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We See a Different Frontier: A postcolonial speculative fiction anthology
This anthology of speculative fiction stories on the themes of colonialism and cultural imperialism focuses on the viewpoints of the colonized. Sixteen authors share their experiences of being the silent voices in history and on the wrong side of the final frontier; their fantasies of a reality in which straight, cis, able-bodied, rich, anglophone, white males don’t get to tell us how they won every war; their revenge against the alien oppressor settling their “new world�.
213 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2013
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694 people want to read
About the author
Fábio Fernandes
151Ìýbooks147ÌýfollowersAutor de BACK IN THE USSR (finalista do Prêmio Jabuti 2020), Love Will Tear Us Apart, Rio 60 Graus e O TORNEIO DE SOMBRAS.
Em 2025: OS AGENTES DO CAOS (Uma aventura de January Purcell)
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
September 17, 2013
This is a vital anthology and it pains me to suspect that it won't get the attention it deserves. There's been a lot of talk about diversity in SFF: well, here's a brand new anthology of stories by authors from around the world, writing post-colonial SFF. Sure, some individual stories are weak (it would be really great if Joyce Chng's "Lotus" explained how her characters drank from a still, low-lying body of water without boiling/sterilising it and didn't die of hideous infections, among other worldbuilding holes), while others are good-but-not-great (oh, how I wanted JY Yang's "Old Domes", about the history of buildings in Singapore, to be a little more sharp, more coherent).
Some, however, are absolutely brilliant.
My favourite is Benjanun Sriduangkaew's "Vector", one of the best stories I've read this year, about Western imperialists trying to infect - and destroy - the very held, lived memory of Thai culture. Needless to say, there is resistance. I also loved Shweta Narayan's "The Arrangement of Their Parts", one of a sequence of stories Shweta's writing in an India that resisted British colonialism. Then there's Lavie Tidhar's "Dark Continents", which examines the re-writing of history and the probability of alternative evils - and the possibility of better. As a historian, I really liked this one. It does things a lot of alt-history doesn't even bother to think about. Speaking of history, there's Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's "What Really Happened in Ficandula", an angry, wishing story about colonial violence.
Others I liked a lot: Sofia Samatar's "I Stole the D.C.'s Eyeglass", a steampunk-of-sorts. (To borrow the author's own words on her blog: "I am asking myself if it is possible to write an African steampunk story. Is it possible to engage with African oral traditions in a serious way and produce a story that a wider audience will recognize as science fiction?") Silvia Moreno-Garcia's "Them Ships". Dinesh Rao's "A Bridge of Words".
There is such a variety of approaches in this anthology, such a vitality often lacking in SFF anthologies where familiar (and often damaging) tropes are trod into the ground and applauded for their repetitiveness. I want people to read this instead. It is diverse, it is intersectional - will the people talking about diversity in SFF read it?
Some, however, are absolutely brilliant.
My favourite is Benjanun Sriduangkaew's "Vector", one of the best stories I've read this year, about Western imperialists trying to infect - and destroy - the very held, lived memory of Thai culture. Needless to say, there is resistance. I also loved Shweta Narayan's "The Arrangement of Their Parts", one of a sequence of stories Shweta's writing in an India that resisted British colonialism. Then there's Lavie Tidhar's "Dark Continents", which examines the re-writing of history and the probability of alternative evils - and the possibility of better. As a historian, I really liked this one. It does things a lot of alt-history doesn't even bother to think about. Speaking of history, there's Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's "What Really Happened in Ficandula", an angry, wishing story about colonial violence.
Others I liked a lot: Sofia Samatar's "I Stole the D.C.'s Eyeglass", a steampunk-of-sorts. (To borrow the author's own words on her blog: "I am asking myself if it is possible to write an African steampunk story. Is it possible to engage with African oral traditions in a serious way and produce a story that a wider audience will recognize as science fiction?") Silvia Moreno-Garcia's "Them Ships". Dinesh Rao's "A Bridge of Words".
There is such a variety of approaches in this anthology, such a vitality often lacking in SFF anthologies where familiar (and often damaging) tropes are trod into the ground and applauded for their repetitiveness. I want people to read this instead. It is diverse, it is intersectional - will the people talking about diversity in SFF read it?
Read
April 17, 2022So What’s It About?
This anthology of speculative fiction stories on the themes of colonialism and cultural imperialism focuses on the viewpoints of the colonized. Sixteen authors share their experiences of being the silent voices in history and on the wrong side of the final frontier; their fantasies of a reality in which straight, cis, able-bodied, rich, anglophone, white males don’t get to tell us how they won every war; their revenge against the alien oppressor settling their “new world�.
What I Thought
As with any anthology, some of the stories in this collection worked for me and others didn’t. I thought I’d describe my three favorite stories here.
Them Ships by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - this story’s narrator has the unique, distinctive voice of someone incredibly smart who never had opportunities to learn before and is gradually starting to now. She sees the world with alien conquerors as an improvement from the life of destitution she lived before and is willing to give up personal freedom for education and subsistence and safety. Her growing relationship with her roommate - who was more privileged in the pre-alien world so views the present day as a horrorscape- and her betrayal when he makes a bid for freedom are both unforgettable, and the story raises the conundrum of what those who have nothing in a world before conquest might feel when those conquerors promise them a new world and an upheaval of the present system.
A Heap of Broken Images by Sunny Moraine - this is a story about a tour guide of a massacre’s monument on an alien planet. There are some extremely relevant musings on human hate and fear and how we act about historic atrocities after the fact; the humans come to see the massacre site but they aren’t willing to actually understand what it means. Also incredibly telling is the fact that the aliens have dealt with the massacre’s aftermath by ignoring and shunning its victims and being pleasant with the tourists who come to visit and gawk. I love the main character’s ultimate decision to strip away their polite veneer and let their tourists see them in truth for the first time. This story has lovely writing, and I am certainly going to look for more work by Sunny Moraine.
