Jaymee Goh of Silver Goggles and SFF author Joyce Chng have launched a fundraiser for a new steampunk anthology based on Southeast Asia to be published by Rosarium Publishing. According to their press release, The SEA is Ours was conceived with a specific intent in mind:
Both editors have long been involved in speculative fiction. Joyce Chng is the author of several urban fantasy and Young Adult novels written from a Singaporean perspective. Jaymee Goh, currently a PhD Candidate at the University of California, Riverside, has published short fiction and poetry, including a series of short stories set in a re-imagined Malaysia uncolonized by the West. Both are also consistent critics of the genre’s Eurocentrism. “We felt unsatisfied by representations of Southeast Asia in most of speculative fiction,” Goh says in an interview with Asian American Press, “and felt very strongly that steampunk would be a really great way of talking about the myriad histories in the region.
Very excited to see this book go out into the world, and more details about the book and how to support it can be found after the jump.
The SEA Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia is an anthology of short stories and art. It is exactly what it says on the tin–it has:
SOUTHEAST ASIA!
Southeast Asia is the lesser-known Asia, the Asia confused with other Asias. Some know us by our typhoons and tsunamis, as the land where refugees and cheap labor come from, or as the sad, downtrodden, Third World region where Westerners go for their exotica and sex tourism.
Southeast Asia is a rapidly modernizing region, home to unique flora, fauna, cultures with long histories of towering civilizations, and peoples picking ourselves up in the wake of imperialism. Southeast Asia is a place of far flung dreams, rising metropolises, high-end technology, and myriad languages. Each Southeast Asian country has its unique history and treasures.
STEAMPUNK!
Commonly assumed to be “Victorian Science Fiction,” our fancy steampunk recipe combines alternate history, technofantasy, and retrofuturism.
THE BOOK
Twelve stories that reimagine Southeast Asia through a steampunk lens—or perhaps, stories that reimagine steampunk’d fantastic technology and potential histories through a Southeast Asian lens. You decide! These are tales of Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam by writers all over the world.
Here you will find dreams of revolution, acts of resistance, and lives, loss, and loves played out in high and low places. Aswang! Boat People! Clockwork revenge! Dragons! Spider fighting! Volcanoes! And the requisite explosions galore!
THE TABLE OF CONTENTS
“On The Consequence of Sound” – Timothy Dimacali
“Chasing Volcanoes” – Marilag Angway
“Ordained” – L. L. Hill
“The Last Aswang” – Alessa Hinlo
“Life Under Glass” – Nghi Vo
“Between Severed Souls” – Paolo Chikiamco
“The Unmaking of the Cuadro Amoroso” – Kate Osias
“Working Woman” – Olivia Ho
“Spider Here” – Robert Liow
“The Chamber of Souls” – zm quỳnh
“Petrified” – Ivanna Mendels
“The Insects and Women Sing Together” – Pear Nuallak
These are the voices of the unheard, singing the songs of the unsung. Only a few have ever been published in the West—indeed, some have never been published before! Each story will be accompanied by an illustration by an equally talented artist.
The SEA Is Ours will be released November 1, 2015 from Rosarium Publishing, distributed by IPG.
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