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ISSUE 11: CONTRIBUTORS
Adele Gardner, Avra Margariti, David A. Hewitt, D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Elaine Vilar Madruga, M. Bennardo, Mary Soon Lee, Phoebe Low, Qurat Dar, Timothy Bastek, Toshiya Kamei, Uma Menon & Wren Wallis. Cover art by Edward Hicks (1848).
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family (a form somehow must)
family (a form somehow must) Gwynne Garfinkle the cat vanishes forever between one episode and the next so does our beloved dog (we don't notice) the girls once had a different dad the boys, a different mom now they're gone never to be mentioned like the braces one of...
The Santa Monica Prophecies: A Collaborative Triptych
The idea for this triptych of poems was conceived when Layla, Holly, and Bonnie spent an evening at Santa Monica Pier in LA, where they had their futures foretold by a fortune-telling machine. Each writer's poem is directly inspired by her fortune, borrowing words,...
Instructions for Astronauts by Michael Janairo
Instructions for Astronauts Michael Janairo I. The People of the One Ship By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. — Genesis 3:19 Oh, Voyagers, Our...
Robots, Ghosts, and Dreams: Some Preoccupations of World SF
After reading a lot of speculative fiction in English translation over the past couple of years, I finally decided to make a subject index on my site (sfintranslation.com). Not surprisingly, I had found myself coming across the same preoccupations, obsessions, and...
Cixin Liu: Chinese Readers Care About the Whole Humanity
Read: Interview in Chinese Cixin Liu is the most prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People's Republic of China. Liu is a winner of the Hugo Award, an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo), and a winner of the Chinese Nebula...
Fidelity, Meaning, and Metadata: Observations of a New Translator
Early in the process of my first translation for Clarkesworld, I wrestled with the issue of the protagonist’s name. Wu Kong（悟空）, ‘Awakened to Nothingness,’ was the religious name given to the Monkey King by his first master, perhaps to imbue the headstrong creature...
Landscape Of Dreams: Metronome by Oliver Langmead
Worldbuilding can be a dull affair. An attempt to survey a place that isn’t there can often result in writing that isn’t readable. For M. John Harrison [1], a work of fiction relying on worldbuilding does not invite readers to the text with the idea that reading is a...
The Twelve Rules of Etiquette at Miss Firebird’s School for Girls
Miss Firebird’s School for Girls is committed to the reeducation of young women who have gone astray. In keeping with this pledge, we ask for those in attendance to obey the following rules of etiquette, all of which we’ve developed based on the misbehavior of former...
Axes on Viola
An intriguing short story from the award-winning Czech science fiction and fantasy writer Jaroslav Mostecký The tree yelled in a premonition of death and the sky stormed. Seal was startled and dropped the lamp on the ground. I swore and looked furiously at him. “What...
Winds That Stir Vermilion Sands
2370 Seven-year-old Rodrigo ben-David sat alone in the hovel, spooning the last bit of last Shabbat’s chamin into his mouth and using a hard bit of crust to scrape the pot clean. The thin, cold wind rattled the aluplaz walls mercilessly. Winters in the Hellas Region...
Spectacular Worlds in Translation
"A hypertext of original narratives and home of the translated from around the globe, Mithila Review is an inquiry into the process of translating and the craft of storytelling.” I wrote that description as a vision statement for Mithila Review last January, and it...
Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation (2016) opens with editor Ken Liu’s discussion of the limiting nature of comparative categories such as ‘Chinese science fiction’ or ‘science fiction written in English.’ I believe it is important,...
Gringos
By Ernest Hogan An extract from the novel High Aztech: I thought I had died, but it was an ixmictiante flowery death, in a battle with a proud Aztecan warrior, so I was happy. I knew it wasn’t Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancíhuatl that were waiting for me this time. I...
La Gorda and the City of Silver
I. I was born on a Wednesday, in middle of a chapuzón. The sudden squall of sky water bears little resemblance to a thunderstorm – it's more like a vertical flood, though very brief. I considered Chapuzón for my luchador name – I had poured out of my mother with the...
American Moat
Hamilton — everyone called him Ham — had fully bought into the bacon-as-fashion fad. That night as he patrolled the Arizona border with Alex, his ensemble featured a bacon wristwatch, bacon suspenders, bacon bolo tie, and bacon boots branded with the image of a pig...