I Stole the D.C.’s Eyeglass by Sofia Samatar - this story features Samatar’s typical lovely language and a story about the narrator’s sister’s resistance to colonial rule and her refusal to play by the rules. I really appreciate that the main character has such complicated feelings about her sister’s actions and it is a difficult and bold authorial choice to have her betray her sister by telling their parents about what she is doing so that they can stop her by shuffling her off onto a husband. Ultimately, though, the protagonist begins to understand why her sister did what she did and vows by the end to begin learning the things that have almost become forgotten under colonialism while waiting for her sister to return after her flight.
This anthology of speculative fiction stories on the themes of colonialism and cultural imperialism focuses on the viewpoints of the colonized. Sixteen authors share their experiences of being the silent voices in history and on the wrong side of the final frontier; their fantasies of a reality in which straight, cis, able-bodied, rich, anglophone, white males don’t get to tell us how they won every war; their revenge against the alien oppressor settling their “new world�.
What I Thought
As with any anthology, some of the stories in this collection worked for me and others didn’t. I thought I’d describe my three favorite stories here.
Them Ships by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - this story’s narrator has the unique, distinctive voice of someone incredibly smart who never had opportunities to learn before and is gradually starting to now. She sees the world with alien conquerors as an improvement from the life of destitution she lived before and is willing to give up personal freedom for education and subsistence and safety. Her growing relationship with her roommate - who was more privileged in the pre-alien world so views the present day as a horrorscape- and her betrayal when he makes a bid for freedom are both unforgettable, and the story raises the conundrum of what those who have nothing in a world before conquest might feel when those conquerors promise them a new world and an upheaval of the present system.
A Heap of Broken Images by Sunny Moraine - this is a story about a tour guide of a massacre’s monument on an alien planet. There are some extremely relevant musings on human hate and fear and how we act about historic atrocities after the fact; the humans come to see the massacre site but they aren’t willing to actually understand what it means. Also incredibly telling is the fact that the aliens have dealt with the massacre’s aftermath by ignoring and shunning its victims and being pleasant with the tourists who come to visit and gawk. I love the main character’s ultimate decision to strip away their polite veneer and let their tourists see them in truth for the first time. This story has lovely writing, and I am certainly going to look for more work by Sunny Moraine.
I Stole the D.C.’s Eyeglass by Sofia Samatar - this story features Samatar’s typical lovely language and a story about the narrator’s sister’s resistance to colonial rule and her refusal to play by the rules. I really appreciate that the main character has such complicated feelings about her sister’s actions and it is a difficult and bold authorial choice to have her betray her sister by telling their parents about what she is doing so that they can stop her by shuffling her off onto a husband. Ultimately, though, the protagonist begins to understand why her sister did what she did and vows by the end to begin learning the things that have almost become forgotten under colonialism while waiting for her sister to return after her flight.
October 2, 2013
A criticism that I think can be leveled at the science fiction community is that when it comes to diversity we are still not quite there. Sure there are lots of authors that include a more diverse range of characters in their stories but where I think we struggle is with supporting and promoting diverse authors. Paolo Baccigaluppi gets noticed for writing about Thailand, but what about Thai writers writing about Thailand using Science Fiction and Fantasy as the framework?
I think that white western writers need to be careful that in the rush to write more diverse characters that they aren’t indeed silencing authors from those diverse backgrounds � the result if you are not careful, is almost a second wave of colonisation.
For this fact alone I find We See A Different Frontier to be a very important book. Some stories engage directly with the effects of historical colonialism, some tap into the experience, all the stories have something of value.
Beyond that of course is the fact that they are enjoyable fiction for the good stories they tell and the choices the authors make in structure and form.
The Arrangement of Their Parts by Shweta Narayan opens the collection and examines the arrogance that the coloniser displays in regards to the colonised, the perception of the colonised as inferior, especially intellectually. In this steampunk India, Shweta skilfully weaves an moralistic folktale with the main narrative of the story to underline her point.
Sticking with the steampunk theme, so often the preserve of western writers who want to experience the grace and refinement of the Victoria age without examining how that was arrived at, we have Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus by Ernest Hogan. An American tale ( in a geographic sense) that manages to combine Tesla, Deathrays and Hollywood. A subtle dig at American cultural colonisation is had here.
Them Ships by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, examines what American rescue might mean for different parts of a society colonised by Aliens. Mexico has been invaded by largely benevolent Aliens, their Jellyfish-like ships hang over the city and rich and poor alike are contained in cells until the aliens find a use for them. Silvia contrasts the plight of the different classes, the rich and the poor in Mexican society. She asks the question would an American rescue mean freedom for everyone? The story, however, presents the reality that sometimes you just need to do what you can to survive.
JY Yang gives us Old Domes, the first of series of stories that tap into hidden or obscured history. I think this is about the third Yang story I have read and I like her mixing of traditional concepts with modernity. The erasure or forgetting of place due to colonialism or progress struck a chord with my experience of living in Darwin, a city where new seemed to replace old within decades.
Dinesh Rao’s A Bridge of Words, carried through this theme of hidden histories. Our protagonist Riya is a outsider in her own culture- part coloniser, part colonised. This story is a mystery and comment on the way important cultural information can be conveyed through art.
Lotus by Joyce Chng is I think a piece that stresses the need for a different paradigm, a different way of viewing and being, one that does not require endless exploitation of finite resources or theft or control of resources that are needed by everyone. It’s a post-environmental apocalypse piece that argues that we need to stop making the same mistake.
Lavie Tidhar’s piece is perhaps the most experimental story in form. Dark Continents gives us an alternate Israel set in Africa. Tidhar remixes and restarts history before our very eyes, examining and imagining a wealth of possible histories and ending perhaps with an unlikely utopia?
Sunny Moraine in A Heap of Broken Images, focuses on humanity as colonisers of an Alien world where a great atrocity has been committed against the Aliens in the not too distant past. Our protagonist is a tour guide of sorts who works to guide human scholars and students around the scenes of the atrocity. It is a beautiful story that at its heart discusses the way in which the coloniser and the colonised set up structures to avoid having to deal with what has happened.
