The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 1 (Apex World of Speculative Fiction)

The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 1 (Apex World of Speculative Fiction)

Lavie Tidhar

Language: English

Pages: 302

ISBN: B002YQ2X2G

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


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”

Anil Menon (India) — “Into the Night”

Mélanie Fazi (France, translated by Christopher Priest) — “Elegy”

Zoran Živković (Serbia, translated by Alice Copple-Tošić)—“Compartments”

(Note: Digital edition does not contain the Zoran Živković's story)

Cover art and design by Sarah Anne Langton.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

loss. Her father thought that they would not agree with him, but he said, “Let’s make a deal. How much is it?” The lamas gathered and murmured for a whilst. Then an old lama, possibly the living Buddha of the lamasery, stepped forward and said to Father: “My benefactor, if you really want it, just take it away. Is there anything in the world that we cannot give up? And it is the wheel’s fate.” The reply went beyond her father’s expectations. Watching the lama’s peaceful face, the daughter and

Nir Yaniv is an Israeli writer, editor, and musician. His first short story collection, Ktov Ke’shed Mi’shachat (Write Like a Devil), came out in 2006, and he is a co-author (with the editor of this book) of a short novel, The Tel Aviv Dossier. He served as editor of the Israeli SF Society’s website and later edited the magazine Chalomot Be’aspamia. He lives in Tel Aviv. They say you should always start small. Burn a tree, perhaps: a parked car, road signs, a traffic light. Not us. We, for

bearded and losing his hair. The town had changed, too. There were big buildings and smooth roads, washing machines and colour TVs, and hardly anyone rode donkeys anymore. Someone had introduced a machine that could chip stone smoother and more quickly than any stonecutter. We walked around the playground gingerly, hands in our pockets, as if we might break something. It was morning class period, and a kindergarten song came faintly through the sunlight from the far end of the school building.

sea, looking for some measure of freedom. Thapsakae—it rhymes with Tupperware—it’s always warm, but never stifling like in Bangkok, always a breeze from the unseen sea, shaking the ripe coconuts from the trees…a town of stilted dwellings, a tiny main street with storefront row houses, fields of neon green rice as far as the eye can see, lazy water buffalo wallowing, and always the canals running alongside the half-paved road, women beating their wet laundry with rocks in the dawn, boys diving in

It’s always the same for him—they were taken away, whoever has them will not return them even if they are still alive. “They’re dead, Deborah. Get used to the idea. You’ll never see them again.” Why is it always men who go to pieces? It is not Benjamin who, night after night, comes to this hill to plead for your leniency. He does nothing but wait, drunk more often than he is sober—counting the seconds, the hours, the years that have passed since that day. That day, that morning, just after we

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