Philippine Speculative Fiction Updates August 2011 Edition

Lots of interesting news for the month of July. (I also want to remind Filipino authors and readers to update the Philippine Speculative Fiction 2011 Database.)

First, as a backlog, Michael A.R. Co published his short story collection, The God Equation and Other Stories, on the Kindle late last year. The titular story, which won the Greg Brillantes award in 2006, can be found in the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler.

For the short story roundup, Philippine Genre Stories (guest-edited by Yvette Tan) published "Sweet" (1|2) by Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon (the story originally appeared in The Philippines Free Press last year and was a finalist in the 2010 Philippines Free Press Literary Awards) and "Malvar" by Paolo Chikiamco. The Philippines Free Press published "Why This Soft Soil" by Catherine Batac Walder (it's one of those stories that's ambiguous enough to be considered spec fic) while Philippines Graphic published "The Fortune-teller's Beautiful Daughter" by Dean Francis Alfar.

Alfar and Alcazaren de Leon's stories are particularly noteworthy.


When it comes to awards announcements, The Dragon and The Stars edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi (DAW, 2010), is a finalist for the Best English Related Work in this year’s Prix Aurora Awards. Three of the stories are by Filipino authors and now available online:

• “The Fortunes of Mrs. Yu” by Charles Tan
• “The Man on the Moon” by Crystal Gail Shangkuan Koo  
• “Bargains” by Gabriela Lee

You can find other excerpts and stories from the anthology here or here.

The World Fantasy Awards nominees have also been released and this blog is nominated for the Special Award, Non-Professional category.