Remembering Turinam by N.A. Ratnayake, has shades of Steampunk but is really the story of a benevolent society colonised by an aggressive and militaristic one. It is also a brilliant examination of the way in which colonial powers destroy or subsume cultures through language ie the insistence that the colonised speak the language of the coloniser, either through threat of force or by making the Colonists language the one that is most beneficial or necessary. Ekaterina Sedia has some sombre thoughts on this very point in her afterword. What did astonish me was that this was Ratnayake’s first professional sale. I hope we see more from him.
Vector by Benjanun Sriduangkaew left me breathless due to the second person present tense. It is a story whose form reinforces the sense to produce a direct hard hitting effect. It places you the reader in the driving seat, demands that you experience the feeling of being the colonised.
I have not mentioned all the stories in the collection, but this is not a comment on their quality. I need to leave some surprises for you to discover. I can’t sign off however without mentioning the story that bookends the collection. Rochita Loenen-Ruiz leaves us with a very solid and thoughtful piece in What really happened at Ficandula. The story is based on a historical incident that happened during the American occupation of the Philippines and weaves a historical tale with that of the fantastic. I had the privilege of talking to Rochita for Galactic Chat and discussing the story and her decision to frame it within speculative fiction. Her answer was that “facts� surrounding the incident were limited and biased and that this story was the only way to present elements that needed to be spoken about or remembered. This story left me contemplating my own country’s colonial history. How, stories and histories disappear for both the colonised and the colonists.
The strength of this collection is , not surprisingly, its diversity in story, approach, and form while still being focussed on a theme. This is a book that anyone that wants to pay more than just lip service to the idea of diversity, needs to read. It is also a collection that I think you can point critics of speculative fiction toward when they say that the genre can’t deal with serious issues.
Kudos to Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad for bringing these writers together.
This review copy was provided by the publishers.
I think that white western writers need to be careful that in the rush to write more diverse characters that they aren’t indeed silencing authors from those diverse backgrounds � the result if you are not careful, is almost a second wave of colonisation.
For this fact alone I find We See A Different Frontier to be a very important book. Some stories engage directly with the effects of historical colonialism, some tap into the experience, all the stories have something of value.
Beyond that of course is the fact that they are enjoyable fiction for the good stories they tell and the choices the authors make in structure and form.
The Arrangement of Their Parts by Shweta Narayan opens the collection and examines the arrogance that the coloniser displays in regards to the colonised, the perception of the colonised as inferior, especially intellectually. In this steampunk India, Shweta skilfully weaves an moralistic folktale with the main narrative of the story to underline her point.
Sticking with the steampunk theme, so often the preserve of western writers who want to experience the grace and refinement of the Victoria age without examining how that was arrived at, we have Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus by Ernest Hogan. An American tale ( in a geographic sense) that manages to combine Tesla, Deathrays and Hollywood. A subtle dig at American cultural colonisation is had here.
Them Ships by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, examines what American rescue might mean for different parts of a society colonised by Aliens. Mexico has been invaded by largely benevolent Aliens, their Jellyfish-like ships hang over the city and rich and poor alike are contained in cells until the aliens find a use for them. Silvia contrasts the plight of the different classes, the rich and the poor in Mexican society. She asks the question would an American rescue mean freedom for everyone? The story, however, presents the reality that sometimes you just need to do what you can to survive.
JY Yang gives us Old Domes, the first of series of stories that tap into hidden or obscured history. I think this is about the third Yang story I have read and I like her mixing of traditional concepts with modernity. The erasure or forgetting of place due to colonialism or progress struck a chord with my experience of living in Darwin, a city where new seemed to replace old within decades.
Dinesh Rao’s A Bridge of Words, carried through this theme of hidden histories. Our protagonist Riya is a outsider in her own culture- part coloniser, part colonised. This story is a mystery and comment on the way important cultural information can be conveyed through art.
Lotus by Joyce Chng is I think a piece that stresses the need for a different paradigm, a different way of viewing and being, one that does not require endless exploitation of finite resources or theft or control of resources that are needed by everyone. It’s a post-environmental apocalypse piece that argues that we need to stop making the same mistake.
Lavie Tidhar’s piece is perhaps the most experimental story in form. Dark Continents gives us an alternate Israel set in Africa. Tidhar remixes and restarts history before our very eyes, examining and imagining a wealth of possible histories and ending perhaps with an unlikely utopia?
Sunny Moraine in A Heap of Broken Images, focuses on humanity as colonisers of an Alien world where a great atrocity has been committed against the Aliens in the not too distant past. Our protagonist is a tour guide of sorts who works to guide human scholars and students around the scenes of the atrocity. It is a beautiful story that at its heart discusses the way in which the coloniser and the colonised set up structures to avoid having to deal with what has happened.
Remembering Turinam by N.A. Ratnayake, has shades of Steampunk but is really the story of a benevolent society colonised by an aggressive and militaristic one. It is also a brilliant examination of the way in which colonial powers destroy or subsume cultures through language ie the insistence that the colonised speak the language of the coloniser, either through threat of force or by making the Colonists language the one that is most beneficial or necessary. Ekaterina Sedia has some sombre thoughts on this very point in her afterword. What did astonish me was that this was Ratnayake’s first professional sale. I hope we see more from him.
Vector by Benjanun Sriduangkaew left me breathless due to the second person present tense. It is a story whose form reinforces the sense to produce a direct hard hitting effect. It places you the reader in the driving seat, demands that you experience the feeling of being the colonised.
I have not mentioned all the stories in the collection, but this is not a comment on their quality. I need to leave some surprises for you to discover. I can’t sign off however without mentioning the story that bookends the collection. Rochita Loenen-Ruiz leaves us with a very solid and thoughtful piece in What really happened at Ficandula. The story is based on a historical incident that happened during the American occupation of the Philippines and weaves a historical tale with that of the fantastic. I had the privilege of talking to Rochita for Galactic Chat and discussing the story and her decision to frame it within speculative fiction. Her answer was that “facts� surrounding the incident were limited and biased and that this story was the only way to present elements that needed to be spoken about or remembered. This story left me contemplating my own country’s colonial history. How, stories and histories disappear for both the colonised and the colonists.
