This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.
The Boy The Girl
The Rat The Rabbit
and the Last Magic Days
Chapbook, 2018
Republic of Carnage:
Three Horror Stories
For the Way We Live Now
Chapbook, 2018
Bamboo Girls:
Stories and Poems
From a Forgotten Life
Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2018
Don't Tell Anyone:
Literary Smut
With Shakira Andrea Sison
Pride Press / Anvil Publishing, 2017
Cupful of Anger,
Bottle Full of Smoke:
The Stories of
Jose V. Montebon Jr.
Silliman Writers Series, 2017
First Sight of Snow
and Other Stories
Encounters Chapbook Series
Et Al Books, 2014
Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop
Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
Handulantaw: Celebrating 50 Years of Culture and the Arts in Silliman
Tao Foundation and Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, 2013
Inday Goes About Her Day
Locsin Books, 2012
Beautiful Accidents: Stories
University of the Philippines Press, 2011
Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and Horror
Anvil, 2011
Old Movies and Other Stories
National Commission for Culture
and the Arts, 2006
FutureShock Prose: An Anthology of Young Writers and New Literatures
Sands and Coral, 2003
Nominated for Best Anthology
2004 National Book Awards
What exactly defines a secondary world anyway?
The grandfather of all fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, once said the story-maker, as a successful ‘sub-creator’, can make a secondary world in which the reader’s mind can enter. He states, “Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.” It is this ‘internal consistency of reality’ that is important to make a secondary world work.
Thus, an author creates a story wherein the world imagined in it (but separate from our own reality) must be sound—from its internal laws, principles, etc.—as well as consistent in order to believable. Moreover, this ‘separate’ world combines elements from the ordinary and extraordinary so that readers will be able to find some familiar footing in such an unfamiliar setting.
Given this partial description of what a secondary world is, I then left it to the writer to define the term. And such an interesting set of stories! From a gigantic turtle-like beast traveling in space, to a young woman’s cry for justice in an imagined world, to a witch-queen intent on escaping a deal with a devil, these writers showed how secondary-worlds can be done—with or without the pressure of trying to write a Filipino story.
Labels: books, philippine literature, speculative fiction, web and tech