The Aliens Won: SF around the World and Back Again

Abstract

ESSAY The Aliens Won: SF around the World and Back Again Lovie Tidhar Inthis piece,LavieTidhar?editor inchief of theinfluential WorldSFNews Blog?suggests that we liveinthe GoldenAgeofworldSF.He also addresses theimport of theInternet on SF.Check this month's WLTwebsite tofind more SF on the Web. Thealiensare notwhatyoumight think. The English-language term "World SF" has had more than one meaning over the decades. Its earliest incarnation might well be the first Worldcon, or the World Science Fiction Convention, which took place in New York City in 1939, and was named less out of a desire for true international inclusion than to capitalize on thatyear's World's Fair in the city. Though administered by a "World SF Society" and theoretically open to all, itremains to a large extent an American phenomenon. Much later on, another world SF group formed: comprising several prominent US and UK writers, alongside some counterparts from across the world, its main raison d'?tre seems now?perhaps uncharitably?to have been an excuse for Western writers to drink in "exot ic" locales. Little of substance seemed to have emerged from the group for thebenefit of inter national writers, and it is no longer active. The problem with all previous approaches toworld SF from the English-speaking world? including the handful of specialist anthologies thathave appeared over the decades?has been the fact that,by default, such approaches aswere made were done by (certainly well-meaning) Western authors or editors rather than interna tional writers themselves. All this isnow changing. The Internet has been a radical force for change around the world. In terms of interna tional science fiction, ithas opened theway to a cross-pollination that is trulyglobal, democratiz ing a conversation by opening itup, for the first time, to international writers themselves to initi ate and expand. Forme, that change came into effectin 2005. That year, a group of German science-fiction fans decided to embark on a truly collabora tive, international project: Internova, a magazine devoted to international science-fiction and fan tasy stories, tobe selected, translated, edited, and published by people fromoutside of theAmeri can/Britishworld of SF. The first?and only?issue came out, con taining stories by such writers as Guy Hasson from Israel,Wu Yan fromChina, Vandana Singh from India, and others. Inhindsight, the involve ment of too many people at too many stages made the entire process overly cumbersome; distribution problems plagued it from the start; enthusiasms waned, and a second issue never appeared. And yet. . . It is my contention thatInternovarepresented awatershed mark for world SF. For the firsttime, a group of international writers themselves acted to promote theirown work. Using the Internet, German, Italian, Chinese, and Israeli writers cor responded, collaborated, and togethermade a difference. Having been involved with Internova from an early stage, "recruiting" several friends to become involved (Wu Yan, Guy Hasson, South African Richard Kunzmann, and others), I took enormous inspiration from thework done by the Internova collective. And in the meantime . . . May-June 2010 1 39 SCIENCE FICTION LavieTidhar grew up in Israel and South Africa and has since lived inthe United Kingdom, Vanuatu, and Laos. He isthe author of the novels The Bookman and the forthcoming Camera Obscura, both published by HarperCollins. He isalso the author of the novellas An Occupation of Angels, Cloud Permutations, and Goreland thePot-Bellied God, and two novels with Nir Yaniv, the English-language The Tel Aviv Dossier and the Hebrew Retzach Bidyoni. Other forthcoming novels include Martian Sands and Osama. He isalso a prolific short storywriter and edited the anthologies A Dick & Jane Primer forAdults and The Apex Book ofWorld SF. He runs theWorld SF News Blog at worldsf.wordpress.com. I became aware of other writers like me. Writ ers who worked inmore than one language, or who chose towrite in English in order to reach a wider readership, writers who were passionate about global science fictionand wanted to spread the word. Things were changing. Slowly, international writers began to make an appearance in maga zines?primarily the new wave of Internet pub lications. More novels began to be translated into English, not just in the small press, but by mainstream publishers. And new authors, such...