The strength of this collection is , not surprisingly, its diversity in story, approach, and form while still being focussed on a theme. This is a book that anyone that wants to pay more than just lip service to the idea of diversity, needs to read. It is also a collection that I think you can point critics of speculative fiction toward when they say that the genre can’t deal with serious issues.
Kudos to Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad for bringing these writers together.
This review copy was provided by the publishers.
March 9, 2015
A truly remarkable collection. Many of these stories will be with me a long time.
I heard about this obscure crowd-funded collection on The Writer and the Critic podcast and I'm so glad they convinced me to read it. There is not a dud story in the collection, though there were some that blew me away more than others. The theme of the collection is post-colonial spec fic written not from the perspective of the colonizers (or even "colonizer who is good or sees the error of their ways") but of conquered peoples dealing with the effects of colonization. This, of course, is an incredibly rich theme in a genre so full of exploration and settlement stories (usually told from the colonizer's perspective). Neither, too, are any of these stories a pat "obvious alien stand-in for a human people here to make a ham-fisted allegorical point". These are all complex, intimate, deliciously drawn stories.
There are a couple of authors here that I had heard of, but none I had read before. One of the things I really appreciated about this collection is that none of the stories hold your hand, and if you're an Anglophonic reader who lives in the West you might have to Google a thing or two to understand the stories. Which is great! There are landscapes and experiences depicted here you almost NEVER get in mainstream genre mags.
It goes without saying every story is well-written and a good read. Just to highlight a few of my absolute favorites...
Favorites
Them Ships by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Lotus by Joyce Chng
Dark Continents by Lavie Tidhar
A Heap of Broken Images by Sunny Moraine
Fleet by Sandra McDonald
Vector by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Forests of the Night by Gabriel Murray
Read twice
Vector
Forests of the Night
Socked me in the frigging gut
Fleet
A Heap of Broken Images
Vector
I'm not going to go into detail about every great story here, but I do want to talk about a few.
Dark Continents by Lavie Tidhar has a really interesting narrative structure and is essentially about someone or someones with the power to travel in and re-write time and break down barriers between alternate universes using that power to totally rewrite certain parts of European conquest in Africa. Rich, inventive, intriguing, and surprising, this story keeps you on your toes.
A Heap of Broken Images by Sunny Moraine is about an alien tour guide whose planet was colonized by humans who committed an unspeakable massacre before he was born. He now takes human tourists to see the sites associated with the massacre. He agonizes over his own struggle to accept his own culture's unfailing politeness about the whole thing and to understand the humans he is obliged to host.
Fleet by Sandra McDonald is possibly my favorite story in the whole collection. It takes place in Guam after an apocalyptic event wipes out all technology and communications and consequently the island is cut off from the rest of the world. The main character is a transgender woman who discovers a Russian cast-away and her ordeal in handling the situation the way her trainers taught her.
The other contender for my favorite story in the collection, Vector by Benjamun Sriduangkaew, was almost incomprehensible to me the first time I read it, even with some heavy Googling. But after finishing it, having an 'aha' moment and rereading it, I was completely knocked over. This cyberpunk thriller (What precedes is not actually spoiler so much as basic plot points that I didn't understand until after reading the story the first time. I hid it in case you'd like to figure out what's happening in the story for yourself, which I recommend.)
So, although those are my absolutely cherished picks, the whole thing is just an incredible collection. Read it.
I heard about this obscure crowd-funded collection on The Writer and the Critic podcast and I'm so glad they convinced me to read it. There is not a dud story in the collection, though there were some that blew me away more than others. The theme of the collection is post-colonial spec fic written not from the perspective of the colonizers (or even "colonizer who is good or sees the error of their ways") but of conquered peoples dealing with the effects of colonization. This, of course, is an incredibly rich theme in a genre so full of exploration and settlement stories (usually told from the colonizer's perspective). Neither, too, are any of these stories a pat "obvious alien stand-in for a human people here to make a ham-fisted allegorical point". These are all complex, intimate, deliciously drawn stories.
There are a couple of authors here that I had heard of, but none I had read before. One of the things I really appreciated about this collection is that none of the stories hold your hand, and if you're an Anglophonic reader who lives in the West you might have to Google a thing or two to understand the stories. Which is great! There are landscapes and experiences depicted here you almost NEVER get in mainstream genre mags.
It goes without saying every story is well-written and a good read. Just to highlight a few of my absolute favorites...
Favorites
Them Ships by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Lotus by Joyce Chng
Dark Continents by Lavie Tidhar
A Heap of Broken Images by Sunny Moraine
Fleet by Sandra McDonald
Vector by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Forests of the Night by Gabriel Murray
Read twice
Vector
Forests of the Night
Socked me in the frigging gut
Fleet
A Heap of Broken Images
Vector
I'm not going to go into detail about every great story here, but I do want to talk about a few.
Dark Continents by Lavie Tidhar has a really interesting narrative structure and is essentially about someone or someones with the power to travel in and re-write time and break down barriers between alternate universes using that power to totally rewrite certain parts of European conquest in Africa. Rich, inventive, intriguing, and surprising, this story keeps you on your toes.
A Heap of Broken Images by Sunny Moraine is about an alien tour guide whose planet was colonized by humans who committed an unspeakable massacre before he was born. He now takes human tourists to see the sites associated with the massacre. He agonizes over his own struggle to accept his own culture's unfailing politeness about the whole thing and to understand the humans he is obliged to host.
Fleet by Sandra McDonald is possibly my favorite story in the whole collection. It takes place in Guam after an apocalyptic event wipes out all technology and communications and consequently the island is cut off from the rest of the world. The main character is a transgender woman who discovers a Russian cast-away and her ordeal in handling the situation the way her trainers taught her.
The other contender for my favorite story in the collection, Vector by Benjamun Sriduangkaew, was almost incomprehensible to me the first time I read it, even with some heavy Googling. But after finishing it, having an 'aha' moment and rereading it, I was completely knocked over. This cyberpunk thriller (What precedes is not actually spoiler so much as basic plot points that I didn't understand until after reading the story the first time. I hid it in case you'd like to figure out what's happening in the story for yourself, which I recommend.)
