Read Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction Online
Authors: Dominica Malcolm
Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction
AMOK
An Anthology of
Asia-Pacific
Speculative Fiction
Edited by Dominica Malcolm
Solarwyrm Press
2014
The short stories within are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Thank you for supporting Solarwyrm Press by obtaining this electronic book legitimately. If you did not obtain this electronic book by legitimate means, please support the authors and publisher by either purchasing a copy, reviewing it, or recommending it to friends.
Published and produced by Solarwyrm Press
Cover design by Jun Hun Yap
Production by Dominica Malcolm
This anthology in its current form © 2014
Each story © 2013 their respective authors
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9805084-4-4
Table of Contents
Introduction
- Dominica Malcolm
>
The Donor
- Brett Adams (Australia)
>
Operation Toba 2049
- Kris Williamson (Malaysia)
>
Target: Heart
- Recle Etino Vibal (Philippines)
>
Dreams
- Tabitha Sin ((New) Hong Kong)
>
Bumbye! Said the Candelarios
- Ailia Hopkins (Hawai‘i)
>
The Volunteer
- TR Napper (Thailand & Vietnam)
>
Bright Student
- Terence Toh (Malaysia)
>
No Name Islands
- Kawika Guillermo (Indonesia)
>
The Dead of the Night
- Barry Rosenberg (Australia)
>
Yamada’s Armada
- Eeleen Lee (Singapore)
>
Love and Statues
- Jax Goss (New Zealand)
>
Gone Fishing
- Jo Thomas (Pacific Ocean)
>
Shadows of an Ancient Battle
- Daniel A. Kelin, II (Hawai‘i)
>
In Memoriam
- Fadzlishah Johanabas (Malaysia)
>
Lola’s Lessons
- Shenoa Carroll-Bradd (Philippines)
>
When the Rice was Gone
- Dominica Malcolm (South Korea)
>
The Healer
- Aashika Nair (India)
>
Caves of Noble Truth and Dangerous Knowledge
- Celeste A. Peters (China)
>
The Seventh Month
- Agnes Ong (Malaysia)
>
And Then It Rained
- Rebecca Freeman (Australia)
>
Where the Fireflies Go
- NJ Magas (Japan)
>
The King of Flotsamland
- Tom Barlow (North Pacific Gyre)
>
Introduction
Dominica Malcolm
As an Australian who knew a number of excellent Australian short story writers, in the early stages of conceptualising my first anthology, my instinct had been to have a collection of speculative fiction set in Australia. Then I had a request to include New Zealand as a setting, and once that door opened, it occurred to me that living in Malaysia and sharing my writing with those I met in Kuala Lumpur meant I at the very least had some connections to help me spread the word within the region. It then ended up being no surprise to me that the majority of submissions came from and/or were set in Australia and Malaysia.
When I put up the call for submissions, I was specifically looking for the kind of diversity that doesn’t seem so common in mainstream fiction. Not only is the Asia-Pacific region home to a vast number of races—which are captured very well in this anthology—but I was also hoping to find more characters both young and old, from non-Western religious backgrounds, women, LGBT, and disabled characters. I am thankful to say all of this diversity is represented in this collection.
Whilst the stories feature settings in Australia, China, Hawai‘i, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Pacific Ocean, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, the authors are also diverse, living across the globe in Australia, Canada, China, England, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the USA.
As well as diversity, I was naturally also looking for good quality speculative fiction, which I generally define as “real world settings in the past, present, or future, with science-fiction or fantasy elements.” The stories I selected range from using traditional mythology of the country or region they’re set in, re-imagined mythology or other fantasy, and possible futures, which includes both new technologies and dystopias.
I’m really proud of the selection of stories I was able to include. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
The Donor
Brett Adams
~ Australia ~
I wasn’t born blind.
At least, that’s what my mother told me.
My sight was stolen by a man calling himself Doctor Fletcher. He gave me the wrong drops—the wrong treatment entirely—for swollen eyes, and ran away when the shit hit the fan. Left me blind at six months, when I was just beginning to drink in the kaleidoscope, only to have it wink out in the time it took to draw breath.
That’s the gist of what Mum told me. I don’t remember any of it.
As I grew, it fell to my remaining senses to give me a kind of sight. With my ears I learned how to map a room by the subtle play of echo from texture. With my nose I fixed upon a thousand different scents undetected by mere mortals. With my fingers I grasped the Elephant—hide, tusk and trunk. And so I saw, after all.
At least, that’s what my teachers told me.
But the sense I held most dear is the common sort. It’s a pity it kept silent on that fateful day in August all those years ago, instead of screaming how crazy it was for three kids—one blind, one deaf, and one… other—to be on the cliffs of Blackwall Reach just shy of midnight, winter’s breath heavy on our necks, hunting for a missing man.
Did I mention we were twelve? Three boys of twelve at Blackwall Reach in the witching hour. Not very Disney. But we figured we had the pooled resources of a thirty-six year old man. Treble the feet and hands in any case. Funny to think that thirty-six was the missing man’s age.
Why Blackwall? That had been Barny’s idea.
I remember it vividly. Earlier that day he’d said, “Paahlie,” (my name is Paulus) in that voice of his, which sounded like a crow in flight. I liked Barny’s crow’s caw. It had a singsong quality. The other kids might have liked it too if they’d shut up long enough to listen, instead of gibbering to each other to bugger up his lip reading. That was before we changed school, mind you. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Paahlie,” he cawed, “Let’s go.”
We were killing time in a foodhall after school, and I thought he meant we should leave. I sucked harder on my shake and made to get up.
“No.” He laughed in that breathy way of his. “Not here. Blackwall.”
He was a brave bugger, Barny. I could have travelled the world if I had a fiver for every time some well-meaning adult told me how brave
I
was. So independent, so ‘autonomous’—and blind!
But Barny had it worse. His dad had belted his hearing from him when he was six. He didn’t have a mum. No one else knew how he’d lost his hearing. He told only me, and that’s the other reason I harboured a special fondness for Barny.
Me
, brave? It was Barny who walked home from school every day after he lost his hearing, just like normal. Home to that man. To his
Guardian
. Barny went home to his father every day at 3.30 on the dot, and sat with him on the couch and watched TV and fetched his poison from the fridge. And as the years passed and Barny’s legs lengthened and his dad’s gut grew, Barny loved him until he crawled out of the hole and into the sun.
I had the first inkling the day he told me all this that giants walked among us.
So it was brave Barny’s suggestion to go to Blackwall Reach.
And it was Nate who seconded it.
He was with us in the foodhall. He stood so quickly his chair squealed on the tiles. “Yeah,” was all he said, and I heard him stuffing his things back into his bag.
“Nate,” I said, “There’s no way my parents, or yours for that matter, are gunna buy that.”
“We’ll go tonight,” he said. He was standing now. There was a finality in his voice that sent a shiver down my spine.
Why the fuss about Blackwall Reach? Well, for that we need to go back a little further than that day in August, to January of the same year.
But first let me set the scene.
Come with me. Shut your eyes for a moment. Turn out the lights if you can, and let even the after image fade.
Black, right? Empty? Think you’re going cross-cultural with a blind man?
You’re not even close.
Forgive me. I was being a little insincere when I said ‘come with me’. You see, you can’t.
But go ahead and picture as best you can the inner world of the man for whom the photon has been forever banished. This is immediate living. No time lag here. No awaiting that neural zap of the universe’s synaptic pathways to carry the sensory payload to your brain. No Neo-Kanto-Einsteinian phenomenological distance here: The thing beheld is the thing. It is the desert of the now.