Lavie Tidhar - The Apex Book of World SF 2

When we first set out to put together and publish The Apex Book of World SF, none of us thought it would become quite what it became. Success is relative, of course—but we were in turns amazed and gratified as the anthology took off, receiving wide-spread exposure in the genre world, initiating conversation—even ending up on more than one university curriculum!

At the same time as the book came out, I launched the World SF Blog, initially intended to be a promotional tool for the anthology, but very quickly it took on a life of its own. The site now publishes a regular stream of articles, essays, interviews and even short fiction, all on a daily basis (you can find the site here: http://worldsf.wordpress.com/). Charles Tan joined to help me run it, and somehow, between blog and book, we seemed to have hit on a new wave of interest in, and enthusiasm for, the science fiction and fantasy coming from outside of the traditional Anglophone world of SF. Whether we helped create the wave, or merely rode the top of it, I can’t say—nor does it matter, as long as the wave is there and still going.

To my mind, though, what we are doing simply reflects a wider change in the SF world. In this volume, for instance, we have a story from Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi, whose debut novel—written in English—has done tremendously well on publication. Here, too, is mega-star in the making Lauren Beukes from South Africa, who I got the chance to see win the Arthur C. Clarke Award this year in London…

In this volume, too, we are very lucky to have a story from Polish grandmaster Andrzej Sapkowski, whose novels are beginning to be translated into English and winning a wider readership everywhere. And here, too, I have tried to address the imbalance that was present in the first volume, and which I lamented in my last introduction—namely, to introduce more African and Latin American writers into the next volume

I am extremely grateful to Daniel W. Koon for his help with the two Cuban stories, and much else, to Wu Yan for his help with securing another Chinese story—this one by Chen Qiufan—for this volume, and for Charles Tan for services above and beyond the call of duty. And none of this would have been possible without the support and enthusiasm of our hard working publisher, Jason Sizemore, whose faith brought this project alive.

There are more original stories in this collection than in the last one, and more stories, period—a whopping twenty-six this time around!—featuring writers from Africa and Europe, Asia and Latin America, Australia and New Zealand and the Middle East. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

In Springtime, her garden yielded a hundred wisteria blossoms. White English roses climbed the pergola. Digitalis purpurea , lavender from the South of France, mint and thyme, rosemary and tarragon, basil and sweet marjoram—they all grew in Alternate Girl’s one-hundred-percent super-qualified housewife garden.

Across the street, excavators dug up large swathes of grass.

“They’re building a new complex over there,” her neighbour said. “I heard the farmer who owned that land went off to live the life of a millionaire.”

Her neighbour babbled on about yachts and sea voyages and Alternate Girl stood there staring while the machines went about their business of churning up grass and soil. She wondered what it would be like to be crushed under those hungry wheels, and she flinched at her own imagination.

“A pity,” her neighbour said. “I sure will miss the view.”

Alternate Girl murmured something vague in reply, and went back to tending her flowers.

She wondered if the farmer was happier now that he had his millions. Would wealth and sea voyages make up for severed ties and the erasure of generations of familial history?

She pulled out a stray weed, and scattered coffee grounds to keep the cats from digging up her crocus bulbs.

She shook her head and headed back indoors. She’d only known two kinds of lives, and in neither of them had she been a millionaire.

Most expatriates pursue a model life. This makes them a desired member in their adopted society. They appear to assimilate quickly, adapting without visible complications to the customs of the country in which they reside.

On the surface, they may appear contented, well-adjusted, and happy. However, studies reveal an underlying sorrow that often manifests itself in dreams. In dreams, the expatriate experiences no ambivalent feelings. There is only a strong sense of loss. It isn’t uncommon for expats to wake up crying.

In her dreams, Alternate Girl fled from her life as an expat. She sprouted wings and let the wind take her back to the gates of her hometown.

Even in the dreamscape, she could smell the exhaust from passing jeepneys. She could taste the metal dust in the air. The moon shone on the gentle curve of asphalt, cutting through dusty thoroughfares, creating long dark shadows on the pavement. Metal tenements jutted up from the land, pointing like fingers at the night sky.

By day, a constant stream of drones strove to keep those buildings together. Every bit of scrap metal, every piece of residual wiring was used to keep the landscape of steel and concrete from breaking to pieces. For all its frailty, for all its seeming squalor, there was something dear and familiar about the way the streets met and turned into each other.

Even if her life was filled with the cosiness of the here and now, she could not shake off the longing that thrummed through her dreams in the same way that the thrum of the equilibrium machine pulsed through this landscape.

Towering above the tenements was the Remembrance Monument. Made of compressed bits and parts, it contained all the memories of those gone before. Each year, the monument reached higher and higher until its apex was lost in the covering of clouds. When she was younger, she’d often imagined she could hear the voices of the gone-before.

Above the pulse of the Equilibrium Machine, above the gentle susurrus of faded ghosts, she heard a cry. High and shrill, it emitted a hopelessness Alternate Girl remembered feeling.

It was the same cry that pulled her out of her dreams and back into the present. She turned on her side, pressed her ear against her pillow and stared into the darkness.

This is my home now , she told herself. I am happy as I am. We are happy as we are.

Never mind her personal griefs. Never mind her longing for that lost landscape.

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Alternate Girl stared at the screen. Each day the spam mail showed up without fail. Same time stamps, same recipient name, all from anonymous senders.

Who sends this mail? she wondered. And did everyone in her neighbourhood receive the same mail with the same time stamps every day? If she had the courage to reply, would she receive an answer from all the anonymous senders? Her hand hovered over the delete key.

If you sent garbage to the landfill, it got buried underground, but what about garbage in the ether? Did it float around silently on the airwaves? Would all the spam and the deleted mail come back to haunt her in the form of ether pollution or some such specialised name?