So, although those are my absolutely cherished picks, the whole thing is just an incredible collection. Read it.
February 20, 2015
Stuff I Read - We See A Different Frontier Review
This. I need more this. Really, I think collections like this, which take a much wider view of speculative fiction (dare I say, a worldly view), are few and far between. It's getting a bit better, maybe, but this is a great collection, a collection that really gets the brain working, that is uncomfortable in the best way possible because it confronts the reader with privilege and tries to foster empathy. It's not really an easy collection to read (and it has kind of a weird cover and name), but that's what makes it so important, that it doesn't try to soften the blow or apologize. It collects some great stories, with some powerful messages, and the world needs more like this. Make it so.
Really, there's a whole lot to like about this collection. There's the diversity of authors and of characters represented. There's also the diversity of genres. This collection shows just how pervasive colonialism can be, and how damaging and permanent the damage done can be. There is a push most of the time, in colonial narratives, to excuse the colonizers. To give them a pass. At least they brought "civilization," right? These stories don't seek to excuse the harm, don't seek to really make things right. Instead they seem more intent on cataloguing that harm, on bringing it to the light so that people can see and not do it again.
Because by ignoring it, by making colonialism about how the colonizers can avoid feeling bad, people miss the whole point. It just paves things over to happen again. I really liked Sunny Moraine's story for that reason, because it dealt with the people after, with the children of both colonizers and colonized, and trying to find some way to move forward despite everything. Not to erase what happened, though, not to forgive it. All of the stories do a pretty excellent job of dealing with colonialism and post-colonialism. There were only one or two that I wasn't sure about, that I didn't really like, but even that led me to examine why which led me down entirely different avenues of thought.
It's an ambitious project, to be sure, and one that is successful in treating the subject matter in an interesting and nuanced way. The talent is spectacular and the stories range from quiet to raging. There's something for everyone and, if you're like me, basically everything for someone. There need to be more collections like this. Which means I'm giving this a 9.5/10.
This. I need more this. Really, I think collections like this, which take a much wider view of speculative fiction (dare I say, a worldly view), are few and far between. It's getting a bit better, maybe, but this is a great collection, a collection that really gets the brain working, that is uncomfortable in the best way possible because it confronts the reader with privilege and tries to foster empathy. It's not really an easy collection to read (and it has kind of a weird cover and name), but that's what makes it so important, that it doesn't try to soften the blow or apologize. It collects some great stories, with some powerful messages, and the world needs more like this. Make it so.
Really, there's a whole lot to like about this collection. There's the diversity of authors and of characters represented. There's also the diversity of genres. This collection shows just how pervasive colonialism can be, and how damaging and permanent the damage done can be. There is a push most of the time, in colonial narratives, to excuse the colonizers. To give them a pass. At least they brought "civilization," right? These stories don't seek to excuse the harm, don't seek to really make things right. Instead they seem more intent on cataloguing that harm, on bringing it to the light so that people can see and not do it again.
Because by ignoring it, by making colonialism about how the colonizers can avoid feeling bad, people miss the whole point. It just paves things over to happen again. I really liked Sunny Moraine's story for that reason, because it dealt with the people after, with the children of both colonizers and colonized, and trying to find some way to move forward despite everything. Not to erase what happened, though, not to forgive it. All of the stories do a pretty excellent job of dealing with colonialism and post-colonialism. There were only one or two that I wasn't sure about, that I didn't really like, but even that led me to examine why which led me down entirely different avenues of thought.
It's an ambitious project, to be sure, and one that is successful in treating the subject matter in an interesting and nuanced way. The talent is spectacular and the stories range from quiet to raging. There's something for everyone and, if you're like me, basically everything for someone. There need to be more collections like this. Which means I'm giving this a 9.5/10.
December 31, 2015
I like the idea of a collection focusing on the other side of colonialism, especially when so much of SF is completely about colonizing. But I'm not sure that this collection accomplished what its editors set out to show. On the other hand, there's some marvellous stuff in here, anyway.
"What Really Happened in Ficandula" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz is very good, but depressing. Are we really doomed to always repeat our history? Is this not just the colonized becoming the colonizers?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia's "Them Ships" isn't so much a tale of colonialism as poverty.
J.Y. Yang's "Old Domes", a story of some future-ish Singapore deftly weaves an Eastern mysticism into Western SF, and is the best example, to me, demonstrating the beauty that can come from the intersection of cultures.
"Droplet", by Rahul Kankia, makes it difficult to know who are the colonizers and who are the colonized. Subhir's parents and grandparents—Americans of Indian descent—are driven out of America, due to racism: or so Subhir believes. When he returns to the US, India is the colonizer, America is greatly reduced, and the truth turns out to be far more complex.
August 25, 2013
...We See a Different Frontier is a fascinating piece of reading. It tackles a theme that is so hugely complex that there are countless of ways to approach it and the stories the editors reflect that. The diversity in these stories is stunning. The anthology offers no easy answers but makes the reader aware of issues that are rarely raised in science fiction. In her afterword Ekaterina Sedia mentions that the collection left her 'a bit whiplashed' and that is not far from how I experienced it. These stories are challenging and thought-provoking, qualities that good speculative fiction in my opinion needs to possess, but at the same time they manage to cover ground most readers of the genre will be unfamiliar with. This anthology is one of the best themed anthologies I've had the pleasure of reading. It deserves a larger audience than it is likely to get.
August 26, 2013
"We See a Different Frontier" is wonderful. Every story tackles complex sociocultural issues in it's own unique and thoroughly engaging way and there's something to love about each and every one of them. The range of the authors, both in terms of style and imagination is staggering. It took me a while to actually finish it, simply because I had to pause after each story and reflect. If there's anything wrong with it, it's that I wished a lot of the stories didn't end at all - their worlds and characters were so fascinating that I wanted to see more of them. Hopefully that will happen one day.
