative fiction is expansive; it covers more than one country, one continent, one culture. Collected here are sixteen stories penned by authors from Thailand, the Philippines, China, Israel, Pakistan, Serbia, Croatia, Malaysia, and other countries across the globe. Each one tells a tale breathtakingly vast and varied, whether caught in the ghosts of the past or entangled in a postmodern age.
Among the spirits, technology, and deep recesses of the human mind, stories abound. Kites sail to the stars, technology transcends physics, and wheels cry out in the night. Memories come and go like fading echoes and a train carries its passengers through more than simple space and time. Dark and bright, beautiful and haunting, the stories herein represent speculative fiction from a sampling of the finest authors from around the world.
Table of Contents
S.P. Somtow (Thailand) — “The Bird Catcher”
Jetse de Vries (Netherlands) — “Transcendence Express”
Guy Hasson (Israel) — “The Levantine Experiments”
Han Song (China) — “The Wheel of Samsara”
Kaaron Warren (Australia/Fiji) —“Ghost Jail”
Yang Ping (China) — “Wizard World”
Dean Francis Alfar (Philippines) — “L’Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)”
Nir Yaniv (Israel) — “Cinderers”
Jamil Nasir (Palestine) — “The Allah Stairs”
Tunku Halim (Malaysia) — “Biggest Baddest Bomoh”
Aliette de Bodard (France) — “The Lost Xuyan Bride”
Kristin Mandigma (Philippines) — “Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang”
Aleksandar Žiljak (Croatia) — “An Evening in the City Coffehouse, With Lydia on My Mind” (Read for free in Apex Magazine issue 5)
Anil Menon (India) — “Into the Night”
Mélanie Fazi (France, translated by Christopher Priest) — “Elegy”
Zoran Živković (Serbia, translated by Alice Copple-Tošić) — “Compartments”
Excerpt
An Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on My Mind by Aleksander Žiljak
Maybe I shook them off. I don’t feel them breathing down my neck anymore. I turn around, but I don’t see them in the crowd.
The square is swarmed by people. I elbow through the sea of bodies, carried by the current of fear. Conversations, laughter, shouts are everywhere around me. It’s supper time, and crowds gather in front of manna machines. In Gaj Street, the Bolivians drawl El Condor Pasa on their flutes and drums, wood and stretched skin bringing snow from the Andean peaks. Performers are dancing under the clock and in front of the Vice-Roy, not giving a shit about ten degrees below zero. Nanopigments in their skins pour colours across naked bodies writhing through retro-industry at full volume. Hare Krishnas reach me from the Dolac. Their mantra collides with the flutes and ghetto blasters, mixing and merging into a bizarre noise of three worlds melted in the same pot.
I look at my wristwatch. The Underground from Samobor arrived a couple of minutes ago and a new crowd spills out on the square, seekers of evening amusement in the metropolis core. I drown amongst people, one fish in the glittering school that moves to and fro, hiding me from gaping jaws.
A bunch of kids in fluorescent jackets buzz next to me on their roller skates. One of them almost runs down some babe, her skin violet, her snow-white hair reaching halfway down her back. The girl spouts obscenities after them, but the punks don’t even hear her, their players at full pitch.
I walk across the square and find my refuge in the City Coffeehouse, a preserve of the Kaiser-und-König Zagreb tradition in the midst of the nano-Babylon. Also, a relatively good place for taking a break: they will hardly dare to off me here. Absent-mindedly, I order a cup of coffee. The real coffee, expensive: Brazil. Just a few plantations left, surrounded by vast rainforests.
I take a deep breath and calm down. As I wait for the coffee, I run all the possible scenarios through my head. And they all boil down to the same thing: back to the start. New name, new address, as far away from here as possible. Maybe even a new face in the mirror every morning. I already ruled out everything else. My existence in Zagreb is past and finished. When I leave, there’ll be no coming back for some time. Say, to the end of my life.
They won’t forgive. They can’t.
If only Piko wasn’t such an idiot!
Time for some stock-taking. The plastic in my pocket is comfortably fat. Perhaps it could last me two years. That’s good news. Bad news is that every use of the credit card is a public announcement of my momentary whereabouts. That means a new card. It’ll cost me at least a third, maybe more.
I touch an Apple under my jacket, as if I want to make sure it’s still there, in my pocket. A little box with a headset and dataglove that I need to switch to the next level. I feel somewhat better now. I’m still in the game, it’s not over yet. But I need an assembler, ASAP. And I need some time to hack its protection. In the meantime, public places. I’m becoming quite certain that the boys won’t take me out before witnesses. At least, I hope so.
Meanwhilst, the player rewinds and the clip starts from frame zero.
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.
