Worldwide Speculative

While reading through the web blogs this past week, I found this interesting link to a blog on the state of Chinese science fiction and fantasy via The Mumpsimus.

It also reminded me of a short discussion I had with JP and Neil over at the Sci-Fantasy Forum about looking for speculative fiction stories all around the world. This led to JP linking to a great article on Science Fiction in Tamil.

I find this fascinating because it gives me hope to see countries that I think have little or no tradition in speculative fiction (unlike the Americas or Europe) now having healthy SFF literature that they can be proud of. And if it's possible for these countries, why not in the Philippines?

I don't claim to have read all of Philippine literature but I'm generally sure that speculative fiction is nearly non-existent in this country, except for some writings by Eric Gamalinda (who unfortunately has migrated to the US). Ironically, the Philippine reading public is growing and this includes a great number of Filipinos getting into SFF.

(I'm not just talking about "Harry Potter," "Lord of the Rings," Stephen King and media tie-in books like Star Trek Star Wars, mind. And most of the bookstores I've mentioned in a previous post have prominent SFF sections.)

So where does that leave the Philippines and the local SFF literature?

Well, there is some hope. One of the most prestigious national awards for literature in the country, the Palanca Awards, has come up with the FUTURISTIC FICTION category, presenting a scenario of the future Filipino and the country.

So who knows, maybe we'll soon see SFF magazines in the near (or far?) future. And that's no speculation...