October 24, 2013
I think this is, overall, the best multi-author anthology I've ever read. The writing and storytelling is of consistently high quality throughout. I usually like to pick out one or two stories that I particularly liked, but this time I realised that I would be listing nearly the entire table of contents if I tried. The stories represent several different situations and points of view, and are all fascinating (and enlightening) reads.
October 1, 2023
Closer to 4.5 because, like most anthologies, there were stories that really worked (for me) and others that had a lesser impact. Your own experience from story to story may vary but the anthology as whole is well worth reading, both because the quality of the story telling is in itself to high standard but also because it reveals both the great potential and simultaneous difficulty in telling stories from a post-colonial perspective when the the impacts of colonialism, past and present, are still being felt.
Science fiction is about exploring the worlds of what if and that makes it a powerful tool in exploring real alternatives to what has happened and still happens in the world, economically, politically, culturally and, most tragically, militarily. This book is a good start for those trying to see other possibilities and other paths forward to build a truly post-colonial world.
Science fiction is about exploring the worlds of what if and that makes it a powerful tool in exploring real alternatives to what has happened and still happens in the world, economically, politically, culturally and, most tragically, militarily. This book is a good start for those trying to see other possibilities and other paths forward to build a truly post-colonial world.
August 10, 2016
This is an excellent anthology, one worth reading. Its stories explore the aftereffects of colonialism (in its broadest sense) from a variety of perspectives and concerns, and they generally do so quite effectively. Some of the stories here are very good, some are ok, a few didn't resonate with me at all, but almost universally these stories take on some aspect of the theme from a unique perspective. The anthology sustains unity of theme throughout without being too uniform (or too heavy-handed, for the most part). (I should note the preface and afterword are also quite worth reading.) The end result is to create a whole that, to use a cliché, is more than the sum of its parts. Which is to say that this collections's excellence rests not so much on the quality of the stories in it but rather on what the collection achieves in its totality.
Which is not to put down the stories themselves! "A Heap of Broken Images" by Sunny Moraine was especially worth reading; it is profound and thought-provoking. "Them Ships" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and "Remembering Turinam" by N.A. Ratnayake are also in the thought-provoking category. "A Bridge of Words" by Dinesh Rao is quite a good story, and one of the most traditionally science-fictional story of the lot. "Dark Continents" by Lavie Tidhar is the least traditional of the stories, jumping between times and timelines, but it has in it some interesting what-ifs. I did not, as I said, like every story here, but some of that might be a matter of taste, and certainly I think the best stories more than make up for the weakest.
But whatever the artistic merits of this anthology, I think its social value is much greater. The effects of colonialism are not only worth discussing, they need to be discussed. That We See a Different Frontier explores this topic, and is so effective in doing so, is to be commended. I certainly found my thinking challenged and stretched by reading it, and sometimes, I was even uncomfortable. But I think that just demonstrates how effective this anthology truly is.
Which is not to put down the stories themselves! "A Heap of Broken Images" by Sunny Moraine was especially worth reading; it is profound and thought-provoking. "Them Ships" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and "Remembering Turinam" by N.A. Ratnayake are also in the thought-provoking category. "A Bridge of Words" by Dinesh Rao is quite a good story, and one of the most traditionally science-fictional story of the lot. "Dark Continents" by Lavie Tidhar is the least traditional of the stories, jumping between times and timelines, but it has in it some interesting what-ifs. I did not, as I said, like every story here, but some of that might be a matter of taste, and certainly I think the best stories more than make up for the weakest.
But whatever the artistic merits of this anthology, I think its social value is much greater. The effects of colonialism are not only worth discussing, they need to be discussed. That We See a Different Frontier explores this topic, and is so effective in doing so, is to be commended. I certainly found my thinking challenged and stretched by reading it, and sometimes, I was even uncomfortable. But I think that just demonstrates how effective this anthology truly is.
September 16, 2013
Leà este libro principalmente por la historia de Silvia Moreno-GarcÃa "Them Ships", y aún cuando esa historia me encantó, terminé enamorado de "Old Domes" de J.Y. Yang, y aún no estoy seguro por qué se convirtió en una de esas narraciones que voy a recordar durante años, es simplemente hermosa. "Dark Continents" de Lavie Tidhar me pareció muy interesante asà como "A Heap of Broken Images" de Sunny Moraine. Y creo que la más emocionante de las historias, para mi, fue "Vector" de Benjanun Sriduangkaew.
Sin por lo anterior quitar mérito a las demás historias, por supuesto.
Sin por lo anterior quitar mérito a las demás historias, por supuesto.
July 13, 2014
This was solidly good; a wide variety of stories and styles, well-arranged to speak to larger themes of displacement, assimilation, cultural memory and resistance. This book is one of the reasons why online fundraising is a great thing--so glad Seattle Public Library purchased it for their collection. Recommended.
April 6, 2014
This anthology of speculative fiction stories written from a post-colonial perspective is well worth reading, if at times acutely uncomfortable for the member of a colonising culture that is thoughtfully reading them. A brief concluding essay by Ekaterina Sedia summarises the recurrent themes of these stories far better than I could.
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January 10, 2014Being the editor, I must say I read it all, of course. This is just a disclaimer - I will neither rate it nor review it, but I'll be glad if you want to do it. Thank you!
May 30, 2019
By and large the language of Science Fiction has always been English, its explorations of other worlds in the main tending to describe their exploitation. In literature (as in life) humans have generally gone off planet to seek things, either knowledge or possessions - and damn any natives. Long past time for a corrective? A “straight, white, cis, male� might feel loth to comment.
The Arrangement of Their Parts by Shweta Naryan is a partly fabular tale of clockwork animals taken to pieces by an Englishman and the Artificer Diva who stands up to him.
The delightfully titled but pulpy Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus by Ernest Hogan tells how with the help of Nicola Tesla’s death ray Alejandro Sahagún replaces Pancho Villa and sets out to recover his sweetheart, abducted by Hollywood producers. While a slight tale this nevertheless rightly fingers Hollywood as the centre of cultural colonialism.
Them Ships by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Aliens in iridescent spacehips have taken over Earth. Our (unnamed) narrator, a former street scavenger, wonders why his cell-mate - the once privileged Leonardo � would want to escape what he regards as a cosseted life.
