A review of two anthologies I helped translate
Arrate Hidalgo at Strange Horizons has a thoughtful review of two anthologies from Spain, Spanish Women of Wonder and Castles in Spain. She concludes:
"The question of whether a country’s SFF has reached a stage of maturity necessarily invokes the canon we’re measuring it up against. However, what transpires from these two anthologies is that they are the result of a conscious effort to reject comparison and to focus instead on what there is, distilling not only the quality but also the cultural relevance of Spanish SFF in an international context—registering, for instance, the interest of some of the most established authors among them (César Mallorquí, Rafael Marín, Eduardo Vaquerizo) in normalizing the use of autochthonous references. Or featuring, as does Spanish Women of Wonder, visions of contemporary sources of collective angst, including mass extinction by climate change and the erosion of our attention spans. Ultimately, these twenty-one short stories work very well together as a tip of the iceberg of Spanish speculative fiction, which incidentally appears to be a pretty sizeable one—and I for one sure hope it makes the splash it deserves."
Read the whole thing here:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/spanish-women-of-wonder-edited-by-cristina-jurado-and-leticia-lara-and-castles-in-spain-edited-by-mariano-villareal/
"The question of whether a country’s SFF has reached a stage of maturity necessarily invokes the canon we’re measuring it up against. However, what transpires from these two anthologies is that they are the result of a conscious effort to reject comparison and to focus instead on what there is, distilling not only the quality but also the cultural relevance of Spanish SFF in an international context—registering, for instance, the interest of some of the most established authors among them (César Mallorquí, Rafael Marín, Eduardo Vaquerizo) in normalizing the use of autochthonous references. Or featuring, as does Spanish Women of Wonder, visions of contemporary sources of collective angst, including mass extinction by climate change and the erosion of our attention spans. Ultimately, these twenty-one short stories work very well together as a tip of the iceberg of Spanish speculative fiction, which incidentally appears to be a pretty sizeable one—and I for one sure hope it makes the splash it deserves."
Read the whole thing here:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/spanish-women-of-wonder-edited-by-cristina-jurado-and-leticia-lara-and-castles-in-spain-edited-by-mariano-villareal/
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They are ebooks. As the reviewer said, sometimes the stories blend seamlessly with "international" SF, but sometimes you can tell that the writer has a Spanish perspective -- which I think is good. Sometimes this is very subtle. Mallorquí's story "The Flock," for example, reflects Spanish ways of shepherding sheep. The same story set in Idaho would necessarily be different.
Thinkingof Spanish as the second most used language in the world, or second most widespread anyway, it should therefore be that Spanish SFF is as well-informed by modern sources as English SFF is, so these might be interesting to read in what are, indubitably, excellent translations.
I'll add them to the pile if they're in ebook format.