One of the benefits of being an online magazine, published in English, is that we have a global reach throughout the English- speaking world. Allow me to share a few examples.
Abyss & Apex has international authors.
Aliette DeBodard, whom we have published twice, is an ethnically Vietnamese Frenchwoman who writes in English. (If you missed them, we’ve unlocked her Dancing for the Monsoon and Weepers and Ragers from the archives for your reading pleasure, but only if you access them from this editorial. We’ve similarly unlocked any other stories with links that follow.)
Lavie Tidhar, an Israeli, writes fiction with an occasional Jewish twist. He also travels extensively and writes stories with local colors of exotic locales. If you’re a fan of his, you may not know that we’ve published his Out of the Blue and The Monks of Udom Xhai . . . and a poem, and a story we pulled from the archives so he could have it reprinted. We’ve been publishing Lavie since 2004.
We’ve a South African author–she wrote When White Roses Freeze–and another South African author on the way this year. (Hi, SFFSA members!) And last quarter we reviewed a book by a South African small press publisher.
Australian author Heidi Wessman Kneale had her The Devil You Know reprinted in our Best of A&A and Aussies Phillip Ellis and Paul Christian Stevens wrote our poems “Unicorns” and “The Grimpen Sedge.” There are other Australian authors in our archive, too. G’Day!
From Ireland we have RJ Astruc’s The Ghosts of los Hellas. Hailing from Trinidad and Tobago, we published R.S. Garcia’s chilling Douen Mother.
Canadians! We have Shane Nelson’s Being Blue and the wonderful Tony Pi gave us Night of the Manticore, Metamorphoses in Amber and Zeno’s Last Paradox. From Nova Scotia we have Jennifer Greylyn’s Fairyland. Plus Canadian Jamie Mason sent us Invention.
British author Simon Kewin has the honor of being my first slush survivor when I came on staff. His Museum Beetles is soon to be followed by a new offering of his from “across the Pond.” Also hailing from the UK is our Brian Dolton, who gave us The Man Who Was Never Afraid and At Blue Crane Falls. He’s since moved to the USA, and the stories are Chinese but hey, A&A is global enough that it works.
International themes and outlooks
Our authors might live in the United States but take a more global view. For example, Sri Lankan-born American Maryann Mohanraj showed her cultural roots in Talking to Elephants. And we have American writer David Sakmyster’s ghost story of Americans from Madagascar, Turning Time.
Islamic fiction: A Hundredth Name came from Australian author Christopher Green. There’s a Sudanese main character in Mind Diver, one of our many stories from American writer Vylar Kaftan
American ex-pat Ruth Nestvold writes stories with a Eurocentric sensibility, and emails them to us from the Continent – tales like Troy and the Aliens. Any fans of Top Gear might want to check out why her aliens landed in Germany.
An American author living in Japan gave us the Japanese-influenced The Heaviest Dream.
Add to this all the translated reprints our authors have sold to markets in Brazil, Poland, and Italy!
A&A has an International staff, too.
Did you know that our long-time science fiction editor is Rob Campbell is a Scotsman living in New Zealand? (Leis na beannachdan, Rob.) We have a new assistant editor in Nova Scotia, Canada and our editor-at-large is in Alberta, Canada. There’s another assistant editor working in Switzerland; A&A cover art/banners by are Mondolithic studios, whose owners were originally from Vancouver, Canada and are now based in Guadalajara, Mexico.
So…
Because of the explosion of internet usage around the world, young people want to speak English to get most use of the Net. Abyss & Apex cannot assume that our readers are Americans. I’ve therefore sometimes rejected a story solely on the basis of its insular American viewpoint. There are other viewpoints and other ways of looking at the world. When we find a genuine international voice with a memorable story to tell, we try to highlight it.
In this edition, have the story of an American scientist who is forced to live in Columbia, SA, near Bogotá. Soak up some not-so-local color and read Fermi’s Plague.
Wendy S. Delmater, Editor
Abyss & Apex Magazine of Speculative Fiction