In J Y Yang’s Old Domes Jing-Li is a cullmaster, charged with despatching guardians - the personifications of buildings - before their renovation. The guardian of Singapore’s Supreme Court is unwilling to go quietly.
Fabio Fernandes’s The Gambiarra Method reads a bit like a 1950s magazine story. Time travel is discovered in 2077. By accident. In anti-gravitational lifts with an attached post-virtual environment. The mechanism is investigated using the Gambiarra method - how to do things with whatever is at hand.
Riya in A Bridge of Words by Dinesh Rao has spent most of her life in Krashnigar, the former colonial power. She is now involved in a project to decipher the tattoos of the Thuri, one of the two sects of her ancestral homeland. Over this world hangs a mysterious red spaceship broadcasting an unchanging coded message.
Droplet by Rahul Kanakia. Subhir has lived in India after his parents took him there from his childhood home in California to avoid the ever worsening drought conditions. On his return to the US he finds out what really happened.
In Joyce Chng’s Lotus most of the Earth is covered in water after an event called the Washing. Landers fight fiercely to hold on to their territories while boaters roam the Waterways, exchanging and bartering. Boater Cecily and her partner Si one day come upon a source of precious drinkable water and food, giving them a moral dilemma.
Lavie Tidhar’s Dark Continents* envisages several different ways in which the past two centuries of Jewish history could have worked themselves out. These include forging a disputed homeland in Africa, intervention in the US Civil War and a peaceful integration into Palestine.
A Heap of Broken Things* by Sonny Moraine features a planet lit by two suns, where human colonists carried out a massacre a generation before. A local tour guide is confronted with that inheritance.
Sandra McDonald’s Fleet* is set a generation after the Night of Fire when solar megaflares destroyed all electronic communication. The people of a Pacific island forge their future in isolation.
Remembering Turinam by N A Ratnyake. A scholar from a defeated people whose language and culture have been oppressed, all but forgotten, returns to his capital city to speak with his grandfather, the last remaining witness to the old days.
Sofia Samatar’s I Stole the DC’s Eyeglass is the story of Pai-te and her sister Minisare who has a spirit-eye and builds a beast of iron as a gesture of “defiance honour, dawn, tomorrow.�
Vector by Benjanun Sriduangkaew. In a US dominated Thailand where no-one has dark hair anymore, nor speaks Thai, a woman’s body has been turned into a viral weapon, both disease and vector, to undo the changes.
In Gabriel Murray’s Forests of the Night* the illegitimate son of the ex-colonial Captain Lyons, brought to Yorkshire to act as his father’s valet, dreams of the tiger that is stalking the local neighbourhood.
What Really Happened in Ficandula by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. A cultural misunderstanding leads to deaths and reprisals the memories of which are kept alive by the female descendants of the colonised as they themselves head for a new planet.
This collection illustrates how language, or its suppression, has been a primary tool of colonialism on Earth. There is irony, then, that, as Ekaterina Sedia’s afterword notes, all these stories were written in US English. (Double irony when the word “veterinarian� is depicted as being employed by a Yorkshireman.) Yet the theme of resistance, the keeping of traditions, shines through. Under the circumstances resistance becomes necessary.
As with most anthologies the standard can be uneven, but each story works as speculative fiction; and four are very good indeed.
The Arrangement of Their Parts by Shweta Naryan is a partly fabular tale of clockwork animals taken to pieces by an Englishman and the Artificer Diva who stands up to him.
The delightfully titled but pulpy Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus by Ernest Hogan tells how with the help of Nicola Tesla’s death ray Alejandro Sahagún replaces Pancho Villa and sets out to recover his sweetheart, abducted by Hollywood producers. While a slight tale this nevertheless rightly fingers Hollywood as the centre of cultural colonialism.
Them Ships by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Aliens in iridescent spacehips have taken over Earth. Our (unnamed) narrator, a former street scavenger, wonders why his cell-mate - the once privileged Leonardo � would want to escape what he regards as a cosseted life.
In J Y Yang’s Old Domes Jing-Li is a cullmaster, charged with despatching guardians - the personifications of buildings - before their renovation. The guardian of Singapore’s Supreme Court is unwilling to go quietly.
Fabio Fernandes’s The Gambiarra Method reads a bit like a 1950s magazine story. Time travel is discovered in 2077. By accident. In anti-gravitational lifts with an attached post-virtual environment. The mechanism is investigated using the Gambiarra method - how to do things with whatever is at hand.
Riya in A Bridge of Words by Dinesh Rao has spent most of her life in Krashnigar, the former colonial power. She is now involved in a project to decipher the tattoos of the Thuri, one of the two sects of her ancestral homeland. Over this world hangs a mysterious red spaceship broadcasting an unchanging coded message.
Droplet by Rahul Kanakia. Subhir has lived in India after his parents took him there from his childhood home in California to avoid the ever worsening drought conditions. On his return to the US he finds out what really happened.
In Joyce Chng’s Lotus most of the Earth is covered in water after an event called the Washing. Landers fight fiercely to hold on to their territories while boaters roam the Waterways, exchanging and bartering. Boater Cecily and her partner Si one day come upon a source of precious drinkable water and food, giving them a moral dilemma.
Lavie Tidhar’s Dark Continents* envisages several different ways in which the past two centuries of Jewish history could have worked themselves out. These include forging a disputed homeland in Africa, intervention in the US Civil War and a peaceful integration into Palestine.
A Heap of Broken Things* by Sonny Moraine features a planet lit by two suns, where human colonists carried out a massacre a generation before. A local tour guide is confronted with that inheritance.
Sandra McDonald’s Fleet* is set a generation after the Night of Fire when solar megaflares destroyed all electronic communication. The people of a Pacific island forge their future in isolation.
Remembering Turinam by N A Ratnyake. A scholar from a defeated people whose language and culture have been oppressed, all but forgotten, returns to his capital city to speak with his grandfather, the last remaining witness to the old days.