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- Description
- Table of Contents
- Excerpt
- About the Editor
The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar, features award-winning science fiction and fantasy short stories from Asia, Eastern Europe, and around the world.
The world of speculative fiction is expansive; it covers more than one country, one continent, one culture. Collected here are sixteen stories penned by authors from Thailand, the Philippines, China, Israel, Pakistan, Serbia, Croatia, Malaysia, and other countries across the globe. Each one tells a tale breathtakingly vast and varied, whether caught in the ghosts of the past or entangled in a postmodern age.
Among the spirits, technology, and deep recesses of the human mind, stories abound. Kites sail to the stars, technology transcends physics, and wheels cry out in the night. Memories come and go like fading echoes and a train carries its passengers through more than simple space and time. Dark and bright, beautiful and haunting, the stories herein represent speculative fiction from a sampling of the finest authors from around the world.
S.P. Somtow (Thailand) — “The Bird Catcher”
Jetse de Vries (Netherlands) — “Transcendence Express”
Guy Hasson (Israel) — “The Levantine Experiments”
Han Song (China) — “The Wheel of Samsara”
Kaaron Warren (Australia/Fiji) —“Ghost Jail”
Yang Ping (China) — “Wizard World”
Dean Francis Alfar (Philippines) — “L’Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)”
Nir Yaniv (Israel) — “Cinderers”
Jamil Nasir (Palestine) — “The Allah Stairs”
Tunku Halim (Malaysia) — “Biggest Baddest Bomoh”
Aliette de Bodard (France) — “The Lost Xuyan Bride”
Kristin Mandigma (Philippines) — “Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang”
Aleksandar Žiljak (Croatia) — “An Evening in the City Coffehouse, With Lydia on My Mind” (Read for free in Apex Magazine issue 5)
Anil Menon (India) — “Into the Night”
Mélanie Fazi (France, translated by Christopher Priest) — “Elegy”
Zoran Živković (Serbia, translated by Alice Copple-Tošić) — “Compartments”
An Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on My Mind by Aleksander Žiljak
Maybe I shook them off. I don’t feel them breathing down my neck anymore. I turn around, but I don’t see them in the crowd.
The square is swarmed by people. I elbow through the sea of bodies, carried by the current of fear. Conversations, laughter, shouts are everywhere around me. It’s supper time, and crowds gather in front of manna machines. In Gaj Street, the Bolivians drawl El Condor Pasa on their flutes and drums, wood and stretched skin bringing snow from the Andean peaks. Performers are dancing under the clock and in front of the Vice-Roy, not giving a shit about ten degrees below zero. Nanopigments in their skins pour colours across naked bodies writhing through retro-industry at full volume. Hare Krishnas reach me from the Dolac. Their mantra collides with the flutes and ghetto blasters, mixing and merging into a bizarre noise of three worlds melted in the same pot.
I look at my wristwatch. The Underground from Samobor arrived a couple of minutes ago and a new crowd spills out on the square, seekers of evening amusement in the metropolis core. I drown amongst people, one fish in the glittering school that moves to and fro, hiding me from gaping jaws.
A bunch of kids in fluorescent jackets buzz next to me on their roller skates. One of them almost runs down some babe, her skin violet, her snow-white hair reaching halfway down her back. The girl spouts obscenities after them, but the punks don’t even hear her, their players at full pitch.
I walk across the square and find my refuge in the City Coffeehouse, a preserve of the Kaiser-und-König Zagreb tradition in the midst of the nano-Babylon. Also, a relatively good place for taking a break: they will hardly dare to off me here. Absent-mindedly, I order a cup of coffee. The real coffee, expensive: Brazil. Just a few plantations left, surrounded by vast rainforests.
I take a deep breath and calm down. As I wait for the coffee, I run all the possible scenarios through my head. And they all boil down to the same thing: back to the start. New name, new address, as far away from here as possible. Maybe even a new face in the mirror every morning. I already ruled out everything else. My existence in Zagreb is past and finished. When I leave, there’ll be no coming back for some time. Say, to the end of my life.
They won’t forgive. They can’t.
If only Piko wasn’t such an idiot!
Time for some stock-taking. The plastic in my pocket is comfortably fat. Perhaps it could last me two years. That’s good news. Bad news is that every use of the credit card is a public announcement of my momentary whereabouts. That means a new card. It’ll cost me at least a third, maybe more.
I touch an Apple under my jacket, as if I want to make sure it’s still there, in my pocket. A little box with a headset and dataglove that I need to switch to the next level. I feel somewhat better now. I’m still in the game, it’s not over yet. But I need an assembler, ASAP. And I need some time to hack its protection. In the meantime, public places. I’m becoming quite certain that the boys won’t take me out before witnesses. At least, I hope so.
Meanwhilst, the player rewinds and the clip starts from frame zero.
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.
The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 1