Asimov's SF, September 2010 Read Online Free Page B

might seem like a retread of colonialist ethos, forcing alien values onto them.
    And yet . . . and yet, all literature is a dialogue. A dialogue in the sense that the writers are listening to those who have come before; that no SF writer exists in a vacuum, but rather draws inspiration from their predecessors. But it is also a dialogue because any writer will speak in their own voice—a voice that is influenced by their upbringing, the society they live in, the values they hold dear. Even if those other countries had read no other SF but that imported from America—which, as I have shown above, is not true—they would still create a form of science fiction that would be uniquely their own. Japanese SF, as Nick Mamatas points out on the Haikasoru blog[14], harkens back to Van Vogt and Fredric Brown just as much as it draws from other Japanese writers, religious concepts, manga, science....
    Because just as if one gives two writers the same plot and ask them to write, one will end up with two very different stories, no two people will read the same book in the same way, and no two people will craft an answer to the same book or author in the same voice. That is even more true when there is a great distance between those two writers. What I, as a Frenchwoman living in France, get out of reading Charles Stross is no doubt very different from what a black Kenyan woman would get out of it. And what I will write is different from what an Asian or an African writer will write.
    To take just one example: there is a greater emphasis on the community in Asian countries than there is in the West. As a result, many Asians coming-of-age stories are about learning to fit in and be accepted, rather than forging one's independence. A story in which a character walks away from his community and his family would be seen as a tragedy, rather than the triumph of turning over a brand new leaf and making a life for oneself—as it might be in the West. Likewise, Asians tend to have a more elastic concept of reality than Westerners. (the idea that science can explain everything is a typically Western one.) pieces such as Liu Cixin's “From Ball Lightning"[15] or Han Song's “The Wheel of Samsara"[16] have a peculiar, very fluid concept of reality and memory.
    SF, then, is shaped by influences and dialogue, and the voice of SF in different countries is necessarily going to be different. When you throw into the mix the writers of those countries—the Brazilian writers of Brazil, the Chinese writers of China—then you will have voices that are very different from those that come from America or indeed from the western world, and markets that will continue to develop and thrive, and make their own ways with their own voices.
    Copyright © 2010 Aliette de Bodard
    With thanks to Lauren Beukes, Keyan Bowes, Dario Ciriello, Fabio Fernandes, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Rick Novy, and Juliette Wade.
    * * * *
    References
    1 “Japanese History: Meiji Restoration,” Encyclopaedia Britannica 2001 & 2006.
    2 C.P. Fitzgerald, A Concise History of East Asia , Penguin Books, 1966.
    3 worldsf.wordpress.com
    4 www.concatenations.org
    5 Jenny Bai and Cecilia Qin, www.concatenation.org/articles/sciencefictionchina.html
    6 Sherry Yao, www.concatenation.org/articles/sciencefictionworld2010.html
    7 M. Elizabeth Ginway, Brazilian Science Fiction: Cultural Myths and Nationhood In The Land Of The Future , Bucknell University Press, 2004.
    8 Nnedi Okarafor, www.sfwa.org/2010/03/can-you-define-african-science-fiction
    9 Nick Wood, worldsf.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/monday-original-content-sf-in-south-africa-by-nick-wood
    10 Nick Wood, “Science Fiction in South Africa,” series of articles from 2005 to 2009 ( nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz/index2.htm?sfsa.htm )
    11 Centre National du Livre, Le Secteur Du Livre: Chiffres-clés 2008-2009 , 2010
    12 Natalie Levisalles, “The US market for translations,” Publishing Research Quarterly , June 2004.
    13 Richard J. Smith, China's Cultural