Monday, October 05, 2009

1:29 AM | An Anthology of Filipino Fantasy Worlds

So, of course you have Narnia of C.S. Lewis, and Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien, and Earthsea of Ursula K. Le Guin, and Hogwarts of J.K. Rowling. The fantasy worlds everybody knows about. Ever heard of Hinirang? No? Then it's time you get to know some original worlds conjured by our very own tinkerers of fantasy. Here's an online anthology of speculative worlds, edited by two people who know best, Dean Francis Alfar and Joseph Nacino.



From Joseph's own introduction:

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.

Read the rest of the introduction here.

Click here for the anthology.

Labels: books, philippine literature, speculative fiction, web and tech

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