Sofia Samatar’s I Stole the DC’s Eyeglass is the story of Pai-te and her sister Minisare who has a spirit-eye and builds a beast of iron as a gesture of “defiance honour, dawn, tomorrow.�
Vector by Benjanun Sriduangkaew. In a US dominated Thailand where no-one has dark hair anymore, nor speaks Thai, a woman’s body has been turned into a viral weapon, both disease and vector, to undo the changes.
In Gabriel Murray’s Forests of the Night* the illegitimate son of the ex-colonial Captain Lyons, brought to Yorkshire to act as his father’s valet, dreams of the tiger that is stalking the local neighbourhood.
What Really Happened in Ficandula by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. A cultural misunderstanding leads to deaths and reprisals the memories of which are kept alive by the female descendants of the colonised as they themselves head for a new planet.
This collection illustrates how language, or its suppression, has been a primary tool of colonialism on Earth. There is irony, then, that, as Ekaterina Sedia’s afterword notes, all these stories were written in US English. (Double irony when the word “veterinarian� is depicted as being employed by a Yorkshireman.) Yet the theme of resistance, the keeping of traditions, shines through. Under the circumstances resistance becomes necessary.
As with most anthologies the standard can be uneven, but each story works as speculative fiction; and four are very good indeed.
Read
August 11, 2019This is a strong collection.
I think the ones that will stick with me most are "Old Domes" by J.Y. Yang (Singapore) and "Forests of the Night" by Gabriel Murray (Malaya and Britain).
The book jacket says talks about centering the perspectives of those who are not "straight, cis, able-bodied, rich, anglophone, white males" (and the Introduction includes their call for submissions, which says, "We want to see stories that remind us that neither readers nor writers are a homogeneous club of white, male, Christian, hetero, cis, monoglot anglophone, able-bodied Westerners.") but there's not a lot of queer or disability rep.
Our protagonists are heavily poor, non-White colonized (a fair amount of whom are women), which is not a bad thing to be, but I wish the front/back matter had acknowledged how the final anthology didn't live up to all the editors' hopes when they first imagined it.
I think the ones that will stick with me most are "Old Domes" by J.Y. Yang (Singapore) and "Forests of the Night" by Gabriel Murray (Malaya and Britain).
The book jacket says talks about centering the perspectives of those who are not "straight, cis, able-bodied, rich, anglophone, white males" (and the Introduction includes their call for submissions, which says, "We want to see stories that remind us that neither readers nor writers are a homogeneous club of white, male, Christian, hetero, cis, monoglot anglophone, able-bodied Westerners.") but there's not a lot of queer or disability rep.
Our protagonists are heavily poor, non-White colonized (a fair amount of whom are women), which is not a bad thing to be, but I wish the front/back matter had acknowledged how the final anthology didn't live up to all the editors' hopes when they first imagined it.
October 25, 2017
I didn't have time to read all the stories in this collection, and unfortunately I hit a few duds, but there were also some great ones. One I particularly liked was called Them Ships, and is actually available online here:
August 5, 2018
lOVED THIS COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES! eSPECIALLY lOTUS. Hate caps lock, tho.
May 16, 2016
I usually reserve 5 stars for books I can't stop raving about. I didn't love each of the stories in this anthology, but I do absolutely positively love that it exists. So it gets 5 stars because I loved the majority of the stories, and the theme is one that does not get enough attention in SFF.
The introduction and afterward were also really helpful for me to process the anthology as a whole, not just as the sum of the individual stories. The different approaches to colonialism still had a lot of common themes and points.
I highly recommend this collection to anyone who is tired of white male perspective in stories. To anyone who wants to read a story and see themselves in it. Or to simply put themselves in another person's perspective. To see the possibilities from a new angle.
The introduction and afterward were also really helpful for me to process the anthology as a whole, not just as the sum of the individual stories. The different approaches to colonialism still had a lot of common themes and points.
I highly recommend this collection to anyone who is tired of white male perspective in stories. To anyone who wants to read a story and see themselves in it. Or to simply put themselves in another person's perspective. To see the possibilities from a new angle.
January 16, 2017
This was a really interesting collection of short stories. Some of the stories were pure speculative fiction, some wandered more towards science fiction, and others had a splash of magical realism, but the anthology really was very well put together around its common theme. Some of the stories worked for me more than others, but even when the writing left me flat, the creativity and diversity of it all made it a good read - shout outs to Old Domes, A Heap of Broken Images, Vector, and Forests of the Night for really sticking with me.
November 26, 2015
Este livro é na verdade um projeto para se aplaudir de pé. Um apanhado riquÃssimo de múltiplas visões dos colonizados e colonizadores, do ponto de vista dos primeiros. Por ser literatura, e por sua posição pós-colonialista, vai muito além da visão clássica contada nos livros de história.
Afinal, não estamos todos nós lutando um pouco - e ao mesmo tempo degustando um pouco - as múltiplas ondas colonizadoras dos dias atuais?
Afinal, não estamos todos nós lutando um pouco - e ao mesmo tempo degustando um pouco - as múltiplas ondas colonizadoras dos dias atuais?
March 14, 2016
You want to read more diverse books? You like sci-fi, fantasy, speculative fiction? I got you covered RIGHT HERE! Some truly amazing stories in here, I especially liked "Lotus" (Joyce Chng), "Them Ships" (Silvia Moreno-Garcia), and "Forests of the Night" (Gabriel Murray) but all of them held me in thrall. Check this out now.
December 18, 2014
"Quem tem dois, tem um. Quem tem um, não tem nenhum."
December 12, 2016
This was great! So many writers I want to read more of.
April 30, 2017
Mind bending and often fun
Some of these stories are difficult but many are joyful and satisfying. Took me forever to finish but I'm happy to own this.
Some of these stories are difficult but many are joyful and satisfying. Took me forever to finish but I'm happy to own this.
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January 10, 2019For my Science Fiction class we read “Them Ships� by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It was a really interesting examination of two people from different walks of life in Mexico City, forced together after the aliens arrive on Earth. It contrasts background, class, and free will versus coping in a bad situation.
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